Monthly Archives: September 2009

Wrath, Anger, Fury: How Mercy is Amplified and Understood

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We would know nothing about mercy if there were no such things as wrath. The meaning of mercy implies an alternative. Mercy is not an independent concept that drops out of some vacuum. Mercy is the response that’s very presence testifies to the fact that it is what should not be. If mercy is to be fully understood (and appreciated!) then understanding wrath is a necessity. Leon Morris writes,

“… unless we give real content to the wrath of God, unless we hold that men really deserve to have God visit upon them the painful consequences of their wrongdoing, we empty God’s forgiveness of its meaning” (Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 213).

It is good news that Jesus Christ saves us from the wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:10).

Legitimization and Actualization: What We Should Do But Cannot Unless God Do Something

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Psalm 95 follows the outline of the Pentateuch. The invitation to worship the LORD is founded upon His work of creation (vv. 4-6) and His calling of Israel (v. 7). The psalmist is exhorting the readers not to be like those at Meribah who did not believe (vv. 8-11). This is the psalm in the context of calling its reader to worship (vv. 1-2, 6).

“Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!” (v.6). Indeed. Let us do this. The psalmist has legitimized such worship. This is what we should do. He made us. He made everything. He is the Unmoved Mover, the non-orginating, non-derivative, all-sufficient Being who creates and governs by His Word. The infinite, everlasting God, the Ultimate Reality, the greater-than-that-which-can be imagined. We should worship Him, of course. Our worship of God has been legitimized.

But, how are we not going to end up like those at Meribah? How are we to be any different? Legitimization is not enough. That is what Romans 1:18-20 does. We don’t need to know what merely should be, but why and how what should be, can be. Beyond our worship of God being legitimized, it must be actualized.

So we read on in the theocratic psalms of 93-99. A transition begins to unfold. Psalm 98:3:

He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

Steadfast love (hesed) is mentioned again (99:5, 101:1, 103:8, 17; 106:1). The sketch of God’s theocratic rule develops into a focus on His covenant faithfulness (105:6-11), which is supremely displayed in none other but the Messiah, Jesus—the amen to God’s promises, the true and clear expression that He will accomplish what He promised. This is the objective work of God in Christ to bring about the New Covenant. This objective, external work of God is what actualizes our worship. Only God creating new hearts in us is what makes what should be, be.

God’s Person, the Cross, and His Resuce of Us from His Wrath

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Jesus has rescued me from the wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:9-10). Therefore, because of Jesus, it would now be an injustice for God to punish me for my sins. Punishment has already been given and received. God’s goodness to me is now confirmed not only by His mercy, but also by His justice. Better stated: God’s communicable attributes are ‘totalized’ or “simplified.” God’s goodness to me is confirmed by His Person of righteousness and mercy. Due to the cross of Jesus, for God to punish His people would the greatest injustice conceivable and a contradiction of who He is. It would be an injustice not in the human understanding of double jeopardy, but as an undermining of Jesus’ work.

The Father loves the Son. The Father delights in the Son—“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17; 17:5). “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35). This is a preexistent, everlasting love. Jesus prayed, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). The work of Jesus on the cross is to be exalted and heralded, not undermined and ignored—especially not by the Father who takes infinite pleasure in the Son and ordained the cross according to His definite plan (Acts 2:23; Isa 53:10-11).

Our hope is not in a detached superlative of the Divine Being. Our hope is in God Himself and all that He is for us in Jesus Christ.

Crutchmer from Webster in Email on Here

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“I just read this paragraph from Webster in Holiness and thought it so good and helpful that I had to send it to you. It is a lot like DA Carson’s point that if you isolate the love of God from his other attributes, say sovereignty and holiness, you really screw up the doctrine of God, as Greg Boyd and others have done. This is similar, yet a slightly different aspect of the same principle:

“Theological talk of the divine attributes is thus not primarily a matter of categorization but of confession; the attributes of God are conceptual glosses on God’s name, indicators of God’s identity. It was for this reason that the classical dogmatic tradition insisted that when theology enumerates a range of different attributes of God, it is not denoting different realities within the divine being; rather, each of the attributes designates the totality of the being of God under some particular aspect. That is to say, language about the different divine attributes must not compromise the principle which Augustine enunciated in saying that God is ‘simple beyond all comparison.’ God’s simplicity means that God is beyond composition; different divine attributes do not, therefore, denote separate parts of God which, when assembled, together make up the divine identity. Rather, the enumeration of divine attributes is simply a designation of God’s simple essence. The attributes are not accidentia, accidental qualities in God by virtue of which God can be said to be, for example, holy or wise, for God is essentially holy and wise. ‘In God,’ as Augustine puts it, ‘to be is the same as … to be wise.’ Thus the range of the divine attributes indicates nothing other than the divine essence in its purity and simplicity.”

This is from an email sent to me by Matt Crutchmer. I thought it was helpful and he okayed it for sharing.

Jesus at the Cross: Ultimate Humiliation and Ultimate Contradiction

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Millard Erickson discusses the humiliation of Jesus’ cross.

The mockery and taunting by the crowds, the abuse by the religious leaders and the Romans soldiers, and the challenges to each of his functions compounded the humiliation. His status as a prophet was challenged during his appearance before the high priest: “Prophesy to us, Christ. Who hit you?” (Matt. 26:28). His kingship and rule were mocked by the inscription put on the cross (“The King of the Jews”) and by the taunts of the soldiers (“If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself”–Luke 23:37). His priestly role was called into question by the scoffing remarks of the rulers: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One” (Luke 23:35). Thus the crucifixion was a contradiction to everything he claimed for himself.

Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 791

Five Summaries of Macleod’s Critiques of the Kenotic Theory

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“Kenósis: Making Himself Nothing” in Donald MacLeod, The Person of Christ, “Contours of Christian Theology,” ed. Gerald Bray (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998) 205-221.

Macleod offers five short critiques of the Kenotic Theory. They are summarized as follows:

1.              How does such a theory explain the sustaining work of Christ in such texts as Hebrews 1:3 and Colossians 1:17? According to these texts, the universe depends on the continual divine work of Jesus to be held together. If He emptied Himself of such divinity, the earth and everything else up there would have dropped out of orbit.

2.              The theory seems to begin with a denial of two consciousnesses and two minds and two wills can exist within one person. It denies the hypostatic union, that the divinity and humanity of Jesus retain their own “distinctive properties” (210). Macleod offers, “An incomplete godhead is as incompatible with Chalcedon as an incomplete manhood” (210).

3.              The theory creates a hiccup in the continuity of Jesus’ preexistence and incarnation. Macleod suggests that an eternity of self-awareness would have suddenly ended and created a crisis of identity. He explains that it would of represented “a hopeless breakdown in the consciousness of the Son” (210).

4.              The theory goes further to separate the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith.” If Jesus emptied himself of His divine attributes while on earth, one can seen how this propels historical Jesus research. Macleod explains that the theory contradicts the Scriptures where Jesus clearly exercises divine attributes, such Mark 4:41 and Matthew 11:28. He writes, “Whatever the lowliness into which Christ stooped by his incarnation it was not such as to prevent his disciples seeing his glory (Jn. 1:14). It it had been—if the earthly life had disclosed nothing but ‘human likeness’ (Phil 2:7)—Christ would never have been worshipped and Christianity would never have been born” (211).

5.              Macleod writes, “the position that the Lord was fallible in literary and historical matters yet infallible spiritually and morally is an extremely precarious one” (211). Such a position is untenable and has no Scriptural basis. The question of Jesus’ mistake concerning Deuteronomy’s authorship will mutate. Macleod suggests, “Modern scholarship has arraigned Jesus on the charge of culpable deficiency in theological and moral sensitivity. It will take more than the Kenotic Theory to vindicate him” (211).

Donald Macleod Against the Kenotic Theory

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I have loved Donald Macleod’s The Person of Christ. It is very helpful in many ways. His treatment of the Kenotic Theory is worth the book…

In review, the Kenotic Theory is a dangerous speculation about the divinity of Jesus during His earthly incarnation.

The text of Philippians 2 teaches no such doctrine that Jesus emptied Himself of divine attributes.[1] The “emptying Himself” is paralleled to Jesus humbling Himself and is given by Paul as an example of our own humbling for the sake of others. Jesus has never been and will never be anything less than fully God. Even in the climax of His humiliation, the cross, Jesus bore our sins as God. He absorbed the furious wrath of God as God. He died as God.

MacLeod writes,

He possessed all the majesty of deity, performed all its functions and enjoyed all its prerogatives. He is adored by the Father and worshipped by the angels. He was invulnerable to pain, frustration and embarrassment. He existed in unclouded serenity. His supremacy was total, his satisfaction complete, his blessedness perfect. Such a condition was not something he had secured by effort. It was the way things were, and had always been; and there was no reason why they should change (213).

The emptying of Philippians 2 is not the renunciation of what makes Jesus divine, it is the glorious wonder of how God can serve sinful man. Philippians 2 is God becoming a servant to the point of an excruciating, humiliating death as a man cursed on a tree. Jesus did not disconnect Himself from the Godhead. It is this very fact that makes us stand in awe. The cross was not a mere man dying for His friends, it was God dying for His people.

[1] For a helpful exegesis of Philippians 2, see Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, 26B. My explanation leans heavily upon the content found in his discussion.

Calling Out the Junk to Be Transformed Into the Image of Jesus Christ

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“For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”

(2Corinthians 6:16-7:1 ESV)

Based upon the reality that God has made us, the church, His dwelling place–because He has redeemed for Himself a people through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: we are cleanse ourselves of every uncleanness. And in obedience to this imperative, we are bringing to completion the sanctifying work of God in our lives.

To say it more concretely: there are areas in our lives that are not in accordance with the gospel. They are defilements, uncleanness, inappropriate realities. What does it mean to cleanse ourselves of these things? They are only cleansed by the gospel. The gospel conquers them, puts them in their place, reigns over them victoriously.

We are never sanctified apart from the gospel. Paul is not commanding us to try harder and do better. He is telling us that because Jesus has saved us, we are to press in deeply, call out our junk, and let the wonder of Jesus rule in every corner and crevice of our being. And in so doing, we are being transformed into the image of Jesus. We are being sanctified. Holiness is being brought to completion. Jesus is glorified by His work.

Life: When You’re Not All About Your Own Life Anymore!

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What does it mean that being called to life is no longer living for ourselves?

There is glory, much glory, in being called into something bigger than who we are. We are people with souls. Souls are big. We were made for eternity. Individual parochialism is against everything that we were created to be– there is no question why Jesus saves us from it.

Jesus is just not about forgiven sins and right standing before God. He doesn’t do that to just do that. He does that as a glorious means to an even more glorious reality– that we would be His and be brought into His mission for the universe. We’re not all about ourselves anymore, not even about our own sanctification! We began to see that even the transforming of our own persons is part of a more glorious reality that will encompass the cosmos (Rom 8:19-22).

We don’t live for ourselves anymore, but for Him. All the nitty-gritty, day to day, hour to hour stuff of life becomes absorbed into this thing that has been in the mind of God before the world was ever created– a people of worshipers from everywhere inhabiting a new world in the fellowship of His presence forever.

“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2Corinthians 5:14-15 ESV)

“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.” (Psalms 67:1-2 ESV)

Jesus, let it be!