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Jesus Christ saved me (Ephesians 2:1-10)

Excerpts from Sinclair Ferguson on Union with Christ

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There are some sermons we’re shy to recommend, not because they’re bad, but because they’ve been so helpful we fear we cannot do them justice. And we fear that their deep helpfulness to us can’t be replicated for others. Well, this sermon from Sinclair Ferguson is like that. It is on Paul’s understanding of union with Christ.

My friend, Gary, took a vacation day to transcribe the whole thing, and then he recommended it to me. I hope you find it helpful. Watch the sermon or download the transcript (PDF).

The whole sermon is worth reading. Here’s a handful of outstanding excerpts:

On preaching…

Remember how Paul says it in Ephesians 2, that once Christ had finished his work he came and he preached peace to those who were near and to those who were afar off. This is part of the reason why in giving sermons, when we are 15–20 minutes into the sermon, we have forgotten that the brothers speaking are actually speaking with a different accent from the accent we have ourselves. We are caught up in the fact that Jesus Christ is preaching his word to us himself, through servants to whom he has united himself to by the Holy Spirit, and whom he has made servants of his work. And that’s why we are able to say we don’t preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. How can we dare to say that? It is because in gospel ministry we minster out of the reality of our union with Christ and the way in which it impacts the dynamics of being a servant of the Lord Jesus.

On gospel ministry…

Union with Christ is central to living the Christian life and therefore, by necessity, union with Christ is that driving principle that transforms our gospel ministry.

The grammar of the gospel…

We need to be soaked in all that Christ has done so that it oozes from us. So that preaching Christ is not something we learn as a technique because we understand that it’s the right thing to do, but we speak the grammar of the gospel because by God’s grace — through the word and by the Spirit — that grammar has become instinctive to us. And it oozes from us.

Legalism and antinomianism…

And it is fascinating that in Romans Paul deals with legalism on one hand, and antinomianism on the other hand. The way you and I would deal with it is to say, “Antinomian, let me just give you a little dose of legalism.” Or to the Legalist, “Let me just give you a little dose of Antinomianism.” That’s the way most Legalists and Antinomians try to right themselves. But the way Paul rights the ship is saying, “Don’t you understand how the gospel works for those who are united to Jesus Christ?” So that what the law can never do because it’s weak through the flesh, God does by sending his son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, to condemn sin in the flesh.” Christ dies for us in order that the righteous commands of the law might be fulfilled in us who by the Spirit are united to Jesus Christ and walk by the Spirit.

On sharing in Jesus’ sufferings…

You are ordained into sharing in the sufferings of Christ and in the triumph of Christ. You do not have the former without experiencing also the latter, even though that triumph and glory and fruitfulness may be invisible to you, and even invisible during the course of your ministry. And you do not ever have the genuine triumph and fruitfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, in the power of resurrection grace, without being willing to share in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Because the Jesus Christ we all long to know — how hard it is to dawn upon our distempered souls! — the only Jesus Christ who ever was upon the earth and who now is in heaven is the one who entered into glory through suffering. The one who was crucified in order that he might be fruitful. He became a grain of wheat who fell into the ground and died in order that it might bring forth much fruit.

Closing prayer…

Heavenly Father, thank you that you have not only united us by your Spirit to our Lord Jesus Christ, but in your word, you have began to teach us, as we have studied these things, how marvelous not only our identity as Christians is, but how amazing is the pattern that you have set for us as gospel ministers.

Lord, we are often sore and crushed and perplexed, but we thank you that out of the darkness you bring life, and out of the death you bring resurrection. We know that nothing that refuses to die can ever be raised again from the dead.

And we pray that in this Spirit we may yield more and more to our crucified Savior, and more and more enter into our share in the triumph of his resurrection, so that anything that is lacking in us of our fellowship in the sufferings of Christ may be filled up in order that anything that is lacking in your ordination of our fruitfulness may come to pass in our ministries. And to this we commit one another with thankfulness in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Logic of God’s Love

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John Piper says it’s almost too good to believe. Hear Zephaniah’s words:

The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah 3:17 is an absolutely magnificent promise that is meant to make us feel God’s joy. Like when the father ran to embrace his prodigal son, some scenes in Scripture are especially meant to astonish us with mercy.

But not everyone can bring themselves to believe God’s love for us is that powerful. Though, as Pastor John writes, Zephaniah wants to help us get it:

[Zephaniah] labors under the wonderful inspiration of God to overcome every obstacle that would keep a person from believing — really feeling and enjoying — the unspeakable news that God exults over us with singing. (178)

But there are many who struggle, and you might be one. In chapter seven of The Pleasures of God John Piper sketches a hypothetical dialogue between a one who struggles and the rationale of Zephaniah. He speaks for Zephaniah and interacts with the potential inhibitions that keep us from believing in God’s love. It goes like this:

A Dialogue with the Logic of Zephaniah1

“Can you feel the wonder of this today — that God is rejoicing over you with loud singing?”

“No, I can’t, because I am too guilty. I am unworthy. My sin is too great, and the judgments against me are too many. God could never rejoice over me.”

“But consider Zephaniah 3:15. God foresees your hesitancy. He understands. So his prophet says, ‘The Lord has taken away the judgments against you!’ Can you not feel the wonder that the Lord exults over you with loud singing today, even though you have sinned? Can you not feel that the condemnation has been lifted because he bruised his own Son in your place, if you will only believe?”

“No, I can’t, because I am surrounded by enemies. Obstacles press me in on every side. There are people who never let me believe this. There are people at work who would make my life miserable if God were my treasure. There are people in my family who would ostracize me. I have friends who would do everything to drag me down. I could never go on believing. I would have too many enemies. The oppression would be too much to bear, I could never do it.”

“But consider Zephaniah 3:17, ‘The Lord is a warrior who gives victory’; and verse 19, ‘Behold, at that time I will deal with your oppressors [says the Lord]’; and verse 15, ‘He has cast out your enemies.’ Can you feel the wonder that God is doing everything that needs to be done for you to enjoy his own enjoyment of you? Can you see that the enemies and the oppressors are not too strong for God? Nothing can stop him, when he exults over you with loud singing. Can you feel the wonder of it now? Can you believe that he rejoices over you?”

“No, still I can’t, because he is a great and holy God and I feel like he is far away from me. I am very small. I am a nobody. The world is a huge place with many important people. There are major movements and institutions that he is concerned with and happy about. I am too small. God is like the president. He is far away in Washington, busy with big things.”

“But consider Zephaniah 3:15, ‘The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst’; and verse 17: ‘The Lord, your God, is in your midst.’ He is not far from you. Yes, I admit that this staggers the imagination and stretches credibility almost to the breaking point — that God can be present personally to everyone who comes to him and believes on him. But say to yourself, again and again, He is God! He is God! What shall stop God from being close to me if he wants to be close to me? He is God! He is God! The very greatness that makes him seem too far to be near, is the greatness that enables him to do whatever he pleases, including being near to me. Has he not said, for this very reason, ‘I dwell in a high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit’ (Isaiah 57:15)? Can you not then feel the marvel that God makes merry over you — even with loud singing — when you come to him and believe him?”

“But no, you just don’t understand. I am the victim and the slave of shame. I have been endlessly belittled by my parents (see Zephaniah 2:8, 10). I have been scoffed at and threatened and manipulated and slandered. Inside this cocoon of shame even the singing of God sounds faint and far away and indecipherable. It is as though my shame has made me deaf to anyone’s happiness with me, especially God’s. I cannot feel it.”

“Now I am sure I do not feel all that you feel. I have not been through what you have been through. But God is no stranger to shame. Unbelievable shame was heaped on his Son (Hebrews 12:2), terrible slander, repeated belittling, even from his own townsfolk (Matthew 13:55–58). Therefore, ‘We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses’ (Hebrews 4–15). I know I have never walked in your shoes. I did not have to live with the family you lived with. But Jesus knows. He feels it with you. And best of all, his Father says right here in Zephaniah 3:19, ‘I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.’ Is it not amazing how well God knows you? Can you not feel the warmth of his heart as he makes provision for every question you have? Do you not yet hear the singing of God as you draw near?”

________

1This is adapted from The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God, 1991, (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2012), 179–180.

Read the original post at the DG blog: How Zephaniah Helps Us Feel the Glad Love of God

Discipleship Makes You a Christian Hedonist

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Discipleship is about values. This could not be clearer in the Gospels. Jesus’ call is for a double action: leave and follow. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,” he first said to Peter and Andrew in Matthew 4:19. And “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Then to James and John. And “Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” Whether nets or family, the call to follow Jesus is the call to walk away from something else. It is the call to this, not that. Here, not there.

The disciples knew this. They knew they were forsaking one thing for another. And they knew pleasure was at the root. That’s why Peter asked what he did in Matthew 19:27. To be sure, he was still putting the pieces together, but he tipped his hand here. He was waiting for the pay off. Jesus had just taught on riches, which I imagine seemed out of the ballpark to Peter. Riches? Psssssst! (He had even walked away from his meager livelihood.) Ayhem, Jesus? Great lesson on riches, and about that, we, you know, we, uh, we left everything. So when do we get to cash the check?

Maybe more astonishing than Peter asking the question is that Jesus answers him.

Forsake the lesser pursuit in order to gain the greater pleasure. That’s why a man sells everything to buy a field (Matthew 13:44) or why the merchant considers all his goods mere commerce compared to one pearl (Matthew 13:45). There is something better out there and discipleship is the great calling to lay hold of it.

The human is a deep creature: “not just a body, but a soul. Not just a soul, but a soul with a passion and a desire. Not just a desire for being liked or for playing softball or collecting shells.” And Jesus says, “Follow me.” His call harmonizes with our inherent depth. Look, here’s the treasure. It’s me. Then we are awakened, muddy hands and all, wallowing in the slums this whole time but now testifying of a “desire for something infinitely great and beautiful and valuable and satisfying — the name and the glory of God” (Boasting Only in the Cross). So we leave and we follow. Goodbye broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13), hello my exceeding joy (Psalm 43:4).

We follow Jesus into a new world, not as pedagogy, but as fellowship. We come not as pupils, but as rebellious creatures made alive for the first time — rebellious creatures now reconciled to God by the death of his Son. Discipleship — following Jesus — is to live before God’s face, to dwell in his presence, to be satisfied in all that he is. We follow as creatures of grace, entering into the fellowship of the triune God in whose presence there is fullness of joy, at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

________

Read the original post at the DG blog: The Heart of Discipleship.

For some helpful reading on discipleship, see Jonathan Dodson’s most recent book, Gospel-Centered Discipleship; see also chapter 4 of Holiness by John Webster. And for sure, The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Calvin’s Institutes, Book III.

Memorial Day Reminds Me of America’s Complicated History

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Memorial Day reminds us that war is real life and there are heroes out there. Real heroes.

And it reminds me of America’s complicated history.

There are two men in my family tree who lost their lives in military service, and only one of them is meant to be honored today.

My great uncle, Billy, was shot by enemy fire in Vietnam. I never met him, of course, but heard about the event of his death several times growing up. I am deeply grateful — unspeakably grateful — for those like Billy who have died for our country. It is amazing.

And then there is Alsey. My great-grandaddy’s name was Leslie. Leslie’s daddy was Eddie Brice. Eddie’s daddy was Ruffin, and his daddy was Alsey.

Alsey died from disease on September 30, 1861 outside of Pennsylvania. He was 30 years old and left an estate worth only $20. But perhaps most confusing — and just plain weird — is that he died as an enemy to the country that celebrates Memorial Day. He died in service, at war, but it wasn’t for this country; it was against it.

Alsey was a member of the 24th Infantry Regiment from North Carolina, a state of the Confederate States of America. He had taken up arms against the U. S. A., my country, the one for whose defense many have fallen — ones for whom today I give thanks, including my great uncle.

See, it’s complicated.

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For some summer reading on the American Civil War, see Religion and the American Civil War — a book of really good essays, including Paul Harvey’s fascinating piece, “Yankee Faith” and Southern Redemption: White Southern Baptist Ministers, 1850-1890.

Also, The Civil War by Bruce Catton; and For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War by James McPherson.

At Least One Connection Between Baseball and Prayer

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Memorial Day weekend is the traditional welcome into summer. Long days, outside reading, baseball, iced tea, sunshine — ’tis the season of unparalleled displays of God’s common benevolence.

And it’s also full of exciting opportunities for us to grow in the grace of prayer.

God’s grace is immeasurable, not seasonal (Ephesians 2:7). There’s not more of him now than in January, but summer tends to open our eyes a little wider. We can see a little clearer. And this helps how we pray.

C. S. Lewis:

For what I call “myself” (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction. . . Normally I call this construction “me,” and the stage set “the real world.” Now the moment of prayer is for me — or involves for me as its condition — the awareness, the re-awakened awareness, that this “real world” and “real self” are very far from being rock-bottom realities” (Letters to Malcom, 81).

In other words, prayer is when we snap out of it — out of the busyness, out of Facebook charades, out of our culture-imposed identities. Prayer is the most real thing we do, and if summer is when we are most awake, then let it teach us how to pray. Let it invite us into deeper fellowship.

Jonathan Dodson writes of prayer,

Prayer is about love not about lists. It is about drawing near to God, not about impressing God. It is about enjoying his grace not enduring guilt. In fact, our genuine guilt for loving something altogether more than we love the Father is gone in Christ. God so loved us that he sent his only Son to be cut off in death so that we might be wonderfully united with him in life. Prayer is a response to the Father and the Son; it is a warm reaction to what they have together done for us. Prayer is communion with God, a cementing of souls together in a common delight, in this case, a delight in God and his grace towards us in Christ. It begins and continues with honest words about our loveless lives, our guilt-ridden approaches to prayer, and a shameless embrace of God’s reckless love and grace. (What to Do with Prayerlessness)

May the next four months be the background of deeper discoveries in what this means.

________

Read the original post at the DG blog: How Summertime Helps Us Pray.

Russell Moore on Fake Love and Fake War

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Russ Moore:

Pornography promises orgasm without intimacy. Video warfare promises adrenaline without danger. The arousal that makes these so attractive is ultimately spiritual to the core. . . .

The answer to both addictions is to fight arousal with arousal. Set forth the gospel vision of a Christ who loves his bride and who fights to save her. And then let’s train our young men to follow Christ by learning to love a real woman, sometimes by fighting his own desires and the spirit beings who would eat him up. Let’s teach our men to make love, and to make war . . . for real.

Read the entire article.

Talking Darwin and Morals

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Richard Weikart has written a salty article about Ben Carson’s recent commencement address at Emory University. I saw the link in one of John Piper’s tweets earlier today.

Here’s the climax of the piece:

Ben Carson, then, should hardly be pilloried for arguing that evolution has ethical implications and that it undermines morality.  If Emory University professors want to argue that evolution has no ethical implications, they are free to make that argument (I wonder how many of them actually believe this).  However, if they do, they need to recognize that they are not just arguing against “benighted” anti-evolutionists, but they are arguing against many of their cherished colleagues in evolutionary biology, including Darwin himself.

Read the whole thing.

Theology in Baseball and Blockbusters

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My colleagues (and friends), Tony Reinke and David Mathis, have authored two posts this week I absolutely love. Now, I think it’s excellent content. But even more than that, it’s what’s under the hood that encourages me most. It’s the way these posts give us a model for seeing the world. Tony is drawing deep truths about God’s wrath from a movie about superheros. David connects John Frame on the Christian life to Major League Baseball’s league-leading homerun hitter.

Check them out: Tony’s The Avenger and David’s Josh Hamilton, Relapse, and the Means of Grace.

On Election and Faithfulness

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Deuteronomy 7:7–9,

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,  but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations

The theology of election leads to the exhortation to know the very character of God. He is sovereign: loving whom he loves, having mercy on whom he wills — and he is not arbitrary. He acts in accordance to a standard, namely, himself. He is a God of covenant faithfulness.

This passage is a remarkable blending together of YHWH’s utter sovereignty and condescending relation to his people. He is sovereign enough to choose whom he wills, according to his own good pleasure, and yet he is guided by his own character such that he never acts outside of who he is. He is sovereign, in that he does whatever he pleases, and he is bound, in that he doesn’t contradict his character.

This is deeply rooted in the essence of the triune God, whose election is in reference to the Son (Ephesians 1:4). And the root of his election — his unconditional, because-he-is-God election — and his mind-boggling, mouth-shutting faithfulness is intrinsic to himself. It is in himself, “for he is content with his own secret good pleasure.”