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Analogies of Union with Christ (The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification)

We receive from Christ a new holy frame and nature, by which we are enabled for a holy practice, by union and fellowship with him, in like manner
-as Christ lived in our nature by the Father (John 6:57);
-as we receive original sin and death propagated to us from the first Adam (Rom. 5:12,14,16,17);
-as the natural body receives sense, motion and nourishment from the head (Col. 2:19);
-as the branch receives its sap, juice and fructifying virtue from the vine (John 15:4,5);
-as the wife brings forth fruit by virtue of her conjugal union with her husband (Rom. 7:4);
-as stones become a holy temple by being guilt on the foundation, and joined with the chief corner-stone (1 Peter 2:4-6);
-as we receive the nourishing virtue of bread by eating it, and of wine by drinking it (John 6:51,55,57),
-which last resemblance is used to seal to us our communion with Christ in the Lord’s Supper.

-Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, Chapter 3, Kindle Loc. 606-12 (Get a free copy for Kindle HERE).

The analogies are miraculous, covenantal, organic, and architectural:

  • Miraculous: hypostatic union
  • Covenantal: federal headship, marriage
  • Organic: mind/body, vine/branch, body/food
  • Architectural: cornerstone/foundation/building

All of these entail the idea of ‘indwelling.’

 

 

The Romance of Repentance

It is so ordered that the continuance of sin in us shall be the ground, reason, and occasion, of the exercise of all grace, and of putting a lustre on our obedience. Some excellent graces, as repentance and mortification, could have no exercise if it were otherwise; and whilst we are in this world there is a beauty in them that is an overbalance for the evil of the remainders of sin.

-John Owen, Sin and Grace: Of the Dominion of Sin and Grace, p. 556

Owen is making the point that if you made a scale (of the old fashioned sort, a balance) and put the ugliness of sin in one side and beauty of the fight against sin, and repentance, in the other, the scale would tip dramatically toward the beauty of the fight.

Remaining sin in the Christian is ugly, but the struggle to fight against it is beautiful. Falling into sin is ugly, but repentance is beautiful. The dragon is ugly, but the fight against the dragon is romantic and beautiful. The dragon is vile, but getting back up after taking a shot from its tail is heroic and noble.

Remember, therefore, the ugliness of sin. See it for what it is. But remember that your battle against it is beautiful, even if it means you get knocked down from time to time, even if some blows are nearly fatal.

Christ, through his own righteousness, has already given us the victory. Only the fight remains.

  • For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live (Romans 8:13).
  • Where, O Death, is your victory?
    Where, O Grave, is your sting?
    The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:55-57).

A Savior From Sin (Charity and Its Fruits)

He that, by the act of his will, does truly accept of Christ as a Savior, accepts of him as a Savior from sin, and not merely as a Savior from the punishment of sin.

Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, Chapter 11

Edwards is commenting on 1 Corinthians 13:6: ‘[Charity] rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.’ Quite frankly, I got chills as I read these words for the first time. I do not know if I have read a statement that I would consider more of a theological bomb, for it blows up our lawlessness. Our Lord is named Jesus, ‘because he will save his people from their sins’ (Matthew 1:21), not just the punishment their sins deserve.

Edwards further proves the statement like this:

The most remarkable type of the work of redemption by divine love in all the Old Testament history, was the redemption of the children of Israel out of Egypt. But the holy living of his people was the end God had in view in that redemption, as he often signified to Pharaoh, when from time to time he said to him by Moses and Aaron, “Let my people go, that they may serve me.” And we have a like expression concerning Christ’s redemption in the New Testament, where it is said, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, . . . to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life” (Luke 1:68-75). All these things make it very plain that the end of redemption is, that we might be holy.

He won’t stop until we are not only counted as holy, and forgiven of our unholiness, but until we actually are holy. Christ’s work will not be complete until we are glorified, but that glorification is so certain that the Apostle Paul can speak of it in the past tense (Rom. 8:30). That’s motivation to put sin to death and live unto righteousness. That’s not Legalism – that’s high and heavenly motivation. Those who know the love of Christ, and love him on account of it, will rejoice in truthful living, which is holiness.

A Religion for Adult Minds

In her essay entitled Strong Meat, Dorothy Sayers quotes Augustine speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ (Confessions, 7.10):

I am the food of the full-grown; become a man, and thou shalt feed on me.

She comments,

Here is a robust assertion of the claim of Christianity to be a religion for adult minds (Creed or Chaos?, p. 14).

It has often been said that the basics of the gospel – Christ living the life that we couldn’t live and dying the death that we deserve – are simple enough for a small child to understand, while the complexities of Scripture are profound enough that the aged genius can’t even begin to plumb the depths. I think that statement is true. And one end of it shouldn’t take away from the other. We should not let the simplicity of the basic message fool us into thinking that this isn’t hearty food, that this isn’t a religion for adult minds.

This past week I spent a good deal of time re-studying the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son of God. The church fathers took great effort, essentially exhausting their resources formulating this doctrine, and still they leave us with only a hint of what this doctrine is, and might entail. This is ‘strong meat.’ One of the great things about Christianity is that it never stops challenging the mind.

John Piper once commented on the brilliance of John Owen, and the application of his life and work to us, that the Christian life is like cliff-climbing. You spend time, perhaps years, climbing one intellectual cliff. You look at a doctrine from every angle possible, and ultimately you come to place where you think you have understanding. You get to the top of the cliff and you think you’ve made it. Then you look up – and there’s another cliff to climb. Maybe this one is a smaller cliff, so you climb it more quickly, only to find another, and another. You never stop climbing.

This is why the authors of Scripture speak of the attributes of God in such broad, grand ways:

  • Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Rom. 11:33).

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
your judgments are like the great deep (Ps. 35:6-7).

The Apostle Paul realized that this was no easy matter, plumbing the depths of Jesus Christ, and so he recorded his own prayer for Christians:

  • …that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:17-19).

This is knowledge so great, and so demanding, that it takes the very presence of the food, already in you, to help you digest the food to come. You might say that Jesus, in Paul’s picture, is like the mother bird who must chew the babies’ food before them, and for them. If we were to eat it on our power we could never digest it. And it is only through this process that we grow intellectually. In other words, it is only through approaching the truth like a child, knowing that it is not something we can fully comprehend,  that we attain adult minds.

I will ‘bottom line’ this post in this way: Don’t be deceived into thinking that Christianity is a shallow religion. Our God is not shallow. We come as children to a Father, but we do not check our minds at the door. We come as children longing to eat grown-up food. And there is food in abundance to be found.

What is Theology?: Learning to Live, Living, and Teaching Others to Live a Blessed Life

William Perkins once wrote, ‘Theology is the science of living blessedly forever’ (quoted in J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, p. 64). The quote is found in volume 1 of Perkins’ works, but today it is virtually impossible to get the book (and the online version is borderline unreadable). Hence, I have no context whatsoever to help me in interpreting that quote. With that said, the quote is a gem.

If this definition is true, then the aim of studying theology is learning to live blessedly. That is, the primary task of theology is to ask, How can I gain the smile of God on my person and life? This is why theology can never, not for one second, be separated from Jesus Christ. For it is only through the person and work of Christ that we find blessedness.

Second, If this definition is true, then the way we live is intimately related to our theology. If we are living a blessed life, then we are good theologians. Understand that the term ‘blessed’ does not mean that you will be rich or problem free. It means that you are living under the smile of God. You are living the sort of life that would cause Jesus to say that you are blessed. And we already know what type of life that is, for he told us – poor in spirit, mourning over sin, meek, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted. A good theologian is not someone who is necessarily able to systematize theology like Charles Hodge. A good theologian is someone who is able to life a life like Charles Hodge.

Third, if this definition is true, then teaching theology is teaching people how to live under the smile of God. And again, this is why the person and work of Christ must be central to all Christian teaching. A sermon without Christ is a sermon with bad theology, for it is not teaching people the only way to be blessed and live blessedly. We cannot experience the pleasure of God if we are not accepted by him through his Son. And we cannot live out that accepted life without learning how the gospel informs our motives and actions.

Ezra 7:10 tells us that Ezra’s aim in life was to study, to live, and to teach God’s law. Perhaps that is why, when confronted with the sin of his people, he was the one pulling his own hair out rather than trying to pull out the hair of others (see HERE). He desired to know how to live blessedly, to do it, and to teach others the same.

Temperament and Personality in the Christian

We all possess different temperaments, and we each have a personal problem for that reason. But the difference between the non-Christian and the Christian at this point is this: the non-Christian tends to be governed by his temperament. Now, when we are converted and regenerated our temperament, as such, is not changed at all. It is still there and it should be. Christians are not intended to be all the same, like postage stamps…The point is that the Christian is not controlled by his old nature. He controls it. he can harness it to become something very valuable because he will express his Christianity in his own particular way which is different from another.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Healing and the Scriptures, p. 105

I struggled with this fact early on in my Christian life. Does becoming a Christian mean a complete change in personality? Not so. But what does change is one’s ability to control that personality. The Christian life is not personality-driven, it is personality under the control of the person of Christ.