The doctrine of election is one of the most controversial subjects often discussed within Christian theology. The concept of predestination, that God has chosen His people who will be saved not just in the course of their lives or because of their actions, but from before creation itself, has drawn many objections, including from Christians. It is a subject that requires patience and pastoral care alongside a devotion to Scripture’s inerrancy and sufficiency. It also requires a great deal of humility, which often seems to be alien to the debates this issue raises. 

The doctrine of election is a necessary consequence to the concept of God’s grace, God’s decision to deal in patience and love with those who demonstrably have rebelled against him. Throughout Scripture, God has chosen to bless individuals or peoples for reasons that are entirely His own. We see this pattern develop virtually from the beginning in Scripture, and every step of the way, the Bible makes it clear that the purpose is to bring salvation into the world. God’s end, as stated repeatedly, is to save vast numbers beyond what the receiver of the promise can comprehend. For example, Abraham receives this promise from God that from him and Sarah would come a great people, and that through them all the families of the earth would be blessed. We are given no reason that God has chosen Abraham, simply that He chose him to be the one through whom He would enact the great plan of salvation for creation.

God’s choice throughout

In Deuteronomy 7 Moses speaks on this to the people, saying in verses 7-8, “The Lord had his heart set on you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors, he brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” God’s love for them was entirely of His own choice and will, and not because of any special thing Israel had done. He had elected them to be His, and through them, to bring His people of all nations to Him in Christ.

Just as Moses was calling the Israelites to humble gratitude and obedience for God’s choosing them purely out of His love and grace, so Paul calls believers to the same attitude:

Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One. – Ephesians 1:3-6

Let’s focus on the aspect of election that tends to be most controversial: that those who are saved, are saved entirely because God chooses to save them, and not by any will or work of their own. When we discussed regeneration I mentioned the vision of the valley of dry bones from Ezekiel 37. Those dry bones had absolutely no good thing to recommend them to God, yet He gave them renewed flesh and life. Likewise, believers are not saved because they have made themselves holy, or because there’s something special about us. God has chosen His people for His own reasons, many of which we are not going to know, other than what Paul just said – because He wants to, and for the sake of His own glory. 

Going against the grain

This idea is frustrating for several reasons, but two of the biggest are that it rubs up against our human desire to be in charge of our own destiny, and because it raises difficult questions about what it means that God has elected some to salvation and not others. Those who oppose this idea accuse those of us who hold the reformed position of believing that humans are “robots,” with no real choice, since God has preprogrammed everything and just set us down to run. 

To the latter objection, there is both a strong philosophical as well as biblical response. Are we robots? Well, we certainly have predilections, we have aspects of ourselves that are bent towards particular desires. We also have the unfortunate habit of managing to do evil even when we mean to do what is good. Why does this matter? Because it points to the fact that no matter how hard we try, we’re not going to scrub ourselves clean. We won’t make ourselves holy before God. Even Israel’s religious practices pointed to this – making oneself clean, let alone holy, was difficult, and becoming unclean was remarkably easy. So we need to be cleansed by Someone who cannot be dirtied. 

Our own desires war against it, and that’s why regeneration is tied in so deeply with election. It’s difficult to discuss one without confronting the other. Regeneration cannot be the result of our own choice. Without God transforming our hearts, even a choice to believe is tinged with selfishness that will ultimately 

The King of all commands us to what is good

The objection is also raised alongside this that God would therefore be the author of sin. In the span of this time I scarcely have time to address all of the objections and challenges. I would simply say in the context of what we have discussed so far that we have affirmed and seen from Scripture that God is sovereign. Indeed, if He is God at all, He must be. Scripture says that not a hair is uncounted on our heads, and a sparrow doesn’t fall without His knowledge. Yet Scripture also affirms that rebellion against God exists in this world, in the hearts of humanity. So the most simple way I can respond to these objections would be the words of Charles Spurgeon:

I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me I should never have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards; and he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.

As to the question of why God would elect only some people to salvation, in the words of RC Sproul in Chosen By God, “I don’t know. I have no idea why God saves some but not all….One thing I do know, if it pleases God to save some and not all, there is nothing wrong with that. God is not under obligation to save anybody.” We must not presume upon God’s grace, but fall down at His feet in praise of it.

At rest in His work

Now that we have spelled out this doctrine and some of its foundations (for I don’t pretend that this is an exhaustive explanation, and there are full books out there on this subject alone), the question is: what do we do with this? For even though salvation is God’s work, it’s a work He has set us to. The means of salvation is the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we are called to see it carried throughout the world. We love our neighbors by sharing the good news that they can be reconciled with their Creator, the One who made them in His image and who sent His Son out of love for His creation. But if it’s true that it’s those whom He has chosen since before time began that will be saved, what should that do to our efforts to minister the gospel? 

There are many objections and questions that revolve around this, but they all revolve around a central misunderstanding of the nature of God’s grace, and the necessity of the work of God in our hearts to be able to receive it. Grace is freely given by God, for His reasons and glory. It’s not a thing that is earned. It is an act of love for His creation that led God to His work of salvation. Yet over and over again humanity has spit in God’s face – the Old Testament has God’s own people even rejecting Him repeatedly and running back to idol worship. God would set them free, and lead them back through hardship into His promises – and then the cycle would repeat. The drama of the fall of man in Genesis 3 would be reenacted in greater cycles.

That’s why the coming of Jesus was needed. Man has deepened his capacity for evil. Paul’s words in Romans 1 as to the state of humanity’s hearts are full of descriptors of our capacity for sin but the phrase “inventors of evil” from verse 30 rings out in my mind as unique: not only are we rebelling against the good God is trying to guide us to by the fact of our selfish, sin-loving natures, we are actually trying to find new and greater ways to commit evil acts, to indulge ourselves in depths that are further and further from God. This is what we as humans do, when left to our own devices.

God’s grace is our only hope

The only hope we have is election. It is only by God’s gracious love that any of humanity can be saved, because it’s not our ability to reason that will bring us to God. Humanity is capable of excellent acts of logic, philosophy, and creativity, yet there is a missing ingredient that keeps us from having the wherewithal within ourselves to come to God. And that missing ingredient is a recognition of our need for God, and the humility that comes from that recognition that brings us to Him. 

Twice in Proverbs and once in Psalms the phrase “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” appears. That’s where the path of Jesus begins. That’s what the work of the Holy Spirit in calling God’s elect to Himself plants: bringing us to that fear of God. Not simply being scared, because I think it’s clear that there is an instinctual fear and dread of the true biblical idea of God’s great and overwhelming glory and power planted deep in our very selves that’s evident from things like the art we produce.

But the fear of the Lord is also more than simply another word for respect. When we come face to face with God’s holiness, that light shines brightly upon our own sin. We see a picture of that in Isaiah 6, in the picture of his utter undoing when he finds himself in the presence of the Lord in the temple – and we see the picture of God’s work to impart holiness when the angel brings the coal to his lips to cleanse him. 

I know that is my own story as well, of having that deep transformative encounter with the reality of God’s holiness that utterly shattered my own self-image of “being okay.” No longer was I someone who was fine because I held certain opinions in my brain. My sin, my hypocrisy, my lack of love for God and for others – all of it was brought to the surface and exposed to me in a moment that broke me.

Yet God did not leave me there. The ministry of the gospel to my heart was also a picture of God’s great love, and it made me want to share it with others. It’s what has driven me to create this podcast and to work to share writings like this with others. It’s what leads me to have difficult conversations – a desire to see others know their Creator as well, to stop running after things that bring only death and to have real life. 

And this is why salvation is a fully Trinitarian work of God. God calls His people to Himself, the Son takes the weight of their sin upon Himself as He serves as the perfect atoning sacrifice for them, and the Spirit works to transform their hearts to a new life that glorifies God, that truly and fully trusts in the work of Christ not just for their sins but to make the path they tread in life and through death into eternity.

But here is where we must grab hold of the most critical reaction our hearts should have to this doctrine: we must seize upon it on our knees, in full humility. The reaction to the idea of God’s free choice in grace of His people must bring us to a wide-eyed recognition of the fact that we did nothing to earn our place. It is entirely because of His love, His glory, His patience that any of us are saved at all. That humility must shine through in how we love and worship our Lord. It must be evident in how we love one another, how we love our neighbors, how we serve our cities and pursue the hearts of the lost of this world. 

There is absolutely no room for arrogance or presumption. We are entitled to nothing and yet we receive everything, by the graces of the King. Therefore we must be generous with everything, because He has been infinitely generous with us. We must especially be generous in prayer, because it is through prayer that we see God’s hand working in our world. The question “Why am I saved and my neighbor isn’t?” ought to answered in our hearts with the only real response possible: “I can’t know the answer, but I can ask my Father to save him.” 

How have you wrestled with this doctrine? What questions are still unanswered? How have you seen the truth of God’s grace worked out in your life? Leave a comment below or email us!

So, we actually tried to record this podcast nearly a month ago, but due to technical issues it never got past the sitting down to chat part. Now, we try to recreate it. Sadly, we couldn’t recreate the greatest podcast in the world. No…this is just a tribute.

Dave and Jake talk about Dave’s struggles working on the next part of the What We Believe series on the doctrine of election, and Jake gives some solid advice that will hopefully mean that blog post will finally see the light of day here shortly. We also reflect on what it’s like writing on this topic in an era after so many of the “young, restless and reformed” big name pastors have declined or even been caught out in major scandals of one sort or another.

We also talk about more fallout from the exposure of the deep cracks in the foundation of the current SBC as the truth about the extent of abuse in the denomination has been dragged into the light.

https://coronationradio.net

Opening music: “Unanae” performed by The Big Easy Brass Band: https://www.thebigeasybrassband.com/
Check us out at the Wildflower Festival Friday May 15:
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Christian preaching works heavily through the concepts of justification and sanctification, and for good reason. We have seen many instances throughout the history of the church where the two concepts have been muddled and confused, and it has led to a great deal of strife. To this day we still struggle with discerning the difference, either by mixing sanctification into justification in a way that requires perfection in the now in order to be or remain justified, or by emphasizing justification so heavily that sanctification becomes an afterthought. The former leads to pharisaism and legalism, and the latter leads to antinomianism and a lack of care for holiness.

From God’s eternal perspective, we are clean and holy in Christ, a finished work that glorifies Him. But to us as we walk through each day of life, the sanctification of the Spirit can involve hardship, frustration, conviction, and even suffering. One passage that captures this duality is Romans 8:28-30:

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified.

The battle within ourselves

Yet in our daily experiences we don’t often feel this. Indeed, we often experience a deep sense of frustration as we live out the words of Paul in the preceding chapter, that “when I want to do what is good, evil is present with me.” As we strive forward towards the cross, our flesh continues to fail us. We find our motivations called into question, our hearts heavy, as we mourn the effects of sin even as we also rejoice in our circumstances and struggles. But this is not something we ought to lose hope over. There is, after all, excellent reason that chapter 7 is followed by chapter 8, and the joyful, life-giving truth that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Paul’s words in chapter 6 spell out the reality of sanctification for the Christian, and indeed I think it is how we can see the Lord working in our lives. It isn’t in moments of ease and contemplation that our love for God is most cultivated, but the times we experience and resist temptation. Our happiest times are made all the sweeter when we reflect on what we endure to get there, and especially in knowing that God walks through them with us. Our Lord is not distant, after all, because He too suffered with us. He too endured temptation, and in His power we have the right to reject our sinful desires and weaknesses. We can reject the condemnation of the enemy and embrace the truth that we are dead to sin, and alive in Christ.

We endure many things in this life, which serves to grind away at the hardness of heart, fear, doubt, and all the other things that point to the ways that we don’t trust God’s love and promises. For the person who loves God, when we consider all the experiences life may hold, God is promising that each and every one of them will work for our good. This idea is awe-inspiring, but also becomes incredibly vexatious to many when we consider what that might include. Disease? Financial hardship? Horrible abuse? The evils of war? Loss of a child? God’s Word is clear: yes, even these, though to walk with someone through this notion who has experienced suffering on this scale demands a great deal of empathy, patience, and pastoral care.

Purpose in all things – even the hard things

Sanctification in the Christian life is a significant part of our answer to the question of suffering and evil in this world. Why does God allow them to persist? We do not know His wisdom at its greatest height, nor would we be foolish enough to attempt to, but we do know suffering works its way through our lives so that we may be transformed, degree by degree, into the image of Christ. It is through the lens of Christ – His life, His work, His suffering and death, and His resurrected life – that we are able to endure suffering. 

When we experience hardship, grinding away at our lives and comforts, we are able to most fully embrace the truth of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 3:17 and 18. We have a freedom by the Spirit that this world cannot take away, and as we behold the truth and love of Christ we further embrace this freedom to endure this dark world. We have freedom in Christ to live knowing that He is better, He is stronger, He is more loving and gracious and providing than this world will ever be. We have freedom to endure evil knowing that He will bring justice to bear upon it in perfect time. We have freedom to be generous ourselves because He is infinitely generous towards us with what we need. And we have the freedom to give up everything, even our lives, because He stands with us, and receives us in glory as His own.

Sanctification’s role in what Paul describes in Romans 8:28-30 can be summed up in the phrase, “God ordains the ends and the means.” I can look at my life and at experiences like struggling to make ends meet, at relationships beginning and ending, or times of literal pain. I can think of moments that the Holy Spirit has lifted an idol from my hands in love, one I had been holding back for so long, and in the aftermath of that I found not loss, but true gain. I found my step lighter and my heart more free. This is why I say that sanctification is dying to ourselves, and finding freedom in Christ. We die to desires that weigh us down and find that the weight was only oppression on our souls. And when passages like Paul’s come to mind in those times when we are wrestling with our flesh, we can take heart in them. 

Whatever the pain and suffering, whatever the idol being wrenched from our grasps, whatever evil the world is throwing at us, all of it serves ultimately for our good in Christ. All of it demonstrates that no matter what the world says we need or what we should value, no matter what our flesh longs for, no matter what evil another may perpetrate against us, God’s love is greater. His good plan will come to full fruition in perfect time. And so, we strive to endure it by the strength granted us as we follow behind Christ, our crosses on our shoulders, knowing that death is not the end. J. Todd Billings writes in his book Rejoicing in Lament:

As the Heidelberg Catechism states, “Even as I already now experience in my heart the beginning of eternal joy, so after this life I will have perfect blessedness such as no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human heart has ever imagined: a blessedness in which to praise God forever.” The continuity between now and then is none other than our incorporation into the life of Christ.

So we walk through sanctification each day, whatever that may look like, and we encourage one another in it in patient love, rejoicing in the Lord always. We do the work before us because it is what leads us to the day that we will truly, as Paul writes in Romans 8:29, “be conformed to the image of Christ.” To us now, that day seems far in the distance, but God sees it clearly before Him, a people made holy and perfect and honored for enduring to the end. 

Hope in all seasons, patience in affliction 

Our story is one of sanctification. All the victories and failures of live, the pleasures and discomforts, they are not purposeless. They are meant to pry our hands free from this life – not in a nihilistic way, but in a manner that points to eternity. 

I think of all the encouragements I could give to others in this, it is that we are not meant to walk through this alone. We are never truly alone of course, in that the Holy Spirit is with us and within us, giving us strength and guidance through all things. But we should seek out those who encourage our spiritual strengthening, who aid in stirring our affections for Christ and who in turn we can serve and encourage in their own walks and strivings. Be with believers who will listen, and who will aid in prayerful and practical ways – and be ready to serve. 

The Bible is full of warnings against hardening our hearts, and encouragement that to endure is to see the fruit of Christ grow in our lives. I want to encourage those of you who may be struggling in any way that you are not alone in that. If nothing else, Jake and I are here to provide prayer and encouragement. The Lord knows your needs, and is with you through it all. After all this comes not a statement, but a question: how can we pray for you?

Jake and I sat down to record this a couple weeks before Christmas, but life got hectic as it does this time of year, so we’re a bit later than we expected to get it uploaded. As a result, some of the things we talk about as upcoming – like Tuba Christmas, or Jake’s winter solstice performance at our church, have already happened. But! You can still enjoy our end of year wrapup. It’s been a year of highs and lows, and we reflect on our year and our favorite holiday traditions, and what we hope to see accomplished as we mark the new year’s entry. Join in, and email us or comment below your thoughts and prayer requests.

Justification is that work of God in our lives that makes us righteous, able to stand before God as holy, when we are most assuredly not by our own human work and reckoning. Justification is what we receive and in which we walk in life after we have been regenerated. It is not just a simple hand-wave of God saying “all right, you’re fine.” It is a Trinitarian work that begins with the Father’s calling of His people, the Son’s sacrifice of Himself for the sins of His people and taking the wrath due to them on Himself, and the Spirit bringing new life to those people which enables them to place their faith in that work of the Son on their behalf. 

Justification can be described simply, such as when Paul and Silas told the Roman jailer in Acts 16:31, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Yet the closer we look at it the deeper the truth of it runs. It is also a concept that has held heavy controversy and disagreement throughout the age of the church. One challenge I have noted as I’ve written this is discussing justification specifically without moving into its lifelong effect, sanctification. The truth is simple, however: the former begets the latter, always. One who is in Christ will bear the fruit of Christ. 

The transforming, heart-changing work of Jesus

Justification is the hinge on which our life in Christ turns. It is the seed which grows into the tree of our faith. It is the root of life that brings dead men to their feet, and puts holy and obedient desires in their hearts. When the Holy Spirit baptizes us, He baptizes us into that truth that we may walk in it. Every good thing we are able to do is rooted in the faith and hope in that justification, authored by the blood of Jesus. It is difficult to speak of justification without addressing the whole work of salvation.

However, it isn’t uncommon for this to be a misconception among many, that salvation is simply mentally assenting to the fact of Jesus dying for their sins, and that’s that. Justification is often treated as a form of spiritual insurance, as though it’s a single transaction rather than the beginning of a transformed life. But if Christ is truly the object of our faith, He must also be our Lord. A mind may hold a fact in spite of a hard and unrepentant heart. But justification is not wrought in us simply because we got the right answer. It is the fruit in our lives of the truth of Proverbs 9:10, where the personification of God’s wisdom tells her listener that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” 

Washed clean, made new

If sin, the thoughts and deeds and desires that make us unholy is like mud covering us, justification is what cleans us off and washes our clothes and wipes our shoes, and makes us ready to reenter our Father’s house. Sin is the thing that brings us deep, heartbreaking shame, the thing that haunts our minds and hearts and separates us from our Father. Justification is the way by which we find ourselves free from this shame and regret, and when we see its work before our eyes, we find not a slavery to religion, but freedom – freedom to rejoice, freedom to trust the One who made us and called us to Himself. 

Throughout all their epistles, the apostles seek to emphasize what the life of someone who is following the way of Jesus should look like. Their call is unified and consistent: loving others is a fruit of God’s love for us, and we ought to cultivate this in our lives. James writes in the first chapter of his letter that we must be “doers of the word and not hearers only,” and builds on that in the second chapter by giving examples of what this love looks like – for example, doing away with favoritism over human reasons like money, or truly sacrificing of ourselves for the needs of others. 

The greatest passage of Scripture delving into the concept of justification, its nature and its fruit in our lives, is doubtlessly Paul’s epistle to the Romans. He begins the book addressing the “why” of justification. He calls out sin in both Gentiles and Jews, the two groups that made up the church in Rome, describing in great detail that neither has a right standing with God by their own nature. Jews did not, because they found themselves guilty of breaking the very law they were entrusted with, and the Gentiles did not because of the deep and besetting nature of the sins of their lives. Paul concludes this argument in chapter 3 with passages from the Psalms, concluding with this striking statement: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Why is this important?

Let’s break this down more plainly and answer what is probably the most basic question: why do we need to be justified? I’ve talked about “sin” and I think at least for most in the West there’s a general idea that sin is doing things against God’s rules, but that concept is both rather vague and reductive. Let’s define this in the way the Bible does, then.

The first sin, often referred to as the fall of man, is seen in Genesis chapter 3. The garden of Eden is a place where man and God are able to commune with one another, where heaven and earth mingle. God has created humans not simply as another form of animal to roam the earth, but as co-rulers of creation in a sense. We are made to truly know him, and to share in His image, to reflect it to the world in how we love and care for it. However, we don’t share in the entire nature of God, and of course we cannot – we are creatures, bound to the nature of such a being. We have limits, while God has none. We have a beginning, and at least for the moment, we have an end, while God has neither.

God placed a tree in the garden and commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from it. The tree is dubbed the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Knowledge, in this sense, is not simply an understanding that such concepts exist, for certainly they had that idea from the very beginning, since God had told them that to eat from it was forbidden – and to do so carried the stiffest of penalties, which is death. This image is a warning against trying to take the power of declaring what is good and what is evil into their own hands. This is not what we as creatures get to decide, but God has set the boundaries of creation.

Yet Adam and Eve listen to the lies of the serpent, who convinces them that they can in fact transcend their role as creatures and become like God, “knowing good and evil” – again, in the sense that they would define it. They would control the nature of right and wrong outside of God’s wisdom. And yet when they do, they don’t find empowerment or joy or pleasure. They find sadness and guilt, as they immediately recognize that apart from God’s perfect provision they are naked and exposed. 

This is why the concept of sin is so much deeper than simply “don’t do it, it’s naughty and God will get mad.” It’s also one of the biggest themes woven throughout Scripture, that the wisdom of God is what governs the world and sin, rebellion against that wisdom, finds its end only in death. In the future I’d like to dig into that subject at length but for now I will settle for quoting one of the most striking verses in the book of Proverbs, from the end of chapter 8: “For the one who finds me [God’s wisdom] finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, but the one who misses me harms himself; all who hate me love death.”

And so, we have humanity, trying to do everything in its power to make itself right and good through its own diverse and foolish efforts. We have aching cries for justice in an unjust, wicked world filled with evil, and our own efforts leave us naked, exposed, and dying.

By His work

We can draw from this the important truth that our first step into finding justification is to discover our true need for it. One of the psalms that Paul quotes from in the Romans 3 passage is Psalm 14, which begins with the bold statement that “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.” This is not simply a rebuke to open atheism, but against nominal religiosity that claims perhaps even the name of Christ, yet empties that name of its power through a true trust in human wisdom over God’s. I won’t belabor this point for now, but we’ve discussed ways this idea manifests even within so-called “reformed” Christianity on the podcast many times.

The justified person sees Jesus on the cross with the opened eyes of his heart and sees that but for God’s grace, his fate would be to receive that death himself, leading only to destruction. The justified person cries with the tax collector of Luke 18, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” The justified person is open-handed and joyfully generous not out of obligation or because he believes it manipulates the level of God’s approval for him, but because He has seen God’s great love and generosity on His behalf in the price paid for him. And the justified person is able to be open-handed even with his own life, because he knows that just as Jesus laid His life down and picked it up again, he too will live again with Christ no matter what may happen in this world. 

Justification is a fact of our relationship with God in Christ, and it is a truth of the hope we hold in Him. When we stand before the throne our right standing before God will entirely be the work of God in justifying us. This is a tremendous encouragement to walk in it now, and the desire to append works to it is entirely destructive to what Scripture teaches on this matter. As Paul writes in Romans 6, we put sin to death day by day precisely because of the grace God has shown us in this, not in order to deserve it. We honor God by confessing and repenting of sin, and we are shown the fruit of this justification in our ability day by day to walk more clearly in step with our Lord who achieved it for us.

Look to the cross and live

For believers in all times and places, this is why the truth of justification must bear the fruit of repentance, and in that repentance must come humility. We must recognize that we cannot stand on our own two feet, but that God’s great mercy in Christ’s work on the cross is the foundation of our lives. It’s what allows us to endure anything the world throws at us, not in pride and a sense of being better, but in the knowledge that we had absolutely nothing to bring to God that earned us a gold star. He did it all, and we rest in it.

And so must our message be to our neighbors. We aren’t judging them. We’re inviting them. We’re serving them, and loving them. And our thoughts and deeds must be in step with that. Christians must not be legalistic finger-waggers, but we should be pointing out to the people around us that there is a great hope we are telling them about – that they can know the One that made them, and that the empty pursuit of wealth and pleasure is not what we were made for. We were made to live lives that honor God and bless each other, and through that to know the deepest blessings and love the world can share. Christians, place the love of God in justification before your eyes each day, and love your neighbors because of it. For everyone else, hear Jesus’ words: 

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

If you are a Christian, how have you seen the justification of Christ worked out in your life? If you are not, or you are not sure where you fall here, how have you felt the struggle to reckon with the darkness of your life? How can we pray for you? What questions can we answer? Comment below or email us.

It’s been a week or two, right? All right, all right…ten months. So sue us. No, don’t…sue us. Just listen as we talk about life and family amidst our musical endeavors, enduring loss and more. We go through the latest post to the blog that Dave just finished and talk about Jake’s recent performance marking the seasonal transition at our church. We dip our toes into the current political scene as we talk about one of Dave’s current selections for light reading, and our prayerful desires to help our neighbors who will be encountering hardship as government benefits face interruption. We also get to hear Dave try his hand at a bit of audiobook production, reading a brief selection from Lord of the Rings, and discuss what it means to share these kind of stories with kids as they grow. Listen in and let us know what you think, and how we can pray for you!

Visit our website at https://coronationradio.net/

Email us: spurgeonaudio@gmail.com

Jake’s livestreamed fall equinox performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z37fSsijI0g

Dave’s band performing locally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifh5ZFm26p4

Two posts ago I wrote on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and in the previous one I moved onto regeneration, the effect of that baptism.  Now the fruit of regeneration comes into view: faith and repentance. While they are two separate concepts with different definitions, they are hand in hand in the work these words describe in the lives of Christians. No one will have saving faith in Christ that is not accompanied by a lifetime of repentance from sin. Likewise, no one can walk away from their sin in any method that does not involve a faith in Christ born of the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. 

Faith Misunderstood

In his theological text Foundations of the Christian Faith, James Montgomery Boice uses the definition of faith provided in Hebrews 11:1, that it is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.” This is an idea that has been taken many directions by humans, and unfortunately many of them are to the detriment of the biblical God-centered understanding of faith.

Scripture shows us faith as a reaction of hopeful obedience to the testimony of God, of the work of Christ, imbued by the Holy Spirit. By that faith, we see ourselves as those awaiting an inheritance: true, eternal, sinless life, and a restored intimacy with God. By that faith we are empowered to trust God in obedience for the things He calls us to do, no matter what they may be. 

It is in this vein that human misunderstanding or even false teaching may begin to bear bitter fruit. For example, in Matthew 17 Jesus’ admonition of the disciples that they were unable to drive out the demon because of their little faith, and that “if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Boice brings up the example of Norman Vincent Peale and his ideas of positive thinking, and we have Peale’s intellectual descendants today in the form of teachers and even secular leaders who claim that we can truly do or have anything we desire if we simply gather up enough faith, or focus, or self-actualization, or whatever other term may be employed.

Faith, in this thinking, becomes a currency of sorts, which we can gain or lose and which, typically, is displayed through actions such as handing over as much money as possible to said teacher, in hopes of receiving much more. By this thinking, Jesus is no longer the object of faith, but rather the means by which the true object of faith – money and earthly comfort – is gained. 

Probably the most common place this notion is found is in churches that operate with “word of faith” or “prosperity gospel” theologies, and there is no end of rebuke found throughout books and the web of such ideas, as popular as they remain. However, this is not an issue that is confined to a single theological stream or political “side” – you see this same poisonous idea infecting even supposedly “conservative” camps with the idea that “if we just obey God enough, He’ll bless our country and make it great,” as though we can manipulate God into giving us enough favor that we won’t suffer any longer in this world.

Faith and Obedience

When Jesus gave the example of what faith as small as a mustard seed could accomplish, He wasn’t telling them to work on stirring up a certain emotional response within themselves, because such an idea would be contrary to all He taught and accomplished, and to the concept of faith Scripture teaches. But when a believer with even a small amount of faith is called to an act of obedience, faith in Christ is what enables us to walk in that obedience. 

Nor is it a call to pharisaical concepts of “if we toe the line in exactly the right way, then we’ll unlock the kingdom of heaven on earth.” Seeking to live in obedience to God is good, but this attitude contains the same lack of faith in God’s sovereignty over even the hardships of this world. It also bears the rotten fruit of a lack of love for neighbor, and even for enemy – two things that Jesus explicitly called believers to walk in. 

There are many images of the working out of faith in Scripture in the lives of Jesus’ followers in the years after His ascension – for example, Peter’s healing of the lame man in front of the temple. But the most profound examples we see are the apostles’ and their followers’ faithful patience in enduring suffering and facing death itself, rather than refusing to silence their proclamation of the gospel and their service of the lost, downtrodden and oppressed.

We see it in Stephen boldly rebuking the chief priests in that by murdering Jesus they had dipped their hands in the same blood as their forebears who murdered the prophets, resulting in his being stoned to death. We see it in Paul’s endurance of threats, violence, and imprisonment for the sake of bearing witness to the gospel in love to Jews and Gentiles alike. And we continue to see it repeated over and over again in the millions of little ways that Christians live open-handedly with their resources, their time and energy, and their very lives in hope of seeing the redemption of creation continue through the love of Jesus. And all of this is enabled by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as He gives glory to Jesus.

The Lifelong Work of Repentance

That brings us to the other word in view: repentance. True faith and true repentance are two sides of the same Spirit-given response to grace: faith turns us toward Christ, and repentance turns us away from sin. Repentance is not a singular moment but a lifetime for a believer, as sin is seen and brought to heel before Christ by faith. Faith enables us to repent of sin, for it is a work of the Spirit in our hearts, and repentance in turn sees our faith grow just like a seed, day by day as it reaches full flowering. 

Hebrews 11 gives many examples of Old Testament figures who displayed faith, with one who is frequently cited throughout Scripture being Abraham. He lived in comfort in Ur of the Chaldeans – that is, in Babylon, or its ancient forerunner, but when God called him to step out in faith and go to a distant land armed only with a promise beyond his reckoning, he obeyed. 

Through it all, he saw the ways that God would faithfully provide for him, even when he was unfaithful, and he lived to see God’s miraculous provision of a son with Sarah against all odds. But he never lived to see the true culmination of his faith, in a people more vast than he could ever dream of – not by the blood of relation, but by the blood of the cross, uniting people across every human-made boundary that might separate people. As we stand on the other side of that amazing fulfilled promise, we have a great and clear object of faith in Jesus, and we must continue to walk in repentance day by day, putting our sin to death and awaiting for the day that He will truly clothe us in pure righteousness.

Walking by faith, practicing repentance

Unlike Abraham, we who live today have seen the work of Jesus to conquer sin and death. We have faith that His work is truly sufficient, and we have a hope that our death, like His, will not be permanent but only temporary, only a passing moment that will be undone when Christ returns. But what does it mean to actually live our life in a way that reflects this faith, and to have repentance as a part of our daily battle with our sinful human lusts?

I think we should put it in simple, straightforward terms: it looks a lot like us humbling ourselves before one another. It looks like accepting the loving rebukes and gentle remonstrances that those who are close to us may give when we are being pulled in one way or another by sin, doubt, or worldly desires. 

Practicing Repentance in Community

This may sound like a simple concept, but it very much rubs against our natural instincts as humans. How often have you had someone approach you, even someone you’re close to, and received a word that you need to change some aspect of your behavior with a great deal of grace? I’ll venture a guess, especially based on my own decades of experience, that you who are reading this can think of many moments that you haven’t exactly handled such moments with grace and aplomb.

I’ve seen deep relationships break down over such things, and churches split because someone would rather leave than accept even the mildest reproach. We have seen the stress of our cultural and political climate bringing destructive division to bear on many churches. An outside observer might see a person who genuinely cares for another expressing that through concern in love. But to the receiver, it can come across as a blow to the deepest part of how we see ourselves – as good, as right and well-meaning in all things.

In other words, it sounds simple. But in practice, it’s very difficult. Impossible, without a true change of heart. Even many Christians, those who believe in the work of Jesus and have seen the Holy Spirit move in their lives still struggle with this – but God’s grace is still there. The mark of a church where this is happening is one where they take with deadly seriousness Jesus’ words, “He who would be the greatest among you must be the servant of all.”

It’s also critical to understand that this message is one that must first take root in each of us. It’s for good reason that Jesus warned that we must “first remove the plank that is in your eye, before you help your brother remove the speck that is in his.” It’s easy to call out sin in someone else, especially if it’s not a sin we struggle with. It’s very different to face it in ourselves – but again, it is a mark of the Holy Spirit that we can do this at all. Again, this is why humility must be a mark on the life of a believer, for even a hint of pride can blind us to our own sin.

So, we keep practicing repentance, so that we may practice repentance. We live in faith that Christ has truly made the path we are on, and we seek to place our peace not in our ability to obey and be perfect, but in His perfect love and completed work. We screw up…and we confess our sins, we forgive and seek forgiveness, and we wait another day for the moment when what is hoped for, will be what is seen. And that is a hope that never grows stale, but instead becomes clearer and more refreshing the longer we rely upon it fully. 

How does the working out of faith and repentance in your life look? Where do you struggle to set aside your own desires for the sake of serving and loving others? Where are the ways you have seen God work out His faithfulness in your own life? And how can we pray for you in this daily battle all believers face? Comment below or email us.

The Old Testament is full of vivid imagery from God, on the subjects of His will for His people, warnings of the consequences of sin and rebellion, and the coming work of His Messiah. Some of it is delivered in words, but there are many examples of God giving visions to His prophets to show what was to come. 

One of the most striking examples is in Ezekiel 37, where God brings the prophet to a valley full of dry bones. Not simply dead bodies, but the desiccated remains of countless humans. God tells Ezekiel to “Prophesy concerning these bones and say to them: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Lord God says to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you will live. I will put tendons on you, make flesh grow on you, and cover you with skin. I will put breath in you so that you come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.” Ezekiel obeys and it happens exactly as God had said it would. God then repeats His command to prophesy, this time to “the breath,” to come and fill the bodies with life. Again, Ezekiel does so, and again, it happens exactly as God said it would. Dead bones become a massive host of living humans.

When we think about what regeneration is, this is the kind of image we need to keep in mind. Another image of this is given in the preceding chapter in Ezekiel, in verses 26 and 27: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.” Paul echoes this idea in Ephesians 2 when he writes, 

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses.

In many ways, to speak of regeneration is to simply reiterate what I wrote about in my last post on the baptism of the Spirit: this is the work of God in His people to bring spiritual life to those who were previously dead in spirit. He takes the unwilling, the rebellious, the God-hater, and makes them not simply able to choose to obey God, but to actually do so. 

This is the same idea that Jesus speaks of in John 3 when he tells Nicodemus that “unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus expresses incredulity at this, struggling to understand this picture, but Jesus asks him how he can not understand it, being a man who is in his position in part because of his deep knowledge of the Scriptures. He would have intimately known both references I mentioned above, yet he didn’t connect it to what Jesus was talking about. Jesus even points to it in his imagery in verse 8 when he says “The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

To talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and regeneration is to talk about the planting of a seed and the fruit that the plant that rises from it later bears. He who the Spirit baptizes lives again, and believes, and obeys. This is not, as some say, a “prevenient grace”, grace that puts everyone into sort of a neutral space where they can “choose their own destiny.” He who sees the Spirit work in his heart will find spiritual life, and he who lives in the Spirit will walk in that life. The Spirit’s work of regeneration becomes the sign and seal of the promised eternal life we hope for in Christ. This is what Paul means in Romans chapter 8:

For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. Now the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it is unable to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you.

Regeneration points ahead to resurrection, both in the images used to convey the idea, and in its effect in the lives of believers. By the faith empowered in our lives through the work of the Holy Spirit, we are able to make war on the sinful desires of our old dead humanity while striving ahead towards our new, true humanity, our hope in Christ. 

Spiritual death followed Adam’s sin, but spiritual life follows Jesus’ obedience. It is not our work that brings regeneration about – and how could it? Could those dry bones raise themselves? As Nicodemus asked, could a man enter his mother’s womb a second time? Salvation is a trinitarian work of God. Just as the Father has chosen His people, and just as Jesus has been the perfect sacrifice for us and is our brother in the resurrection to come, so the Holy Spirit is the one who works in our hearts to bring newness of life and spiritual eyes which look ahead to Christ in hope and faith.

There is a larger picture to consider here but also a very personal one. As I edit this to post for the blog, there is a lot of turmoil going on in the world. I won’t belabor this post with pontificating on recent events, and those will likely wait for the next podcast episode for further discourse. But I will say this: If you are dismayed by the turn the world is taking, if you are angry or afraid or embittered: pray. Call out to your Lord and cast your cares on Him. As His church, let’s pray for our neighbors that He will transform the hearts of our neighbors – and do your part to that end by displaying Christ’s love to them.

Beware those who desire to turn you into an army for human ends, or into a voting bloc. Human power is fleeting and vanishes as quickly as it arrives. Trust that God does listen to the prayers of His people, and that He is powerful enough to save, to bring vitality where there is only death, and then: look at your neighbor. Literally, who lives around you? How are they hurting – or how are they rejoicing? Love them in that, serve them in their needs, and be patient as we all endure tribulation. Reject the urge to live a fearful life, and display the patient love of Jesus by trusting that He will be the one to bring mercy and justice to bear at the proper time – but above all, let’s pray that the Holy Spirit will bring life into the hearts of many, and by doing so, bring the only true means of transformation to a hurting and broken world.

How have you see the Holy Spirit work in your heart and in the lives of others to transform? How do you want to see Him further moving in your communities? And above all, how can we pray for you? Leave a comment below or email us.

The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity, and is seen in Scripture as the one who ministers most directly to the hearts of God’s people, bringing conviction and comfort to hearts, and glorifying the work of Jesus in His work in the church. The Old Testament speaks of Him on several occasions, such as the opening of Genesis 1 where He is described as “hovering over the surface of the waters.”  In Psalm 51 where David grieves his sins with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, he cries out to God asking Him “Do not banish me from Your presence or take Your Holy Spirit from me.” In Isaiah 63, the Israelites are described as having “grieved [God’s] Holy Spirit” with their rebellion, leading to punishment. 

The New Testament sees the Holy Spirit described by Jesus as the Counselor in John 14, and as the Spirit of truth in chapter 15. Acts 16 calls Him the Spirit of Jesus, while Revelation uses the title of “seven spirits” or “the sevenfold Spirit” – not that there are seven separate Holy Spirits, but seven is a number associated with completeness in God. Just as Hebrews 1 describes Jesus as being “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature,” the Holy Spirit also bears the fullness of God’s being. He is often misrepresented as being merely an expression of God’s will, or an impersonal force representing God working in the world. But Jesus’ description of Him as being “another Counselor,” using a word that in Greek means “one like the first” as Boice points out, makes it clear that the third Person of the Trinity is not lesser in any sense.

His role in the church is to bring glory to Jesus, as John 15:26-27 says, to testify about Him, and in doing so, to bring forth testimony from those who follow Jesus. He does not bring glory to Himself, just as Jesus did not come to glorify Himself but was glorified by the Father. The Trinity’s perfect unity is seen in that giving of glory to one another and drawing the eyes of all to Christ as the object of our Faith. His work is described in John 3 by Jesus as bringing about a second birth, new life in the hearts of God’s people, and yet like the wind – moving in ways we may not understand and certainly could never hope to control.

Paul speaks of two significant ways in which the Holy Spirit’s work in the church is evident: the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and the gifts of the Spirit, described in different places such as 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4. The distinction between the two is important, because the fruit of the Spirit is in and for all believers and they are one fruit, even as it is described as being different qualities of believers. No one will grow in faith and patience but have no self-control or love. 

The gifts, however, vary and all are intended for the building up of the church as the body of Christ. We see leaders, teachers, helpers, and much more. The controversy and questions arise around the concept of “sign gifts,” what these are, and whether they persist. This is a question for a later discussion, but the Spirit most certainly continues to empower Christians throughout all church history to this day to minister to the flock and to the lost world around us, bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to bear on the hearts of the lost and making hearts ready to receive these words and respond to them.

The Holy Spirit takes residence in us when He transforms our hearts, when that new birth comes to us. Apart from the work of the Spirit, as Paul writes in Romans 8, we are of the flesh and “the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it is unable to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” This new heart, this transformed mindset, is a work of the Holy Spirit that is necessary for us to have faith and to walk in it.

To cry out to God, to hope in Christ, to rejoice in all circumstances because no matter what He is our Lord, that is the Spirit’s doing. There is a desire on the part of some to necessitate human action before the Spirit can do what He will, but there can be no room for this idea from Scripture. Man on his own will not submit to God. God must do the work He describes in Ezekiel 36:26: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” This is the true life that the Holy Spirit brings to us, as faith in Christ is made not only possible but absolutely certain in the hearts of all God’s people. 

The Holy Spirit is the sign and seal of our life in Christ. He is the means by which God ministers to our hearts, transforms us, enables and empowers our faith, and directs our steps. The Holy Spirit is the fire burning in us that enables endurance through all things, as He calls us to fix our eyes on Christ. He unifies the church around the cross and the empty grave, and prepares our hearts for the day when we will be finally and fully unified around the throne.

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit – What, and Why?

The Holy Spirit’s work in the church is what empowers all believers to walk in the way of Christ. Scripture testifies that the Son is begotten of the Father (John 3), and John 14 says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father in the name of the Son. But it is the goal and work of the Holy Spirit that helps us to understand what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is. 

Jesus says in John 14:17 that the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of truth,” and in verse 26 that He “will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.” All four of the gospels carry a statement from John the Baptist, comparing his work of baptizing with water for repentance with the work of Jesus to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire – statements that themselves point back to the prophetic passages of Isaiah 32 and 44 and Joel 2 that use the image of baptism in the Holy Spirit to prophesy about the work of the Messiah in transforming the hearts of His people. 

But what does it look like to see this baptism at work in the church? In Acts 2 we see a very profound image of this, as the apostles are together when “a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying. They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them. Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them.” 

They experience a physical manifestation of this baptism, as a demonstration of this new stage of the work of God among his people. This manifestation, of each of them having tongues of fire descend on them, is of the same kind of image as that of the coming of God’s presence into the tabernacle and into the first temple as a pillar of fire and smoke. Now however, God’s temple is within His people, His church. And they go forth from that room doing exactly what Jesus said they would in Acts 1, preaching the gospel to everyone in Jerusalem and empowered so that everyone could understand them regardless of their language.

This grabs the attention of these thousands of people, that a handful of Galilean Jews are suddenly proclaiming to them in languages they have no business knowing. And as a result, Peter is able to stand before them and preach the first sermon of the church, bringing up the prophetic words of Joel 2 on what has happened: that they are bearing witness to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and that it is to point to the work of Jesus, the Messiah, and the one who was killed at the wishes of the crowd. He preaches boldly from the Scriptures, expositing the truths of the Old Testament and how they point to Jesus, and the hearts of his listeners are convicted. We see the Holy Spirit working in the apostles through the gifts of teaching and preaching, of tongues, and through convicting the hearts of Peter’s hearers.

Paul builds on this more in 1 Corinthians 12, in teaching on the gifts of the Spirit. He emphasizes to the Corinthians that while there are different ways in which the Holy Spirit has gifted believers – including teaching, tongues and interpretation, faith, healing, and more – with the focus on the fact that all of it is intended to build one church united in Christ. Paul’s words are just as pressing today, as division comes very easily to Christians.

We see the effects of the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the changed life of believers, from leading self-centered lives of idolatry, into leading humble lives of service to God and to others. A person baptized in the Holy Spirit is a person who has the capacity to be generous in the right circumstance because he knows everything he has is from God. We see the wisdom of the Holy Spirit working out in wise teachers discerning truth, and preaching the gospel of Jesus from all of Scripture. And we see the power of God worked out in the Holy Spirit’s work to perform miracles that display God’s power over the evils of this world and His will to restore what is broken. 

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a baptism into the work of Jesus. That baptism may involve what we consider miracles, but the purpose is more important than the method. As Dane Ortlund writes in his book Gentle and Lowly,

Jesus walked the earth rehumanizing the dehumanized and cleansing the unclean. Why? Because his heart refused to let him sleep in. Sadness confronted him in every town. So wherever he was, whenever he was confronted with pain and longing, he spread the good contagion of his cleansing mercy. [p.32]

We join in this great and holy work in everything we do, enabled in will, in word, and in deed by the Holy Spirit that draws our hearts to worship and to long after our holy Lord, and to walk in His ways.

One thing I always point to when discussing the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the context of 1 Corinthians 12 is that it is immediately followed by chapter 13, and the truth that the greatest gift is one we all receive: love. The church is unified in our love for God and for one another, and where we see that lacking in our hearts, we ought to pray earnestly that this love would be ignited within us. The baptism of the Spirit enables faith and obedience, that second birth of John 3, and we can trust that He will bring glory to God through even the small everyday acts of obedience in our lives.

The death of Jesus on the cross rightfully is the focus of so much Christian thought and worship, because in His death we have a complete atonement for our sins. But we have just as much of a hope in His resurrection, because by it we see the true defeat of the curse of death, that consequence of sin that most plagues mankind. When Adam died, all he could do was exactly what God said would happen – decay into the dust he was made from. But when Jesus died, the second Adam, He knew that it would have no hold over Him. He had told his disciples as much many times, and the Scriptures promised as much. Psalm 16:10, for example, looks ahead and says “For you will not abandon me to Sheol; you will not allow your faithful one to see decay.” 

Sheol – the grave – was the place all men went at the end of life. Death was the co-curse with sin, for to sin – to live life according to the wisdom of the flesh, in opposition to the wisdom of God – has no possible end but death. God warned Adam and yet Adam sinned and so, took this evil onto himself and all his descendants. Even beyond humanity, in all the world death reigned where life once did. Decay and entropy threatened the end of creation’s blessed existence. Man’s self-deceived foolishness is so self-destructive, in fact, that God had to destroy almost all of humanity with a flood. When the descendants of the survivors began to thrive and seek again their own power, God had to confuse their languages and scatter them across the globe.

Yet Christ conquered all of it. Man embraced sinful living and yet lived in understandable fear of its consequence in death. Christ rejected sin, living without its marks all His days, and yet walked wholeheartedly into the embrace of death – and a most horrifying and humiliating death at that. And in doing so, by letting death take Him as the perfect sin offering for all God’s people, He overcame it. He became a seed that, falling into the ground and dying, grew up into a vast tree of eternal scope and life-giving fruit that will never fail. 

Jesus Christ, the Lamb that was slain, was given glory in His resurrection, and we hope in His glory and life. We don’t simply look at His death as a tragic killing of a good man by an evil regime, because His story does not end there. He took His life back up and more than simply returning from the dead for a short period then dying again, as Lazarus did, He lives still. He ascended to the Father, to await the day that He will return to finally well and truly destroy sin and death in all creation, to bring His work to its full consummation in the redemption of all creation. 

His disciples stood where they saw him ascend for some time, until angels told them that He would return the same way He went. They held that hope and it led them to prayer in unity, and that same hope enriched all their preaching. No longer was there simply life that ended in the grave, but the resurrection of Christ was and is the hope of all. Apart from it, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, life is foolishness and hope is in vain. But with it, we can endure everything that life brings, every dart of the enemy, every pain and loss and moment of suffering, because they all cease and are undone in the life of Christ.

So what?

While re-reading C.S. Lewis’s novel Perelandra recently, I was struck by the horrifying description of death and damnation by a character that has suffered under demonic possession for most of the novel. While much of it is rooted in Lewis’s particular views of the nature of hell and the enemy, the idea that dying in sin is to sink farther away from God and away from all His hope is one that sat in my mind for a long time. 

I was also reminded that this is why the hope of Christ’s resurrection and ascension are so crucial and powerful. No longer do we who trust in Christ fear that sinking away, that loss of connection with God. Instead, we look to when that connection grows stronger, and our intimacy goes from at arm’s length to true, face to face knowledge. We know this is true, and we long for the day we finally have this most rich possession as our own.

This is bedrock Christian theology, truly the cornerstone of Christ’s work is found in His death and resurrection. Yet it can feel like a rote recitation, like something that loses its potency the more we repeat it to ourselves, if we don’t actually meditate on it. “Jesus died for our sins.” “Jesus lives.” These two sentences ought to be a soothing truth to our deepest beings, not only because of their simple truth but also because within their few words the whole of life in Christ is enfolded.

Perfect love

Jesus came as the messiah, the chosen one who would end the rule of evil and usher in God’s kingdom. When He came, so many expected him to drive out Israel’s enemies with overwhelming power – and who could doubt that He was perfectly capable of doing so? A man who was capable of feeding thousands with a handful of bread and fish could sustain endless legions. Someone who can tell a storm to cease could command the ground to open up and devour His enemies in a moment. Surely Jesus could have crushed Rome and every other human empire with a single word? 

And that’s the image John gives in Revelation 19 – the victorious Christ riding to earth on a white horse, his weapon a sword that comes from His mouth. His robe is stained with blood. Yet Jesus came before His people riding on a donkey’s colt. His clothing certainly was stained with blood – His own. 

And all of this, an image of a life in the kingdom. Our lives are not our own, but they are held in His hands – and so we can lay them down for the sake of others. We can love that neighbor who’s in need and know that such service is deeply loved and blessed by the Father. We can be patient in those times when life’s turmoil weighs on our hearts, because we know He has been there, and He walks with us in them.

I want to close with two hopes:

We hope in the death of Christ because in His death, we are forgiven for all sin. A picture of this was carried out over and over in the Israelite sacrificial system as sin was atoned for through the shedding of blood. Everything was made holy through the sprinkling of blood, and there could not be any entering into God’s presence without it. There was an endless reminder of humanity’s sinfulness in those sacrifices – yet Jesus has taken the place of all of it, and through His death He has made the way by which every people group may come to know the One who made them.

We hope in the resurrection of Christ because He has overcome death, and we look forward to the day that we too will be like Him. I love the way Paul talks about being “in Christ” in Ephesians 1, and what it truly means for us to receive the benefits of that – “holy and blameless,” “adopted as sons,” recipients of “an inheritance” and “sealed with the Holy Spirit.” So when suffering enters our lives, we know that the words of the author of Ecclesiastes, that our lives are but a vapor, is true – but we also know that in Christ’s resurrection, we have a greater life ahead of us that will never end. 

When I think of the weight of my sin, my struggles, the things that drag me down day by day, and I compare them to this tremendous promise, I can’t help but ponder the truth of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:17 – it truly is an “incomparable weight of glory.” 

How does the doctrine of the resurrection affect your thoughts and living? Do you struggle to see it as real and meaningful? Share your thoughts below or email us – prayer requests are welcome!