our extravagant god

To recognize the fulfilment of his [God's] promises, you must base your expectations not on the minimal but maximal interpretation of their terms’ 

David Gooding An Unshakeable Kingdom (Pg 30)

David Gooding’s small commentary on Hebrews ‘An Unshakeable Kingdom’ is among the finest of its kind on this book.  And it is free for download here along with others he has written!

letting god be god

Rom 9:14-24 (ESV)
What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.  You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory- even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

The ultimate truth about God is that he is sovereign.  He acts according to his will and does all, according to his own wisdom, for his own glory.  He is glorified in the display of his power,wrath and mercy, all proclaiming his righteousness, and those who are wise and of faith bow before this and worship.  I repeat, he is God and so does as he wills.  Much could be said about this (including noting that in the text above the emphasis is on his willing to be compassionate), but whatever is said, the bottom revelatory line remains the same – God is God and is answerable to no-one, least of all you and me; he judges us we do not judge him.  God’s ultimate Godness is rooted in his sovereignty and nothing else (not even his love).

To deny God his sovereignty is to deny him his majesty.  It is to deny him his rights as God, the very essence of the sin and unrighteousness that provokes his just wrath (Roms 1: 18-24).  When God awakens us to his majesty, our sin becomes immediately obvious and desperately sinful, his judgements and wrath immediately just, and we throw ourselves upon him for mercy.

If we fail to grasp this is who God is, and a response in fear, awe and self-abasement, before him is absent, then we do not really know the God of the Bible and we will be susceptible to many of the destructive evangelical myths and monsters mentioned in the previous post.

If we are wise, we will ponder this text deeply, and believe.

romans, and the righteousness of god (2)

Rom 1:16-17 (ESV)
I am not ashamed of the gospel… for in it the righteousness of God is revealed…

A world that is right is what is needed.  Creation groans eager to birth a world right in every way,  a new world suffused with righteousness where righteousness is the plumb-line (Isa 28:17),  flows like the waves of the sea (Isa 48:18), ​​​​​​​and like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).   The yearning of the righteous is for a creation where the clouds rain down righteousness (Isa 45:8) and righteousness sprouts from the ground like a fruit (Isa 45:8), and where all the people are oaks of righteousness before the Lord (Isa 61:3).

But…  the reality is far from this.

Unrighteousness is the reigning paradigm.  Creation’s steward has despoiled it with unrighteousness and its fruits.  This anatomy of human unrighteousness Paul lays bare in Roms 1:18-3:20: absurd idolatry (1:18-22); unnatural sexuality (1:24-27); brutish behaviour (1: 28-31); permissive morality (1:32); and, perhaps worst of all, moral and religious hypocrisy, epitomised most clearly in the Jewish nation, God’s chosen people (2;1-29).

The Jewish nation believed themselves a cut above all other nations, and they were.  They were God’s chosen people.  They alone had been given God’s Law.  They were God’s chosen mouthpiece to the nations (2:17-20).  Yet Paul is unambiguous – they too have failed and failed abysmally (2:21,22).  The Law was of little value if they did not keep it; the unrighteousness of the supposedly righteous, is the greatest unrighteousness of all (2:23).

The conclusion is as inevitable as it is chilling; if  the most privileged nation on earth (Israel) was pervasively and incorrigibly unrighteous what hope had any other – every mouth is stopped and the whole world is guilty before God (3:20). Because of wilful unrighteousness, the wrath of God is announced from heaven and is inevitably coming (1:18, 2:5-11).  What humanity need fear is not its destructive self, nor even on-going tsunamis, earthquakes and famines awful though they may be, but the final, dreadful, terrifying cataclysmic judgement of a God whose patience has finally ended and who is determined to purge his creation of its moral filth, consigning the unrighteous to Gehenna, the eternal burnings.  Such righteous judgement is the only righteous way for a righteous God to act.

Or is it?  Is a vision of a righteous universe where all the people are ‘oaks of righteousness’ and ‘justice flows like rivers and righteousness like an ever-ending stream’ no more than a prophetic pipe dream?  Is it merely a Seer’s romantic fancy? Is God’s righteousness something we must inevitably fear for it means we must perish?  Thankfully, it is not.

The glory of the gospel is its declaration that God has found a way to be merciful in righteousness, a way to righteously declare the unrighteous, righteous,  a way to establish righteousness by saving not destroying.

The  previous post noted four points about this gospel righteousness implicit in Roms 1:17.  It is… eschatological righteousness … God’s righteousness… saving righteousness… and righteousness received by faith.  In Roms 3;21-26 Paul expands all four aspects.  In five key verses of compressed theology Paul explains the central elements of the saving righteousness of God.  Any attempt to understand what the Bible means by ‘righteousness of God’ must grapple with this text.  I shall comment on a number of its expressions hoping to unpack some of its meaning.

Rom 3:21-26 (ESV)
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

But now…

Paul’s ‘But now‘ signals a contrast.  The contrast is not simply a change in his exposition but more particularly a change in eras -  a change in God’s working in history.  The previous era of Law which condemned by exposing human unrighteousness  has given way to a new era of gospel which saves by exhibiting God’s righteousness.  The eschatological age of salvation-righteousness predicted by the OT prophets has now arrived.  As J R W Stott writes,

The ‘Now seems to have a threefold reference – logical (the developing argument), chronological (the present time), and eschatological (the new age has arrived).

Israel believed that its salvation and that of the world lay in the Law of God (2:17-20); in law-keeping lay righteousness and life.  It was a profound mistake.  The Law, even before it had properly embedded, was exposed as inadequate to establish righteousness.  Even as the tablets of the covenant were being given by God to Moses on Sinai, they were being broken on the plains below as the people worshipped an idolatrous golden calf (Ex 32).  This incident portended the future.  The Law would not keep the people from being just as depraved as the surrounding nations who had no such Law.  It was clear that the Law could not deliver righteousness or deliver from wrath, all it could do was expose sin.  As Paul writes,

Rom 3:19-20 (ESV)
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

If righteousness (and so life) was to be established then it would need to be from another source than humanity.  And so the prophetic voice, informed by the Lord, announced a righteousness sourced not in man but in God (3:21).  It anticipated a time when God himself would act in salvation and righteousness and establish both.  It spoke of the ‘good news’ of God’s coming saving righteousness, this saving righteousness Paul says has now arrived, or ‘been manifested‘.  (Of course, God’s saving righteousness always existed.  From Adam sinners were always justified by God’s righteousness received by faith, but now this righteousness is ‘revealed’, that is, the death of Christ has accomplished and exhibited it.  The gospel, once anticipated, has now been realised and fully revealed.)

righteousness of God apart from law (without law)…

We should reflect deeply on this expression.

• Paul does not say the Law is one example of God’s righteousness and the Gospel is another.  For Paul, the Law never reveals God’s righteousness, what it reveals (if kept) is man’s righteousness.  It is only and always the gospel that reveals ‘righteousness of God’.  We create a non-Pauline paradigm and so confusion when we speak of the Law as revealing God’s righteousness.  I repeat, for Paul, only the gospel does this.

• Paul does not say, ‘In the gospel righteousness is established not by you keeping the Law but by Jesus keeping the Law in your place and on your behalf’.  If this is what gospel righteousness is then here would have been the ideal and obvious place for Paul to have said so.  But he doesn’t.  Instead he insists on the opposite.  He states unequivocally, that the ‘righteousness of God’ has nothing to do with law-keeping.  Indeed, it has nothing to do with the Law.   It is righteousness ‘apart from law’ or ‘without law’, that is, it is righteousness different in premise and principle, and in fact belonging to a different period of redemptive history altogether.   This is a critical point to grasp for failure to appreciate this contributes to mistaken ideas in justification that plague much Evangelical thinking, particularly Reformed Evangelical thinking.  Gospel righteousness is not simply law-righteousness gained for me by another (IAO). It is not merely law-righteousness by another route, by the back door.   It is righteousness of a different kind, of a different epoch, and of a different source altogether.  This is precisely why Paul emphatically refers to this righteousness as... ‘righteousness of God apart from law’
  

• The old era of Law put the emphasis on human responsibility; it looked for righteousness in man.  The righteousness of Law was predicated on ‘do this and live’.  It promised life for righteous living.  Yet, though this was its promise it was not its intent.  God did not give the Law hoping to establish righteousness through fallen human beings but to prove conclusively the futility of such a route to righteousness; he gave it to expose sin (3:20).  Only when all human attempts at righteousness have been exposed as the abysmal and abject failure they are, establishing beyond doubt humanity’s incorrigible unrighteousness and moral bankruptcy (Roms 3:9-20), does God reveal the glory and grace of his own saving righteousness.  Only when it is  established in history that humanity cannot be the architect of its own salvation will God’s salvation-righteousness be revealed.  God will have it crystal clear that if there is to be a saving righteousness then it will be and must be his and not man’s, and that the only ‘righteousness’ celebrated and boasted eternally will be God’s; boasting and glorying in any other is anathema (2:23, 3:27, 4:1,2; 1 Cor 1:28-30).  The gospel reveals God’s righteousness and in it he is glorified and no other.

Of course humanity refuses to learn the lesson of Israel and the Law.  It still seeks to establish its own righteousness.  But it does so against the damning evidence of history.  If Israel failed under Law all have failed (3:20).  Humanity post-cross is pronounced ‘dead’ in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1)  There is no hope in human righteousness; hope of averting God’s wrath (1:18) lies only in the gospel, in ‘righteousness of God’.

I would add one further comment here.  We should not confuse ‘God’s righteousness‘ and ‘Christ’s righteousness’.  When Romans speaks of ‘God’s righteousness‘ it means just that, ‘God’s‘ righteousness.  It does not mean the righteousness of Christ.  God’s saving righteousness of course intimately involves Christ as the text we are considering shows but we confuse Paul’s thought if we conflate Christ’s righteousness and God’s righteousness.  They are distinct and should be kept distinct.  That Paul means ‘God’s‘ righteousness is emphatic in the text.  Three times in five verses we read of  ‘God’s righteousness‘  (3: 21,22, 25. Cf. 1:17, 10:3; Phil 3:9; 2 Cor 5:21) and once of  ‘his righteousness’ , meaning God’s (3:26).

The text could hardly be more emphatic; in the gospel the eschatological age of salvation has dawned.  It is an age where God’s righteousness is the focus and no other (Cf 3:27).  When we have established that Paul’s focus is God’s righteousness, not man’s, not even Christ’s, we have established something profoundly important and we are thinking across the synapses of the gospel.

witnessed by the Law and prophets

I have already alluded to this expression above.  If there is discontinuity between the Law and the gospel (both different epochs based on different sources of righteousness) then there is also continuity.  The continuity lies in the predictive element of both the Law and the prophets (often a term that covers the whole of the OT).

How did the Law predict the gospel?  Principally and specifically, the gospel is predicted in the sacrificial system of the Law.   Thus the following verses speak of redemption, sacrifice and the mercy-seat as the means by which God’s righteousness is revealed and administered (22-25).  The prophets, as we have already seen, regularly anticipated the Age of Salvation when the righteousness of the Lord would be revealed (  E.g. Isa 46:13; 51:5,6,8).

And so, in 3:21 Paul begins to put in context the ‘righteousness of God‘.  In the verses which follow he unpacks the meaning of the expression.  We shall consider these verses in a further blog.  For now let me re-assert we have understood nothing of the rationale of the gospel if we have not grasped this fundamental truth – the gospel is nothing if it is not ‘righteousness of God’.

Christ is new creation

Our thoughts about Christ leave a lot to be desired.  All too often they are inadequate and demeaning.  Two notions I have been disputing over the past few months illustrate this well.   I have been inveighing against a rising tide that seems to suggest that new creation is simply Eden restored.  Christ takes us back to a pre-fall Adam.   At the same time I have been decrying the notion that Adam was created with the promise that if he obeyed he would gain eternal life for himself and his posterity; he failed, however, where the first Adam failed, Jesus, the second Adam, succeeded and by his law-obedience gained eternal life for himself and his posterity.

Both notions reveal a disturbingly low view of Christ.  They place far too small a gap between the humanity of Adam and Christ.  All agree that Adam and Christ are heads of two humanities, indeed of two creations.  All agree there is real continuity between Adam and Christ.  In a real sense Christ is the son of Adam (Lk 3:38).  ‘Since… the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil and deliver all those who l through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery… it is not angels that he helps, but… the offspring of Abraham’ (Hebs 2:14-16).  For the purposes of salvation, ‘… he had to be made like his brothers in every respect’ (Hebs 2:17).  Thus he is truly ‘the seed of the woman’.  His humanity is neither false nor phantom.  There is real continuity, real organic union with the race.  However, there is also real  discontinuity, or, perhaps better, distinction, and all too often this discontinuity or distinction is downplayed.

We must understand that  Adam and Christ are contrasted as much as they are compared, perhaps more so (Cf. Roms 5:12-20).  At the very least we must say Adam (before sin) was humanity in a state of infancy while Christ (even before resurrection) is humanity in maturity.   We may put it another way.  Adam (pre and post fall) was humanity as ‘flesh’ while Christ (pre and post resurrection) is humanity ‘in Spirit’.  Or, in the language of 1 Cor 15

1Cor 15:45-49 (ESV)
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Let me express this difference in a specific example: Adam was morally vulnerable, Christ was not.   We must never think that there was any possibility that Christ would fail to realise a new creation beyond sin.  He was not Adam trying to achieve new creation; he was in himself new creation.  The OT itself had asserted the certain triumph of his mission.  Hear the ringing confidence God has in Christ in Isaiah,

Isa 42:1-13 (ESV)
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.  ​​​​​​​​He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;  ​​​​​​​​a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.  ​​​​​​​​He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.  ​​​​​​​​Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it:  ​​​​​​​​“I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations,  ​​​​​​​​to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.  ​​​​​​​​I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.  ​​​​​​​​Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”  ​​​​​​​​Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants.  ​​​​​​​​Let the desert and its cities lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits; let the habitants of Sela sing for joy, let them shout from the top of the mountains.  ​​​​​​​​Let them give glory to the Lord, and declare his praise in the coastlands.  ​​​​​​​​The Lord goes out like a mighty man, like a man of war he stirs up his zeal; he cries out, he shouts aloud, he shows himself mighty against his foes.

The servant is invincible.  It is an invincibility borne of the fact that he is anointed by the Spirit of the Lord (I have put my Spirit upon him) and upheld by the Lord himself (I will take you by the hand and keep you); the Lord who is ‘mighty against his foes’ is with his servant.

When we turn to the NT we see that Christ is the one to whom the Spirit is given without measure (Jn 3:34).  He is not old creation in the flesh but new creation in the Spirit.  He is sustained by the Spirit in all he does.  He is born (conceived) of the Spirit (Lk 1:35, Matt 1:18)  He is led and filled by the Spirit (Matt 4:1; Lk 4:1).  The Spirit of the Lord anoints him and remains on him in his baptism (Jn 1:32,33) appointing him as the Spirit-empowered Messianic Redeemer who would bring salvation  (Lk 4; Isa 49, 61).  His Kingdom revealing miracles are miracles of the Spirit (Matt 12;28) and his words are words of the Spirit (Jn 6:53).   He is the Messianic Son who not only was himself baptised in the Spirit but would baptize others into this new covenant, new creation, life in the Spirit (Jn 1:33).   The Spirit who indwelt him he would sent to indwell his own new creation people (Jn 15:26).   As flesh can only give birth to flesh so only One who is ‘Spirit’ can give birth to ‘Spirit’ (Jn 3:6).  It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all, and the words of Christ are Spirit and life (Jn 6:63).   ‘Flesh’ never produces ‘Spirit’, old creation never produces new creation, only that which is already Spirit can produce Spirit, only new creation can produce new creation.  Again, in the words of  1 Cor 15, Christ is no mere Adam, of the earth and mere dust, he is ‘a life-giving Spirit’ (1 Cor 15).

Isaiah’s Servant had the promise that the Lord himself would take him by the hand and lead him.  When we come to the NT this translates into the Father and Son relationship that John’s gospel particularly develops.  Christ cannot fail because he can do nothing of his own accord, he can do only the things he sees his Father doing (Jn 5:19).  He and his Father are One (Jn 10:30).  He lives in the bosom of the Father (Jn 1:18), he is in the father and the Father in him (Jn 10:3, 14:10).  He dwells in the Father and the Father dwells in him (Jn 14:10).   All that the Father has he gives to Christ (Jn 16:15).   He lives by the Father, is consecrated and sent by the Father (Jn 10:36), does the works of his Father (Jn 10:37), speaks the words of the Father (Jn 12:49, 50), and follows the commands of his Father (Jn 14:31).   He and the Father work side by side (Jn 5:17).   To see and know Christ is to see and know the Father (Jn 14:9).  He had come from the Father and would return to the Father (Jn 16: 28, 13:1).  He had come from God and would return to God (Jn 13:3).  His origin is heaven not earth.  The first Man is of the dust of the earth, the second Man is the Lord from heaven (1 Cor 15).   In fact, he is a divine person.

Christ, the man,  is no mere Adam, he is no mere ‘Son of Adam’ trying to find the reward of eternal life through obedience and trying to rise from the humanity of flesh (old creation) to the humanity of Spirit (new creation).  Such ideas are woefully inadequate.  Christ has life ‘in himself’ (Jn 5:26).  In him was life (Jn 1:4).  He gives life to whomsoever he will (Jn 5;21).  His words are life ( Jn 6:63).  He is the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:25)  No-one takes his life from him.  He has authority to lay it down and to take it up again  (Jn 10:17,18).   He is the bread of Life (Jn 6:35).  He is the light of life (Jn 8:12).  He not only brings light, he is ‘the light’ (Jn 8:12). the ‘true light’ that lightens every man (Jn 1:9).  Language like this cannot be used of Adam.  This can only describe someone substantially different from Adam (pre or post-fall).  This is not simply a description of a new sinless Adam seeking to gain eternal life.  This language can only describe someone who is and brings others into a new order of humanity; Christ is not Adam restored, he is Adam reconfigured.

Adam was innocent, innocence implies an absence of sin: Christ was holy, holiness implies an abhorrence of sin.  Adam did not hate sin, he chose sin.  Christ loved righteousness and hated lawlessness (Hebs 1:9).  We are not encouraged to praise Christ because in moral vulnerability he faced sin and triumphed.  Rather we praise him because in the integrity of a humanity opposed to sin root and branch he bore all the opposition and grief that such a humanity would experience in a fallen and foul world to the extent of being made on the cross by God his Father what his holy humanity shrank from above all else , namely, sin.

Christ is invincible life, invincible new creation.  This is his great glory.  But this invincibility was at great cost.  He suffered being tempted.  Christ would not fail but the cost in not failing for him was enormous.  As new creation living in the hostile world of old creation he knew what it was to experience the opposition of sinners against himself (Hebs 12:3). He would not turn away from the Father’s will, he would drink the cup his Father gave him to drink, although that cup involved immeasurable suffering (Jn 18:11).  It was the cup drunk when through the eternal Spirit he offered himself without spot to God (Hebs  9;14), the cup of being the flesh in which sin was condemned (Roms 8:3).  His faith as a true man was tested to the utmost.  He made faith chart new territory (Hebs 12:3) for he never faltered or deviated from the divine will however demanding  or distasteful (Matt 26:39).  He may face great odds but he will do so with confidence and boldness; he is certain he will triumph and not be shamed for the Lord is with him.

Isa 50:4-11 (ESV)
The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.  ​​​​​​​​The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward.  ​​​​​​​​I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.  ​​​​​​​​But the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.  ​​​​​​​​He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me.  ​​​​​​​​Behold, the Lord God helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.

This is the Christ of Scripture.  This is the Christ I know, worship and serve.  Not a weak uncertain Christ but an invincible Christ.  A Spirit-empowered Christ.  A Christ filled with all the fulness of the Godhead.  A Christ who is the man from heaven. Man in perfect and holy communion with God.  The Christ of new creation, a new creation whose fulness he enters finally and forever upon resurrection.  We, united to him in his resurrection, share in this new creation which before and without his death and resurrection we could not, for, ‘unless a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abides alone but if it dies it brings much fruit’.

Let’s have great thoughts, biblical thoughts, of Christ.  He is God the Son who in incarnation not only introduced us to the Father but in becoming human introduced eschatological humanity, eternal life humanity, humanity in the Spirit, the humanity of new creation.

piper and christ as the image of God

What do you think of John Piper’s ‘imagining’ of what it means for Christ to be the image of God?  I believe he gets it from Jonathan Edwards.

… it would be totally misleading to say that the Son in whom God delights was made or created at the incarnation or at any time. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” As long as there has been God, there has been the Word of God, the Son of God, who took on a human nature in Jesus Christ.

Now we can get a better idea of what the Bible means when it calls him the image or reflection or stamp or form of God who is equal with God.

From eternity past the one reality that has always existed is God. This is a great mystery, because it is so hard for us to think of God having absolutely no beginning and just being there forever and ever and ever without anything or anyone making him be there—just absolute reality that every one of us has to reckon with whether we like it or not.

The Bible teaches that this eternal God has always had

• a perfect image of himself,
• a perfect reflection of his essence,
• a perfect stamp or imprint of his nature,
• a perfect form or expression of his glory.

We are on the brink of the ineffable here, but perhaps we may dare to say this much: as long as God has been God, he has been conscious of himself, and the image that he has of himself is so perfect and so complete and full as to be the living, personal reproduction (or begetting) of himself. And this living, personal image or reflection or form of God is God, namely, God the Son. And therefore God the Son is co-eternal with God the Farther and equal in essence and glory.

reformed judaism!

Classic Reformed Churches house many godly Christians.  Some of the most able preachers of the gospel are found in their pulpits.   Yet running through this rich gospel lode is a streak of anomalous legalism that causes more than a little head-scratching and hair-pulling.   Some of these  C21 gentile believers seem almost as zealous for the Law of Moses as their C1 Jewish Christian (professing at least) counterparts.  The Law of Moses loomed large in the mind of C1 Jewish believers.  This was hardly surprising since it informed their whole religious and cultural background.  It seems less comprehensible that it should colour so greatly C21 gentiles who view the Mosaic Covenant from an objective  distance (historically, culturally, racially and geographically) and for whom Paul, the apostle, made herculean efforts to keep them free of the Law’s grip.  Yet many seem unable to place it in an appropriate redemptive-historical perspective.  All too often they give it significance it does not deserve.

And so, they speak of Scripture as ‘the Law of God’.  They refer to the Lord’s Day as ‘the Sabbath’.  They confess Christians are not under Law yet insist they are obliged to keep the Law as a rule of life,  an obvious  logical contradiction as well as being biblically unfounded.  They insist on a justification based on law-keeping to be accepted by God (and so Christ must keep the law on our behalf).  Indeed, the Law is so significant that it is, they say, a revelation of God’s character.

Now each of these claims is mistaken and when taken together create a legalistic climate of thought that is in danger of distorting the gospel.  At the very least the gospel becomes confused.  Let me focus on one point only.  Is it true to say that the Law is a revelation of the character of God, or, as many say,  a transcript of his character?

It is certainly true that the Law reveals something of the nature of God.  Everything God says and does reveals something about him just as everything we say and do reveals something about us.  But does the Law reveal the character of God?  The Law is just that, law.  It reveals what God demands of man if he is to be righteous.    It tells us what man ought to be but it hardly tells us what God is.   If a schoolteacher gives rules of behaviour to his pupils, does this reveal his character?  Read the Law in Exodus and Deuteronomy and see just how much it really shows of God.

What do we find when we turn to Scripture?  We find firstly that the Law far from revealing God was given by a hidden God.   The people do not see God.  He was hidden from them in thick darkness.

Exod 19:9,20 (ESV)
And the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever… On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.

God spoke only through an intermediary (Moses).  Only Moses climbed the mountain and even he saw only the ‘back parts’ of God’s glory.  When he came down the mountain he veiled his face so that the people could not see the reflected glory.   All this reveals the nature of Law.  It tells us there is in God a holiness that cannot be approached or seen.  It does not reveal that holiness it simply informs us it is there.  Thus when we come to the NT we are told that the Law is a ‘shadow’.  Can a ‘shadow’ be a transcript of the divine character and nature?  We are told too, the Law is ‘obsolete and passing away’.  Is something transient properly a revelation of all God is in himself, his full glory?

The problem with claiming the Law is a transcript of the divine character is not simply that it gives the Law a significance it doesn’t deserve but that it detracts from the true revelation of the character of God which is Jesus Christ.  It is Christ who images the invisible God, not the Law.  It is Christ who is ‘the Word, eternally with God and himself God’ not the Law.  OT  Law was one part of a revelation that was at best piecemeal and fragmentary (Hebs 1:1) and stands in contrast to his revelation in his Son who is ‘the radiance of the glory of God and h the exact imprint of his nature’.  The Law, says John, in telling contrast, ‘ came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ’.

It is in Christ and in Christ alone that the character of God is truly seen.  John says, ‘We beheld his glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father full of grace and truth’ (Jn 1).  Philip, in Jn 14 says,

John 14:8-10 (ESV)
“Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”

Does Jesus point to the Law?  We read,

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

Such language could never be said of the Law.  The Law demanded righteousness but did not reveal it.  It promised life but could not display it.  The righteousness and life that lie at the heart of God are seen only in the face of Jesus Christ.  John says of Christ, the Word of life, ‘the life was manifested and we have seen it’ (1 Jn 1:1,2).  The OT Law was an administration of death.  Indeed what Law revealed was human sin (Roms 3).  Life and righteousness are revealed in Jesus Christ.

2Cor 3:7-11 (ESV)
Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

It is in the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.  In the Law the righteousness of man is revealed.  Had man kept the Law it is his righteousness that would have been displayed and the object of glory or boasting, not God’s.  That is why in deliberate contradistinction we read in Romans 1 that it is in the gospel ‘the righteousness of God is revealed’ (Roms 1:17).

Where do we look if we wish to see God’s righteousness in its perfection?  We look to Christ.  Christ is the righteousness of God (1 Cor 1:30).  Indeed we look to Christ especially on the cross.  It is in the cross that the true and full character of God is displayed.  It is there God is fully glorified for it is there he is fully revealed.  There his wisdom, righteousness, grace, kindness, power, holiness, kindness, and mercy are all revealed in their perfect proportions.  There God, as he really is in himself, is seen.   God’s righteousness is not properly the demands of Law it is a righteousness that functions in grace and mercy.  Righteousness in God, is God acting consistent with all he is in himself.  Yes God is revealed as righteous in his judgements and is glorified in them but his heart is love and the righteousness that most glorifies him is a righteousness that is married to grace. God’s righteousness is at root a giving righteousness rather than a demanding righteousness.  It is at Golgotha not Sinai that God is glorified in all that he is and in such a way as he responds righteously by glorifying the one who so glorified him.

John 13:31-32 (ESV)
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.

It is not the Law that shares the throne of God it is a freshly slain lamb (Rev 5).  The glory of the New Jerusalem is the glory of ‘God and the Lamb’ (Rev 21).  The glory of the Law was passing, the glory of the Lamb is permanent.   We do neither the Law nor the Lamb any favours when we ascribe to one a glory that rightly and solely belongs to another; Christ and only Christ , is the way (to God), the truth (about God) and the life (of God).

the trauma of holiness

God is good.  God is kind.  God is love.  God is generous.  God is gracious.  When as Christians we reflect on these aspects of God He is approachable.  But God is also holy.  Ah, there is the rub.  He is infinitely majestic and pure and hates all impurity.  His goodness is a holy goodness.  His kindness is a holy kindness.  His love is a holy love.

And mere sinful creatures that we are this holiness crushes us.  It caused Israel to tremble at Sinai and to beg that no further words would be spoken for they could not endure what was spoken.  Moses too trembled with fear.  Isaiah when he caught a glimpse of this holiness, cried ‘depart from me’.  John lay as a dead man.  It frightens and intimidates any sane man.  Only a glimpse crushes us.  God’s holiness makes us run away… apart from the blood of Jesus.

The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.  The blood of Jesus allows us to enter the Holiest.  It enables us to step into God’s presence without fear.  We can rest in his holy goodness, his holy kindness, his holy grace.  We call him Father.  We are his sons.  He protects us and supports us and listens to us and welcomes us and wonder of all wonders delights in us.

Praise God for the blood of Jesus.  Thank you Lord for your precious blood.

Carson and the God who calls for worship

Below is an extract of an extract.  That is, it is a section of a PDF from a book just published.  The book is ‘Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God’ by a symposium of writers.  The PDF is the chapter contributed by D A Carson.  Below is an extract from this chapter based on 1 Peter 2.

I have been doing university missions off
and on for about thirty-five years. About a dozen years ago, I started
stumbling across a question from university undergraduates that I never
received when I was a young man. This relatively recent question is put
variously, but it generally runs something like this: “Amongst human
beings, anyone who wants to have all of the attention and garner all the
praise, anyone who wants to be the focus of everyone’s constant admiration,
with everyone stroking that person and fawning all over him, would
be thought of as massively egocentric. The God you are trying to push on
us looks to me to be very egocentric. He keeps demanding that we praise
Him all the time. For goodness sake, is He insecure? Isn’t He, at very least,

morally defective?”

What do you say to that? The reason I never heard that sort of question
in the past, I suspect, is because until fairly recently most of the
unconverted people I met in university missions had been brought up in
the Judeo-Christian heritage, which held that there is a sovereign, transcendent
God, and that He is unique and deserves special attention. But
now things have changed. Thirty years ago, if I were dealing with an atheist,
at least he or she was a “Christian atheist.” That is, the God he or she
disbelieved in was the Christian God, which is another way of saying that
the categories were on my turf. But I can’t assume that now.
So it’s difficult to respond. Of course it’s true to say something like
this: “Yes, but God is so much more than we are. He’s not just another
human being, slightly ‘souped-up.’ He is God. He is the Creator. He is
to be cherished and revered. He is our Maker and our Sovereign and our
providential King and our Judge.” All of that is true.

But there is more. It is one of the themes John Piper likes to preach
about. It is this: Because we have been made by this God and for this
God, because our very self-identity when we are right with God is to love
Him supremely, to adore Him and to worship Him, it is a supreme act of
love on His part to keep demanding it—because it is for our good. What
conceivable good would it do for us if God were to say: “Don’t give
Me too much worship. I’m just One of you guys. Slightly ratchet it up
maybe, but don’t focus on Me too much.” That might satisfy some idolater’s
notion of humility, but the humility that I see in this King of kings
is on Golgotha. That He keeps directing attention to Himself is an act of
supreme humility and grace, precisely because He stoops to remind us of
what we ought to recognize, and because it is for our good.

There is no insecurity in this God. After all, He is the God of aseity.
He has no needs. In eternity past, the Father loved the Son, the Son loved
the Father, and They were perfectly content. God is not demanding that
we love Him so that we can meet the needs of His psychological profile
this week. His focus on Himself is not only because He is God, but
because, out of love, that is what we need. That is what we must see. That
is the point to which our adoration must come. If it does not, we wallow
in idolatry again and again and again.

god’s wrath is real and personal

The Bible teaches us God’s wrath is real and personal.  God is angry because he has been attacked.   The essence of human rebellion is an attack on God’s right to be God.  We have attempted to unseat him.  In our antagonism we would rather worship empty things rather than Him.  Consequently he is stirred to deep anger.

C H Dodd was one of a string of theologians who have attempted to dismiss the idea of God’s wrath and with it the need for a penal substitionary atonement.   Apparently when he came to translate the word ‘propitiation’ he was heard to mutter under his breath, ‘what rubbish’. So well known was his antagonism that one English Cleric wrote a ditty.  It ran like this:

There was a Professor called Dodd

Whose name was exceedingly odd

He spelt if you please

His name with three ‘d’s

While one was sufficient for God.

The argument is ad hominem.  The poem ridicules Dodd for his hubris; Dodd has ideas above his station.  He knew better than God and as a result has a wilful disregard for the staringly obvious; professing to be wise he became a fool.

Ps 75:9
For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, with foaming wine, well mixed; and he will pour a draught from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.

Ps 7:11
God judges justly, and God is angry with the wicked every day.

Isa 13:9 (ESV)
Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it.

2Thess 1:6-10 (ESV)
God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed.

If this is not real and personal, what is?

god’s women

It ought to be crystal clear to any who read Scripture (though I know it is not) that God has placed authority in this present world in the hands of men.  In both OT and NT God’s model of order in society involves male leadership.  Yet any who infer from this that women are either inferior or unimportant are not reading their Bible.   The reality is, often God uses women to accomplish his purposes.  Examples of this are peppered throughout Scripture.

One example lies in the preservation of the child Moses.  Moses in God’s purpose was to be a strategic leader of God’s people.  He was the leader used by God to redeem his people from Egypt.  He prefigured in many ways God’s coming Messiah. In the OT, Moses is a towering figure.  Yet, in God’s ways,  Moses would be who he became because of women who protected and shielded him. He owed his life to godly women who risked theirs to preserve his.  All Pharaoh’s (Satan’s) attempts to destroy Moses (and for that matter the divine seed, Israel) were thwarted by women.  His mother hid him in a basket made of bulrushes in defiance of Pharaoh’s decree he should die at birth (Ex 2:2-3).  The midwives, ordered to kill all male children outwitted Pharaoh’s orders because they feared God more than the King (Ex 1:17).  Moses’ sister watched over him as he lay in the basket at the banks of the Nile (Ex 2:4).  God, with heavenly irony, even ordered that Pharaoh’s daughter would find the basket and take care of the child; Pharaoh’s own house is orchestrated by God to protect Moses (Ex 2:6).

In the narrative, Pharaoh’s impotence to destroy the people of God and thwart God’s purpose is exposed.  Women, considered weak in their culture, yet strong in faith and in the Lord, are used to ‘confound the mighty’.  God delights in using the weak of this world to destroy the strong.  He uses the things that ‘are not’ to bring to nothing the things that ‘are’.

It has always been thus and will continue so to be.  Thank God for godly women.

fear of God, boxer shorts and piers morgan

Prov 1:7 (ESV)
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Rom 3:18 (ESV)

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

When interviewers ask the President of the USA whether he wears boxers or briefs and British Prime Ministers choose to appear on Piers Morgan and emote about private moments (presumably touting for votes)  it is little wonder that the fear of God is a concept modern people find difficult to grasp.  Respect for high office is gone, both from those who observe it and those who hold it.  All is reduced to toiletries and the mawkish.  How can a people without respect for their leaders and without leaders to respect begin to understand what it is to fear God?   It is little wonder leaders lack wisdom and society lacks restraint. Against such societies God’s wrath is revealed from heaven (Roms 1:18-3:21).