Jesus The Saviour

Many there be who think they know our Lord, but since they only speak of Him as a prophet, a teacher, or a leader, and care not for Him as a Saviour, we are clear that they are in ignorance as to His chief character. His first name, His personal name, they know not. The Holy Spirit cannot have revealed Christ to any man if that man remains ignorant of His saving power. He who does not know Him as Jesus, the Saviour, does not know Him at all.

Certain anti-Christian Christians are craftily extolling Christ that they may smite Jesus: I mean that they cry up Jesus as Messiah, sent of God, to exhibit a grand example and supply a pure code of morals, but they cannot endure Jesus as a Saviour, redeeming us by His blood, and by His death delivering us from sin. I am not sure they follow His example 0f holy living, but they are very proud in extolling it, and all with the purpose of drawing off men’s thoughts from the chief character and main object of our Lord’s sojourn among us, namely, the deliverance of His people from sin.

If men knew our Lord they would call Him Jesus the Saviour, and regard Him not merely as a good man, a great teacher, a noble exemplar, but as the Saviour of sinners.

-Charles H. Spurgeon, from a sermon entitled Jesus

Christ Baptized With Sufferings For Us

“Those last sufferings of Christ, were in some respect like a fire to refine the gold. For though the furnace purged away no dross or filthiness, yet it increased the preciousness of the gold; it added to the finite holiness of the human nature of Christ. Hence Christ calls his offering himself up, his sanctifying himself; John 17:19 ‘And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth.’ Hence he calls those last sufferings a baptism that he was to be baptized with. It was a baptism to him in two respects, as it purged him from imputed guilt, and as it increased his holiness by the Spirit of God, that gave him those terrible but sanctifying views. And so this is one way in which the Captain of our salvation is made perfect by sufferings; Heb. 2:10, 5:9, and Luke 13:22. Thus Christ, before he was glorified, was prepared for that high degree of glory and joy he was to be exalted to, by being first sanctified in the furnace.”

- Jonathan Edwards, Miscellaneous Remarks of Satisfaction For Sin, found in Works, volume 2, page 575

Corporate Worship Is Not For Evangelism

“My church does not evangelize enough during the worship service!”

Many Christians say this. And to that I ask the question, Then who are you putting first, if you focus on lost people during a worship service? The worship service is not for the gratification of the lost. It is however, for the children of God to offer up corporate exaltation and thanksgiving to God. If a sinner is converted during a worship service, then Praise God for it. But that is not what we are to design the worship service around. Worship is for God, period.

So many churches market themselves as a local attraction to get the volume of business up. But the church is supposed to be concerned with being attractive to Christ, just as a bride seeks to attract her groom. When we gather as a church, and we look for attention from any other than God, we are committing false worship, worshiping an idol.

No, the worship service is not for people, it is for the contemplation of the glory of God. It is for being consumed with Him. It is for longing to be with Him. It is for being reminded that one day we will no longer be in this world, but will one day embrace Christ in the world to come.

“Oh, I saw my gold was in my trunk at home! In Christ, my Lord and Saviour!”

 

This is John Bunyan’s account of his deliverance from his struggling through the birth canal of the assurance of his salvation, taken from Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. This is such a sweet, beautiful, and God glorifying account. With all of Bunyan’s struggles with his assurance, I am contemplatingly thoughtful of how God is so gracious to grant us assurance. God does not just want to save us, but He wants us to be sure that we are saved. That He grants us peace and consolation in our salvation, is so endearing. He knows He will save us, and yet He is so encouraging, that He makes it known to us, that we may take comfort in Him, the God of all consolation.

Here’s Bunyan:

“But one day, as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and methought withal, I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, as my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was adoing, God could not say of me, He wants my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. Hebrews 13: 8.

Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed, I was loosed from my affliction and irons, my temptations also fled away; so that, from that time, those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing, for the grace and love of God. So when I came home, I looked to see if I could find that sentence, Thy righteousness is in heaven; but could not find such a saying, wherefore my heart began to sink again, only that was brought to my remembrance, he “of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption;” by this word I saw the other sentence true, 1 Cor. 1: 30. 

For by this scripture, I saw that the man Christ Jesus, as he is distinct from us, as touching his bodily presence, so he is our righteousness and sanctification before God. Here, therefore, I lived for some time, very sweetly at peace with God through Christ; Oh methought, Christ! Christ! there was nothing but Christ that was before my eyes, I was not now only for looking upon this and the other benefits of Christ apart, as of his blood, burial, or resurrection, but considered him as a whole Christ! As he in whom all these, and all other his virtues, relations, offices, and operations met together, and that ‘as he sat ‘ on the right hand of God in heaven.

It was glorious to me to see his exaltation, and the worth and prevalency of all his benefits, and that because of this: now I could look from myself to him, and should reckon that all those graces of God that now were green in me, were yet but like those cracked groats and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, when their gold is in their trunks at home! Oh, I saw my gold was in my trunk at home! In Christ, my Lord and Saviour! Now Christ was all; all my wisdom, all my righteousness, all my sanctification, and all my redemption.

Further, the Lord did also lead me into the mystery of union with the Son of God, that I was joined to him, that I was flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, and now was that a sweet word to me in Eph. 5: 30. By this also was my faith in him, as my righteousness, the more confirmed to me; for if he and I were one, then his righteousness was mine, his merits mine, his victory also mine. Now could I see myself in heaven and earth at once; in heaven by my Christ, by my head, by my righteousness and life, though on earth by my body or person.”

Through Christ

“Indeed, there is no coming to God, no intercourse between God and us immediately, but between God-man and God and us, who is the mediator between God and us. He comes between. In Christ, we go to God, in our flesh, in our nature; and in Christ, and from Christ, and by Christ, we have all grace and comfort. From Christ we have all as God, together with the Holy Ghost and the Father; and we have all in Christ as a head and husband; and we have all through Christ as mediator by his merit. Therefore we should go to Christ every way.”

-Richard Sibbes, The Works of; volume 4, page 212; Banner of Truth

The Burden Belongs To Christ

Let us give what burdens us to Christ. It belongs to Him. It was taken from us and given to Him. Or do we care more for our sorrow than the glory of God?

They hearken to the voice of Christ calling them to him with their burden, “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden;”—” Come with your burdens; come, thou poor soul, with thy guilt of sin.” Why? what to do? “Why, this is mine,” saith Christ;” this agreement I made with my Father, that I should come, and take thy sins, and bear them away: they were my lot. Give me thy burden, give me all thy sins. Thou knowest not what to do with them; I know how to dispose of them well enough, so that God shall be glorified, and thy soul delivered.”

John Owen, Volume 2, Communion With God, page 194; Read here, or buy here

Christ, The Life of Faith

We cannnot act spiritually till we begin to live spiritually: Therefore the spirit of life must first join himself to us, in his quickening work,…. which being done, we begin to act spiritually, by taking hold upon, or receiving Jesus Christ……..The soul is the life of the body, faith is the life of the soul, and Christ is the life of faith.

-John Flavel, Volume 2, The Works of John Flavel, Banner of Truth Trust

The Image of The Invisible God, part 3

Back On the Horse…
In the last post in this series, part 2, we ended with this quote by Owen:

Mankind seem to have always had a common apprehension that there was need of a nearer and more full representation of God unto them, than was made in any of the works of creation or providence.

Owen’s statement here, I believe, could offer us some insight into the idolatrous bent and affection found in man. If man has within him a natural desire or need of knowing God, though corrupted by the fall, then man’s desire to worship someone or something would certainly be another evidence of God’s self exposition to reveal His image. What I find so wonderful about all of this, is that God, even after the fall, still seeks to reveal Himself in an innumerable amount ways to a world full of fallen, unthankful creatures.

But in the pursuit hereof they utterly ruined themselves; they would do what God had not done. By common consent they framed representations of God unto themselves; and were so besotted therein, that they utterly lost the benefit which they might have received by the manifestation of him in the works of the creation, and took up with most foolish imaginations. For whereas they might have learned from thence the being of God, his infinite wisdom, power, and goodness—viz., in the impressions and characters of them on the things that were made—in their own representations of him, they “changed the glory of the invisible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things:” Rom. i. 23.

Although…

…… it is granted, that God hath placed many characters of his divine excellencies upon his works of creation and providence—many [characters] of his glorious presence upon the tabernacle and temple of old—but none of these things ever did or could give such a representation of him as wherein the souls of men might fully acquiesce, or obtain such conceptions of him as might enable them to worship and honour him in a due manner. They cannot, I say—by all that may be seen in them, and learned from them—represent God as the complete object of all our affections, of all the actings of our souls in faith, trust, love, fear, obedience, in that way whereby he may be glorified, and we may be brought unto the everlasting fruition of him. This, therefore, is yet to be inquired after.

Until Next Time…

All this is done in the person of Christ. He is the complete image and perfect representation of the Divine Being and excellencies.

(All quotes taken from - The Works of John Owen, Volume 1, The Glory of Christ)

Flavel on Studying Christ

It is the most sweet and comfortable knowledge; to be studying Jesus Christ, what is it but to be digging among all the veins and springs of comfort? and the deeper you dig, the more do these springs flow upon you. How are hearts ravished with the discoveries of Christ in the gospel? what ecstasies, meltings, transports, do gracious souls meet there? Doubtless, Philip’s ecstasy,John i. 25. “We have found Jesus,” was far beyond that of Archimedes. A believer could sit from morning to night, to hear discourses of Christ…

-John Flavel, Volume 1, page 36

The Image of The Invisible God, part 2

“…The whole earth is full of His glory!”
In part one of this series, we mused briefly about shadows, not pointing to themselves but rather to what they represent. We can tell a shadow by its border and boundary. But when we see shadows of things representing God, we cannot find the borders, for the glory of God covers the whole earth, the whole universe, and in fact extends infinitely. But it is evident to the creature that there is a creator, for His glory is manifest in them and in all things around them.

Owen…

It is evident, therefore, that our conceptions of God, and of the glorious properties of his nature, are both ingenerated in us and regulated, under the conduct of divine revelation, by reflections of his glory on other things, and representations of his divine excellencies in the effects of them. So the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and Godhead, are clearly seen, being manifested and understood by the things that are made : Rom. i. 20. Yet must it be granted, that no mere creature, not the angels above, not the heaven of heavens, are meet or able to receive upon them such characters of the divine excellencies, as to be a complete, satisfactory representation of the being and properties of God unto us. They are all finite and limited, and so cannot properly represent that which is infinite and immense. And this is the true reason why all worship or religious adoration of them is idolatry. Yet are there such effects of God’s glory in them, such impressions of divine excellencies upon them, as we cannot comprehend nor search out unto perfection. How little do we conceive of the nature, glory,and power of angels! So remote are we from an immediate comprehension of the uncreated glory of God, as that we cannot fully apprehend, nor conceive aright, the reflection of it on creatures in themselves finite and limited. Hence, they thought of old, when they had seen an angel, that so much of the divine perfections had been manifested unto them that thereon they must die: Judges xiii. 21, 22. Howbeit, they [the angels] come infinitely short of making any complete representation of God; nor is it otherwise with any creature whatever.

So What Then?…
If it seems so impossible, why are we concerning ourselves with this course of study? Why is this even worth our time and investment to consider? Also, what questions are we hoping to answer in this endeavor? As Christians, every aspect of who we are finds its worth and validation in the person of Christ, who He is, what He has done, and who we are in Him. When the Bible says in Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” and again in Hebrews 1:3, “who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person,” it should be cause enough for us to stop and meditate, pondering what this means and what God is saying about Himself. If Christ is the express image of the person of God and we are conformed to the image of His Son, then we cannot find answers about ourselves by looking at ourselves, but rather by losing ourselves in an all-consumed seeking after Christ. Where is a bride to find her fulfillment except in her husband? And when she cannot see her husband, she is longing after him. Is this not the way it should be with the bride of Christ? Trying to learn about ourselves without looking at God is like trying to see what we look like without using a mirror. But we are made to be the reflection of His glory. We can only find Him when He is looking at us and we are made to seek after Him.

Until Next Time…
In the quote below, Owen begins his discourse on why man is so idolatrous, which we have touched on previously. But you can see where this leads….

Mankind seem to have always had a common apprehension that there was need of a nearer and more full representation of God unto them, than was made in any of the works of creation or providence.

The next time we will look at examples from Scripture of when God has revealed His uncreated glory. Stay tuned!