The Scriptures aim to affect our hearts and change the way we feel about God and his will. The exegete, who believes that this aim is the aim of the living God for our day, cannot be content with merely uncovering what the Scriptures originally meant. He must aim, in his exegesis, to help achieve the ultimate goal of Scripture: its contemporary significance for faith.
Are we more blessed than the virgin Mary?… Luke 11:27-28
Jonathan Edwards writes:
“The hearing and keeping the word of God brings the happiness of a spiritual union and communion with God. ‘Tis a greater blessedness to have spiritual communion with God and to have a saving intercourse with him by the instances of his Spirit and by the exercise of true devotion than it is to converse with God externally, to see the visible representation and manifestations of his presence and glory, and to hear his voice with the bodily ears as Moses did. For in this spiritual intercourse the soul is nigh unto and hath more a particular portion than in any external intercourse.
‘Tis more blessed to be spiritually related to Jesus Christ–to be his disciples, his brethren and the members–than to stand in the nearest temporal relation, than to be his brother or his mother.”
“That Hearing and Keeping the Word of God Renders a Person More Blessed Than Any Other Privilege That Ever God Bestowed on Any of the Children of Men” Unpublished Sermons, ed. McMullen, in Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus, ed. Nancy Guthrie.
This is the word of the prophet: “Unto to us a child is born, unto to us a son is given” (Isa. 9:6). This is for us the hardest point, not so much to believe that he is the son of the virgin and God himself, as to believe that this Son of God is ours. That is where we wilt, but he who feels it has become another man. Truly it is marvelous in our eyes that God should place a little child in the lap of a virgin and that all our blessedness should lie in him. And this Child belongs to all mankind. God feeds the whole world through a Babe nursing at Mary’s breast. This must be our daily exercise: to be transformed into Christ, being nourished by this food. The will the heart be suffused with all joy and will be strong and confident against every assault.
Martin Luther in his Christmas Book
in Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus, ed. Nancy Guthrie, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 26-27.
It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast “I’m no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.” Those who come nearest to a Gift-love for God will next moment, even at the very same moment, be beating their breasts with the publican and laying their indigence before the only real Giver. And God will have it so. He addresses our Need-love: “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy-laden,” or, in the Old Testament, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 14.
Paul takes us the centrality of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 with a special focus on its implication for believers. He also gives an in-depth look in Romans 6 of how the resurrection affects the nuts and bolts of the believer’s everyday experience. 1 Cortinthians 15 and Romans 6 are important passages about the resurrection and their role in the believer’s life.
1 Corinthians 15 is the more broad, bold effect– “if Jesus is not raised then this whole thing is worthless and we are morons.”
Romans 6 is the more detailed, day-to-day effect– “live in the newness of life because Jesus is raised and you were raised with Him.”
Thus my end in preaching is to know Christ, and impart his truth; my principle in preaching is Christ himself, whom I trust, for in him is fullness of spirit and strength; my comfort in preaching is to do all for him. Help me in my work to grow more humble, to pick something out of all providences to that end, to joy in thee and loathe myself, to keep my life, being, soul, and body only for thee, to carry my heart to thee in love and delight, to see all my grace in thee, coming from thee, to walk with thee in endearment.
Then, whether I succeed or fail, nought matter but thee alone.
Valley of Vision, 337
Therefore, that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts–in short, that mystical union–are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body–in short, because he deigns to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him.
John Calvin, Institutes, 3.XI.10
We should object to any notion of imputation that pictures God giving us something 0f Christ’s outside of Christ. The scene is not that Jesus Christ stands there in His righteousness and I stand here in my need and then God takes Christ’s righteousness there and gives it to me here. That is not how it happens and to contemplate it in that fashion is to undermine Christ Himself. This is the rigid individualism that raises valid concern.
The reality is not “there and here” but that we are there in Him. We are there in Him and being united with Him we share in the given righteousness of Himself to all those in Himself. Union with Christ and imputation are not two distinct categories. In Christ we are imputed with His righteousness. Being imputed with Christ’s righteousness means that we are in Him.
