When You Track Your Spiritual Progress

The last days of December are a great time for personal inventory.

It’s almost involuntary for many of us. The close of one year naturally leads to us to think back over the highs and lows of the last 365 days (especially if we’re on Facebook). For others of us, the inventory might be more methodical. Maybe we crack open a journal from a year ago or browse through notes we’ve made or organize a list of our biggest decisions in descending order. Either way, it’s safe to say that we all do some kind of inventory.

And for the Christian, this inventory is mainly concerned with our spiritual progress. Exercise goals and staying on budget are important, and there is certainly something spiritual about them, but the main question for us is whether we grew in grace (2 Peter 3:18). Did we make real steps toward increased Christlikeness?

Are we more sanctified now than a year ago?

I think we should ask this question, even though we run the risk of making two mistakes. One mistake is to instantly theologize the answer before we really think about it. Because we know that God is at work in us, we’re temped to dismiss the question altogether. Of course, we think, we’re more sanctified (Philippians 1:6; 2:13). We consider ourselves to be on an irreversible road of progression, and therefore, we allow this to mute any serious examination. The other mistake is to answer the question in terms of our daily disciplines. We immediately mistranslate the question of our spiritual progress to mean whether we read the Bible and prayed enough.

To be sure, Christians are on an irreversible road of progression, and Bible reading and prayer are indispensable, but neither of these should silence our honest asking — and honest answer — to whether we are more like Jesus a year later. And a big reason I suggest we go there is because sometimes we will feel like the answer is no.

Maybe our assessment yields a humble recognition of true growth — that we have learned more and loved more, experienced remarkable victory over a besetting sin, and made decisions that exhibited counter-comfortable faith. But maybe it’s just no.

Maybe we don’t feel more like Jesus now than we did at the close of 2012. We don’t feel like we’ve learned as much, or loved as much, or mortified our anger, or stepped out of the boat. Maybe we feel like, compared to last year, 2013 was one big blah of spiritual progress. I know a man in Christ, as Paul might say, who has felt this way. We scratch our heads and wonder how the spiritual scenery looks the same even though we’ve been trying to move forward all year long.

Well, Christian, if that is like you, there is something you need to know. And feel.

You are more sanctified — and will be more sanctified. You will be more transformed into the image of Jesus — even if, by your assessment, it doesn’t feel that way.

Your destiny is set. Those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29). And we understand this encouragement not by skipping to it without sincere reflection, but by trekking to it through sincere reflection. We especially sense this wonder in profound ways when God’s word speaks over what our assessments might say. He reminds us that though years are good markers for us, he doesn’t work in calendar quotas. And for him, what is 365 days? If a thousand years is as one day (2 Peter 3:8) . . . you do the math.

But how? we may think.

The assurance of a Christian’s progressing sanctification goes deeper than a few proof texts, so deep, in fact, that it’s actually bound up in what salvation is. We need to look no further than the rich truth of our union with Christ.

In his book, One with Christ, Marcus Peter Johnson argues that “union with the living Christ is … what it means to be saved” (Location 198). He argues that realities such as justification and sanctification are both blessings Jesus bestows on us through our union with him. They are not mile-markers we must cross in route to a relationship with Jesus, but rather, they are wondrous gifts Jesus gives to us because he has saved us to a relationship with him. Johnson writes,

Jesus Christ does not bestow his benefits in the abstract; he bestows himself to us, that we might enjoy who he is for us in all his saving graces. In our union with him, he is the cause of our justification, sanctification and adoption. And because it is Jesus Christ in the fullness of his person and work whom we receive in salvation, we receive all that he is to us simultaneously, never one benefit without the other. (Locations 3256–3259)

The implications here are amazing. This means that because salvation is Christ himself — our getting him and being united to him — then we are assured to receive all his benefits. Nothing gets left out. There is no lesser package that offers full-fledged justification but then leaves out a subscription to sanctifying grace. That is not how it goes.

If we are justified, we will be sanctified, because in Christ we can only have them both.

So it’s yours. Even if you feel that you made less progress in 2013 than you hoped, or that you just stalled more this year than the last. If you are in Christ, you will be sanctified. You get it all. You will be transformed into the image of Jesus. Whether you sense it acutely now or not, one day you will. Keep running. You will look back and see the progress. For one day we know that we shall be like him (1 John 3:2).

Union with Christ is also the theme of the upcoming Conference for Pastors. Learn more information and register by January 1 for the current discount.

I Want to Turn Your Dreams Back On

Below is the video and manuscript from John Piper's plenary message last night at Cross, a new student missions conference. You can watch the conference live over the next two days at www.desiringGod.org/live.

This conference on missions is a dream come true for me. And my prayer is that many of you will look back some day and see that this was a decisive moment in a dream come true for you—that some day, ten or twenty or thirty years from now, you will recall the very first Cross Conference, 2013, as a turning point when God did something decisive in directing the rest of your life. If you came with low expectations, get big ones right now.

There are at least four reasons why this conference is a dream come true for me:

God created the world and has been active in it from the beginning so that the transcendent beauty of his holiness might be known and enjoyed and shared by a redeemed people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and this conference is God’s work to propel that purpose toward completion. To be a part of something so central to God’s ultimate purpose is what I dream about for my life.

This conference is a dream come true because every human being on this planet is lost and bound for eternal suffering unless they come to know and treasure Jesus Christ and the good news that God sent him into the world to die, and in dying to absorb and remove that judgment for everyone who believes. And this conference exists to make that global human lostness—that impending eternal suffering—shockingly clear, and then propel to all the unreached peoples of the world an army of lovers who care about all human suffering, especially eternal suffering.

Third, this conference is a dream come true for me because in my lifetime God has brought about a great awakening to the glory of his sovereign grace. Call it Reformed theology. Call it the doctrines of grace. Call it the new Calvinism. Call it big God theology. Call it a passion for God’s supremacy in all things. Call it the resurgence of God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated worship. Call it a vision of a great, holy, just, wise, good, gracious, sovereign God, whose throne is established in the heavens and who does whatever he pleases. Call it what you will. God is doing this—God is awakening millions of people all over the world, especially young people—to these stunning and glorious realities. And this conference is a fruit of this awakening. It is the sharpening and the pushing of the point of the spear of this gospel truth into the unreached peoples of the world, “for the Imperial Majesty of Jesus Christ and for the glory of his empire” (John Stott).

Fourth, this conference is a dream come true for me because I am old and you are young. Most of my heroes died before they were my age—Calvin, Luther, Tyndale, Owen, Spurgeon, Edwards, Brainerd, Judson—all dead before they were 67. They didn’t have this privilege at my age. Ever since God did an unusual awakening in me in 1983, when I was 37 years old, I have wanted my life to count for the sake of the unreached peoples of the world. The rising of the Cross conference for students feels like a crowning gift from God—like an answer to the prayer of Psalm 71:18, “Even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation.” God is mighty, young people. Unstoppably mighty. He will have the nations. He will have his world.

And now I get the privilege of talking to you about him under the title: “The Chief End of Missions: The Supremacy of God in the Joy of All Peoples.” So this is all a dream come true. And I pray again that many of you will look back some day and see that this was the beginning of a dream come true for you. Or perhaps not the beginning but a decisive milestone making plain what God has been doing in your life all along.

“The Chief End of Missions is the Supremacy of God in the Joy of All Peoples.”

You may hear in that title a paraphrase of the first question in the Westminster Catechism:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

So I have replaced “chief end of man” with “chief end of missions”—which seems legitimate because missions is shorthand for “man active in doing missions.” There is no missions in the abstract without human action. There is only people doing missions. What is their chief end or goal? Or, what is God’s chief end in their action?

Then I changed the glory of God to the supremacy of God. The chief end of missions is the exaltation of God as supremely glorious—supremely beautiful and valuable above all other reality. The chief end of missions is the radical transformation of human hearts through faith in Christ and through the work of the Holy Spirit so that they treasure and magnify the glory of God supremely above all things. In that sense, the end of missions is the supremacy of God.

Then I changed “and enjoy him forever” (“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever”) to “the joy of all peoples.” Missions is not just about winning your neighbor to Christ. It is about the peoples of the world. “Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!” (Psalm 67:3).

So the chief end of missions is the glorification of God’s supremacy in the jubilation of human hearts among all the peoples of the world. Or we could say: the chief end of missions is the supremacy of God in the satisfaction of the peoples in God. Or, the chief end of missions is the glory of God in the God-centered gladness of the peoples.

But the most important change I made in the catechism was changing the word “and” to the word “in.” The catechism says, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” What does “and” mean? If “and” means: There is one end of man called “glorify God,” and another end of man called “enjoy him forever,” then why did the authors of the catechism use the singular “end” when they answered, “The chief end of man is . . .? Why didn’t they say, “The chiefs ends of man are to glorify God and enjoy him forever”?

The answer is that the authors did not consider God’s getting glory in man and man’s getting joy in God as separate and distinct ends. They knew that God’s being glorified in us and our being satisfied in him were one thing.

One thing—the way God looking stunning through me is one thing with my being stunned by him. He looks stunning in my being stunned. God’s being glorified and my enjoying him is one thing the way God looking ravishing is one thing with my being ravished. God’s being glorified and my enjoying him are one thing the way God looking like the supreme treasure over all is one thing with my treasuring him as the supreme treasure over all. The world sees the supreme value of God in our valuing him supremely.

Those great Reformed theologians of the seventeenth century knew that God’s being glorified in us and our being satisfied in him were not two separate goals of creation. They were one goal, one end. And so they wrote, “The chief end (not ends) of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” And what I am doing is simply making it explicit and clear how they are one in my paraphrase: “The chief end of missions is the supremacy of God in the joy of all peoples”—namely, the joy of all peoples in God.

When the peoples of the earth come to rejoice supremely in the Lord, the Lord will be supremely glorified in the peoples of the earth. There is one end, one aim, one goal, of missions: the full and everlasting gladness of the peoples in the glory of God. Or, the glorification of God in the full and everlasting gladness of the peoples in God.

What does this most important change from “and” to “in” imply for your motivation in missions? The change

from: “The chief end of missions is the supremacy of God and the joy of all peoples,”

to: “The chief end of missions is the supremacy of God in the joy of all peoples.”

Why does that matter for you? For your motivation for being here at this conference? For being open to God’s leading in your life in regard to the unreached peoples of the world?

The reason it matters is because this change (from “and” to “in”) clarifies the relationship between the two great biblical motivations for doing missions: the joy you have in seeing God glorified, and the joy you have in seeing people saved—passion for the supremacy of God and compassion for perishing people.

Which do you have? Which has brought you here? Which is driving you? God’s glory or man’s good? God’s worth or man’s rescue? God’s holiness or man’s happiness? The exaltation of God’s supremacy or the salvation of man’s soul? What is your driving missions motivation?

The main reason it matters that I have changed “the supremacy of God and the joy of all peoples” to “the supremacy of God in the joy of all peoples,” is that this makes it clear you don’t have to choose between those two motives. In fact you dare not choose. If you choose between them, both are cancelled. They live and die together. Rightly understood these two motives are one and not two.

When we say, “The chief end of missions is the supremacy of God in the joy of all peoples” we make plain that zeal for the supremacy of God includes a zeal for the joy of all peoples. And the other way around, compassion on the joyless eternity of lost peoples includes a zeal for the glory of God. Rightly understood, it cannot be otherwise.

These are not separate motives, as if missions could be pursued with a zeal for the glory God, but no zeal for the joy of lost people! Or as if missions could be pursued with a zeal for the joy of the lost, but no zeal for the glory of God. No, that’s not possible. Indifference to the glorification of God is indifference to the eternal joy of the peoples. Indifference to the eternal joy of the peoples is indifference to the glory of God. Because missions aims at the supremacy of God in the joy of all peoples—the joy of the peoples in God.

To be sure, not all people will be saved. Not all will enjoy God forever. Many will hate him to eternity. And God will glorify his holy wrath in their righteous judgment. But that is not the goal of missions. Missions is a rescue movement to glorify God in the gladness of the peoples.

These are not two separate motives. They are one. “The chief end of missions is the supremacy of God in—not and—the joy of all peoples.” You don’t have to answer the question I asked a moment ago: “Which has brought you here? Which is driving you? God’s glory or man’s good? God’s worth or man’s rescue? God’s holiness or man’s happiness? The exaltation of God’s supremacy or the salvation of man’s soul?”

Stated like that, there is no right answer to that question. This or that. No. Not: this or that; but: this in that. Not: God’s glory or man’s joy; but: God’s glory revealed in man’s joy—man’s joy in God. Not: God’s worth or man’s rescue; but God’s worth revealed in man’s rescue—his rescue from the deadly condition of not treasuring God’s worth. God’s worth is magnified when a person flees from a lifetime of belittling God’s worth.

So you dare not choose between being motivated by your compassion for lost people and your zeal for the glory of God. If you know what the glory of God is, and you know what it means to be rescued from sin, then you will know that you must have both motives because they are one. The glory of God in the gladness of the peoples, and the gladness of the peoples in the glory of God.

Let’s go to the Bible now and see if these things are so. Perhaps here is where the Holy Spirit will put the match to the kindling I am trying to lay.

The uniform and pervasive message of the Bible is that all things have been done by God for the glory of God, and all things should, therefore, be done by us for the glory of God. This doesn’t mean we do them to increase his glory, but to display his glory. To communicate his glory—the supreme beauty of his manifold perfections.

The apostle Paul comes to the end of the great explanation of redemptive history in Romans 9–11 and writes in Romans 11:36, “From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.” “To him are all things.” All things exist to him, that is, to his honor, to his fame, for the sake of his name and his praise. All things—absolutely all things, from microwave ovens to global missions, from the tiniest microbe to human cultures, all things are “to him.” To him be glory forever. All the peoples, all the languages, all the tribes are to him. They exist for him. His name, his praise, his honor, his glory.

Paul says again in Colossians 1:16, “All things were created through him and for him,” referring to Christ. Everything in creation exists for him. For the honor of Christ, for the glory of Christ. For the name and the fame of Christ (cf. Heb. 2:10).

Or again in Romans 1:5 Paul says, “We have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of Christ’s name among all the nations.” “For the sake of Christ’s name.” Paul’s apostleship, and by extension the cause of missions, and this conference, exist “for the sake of Christ’s name among all the nations.” For the name and honor and glory and fame of Jesus Christ.

This is where John Stott says in his commentary on Romans that the mission of the church exists “for His Imperial Majesty, Jesus Christ, and for the glory of his empire.” For all we know America may be a footnote in the history of the world someday, and every President virtually forgotten, just like the Caesars of Rome—how many Caesars can you name (there were 80)? But we know beyond all doubt that the name and the majesty and the kingdom of Christ, in the words of Daniel the prophet, “shall never be destroyed. . . . It shall break in pieces all the kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44).

The point of all these texts—and dozens more like them—is that God’s aim in creation is to put himself on display and to magnify the greatness of his glory. “The heavens are telling the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). He designed it that way. That is what the galaxies are for. And that is what everything that happens in creation is for. All of history, from creation to consummation, exists for the communication of the glory of God.

Isaiah 48:9–11 flies like a banner not just over God’s rescue of Israel from exile, but over all his acts of rescue, especially the cross of Christ:

For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, . . . I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.

All of creation, all of redemption, all of history is designed by God to display God—to magnify the greatness of the glory of God. That is the ultimate goal of all things including missions. “The chief end of missions is the supremacy of God—the display and communication of the supreme worth and beauty of God.”

But there is another stream of revelation flowing in the Bible concerning what God is up to in the world he has made and the world he is governing. He is not only seeking the glorification of his name, he is seeking the jubilation of the peoples in his name. Ponder this second stream of texts with me for a few moments.

Paul tells us in Romans 15:8 that the Son of God came to confirm God’s promises to the Jews. But immediately then he adds in verse 9, “and in order that the Gentiles—the non-Jewish peoples of the world—might glorify God for his mercy.” And then he tells us what it means to glorify God for his mercy—his mercy! He quotes four Old Testament passages about God’s purpose for the joy of the nations (Romans 15:10-12):

As it is written, “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.”

What does it mean that God’s aim in missions is “that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy”? Gather up all his words! It means, Let the peoples praise! Let the peoples sing! Let the peoples rejoice! Let the peoples extol! Let the peoples hope! It is unmistakable what God is up to in history! The gladness of the peoples in God.

And if we go back to the Psalms, the purpose of God for all the peoples of the earth is clear: joy in God above all things.

Psalm 47:1, “Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!”

Psalm 66:1-2, “Shout for joy to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise.”

Psalm 67:3-4, “Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.”

Psalm 68:32, “O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God; sing praises to the Lord.”

Psalm 96:1, “Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth!”

Psalm 97:1, “The LORD reigns, let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!”

Psalm 98:4, “Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!”

Psalm 100:1, “Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!”

There is no doubt that God’s global aim in creation and redemption is not only the glory of his name but also the gladness of the peoples. Specifically, the gladness of the peoples in God.

And if someone asks, Couldn’t you do the same thing with faith and obedience and life? Couldn’t you trace through all the Bible the places where God aims at these. Why not focus on those as the aim of God and the aim of missions?

If you ask that I would ask, why do you think the great theologians who wrote the Westminster Catechism said, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever”? Why didn’t they say: “To glorify God and trust him forever”? Or: “to glorify God and obey him forever”? Or: “to glorify God and have life in him forever”?

Isn’t the answer that the essence of each of these experiences—of faith and obedience and life, indeed all genuine spiritual experience—isn’t the essence of them all the enjoyment of God in those acts, such that if you remove the enjoyment of God from them (faith, obedience, life), they cease to be God-exalting acts.

Isn’t the essence of faith the embrace of God in Christ as the all-sufficient satisfier of our souls—not just the giver of good gifts, but the giver himself? Isn’t faith, at its essence, being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus (John 6:35)?And isn’t obedience, with all its thousands of manifestations, at its essence, doing what God says with a view to enjoying more of God in the very doing of it, and the reward of it? For example, we obey the command to love our neighbor by expanding our joy in God in our neighbor’s enjoyment of God. I would argue, that’s the nature of all God-exalting obedience (cf. Hebrews 12:2; Acts 20:35; 2 Corinthians 9:7).And isn’t the essence of eternal life to know God, as Jesus says in John 17:3? And what is knowing God in the fullest biblical sense? To know him like the devil knows him, with all the facts just right, but hating them? No. To know God in a saving way is to know his all-satisfying beauty and greatness and worth for what they really are, precious and soul-satisfying. To know him rightly is to treasure what is known.

If the enjoyment of God is withdrawn as an essential aspect of faith or obedience or life, they cease to be the goal of God. They cease to be what they are. Faith is not saving faith without being satisfied in all that God is for us in Christ. Obedience is not obedience where there’s no obedience to the command, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” And life is not life where God himself is not our delight.

So I say again, in creation and redemption and in the mission of the church God aims supremely at both: the glory of his name, and the gladness of the peoples.

And in the fullness of time, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, came into the world to secure both of these goals. He came for the vindication of his Father’s glory, and for the salvation of his Father’s children. And he did this by dying on the cross and rising from the dead.

The night before he died, in great distress he said, “What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” (John 12:27–28). Christ died for glory-belittling sinners to show that it would be true and clear that God does not sweep the dishonoring of his name under the rug of the universe. He died to vindicate the worth of his glory (Romans 3:23–26).

And he also came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). He said, “The Son of Man came . . . to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). A ransom from everlasting misery to everlasting joy—“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11; cf. 17:13). And at the end of the age when all the peoples are gathered before Jesus, those who have received him as their treasure will hear the words, “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23). This is why he came: to purchase by his blood the joy of the peoples in the joy of their Master.

Jesus died for this: the glory of his Father, and the gladness of his people. Frontier missions is an extension to the nations of Jesus’s mission to the world. He came for the glory of the Father and the gladness of the peoples. So the chief end of missions is the supremacy of God and the joy of all peoples.

But not just and, rather in. The aim of history, the aim of Christ in dying for sinners is the glory of God in the gladness of the nations. The chief end of missions is the supremacy of God in the joy of all peoples.

This is so because when you enjoy someone you honor that person. You magnify their value. You glorify them. If I say to my wife, “It makes me happy to be with you,” she doesn’t accuse me of selfishness. Why? I just said that I am motivated to be with her by my own happiness. Because when my happiness is in her, it calls attention to her worth, not mine. She is honored when I say, “It makes me happy to be with you.” So is Christ. So is God the Father. They are seen to be a supreme treasure when they become for us our supreme pleasure. They are glorified in us when we are satisfied in them.

Therefore I say again, “The Chief End of Missions is the Supremacy of God in the Joy of All Peoples.” When the peoples find their supreme gladness in God, God will be supremely glorified in them. Which is why he created the world, and why Jesus’s cross exists, and that’s why this Cross conference exists. That’s what we pray will be the everlasting upshot of these days.

We will not choose between glorifying God and making people glad. We will not choose between praising God’s supremacy and removing people’s suffering—especially eternal suffering. We will not choose between hallowing God and helping people. In the aims of this conference and the aims of global missions, we will not choose between the aim of seeing Christ magnified among the peoples and seeing the peoples satisfied in Christ.

Because these two are one. Christ is supremely magnified in the peoples when the peoples are supremely satisfied in Christ. We have the best news in all the world: Jesus Christ, the Son of God died and rose and reigns to make the nations fully and eternally glad in the glory of God.

When Christ becomes the satisfaction of the nations, and God becomes their delight, then he is honored and they are saved. And you—you who will take or send this best of all messages—you turn out to be a person of great compassion toward perishing sinners and great zeal for the glory of God. Don’t ever choose between these two: praising God and pitying sinners, divine glory and human gladness. Embrace this one great end, and give your life to it—the supremacy of God in the joy of all peoples.

Five Truths About the Incarnation

Christmas is about the incarnation of Jesus. Strip away the season’s hustle and bustle, the trees, the cookies, the extra pounds, and what remains is a humble birth story and a simultaneously stunning reality — the incarnation of the eternal Son of God.

This incarnation, God himself becoming human, is a glorious fact that is too often neglected, or forgotten, amidst all the gifts, get-togethers, pageants, and presents. Therefore, we would do well to think deeply about the incarnation, especially on this day.

Here are five biblical truths of the incarnation.

The virgin conception and birth in Bethlehem does not mark the beginning of the Son of God. Rather, it marks the eternal Son entering physically into our world and becoming one of us. John Murray writes, “The doctrine of the incarnation is vitiated if it is conceived of as the beginning to be of the person of Christ. The incarnation means that he who never began to be in his specific identity as Son of God, began to be what he eternally was not” (quoted in John Frame, Systematic Theology, 883).

Jesus is no typical king. Jesus didn’t come to be served. Instead, Jesus came to serve (Mark 10:45). His humility was on full display from the beginning to the end, from Bethlehem to Golgotha. Paul glories in the humility of Christ when he writes that, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6–8).

The incarnation wasn’t random or accidental. It was predicted in the Old Testament and in accordance with God’s eternal plan. Perhaps the clearest text predicting the Messiah would be both human and God is Isaiah 9:6: “To us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

In this verse, Isaiah sees a son that is to be born, and yet he is no ordinary son. His extraordinary names — Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace — point to his deity. And taken together — the son being born and his names — point to him being the God-man, Jesus Christ.

The Scriptures do not give us answers to all of our questions. Some things remain mysterious. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God,” Moses wrote, “but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Answering how it could be that one person could be both fully God and fully man is not a question that the Scriptures focus on. The early church fathers preserved this mystery at the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) when they wrote that Jesus is “recognized in two natures [God and man], without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ.”

The incarnation of Jesus does not save by itself, but it is an essential link in God’s plan of redemption. John Murray explains: “[T]he blood of Jesus is blood that has the requisite efficacy and virtue only by reason of the fact that he who is the Son, the effulgence of the Father’s glory and the express image of his substance, became himself also partaker of flesh and blood and thus was able by one sacrifice to perfect all those who are sanctified” (Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 14).

And the author to the Hebrews likewise writes that Jesus “had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17).

The incarnation displays the greatness of God. Our God is the eternal God who was born in a stable, not a distant, withdrawn God; our God is a humble, giving God, not a selfish, grabbing God; our God is a purposeful, planning God, not a random, reactionary God; our God is a God who is far above us and whose ways are not our ways, not a God we can put in a box and control; and our God is a God who redeems us by his blood, not a God who leaves us in our sin. Our God is great indeed!

Your Most Courageous Resolution for 2014

Pursue love. (1 Corinthians 14:1)

Resolutions are good things. They’re biblical: “may [God] fulfill every resolve for good” (2 Thessalonians 1:11). And I think developing New Year’s resolutions is a very good idea. A year is a defined timeframe long enough to make progress on difficult things and short enough to provide some incentive to keep moving.

A resolve is not a vague intention, like “one of these days I’m going to get that garage cleaned” or “I’m going to read the Bible through this year,” but without any clear plan to do it. Resolves are intentions with strategies attached to them. You don’t just hope something is going to happen; you are planning to make it happen. To be resolved is to be determined.

But resolves can either be rooted in our selfish ambitions or in the love of God. We must think them through carefully. So as we make our resolutions for 2014, God wants them to all serve this one great end: “pursue love” (1 Corinthians 14:1).

“Pursue” is a very purposeful word. The Greek verb has an intensity to it. It means to “seek after eagerly,” like a runner in a race seeks eagerly to win a prize.

The RSV’s translation of this phrase is clearer: “Make love your aim.” It has a sense of single-minded focus to it. The NIV falls short: “Follow the way of love.” It has no edge to it. It sounds like a platitude that the most polite company could smile and nod to without feeling unnerved. It does not capture Paul’s intensity.

No, this is an aggressive verb. In fact, it can mean to “pursue with hostile intent.” That’s why in the New Testament, it is frequently used to mean persecuting or harassing someone.

That sounds like Paul, the former persecutor who became the persecuted. What he is saying to us is that we should pursue love with no less fervency and determination that he once pursued Christians to Damascus — only our aim is not to stop love, but to unleash it and be captured by it, or, I should say, by Him (1 John 4:8).

Let this be the year that we pursue love. Let this be the year that we stop talking about love, that we do less regretful moaning about how little we love and how much we need to grow in love and actually be determined to love more the way Jesus loved (John 15:12). Let this be the year we actually put into place some strategies to help us love.

Each person’s situation is so unique that we can’t craft strategies for each other to grow in love. It’s something that we must each do with God, though some feedback and counsel from those who know us best are helpful.

But here are some of the Bible’s great love texts to soak in during 2014 that can help loving strategies emerge:

1 Corinthians 13: soak in or memorize it and let each “love is . . .” statement in verses 4–7 search your heart. With whom can you show greater patience, kindness, and more?

John chapters 13–15: soak in or memorize them. Ninety-five verses are very doable. You can memorize them in 3–6 months and be transformed.

The First Epistle of John: Soak in or memorize it. You can do it! Forcing yourself to say the verses over and over will yield insights you’ve never seen before.

Take 2–4 weeks and simply meditate on the two greatest commandments according to Jesus (Matthew 22, Mark 12, Luke 10). Look and look at them and pray and pray over them. You will be surprised at what the Lord shows you.

Read Hebrews 13:1–7, take one verse per day and prayerfully meditate on what you might put into place to grow in each area of loving obedience. It may be one thing or ten things.

You get the idea. We don’t need all our strategies in place by January 1st. But we can make 2014 a year where we pursue love with more intentionality than we ever have before. And as we meditate, letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly (Colossians 3:16), the Holy Spirit will guide us in creating the strategies we should use.

But let’s also be clear: making love our aim in 2014 will demand more courage and faith than any other resolution we can make. Nothing exposes the depth of our sin like really seeking to love God with our entire being and loving our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 10:27).

So we must let our pursuit of love drive us to the gospel. None of us has ever perfectly kept either of the two great commandments. Ever. Our very best efforts have been polluted by our prideful sin. And we have rarely been at our very best.

We can only love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19) and sent his Son to become sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ has kept the greatest commandments (and the rest) perfectly for us! So we are forgiven of our constant failure to love as we ought and are given grace to grow in the grace of love. And because of Jesus, someday we will love perfectly just as we have been loved.

So let’s make our resolution to pursue love this year more than we ever have, knowing that we have been loved with an everlasting love (Psalm 103:17).

World, Get With the Program: Joy! Joy! Joy!

Isaac Watts wrote a book on logic and 750 hymns, including “Joy to the World.” That’s my kind of person! Lucid logic for seeing truth, and a living soul for feeling it and singing it. This is what we were created to be.

Watts wrote “Joy to the World” as Part Two of a meditation on Psalm 98. His title was: “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom.” Most agree he was writing about the second coming of Christ, not Christmas.

But it’s not that simple.

To be sure, Psalm 98:8–9 says, “Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the L???, for he comes to judge the earth.” He is coming to judge. This corresponds to Watt’s “While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, / Repeat the sounding joy.”

But there’s more. The song is indeed about the Christmas coming — and the present reigning, and the final future coming to renovate the world.

“Joy to the world! The Lord is come!”

We don’t usually say, “is come.” We say “has come.” So there it is: Christmas. He has come.

“Joy to the earth! The Savior reigns!”

Now. He reigns now because he came at Christmas, lived, died, rose, and was exalted to the right hand of the Father as Savior and King.

“He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.”

He reigns, but not merely at a distance. He comes now. He is turning back the effects of the curse now. Once we were under wrath (John 3:36), now we are not under wrath. No condemnation (Romans 8:1). Miraculous healings and medical advances are marvelous works of Christ pushing back the physical effects of the fall in places where they once held complete sway.

“He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of his righteousness
And wonders of his love.”

Here is what the reigning Savior does now. He rules. He compels (makes). The second three lines unpack the first. “Righteousness” and “love” correspond to “truth” and “grace.” He rules with truth and grace. And he compels the nations to come to terms with the truth and rightness of all he does, and the ever-present, ever-offered, ever-wonderful grace and love.

What does “prove” mean? He makes the nations “prove” his glories and wonders. To prove something is to test it and see if it is reliable — as in “proving ground.” The king will not be ignored. He will compel attention. All men will prove him. They will judge him to be reliable or not. Sooner or later all the nations will face his grace and righteousness, either with faith and joy, or with rejection and misery.

Besides these four statements about the coming and reign of Christ (“is come,” “reigns,” “makes blessings flow,” “makes nations prove”), the song exhorts. It exhorts us and it exhorts nature.

Us: “Receive your King!” “Prepare him room!” “Employ your songs!” “Don’t let sins grow!”

Nature: “Heaven and nature, sing!” “You fields and floods and rocks and hills and plains, repeat the joy!” “You thorns, no longer infest the ground!”

This is not mere teaching and application. This is exultation. The logician has seen with lucid precision the glories of truth and righteousness and grace and love and kingly power. Now he is brimming with exclamation, exultation. The logic is on fire.

Jesus is King! Jesus is Savior! Jesus has conquered the curse! Jesus rules the nations! Ride on, King Jesus!

And, world, get with the program! Joy! Joy! Joy! Sing! Sin no more! Prove him! He is righteous. He is true. He is gracious. He is loving. He is coming.

Trading One Dramatic Resolution for 10,000 Little Ones

I’ve told the story many times of talking impatiently with my wife one Sunday morning and having my nine-year-old son interject, “Daddy, is this the way a Christian man should be talking to his wife?”

Rather sarcastically I said, “What do you think?” He replied, “It doesn't make any difference what I think — what does God think?”

I went to my bedroom, and two thoughts immediately hit me. First, my pride reared up. I want to be a hero to my son, and I was embarrassed that he had been troubled by my attitude and words. But that didn't last very long. I soon thought, “How could it be that God could love me so much that he would give a twit of care about this mundane little moment in the Tripp bathroom?”

That’s love at a level of magnificence that I am unable to capture with words. This was but one moment in one room in one house of one family, on one block on one street in one neighborhood, in one city in one state in one country on one continent, in one hemisphere on one globe in the universe. Yet God was in that moment, working to continue his moment-by-moment work of transforming the heart of this man.

Why am I telling you this story? Well, it’s that time once again. It’s the fodder for blogs, magazine articles, TV shows, and way too many tweets. It is the time for the annual ritual of dramatic New Year’s resolutions fueled by the hope of immediate and significant personal life change.

But the reality is that few smokers actually quit because of a single moment of resolve, few obese people have become slim and healthy because of one dramatic moment of commitment, few people who were deeply in debt have changed their financial lifestyle because they resolved to do so as the old year gave way to the new, and few marriages have been changed by the means of one dramatic resolution.

Is change important? Yes, it is for all of us in some way. Is commitment essential? Of course! There is a way in which all of our lives are shaped by the commitments we make. But biblical Christianity — which has the gospel of Jesus Christ at its heart — simply doesn’t rest its hope in big, dramatic moments of change.

The fact of the matter is that the transforming work of grace is more of a mundane process than it is a series of a few dramatic events. Personal heart-and-life change is always a process. And where does that process take place? It takes place where you and I live everyday. And where do we live? Well, we all have the same address. Our lives don’t careen from big moment to big moment. No, we all live in the utterly mundane.

Most of us won’t be written up in history books. Most of us only make three or four momentous decisions in our lives, and several decades after we die, the people we leave behind will struggle to remember our lives at all. You and I live in little moments, and if God doesn’t rule our little moments and doesn’t work to recreate us in the middle of them, then there is no hope for us, because that is where you and I live.

The little moments of life are profoundly important precisely because they are the little moments that we live in and that form us. This is where I think “Big Drama Christianity” gets us into trouble. It can cause us to devalue the significance of the little moments of life and the “small-change” grace that meets us there. And because we devalue the little moments where we live, we don’t tend to notice the sin that gets exposed there. We fail to seek the grace that is offered to us.

You see, the character of a life is not set in two or three dramatic moments, but in 10,000 little moments. The character that was formed in those little moments is what shapes how you respond to the big moments of life.

What leads to significant personal change?

10,000 moments of personal insight and conviction

10,000 moments of humble submission

10,000 moments of foolishness exposed and wisdom gained

10,000 moments of sin confessed and sin forsaken

10,000 moments of courageous faith

10,000 choice points of obedience

10,000 times of forsaking the kingdom of self and running toward the kingdom of God

10,000 moments where we abandon worship of the creation and give ourselves to worship of the Creator.

And what makes all of this possible? Relentless, transforming, little-moment grace. You see, Jesus is Immanuel, not just because he came to earth, but because he makes you the place where he dwells. This means he is present and active in all the mundane moments of your daily life.

And what is he doing? In these small moments, he is delivering every redemptive promise he has made to you. In these unremarkable moments, he is working to rescue you from you and transform you into his likeness. By sovereign grace, he places you in daily, little moments that are designed to take you beyond your character, wisdom, and grace so that you will seek the help and hope that can only be found in him. In a lifelong process of change, he is undoing you and rebuilding you again — exactly what each one of us needs.

Yes, you and I need to be committed to change, but not in a way that hopes for a big event of transformation, but in a way that finds joy in and is faithful to a day-by-day, step-by-step process of insight, confession, repentance and faith. And in those little moments, we commit ourselves to remember the words of Paul in Romans 8:32:

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us, how will he not also with him freely give us all things.

So, we wake up each day, committed to live in the small moments of our daily lives with open eyes and humbly expectant hearts.

God in Human Flesh — J.C. Ryle

“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” – Matthew 1:23

Ryle,

Let us take care that we have clear views of our Lord Jesus Christ’s nature and person. It is a point of the deepest importance. We should settle it firmly in our minds, that our Saviour is perfect man as well as perfect God, and perfect God as well as perfect man. If we once lose sight of this great foundation truth, we may run into fearful heresies. The name Emmanuel takes in the whole mystery. Jesus is “God with us.” He had a nature like our own in all things, sin only excepted. But though Jesus was “with us” in human flesh and blood, He was at the same time very God.

We shall often find, as we read the Gospels, that our Saviour could be weary, and hungry, and thirsty,—could weep, and groan, and feel pain like one of ourselves. In all this we see “the man” Christ Jesus. We see the nature He took on Him, when He was horn of the Virgin Mary.

But we shall also find in the same Gospels that our Saviour knew men’s hearts and thoughts,—that He had power over devils,—that He could work the mightiest of miracles with a word,—that He was ministered to by angels, that He allowed a disciple to call Him “my God,”—and that He said, “Before Abraham was I am,” and “I and my Father are one.” In all this we see “the eternal God.” We see Him “who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” (Rom. ix. 5.)

Would you have a strong foundation for your faith and hope? Then keep in constant view your Saviour’s divinity. He in whose blood you are taught to trust is the Almighty God. All power is His in heaven and earth. None can pluck you out of His hand. If you are a true believer in Jesus, let not your heart be troubled or afraid.

Would you have sweet comfort in suffering and trial? Then keep in constant view your Saviour’s humanity. He is the man Christ Jesus, who lay on the bosom of the Virgin Mary, as a little infant, and knows the heart of a man. He can be touched with the feeling of your infirmities. He has Himself experienced Satan’s temptations. He has endured hunger. He has shed tears. He has felt pain. Trust Him at all times with all your sorrows. He will not despise you. Pour out all your heart before Him in prayer, and keep nothing back. He can sympathize with His people.

Let these thoughts sink down into our minds. Let us bless God for the encouraging truths which the first chapter of the New Testament contains. It tells us of One who “saves His people from their sins.” But this is not all. It tells us that this Saviour is “Emmanuel,” God Himself, and yet God with us,—God manifest in human flesh like our own. This is glad tidings. This is indeed good news. Let us feed on these truths in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving.

- J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)
taken from: Expository thoughts on the Gospels: Matthew.

Christianity in a Culture Feeding on Self — John MacArthur

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. (Luke 9:23)

John MacArthur,

If you ever wanted to know how to give an invitation, there’s one. Do you ever wonder what to say at the end of a service? Do you ever wonder what to say to sinners after you’ve preached the gospel? How about this! “Any of you who would like to follow Christ: Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow. And to further explain what that means:

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. (Luke 9:24-26)

Now let’s get the picture. There are a lot of people following Jesus and His ministry at all points on the spectrum of belief and here Jesus gives an invitation. The issue is “coming after me”, “devoting yourself to me”, “following me”. And the terms are unmistakable: “Let him deny himself.” Doesn’t sound like the “self-esteem gospel” to me. Doesn’t sound like felt-needs to me. Arneomai is the verb and I want you to know what it means. It means to “refuse to associate with”, to “disown”. You want to come to Christ do you? Disown yourself. Refuse any further association with the person you are. It isn’t about adding the whip cream on the top of your already successful life. It isn’t about taking the final step to secure forever the wonder of who you are. It is about disassociating with yourself. The one you want to no longer associate with is you. You’re sick of you. You don’t want anything to do with what you are.  This is hard. This is why it’s hard to believe. A sinner has to come to the place of complete self-denial. Abandoning any hope of self-fulfillment. It’s back to that beatitude-attitude again isn’t it? Blessed are the poor in what? The poor in spirit. The spiritually bankrupt who know they’re destitute. And their spiritual destitution causes them to be also those who mourn, and those that are meek, they’re lowly.

In Philippians chapter 3 the Apostle Paul spent his life up until the point of his conversion in the pursuit of self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment for him came through the legalistic system of Judaism–the works-righteousness, self-exalting system of Judaism–and Paul had achieved  as much as could be achieved. Philippians 3 talks about the fact that he was circumcised the eighth day, and that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, he was a Jew, and he was kosher–that is he followed all of the traditions–a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he was zealous for his religion to the degree where he persecuted people that were a threat to it. As far as outwardly concerned there was nothing that could be laid against him as a violation of the law. He was all of that that one could hope would be enough to fulfill one’s self as having achieved religious stature before man and God, and he said when he came across Christ, he looked at it and said it was dung. So much for self-fulfillment. It was once gain to him, but when he saw Christ he counted it as what? Loss. It wasn’t neutral. It was devastating.

This is not about self-fulfillment. The gospel is not about self-fulfillment, it is about self-denial. Out of the carcass of self-denial comes the honey of divine grace. An old puritan prayed this way:

LORD, HIGH AND HOLY, MEEK AND LOWLY,
Let me learn that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the joyful spirit,
that the repentant soul is the triumphant soul
that to have nothing is to have everything
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown
that to give is to receive

Let me find Your light in my darkness
Your joy in my sorrow
Your grace in my sin
Your riches in my poverty
Your glory in my humiliation
and Your life in my death

We need to tell people that if you want to be saved–that if you want to follow Jesus, you want to come after Him–it’s the end of you. All your ambitions, all your desires set aside in utter submission to His Lordship. It’s the attitude of that publican in Luke 18. The Pharisee goes in to the temple: “I thank you that I’m not like other people…”, you know the story. And what is the publican doing? He won’t look up, his head is bowed, he’s pounding his chest, and he’s crying out: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” The Pharisee was happy with himself. The publican didn’t want any further association with himself. That’s where we have to take the sinner. This by the way then becomes a way of life.

When you present some shallow gospel that calls for no self-denial what do you expect people to live like from then on? If they think that Jesus is in the business of giving them what they want does that ever end? Does that ever end? And guess what happens as soon as Jesus doesn’t deliver.

No, we begin  at the point of self-denial and, listen, that’s how you come to salvation at the point of total self-denial and then the Christian life is the struggle to stay that way. And it’s a struggle. I was there when I was saved but it’s a battle to stay there because my flesh rises up and makes it’s demands, doesn’t it? So I have a little set of things written that I keep close by to remind of the fact that I came to Christ in self-denial and I want to live my life that way. This is what it says:

When you are neglected, unforgiven, or when you are purposely set at naught and you sting and you hurt with the insult of that oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ, that is dying to self.

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed and your advice is disregarded and your opinions are ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart or even defend yourself, you take it all patiently in loving silence, you’re dying to self.

And when you lovingly and patiently bear any disgrace, any regularity, any annoyance, when you can stand face to face with folly and extravagance and spiritual insensitivity, and endure it as Jesus did, that is dying to self.

When you are content with any food, any money, any clothing, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption by the will of God, that is dying to self.
And when you never care to refer to yourself in conversation or record your own good works, or itch after commendation from others, and when you truly love to be unknown, that is dying to self.

When you see your brother prosper and have his needs wondrously met, and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy and never question God, though your needs are greater and still unmet, that is dying to self.

And when you can receive correction, and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and humbly admit inwardly as well as outwardly that he’s right and find no resentment and no rebellion in your heart, that is dying to self.

That’s how you came, and that’s how you stay. We are selling a kind of evangelicalism that is deadly to this. You can’t build a gospel around people having self-fulfillment, and then not expect them to think that that’s what God has to deliver to them from then on. This is another way to attack the issue of Lordship.

Furthermore, go back to Luke 9. Jesus didn’t just say: “if anyone wishes to come after Me let him deny himself”, but he took us to the level, or to the extent that that self-denial must go when He said this: “…and take up his cross daily”, take up his cross daily. And the daily there is important because the daily means we’re not talking about an event, we’re talking about a way of life. In the fourteenth chapter and the twenty-seventh verse of Luke, Jesus essentially says the same thing. You take up your cross and you keep carrying it. What does this mean? Well, what did a cross mean to them? It didn’t mean to them what it means to a Keswic preacher. It doesn’t mean some psychological self-crucifixion. It simply meant to them what it was: an instrument of execution.

They knew what crucifixion was. The Romans crucified people. The Persians had sort of launched crucifixion. The Egyptians used crucifixion. There were other barbarians that used crucifixion. It was somewhat common. There had been one occasion of a rebellion in Jerusalem in which 800 Jews were crucified there for a revolt which followed the death of Herod the Great. The Proconsul Varus crucified 2,000 Jews. They knew exactly what a cross meant. A cross was the most heinous form of torture and death. And what Jesus is saying here cannot be mistaken. He’s not talking about something psychological here. He’s not talking about something even spiritual. He’s talking about something very physical: “I want you to deny yourself and be ready to die because that’s what it might require.” In fact you need to be ready to die any day and every day. When Paul said I die daily, he wasn’t saying that I get up spiritually and I execute my ego. He was simply saying every single day I anticipate the possibility of my death so that in my mind  I’m dying everyday. So many plots of the Jews, so many plots of the Gentiles. Paul is talking in his own personal testimony of dying daily, to the Corinthians, the same thing that Jesus is speaking about here. So, Jesus says, you want to follow Me do you? You want to come after Me? It’s the end of you. Even to the degree that every day you put your life on the line should I desire to take it. And then, the literal Greek closes the verse: “And let him be following Me.” Self-denial, cross-bearing, and loyal obedience, those are the life patterns of those who are truly the followers of Jesus Christ…

…It’s hard to believe, but you wouldn’t think that today, in fact, today, it’s easy to believe and in fact it’s getting easier every month…Over the last few months we have been told that you don’t have to even know there was a Jesus. You don’t even have to know there was a Bible! You don’t even have to know the true God! In an article in Christianity Today I read, a couple of editions ago, people are saved by Jesus who don’t even know Jesus is saving them. This is no-Lordship carried to the extreme, this is no Jesus! Some of you may feel I’m a little extreme on this, but I’m just telling you what Scripture says. We have certainly succumbed to the fundamental opposition of sinners in a culture that supports and grows self-love. We’ve literally succumbed to that. Everybody is in to self-love, and fulfillment, personal fulfillment, so that’s the way we’ll put the Gospel — and there are lots of people all around the world who don’t know about Jesus, so let’s get them in the kingdom without having to know about Jesus. If we have to we’ll “trans-dispensationalize” them to get them in.

Martin Luther launched the great Reformation of course with his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. The fourth of his protesting assertions, the fourth, was that a penitent heart was characterized by a self-hate…quote: “penance remains, while self-hate remains.” Luther said true penitence is self-hate, and he says that remains in those who enter the kingdom of heaven. This is essential for the Gospel.

“Depart from me O Lord, for I am a sinful man”, “Woe is me, for I am disintegrating” says Isaiah…This is so alien to a culture feeding on self-love and having every whimsical need met insisting on rights, privileges, equal respect, reward, and honor for everything.

taken from: General Session #1 address given by John MacArthur at the 2003 Shepherds’ Conference. (emphasis added)

View the original article here

The Grace of Remembering

Forgetting something important is one of the most frustrating experiences in life. If we forget an appointment, a birthday or directions we are painfully made aware of how damaging forgetting can be to our relationships. The act of remembering is vital to our making progress in life. In the same way, so much of our Christian life is stunted by the act of forgetting and is fueled by the act of remembering the promises, presence, power and provisions of God in Christ.

In the Scriptures, the first example of the call to remember is found immediately after God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt. In Exodus 13:3 we find Moses telling the Israelites, ‘Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out of this place.’”  The exodus (i.e. the typical Gospel in the Old Testament) became the redemptive-historical event that Israel was repeatedly charged to call to mind throughout their pilgrimage through the wilderness and toward the Promised Land. The antitypical exodus (i.e. in our deliverance from Satan, sin and death in the exodus of Jesus) is what we are to constantly call to mind as we make our way through the wilderness of this world and onto the Heavenly Promised Land (Luke 9:31; Romans 6:11; Galatians 3:1-4; Colossians 1:5-6; 2 Peter 1:9; Revelation 1:5-6).

God commanded Israel to remember the typical Gospel of the exodus in Deut. 5:15 where, immediately before Moses tells Israel to “keep the Sabbath day…,” he said, “remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm…” The holiness of the people of God is fueled by a remembrance of the Gospel. God was calling Israel to remember His redemptive grace and power when they heard the call to obey Him. When Israel faced the prospect of conflict with the Canaanites in the land that the Lord promised to give them, God told them, “If you should say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?’— you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt” (Deut. 7:17-18).When God told Israel to let their indentured servants go free with possessions after 7 years, He told them, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this thing today” (Deut. 15:15). We see this over and over again throughout God’s dealings with the Old Covenant church (e.g. Deut. 6:12; 8:11-14; 16:3, 12; 24:18, 22)

When Israel finally came to the point of taking possession of the land, Joshua charged them to remember the promises of God. He said, “Remember the word which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, saying, ‘The Lord your God is giving you rest and is giving you this land” (Joshua 1:13).

So much of the revelation of God in the Psalms is founded on this very same principle. In Psalm 77:11 we read, “I will remember the works of the Lord; Surely I will remember Your wonders of old.” This is one of the chief ways that the Psalmist stirs up his soul in praise to God. In Psalm 111:2, the Psalmist wrote, “The works of the Lord are great, studied by all who have pleasure in them.” Surely to “study” the works of the Lord is to remember and meditate on the redemptive power and grace of God that was operative in the first generation of Israel.

Isn’t it wrong to live in the past? Doesn’t the apostle Paul tell us to forget what is behind and to press forward? What Israel was actually being called to do was remember the LORD who had redeemed them according to His promise. Behind the redemption was the promise of God and the God of promise. The God of redemption and the act of redemption must always to take center stage in the minds of God people. Whenever Israel forgot the redemption that they had experienced, they were forgetting the LORD who had redeemed them. Whenever they forgot the LORD they lived in sinful rebellion.  We see this clearly in Judges 8:33-35, “So it was, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of Israel again played the harlot with the Baals, and made Baal-Berith their god. Thus the children of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hands of all their enemies on every side; nor did they show kindness to the house of Jerubbaal (Gideon) in accordance with the good he had done for Israel.” There is a direct correlation between Israel’s remembering the previous gracious  and powerful dealings of God and their rebellious idolatry. When they remembered, they trusted Him for present grace and power; and, when they forgot, they lived in sinful rebellion.

Forgetting God is the sinful default setting of our souls. Even believers often forget the goodness and power of God and live with contentions and anxiety rather than turn to Him for grace and provision. We see this in the disciples’ response to Jesus’ call for them to feed the 4,000 in Mark 8:1-21. Just a few days prior they witnessed Jesus miraculously more than 5,000 with five loaves and a few fish. Now, there was a crowd that had been with Jesus for three days and had nothing left to eat. Jesus told His disciples, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar.” The disciples should have said, “Well Lord, we have seven loaves and a few small fish. You can certainly turn these into enough food for the people–just like you did a couple of days ago.” Instead they said, ““How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?” Even as the statement came out of their mouths it should have called to their minds the unbelief of Israel in the wilderness after having seen God’s redemptive power and grace. Richard Trench explained this when he wrote:

All former deliverances are in danger of being forgotten; the mighty interpositions of God’s hand in former passages of men’s lives fall out of their remembrance; each new difficulty appears as one from which there is no extrication; at each recurring necessity it seems as though the wonders of God’s grace were exhausted and have come utterly to an end. He may have divided the Red Sea for his people, yet no sooner are they on the other side, than because there is no water to drink, they murmur against Moses, and count that they must perish for thirst, crying, ‘Is the Lord among us, or not’ (Exod. 17: 1-7)? Or, to adduce a still nearer parallel, He who opens his hand and fills all things living with plenteousness may have once already covered the camp with quails (Exod. 16:13), yet for all this even Moses himself cannot believe that He will provide flesh for all that multitude (Num. 11: 21, 22). It is only the man of a full-formed faith, of a faith which Apostles themselves at this time did not possess, who argues from the past to the future, and truly derives confidence from God’s former dealings of faithfulness and love (cf. 1 Sam. 17:34-37 ; 2 Chron. 16: 7, 8). Nothing then but a strange unacquaintance with the heart of man could have led any to argue that the disciples, with their previous experience of one miracle of this kind, could not a second similar occasion have been perplexed how the wants of the multitude should be supplied ; that we have therefore here an illustration of the general inaccuracy which prevails in the records of our Lord’s life, of a loose tradition, which has told the same event twice over.1

Simon Peter brought this home to bear on the everyday quest for growth in grace in the Christian life when he wrote: “Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,  to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins” (2 Peter 1:5-9). Notice that he lays the blame for a failure to grow in grace at the feet of “forgetting that you have been cleansed from your old sins.” When we forget the Gospel we become spiritually paralyzed and backsliden. All of this can be summed up in the Apostle Paul’s words to Timothy: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David” (2 Timothy 2:8). If we forgot who He is and what He has done, we will fail to make the progress in the Christian life that God calls us on to by His grace.

Vos on the Historicity and Interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2

In addition to the works of Herman Bavinck and several other prominent Dutch theologians at the end of the 19th Century, the historical development of various interpretations of Genesis 1-2 in the Reformed church, in many respects, finds its origin within the walls of Princeton Theological Seminary at the end of the 19th Century. This was due, in large part, to the accompanying advancements in scientific investigation and evolutionary theory being promoted by Professors of biology and geology at the University. When we read the writings of B.B. Warfield, Charles Hodge, A.A. Hodge et al, we find them wrestling with the relationship between science and Scripture–relating to the age of the world and the creation days of Genesis 1. What has not been explored in this discussion–to the best of my knowledge–is Geerhardus Vos’ exegetical considerations of the issues surrounding Genesis 1 and 2. As the father of modern Biblical-Theology, Vos was in no way inferior in theological rigor and scholarship to any of his colleagues at Princeton. With the partial translation of his Reformed Dogmatics, we now have a catechetical entry into the mind of a theological genius of almost unsurpassed greatness. In his chapter on Creation (ch. 6), Vos entered into a thorough exposition on the exegesis of Genesis 1 and 2. After setting out the three interpretive approaches of his day (i.e. allegorical, mythical and historical), Vos answers the following supremely important questions concerning the interpretation the first two chapters of Genesis (Note especially his answers to question 13, 17, and 27-32):

13. Can one who rejects the allegorical and mythical interpretations of Gen 1 and 2 also fall into error on the other side?

Yes, some want to give a hyper-scientific exegesis that satisfies the latest perception and newest fashion. All sorts of theories from physics, geology and astronomy have been projected onto the narrative. Some maintain that the theory of evolution in its entirety is contained in these chapters. This is perhaps apologetic zeal, but it is bad exegesis. Every interpretation of Gen 1 and 2 must be justified exegetically. That science has discovered this or that, or thinks to have discovered it, is not enough to cause us to discover it in Genesis. The creation narrative provides pure truth, but in such a general form that it can serve equally for the instruction of God‘s people in centuries past and His children at the present time. (The hyper-scientific interpretation loses sight of that.) That is precisely what makes the creation narrative such a great artistic achievement of the Spirit of God.

14. How is the first verse of Gen 1 to be interpreted?

“In the beginning” means “before all things.” Thus it does not refer back to subsequent deeds of creation but speaks of the absolute beginning of time.

Concerning the creating mentioned here there are two explanations:

a) It is the initial bringing forth of material out of nothing, thus the so-called immediate creating, while in the following verses mediate creation is described.

b) It is a heading prefaced to the creation account. That is, first it is reported to us in general that God created heaven and earth and first in what follows is that further explained to us. We accept the first explanation, because:

1. Otherwise any reference to the first act of creation would be lacking.

2. The Hebrew word ?????? appears precisely to indicate the immediate creation in its divine uniqueness (see Num 16:30). In the qal form it is never used of human creating. That the basic idea is “to cut” is certainly true and to such extent refers to material out of which something has been cut. But that only shows that human language is unsuited for expressing with complete accuracy divine actions such as the act of creation. God must reveal Himself to man, must speak human language. Here He has at least chosen a word that comes closest to the reality in view.

3. “Heaven and earth” is equivalent to the universe, for which Hebrew does not have any word.

15. What more is contained in the twofold expression, “heaven and earth”?

Simultaneously this expression already contains a division. The creation at its first beginning, when everything was still intermixed, already lay under the goal to be split into two great spheres of heaven and earth. God draws lines from the beginning on. Even the chaos is called “heaven” and “earth.”

16. What does the so-called Restitution hypothesis want to maintain?

Focusing on Genesis 1:2, this hypothesis teaches that there was an original earth before there was the creation or preparation that is described from v. 3 on. It therefore translates v. 2, “the earth became formless and empty,” or “the earth had become formless and empty.” (The first translation is that of Kurz and Zöckler.) The goal of this hypothesis is to harmonize Scripture with geology. The original earth became “formless and empty” by numbers of upheavals, before God prepared our earth. Against this view are the following considerations:

a) An undefined period of such earthly catastrophes is in conflict with God’s intention to make the earth a dwelling place for man (Isa 45:18). Such periods of emptiness are suitable only for a pantheistic development of the universe.

b) All the scientific objections are not solved by this hypothesis, in particular biological ones. Can there have been life on an earth without light?

c) [The Hebrew] tohu wabohu is a negative then positive expression, indicating what has yet to receive its form.

17. What has been done to remove the first objection?

The formlessness and emptiness of the earth is connected to the fall in the kingdom of the angels. But then men with their world become a kind of second experiment, after the failure of the experiment with the pure spirits. Scripture, however, nowhere presents matters in this way. Angels are obliging, etc.

18. How then do we interpret the second verse?

As the introduction to v. 3. It describes the state of the earth when God sent forth His first word of creation.

19. What is to be concluded from the fact that in v. 2 there is no further mention of heaven?

a) That the aim of the creation account is not astronomical but subordinate to the history of redemptive revelation.

b) That v. 1 cannot be a heading. If this were the case, then we would have to say that only half of the heading is treated.

20. What is said further concerning the chaos?

That it was a “roaring flood” or abyss (see Psa 106:9; Isa 63:13). From Psalm 104:6 it is clear that this expression must not be understood to refer to a muddy material, in which land and water are still thoroughly mixed together, but to a solid core of earth, flooded by water (see also 2 Pet 2:5).

21. Explain the words, “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”?

The Spirit here is not a “wind from God,” sent out to dry what was created, for that is first spoken of in what follows. According to Psalm 33:6 it is the personal spirit, the third Person of the Trinity (see Psa 104:30). The word translated by “hovering,” ?????, is used elsewhere of a bird that hovers protectively over its young (Deut 32:11). Already in the first instance where the Holy Spirit is mentioned in Scripture His activity is portrayed for us in an image borrowed from the kingdom of the birds, just as He elsewhere appears as a dove. Here “hovering,” “brooding,” has in view the stirring of life within lifeless material. The brooding of birds brings out very aptly that life originates from outside by fructification. In the world there is at first no life. The Spirit of God must hover above the roaring flood, for its roaring is a dead noise. But the Spirit of God hovers on and above the waters. He does not mingle with them. Even where God‘s immanence comes to the fore, God and the world still remain unmixed.

22. What is the meaning of “And God said” (v. 3)?

a) One must compare these words with Psa 33:6 and with the teaching of the New Testament regarding the creative activity of the Logos, the uncreated Word (John 1:3; Eph 3:9; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2). That God speaks indicates that God‘s thought is going to form the chaos, that ideas are introduced concerning it. And that is precisely the particular work of the Logos, the second person of the Trinity. As being is from the Father and life from the Spirit, so thought is from the Logos. Naturally this must be so understood that nevertheless the undivided ad extra [external] working of the three persons is maintained.

b) It can also include that God can call His works into being by a word of power, without exertion of effort.

c) It shows that the world is something outside God, something distinct from God. It appears at the word of God. And the word is accompanied by thought; the external logos presupposes the internal logos.

23. What is the first thing called into being by this speaking of God?

Light. This is prerequisite, not only for the appearance of living beings where it shines, but for all distinguishing and grouping. Light is the image of clarity, of thinking. Consequently, the works of the Logos begin with the creation of light. The same connection, the same sequence, between life and light that we meet here we find in the work of re-creation, where regeneration and calling follow each other, just as in creation we see the hovering of the Spirit and the word of power, “Let there be light!”

24. What is said about this light?

“God saw that it was good.” God thus recognizes it as a faithful image of His own light-nature, for He is a light and there is no darkness in Him. Its being good consists in its likeness to God. It was not said of the chaos that it was good, nor is that said of the darkness in vv. 4 and 5.

25. How does light appear here?

As not yet concentrated in bodies of light (“lights”). It is thus something distinguished from its bearers. The sun has light, but is not light. Only of God is it said that He is light. According to Job 38:19 there is a place of light and God asks Job if he knows the way to where light dwells (see also v. 12). The treasure of light of the Father of lights is thus much greater than we can conceive or can derive from sun and stars.

26. What is meant with the division between light and darkness (v. 4)?

The light must have its reverse if it is to become completely light. God’s naming “day” and “night” is naturally not to be understood as if God gave the two periods of time the Hebrew names ????? and ?????????. God’s naming is something other. It is a naming that effects something from the outside, gives to things their specific, distinguishing character, makes them what they will continue to be. Augustine said: “All light is not day and all darkness is not night, but light and darkness following each other in regular order make day and night.” The naming of day and night means that therefore light and darkness now receive from God this rhythmic character by which they follow each other. And this physical rhythm, this natural contrast, without doubt reflects the series of spiritual contrasts there are between truth and lies, between good and evil, between beauty and ugliness.

27. How are we to understand, “And it was evening and it was morning, one day”?

It is not as if the first creation day began with evening, for a sufficient distinction would not be made between the preceding darkness and the night. It is probable that here the later, ordinary way of reckoning is not being followed (from evening to evening), but that the days run from morning to morning. The closing words of v. 5 then indicate successively the two halves of the first day. The first half closed with the evening, the second half with the morning.

28. Must the word “day” here be understood in the ordinary sense or in the sense of an indefinite period?

There has been much dispute about this point. Here, too, the decision must not be made dependent on geological considerations but on purely exegetical ones.

29. Is it right to say that the nonliteral interpretation is an innovation to which the development of modern science has driven theologians?

No, those who say that are mistaken. Augustine already said: “What kind of days they were is extremely difficult, or even impossible, for us to imagine, much less to say.”

30. To what is appeal made to support the nonliteral interpretation?

a) To the fact that sun and moon (or rather the rotation of the earth around its axis in relation to the sun) were not yet present. As we know, the length of an ordinary day is determined by this rotation.

b) To the indefinite use of the term “day” in other places in Scripture (Gen 2:4; 5:1; 2 Sam 21:12; Isa 11:16), also to the expression “day of the Lord” (= day of judgment) in the prophets, and to Psa 90:4; 2 Pet 3:8.

c) To the analogy with other things of God. Here we have to do with God’s days. Now the “things of God” are certainly archetypical (exemplars) for the things of men, but they are not completely identical. Thus we have no right, it is thought, to judge that God‘s days are like the days of men.

d) To the fact that the duration of God‘s Sabbath is eternal. That is one of the days here, the seventh day. If the seventh day is not limited to 24 hours, then the six previous days need not be limited to that time span.

On these grounds many, including those who are not intent on a reconciliation of the Scripture with science, accept an extraordinary length for the creation days. This includes many church fathers and theologians of the Middle Ages, and, among more recent theologians, even Charles Hodge inclines to this view.

31. What supports the interpretation that takes “day” in its ordinary meaning?

a) The entire creation aimed at man as its completion. It is difficult to accept that preparing for this goal took thousands of years.

b) All the creation days must have been of the same length. Who can accept, however, that a day on which nothing else occurred than the separation between light and darkness was a day of thousands of years?

c) The fact that the sun and moon, as measures of time, were not present, does not mean that there was no time. Already from the beginning God ordained a rhythm and created the light so that it would alternate with the darkness. When later this light was concentrated in the sun and the other bodies, we are told nothing about it being only then that the 24-hour day began. There was no change at that point. Therefore we have a reason for assuming that before that time the rotation of the earth took place at the same speed and that light was so positioned as was necessary for an alternation of day and night within 24 hours.

d) From v. 14 on the days are unquestionably ordinary days of 24 hours. There God says emphatically of the lights in the expanse that they will be “for days and years.” One might rescue the nonliteral view by assuming for the fourth to the sixth days an extremely slow rotation of the earth about its axis, but what about plant life during those long nights? The night has to have been half of the full day.

e) It is not accurate to say that the days are God‘s days. God ad intra does not have days. Creation is an act proceeding outwardly from God. Appealing to the eternal Sabbath is also of no avail. Although God’s Sabbath is certainly endless, that cannot be said of the first Sabbath (after the six-day creation) for mankind.

f) The use of the term “day” in Gen 9:4 is figurative, but in Gen 1 figurative language is not used. What one must show is another place in Scripture where a first, a second, a third day, etc., are just as sharply separated and nevertheless describe periods of time. The “day of the Lord” in the prophets refers to a specific day, that is, a day on which the Lord appears for judgment, even though His judgment may last longer than one day.

32. Must someone who holds that the days are long time periods be regarded a heretic?

No, in this sense the question is not an essential one. It would only become so if it provided the occasion for granting priority in principle over the Word of God to the so-called results of science.

Stuart Robinson’s 8 Point Interpretation of Genesis 3:15

Stuart Robinson, one of the leading Southern Presbyterian theologians of the 19th Century, set down 8 points of interpretion of Genesis 3:15 in his biblical-theological masterpiece Discourses of Redemption. In short, Robinson was seeking to highlight what our first parents could have known from the first preaching of the Gospel (what he called “the Gospel creed”) when he wrote:

Thus it will be seen, on careful analysis of these words, and deducing the truths embodied by implication in them, that they set forth these eight points of the gospel creed.

1. That the Redeemer and Restorer of the race is to be man, since he is to be the seed of the woman.

2. That he is, at the same time, to be a being greater than man, and greater even than Satan; since he is to be the conqueror of man’s conqueror, and, against all his efforts, to recover a sinful world which man had lost; being yet sinless, he must therefore be divine.

3. That this redemption shall involve a new nature, at “enmity” with the Satan nature, to which man has now become subject.

4. That this new nature is a regeneration by Divine power; since the enmity to Satan is not a natural emotion, but, saith Jehovah, ” I will put enmity,” &c.

5. This redemption shall be accomplished by vicarious suffering; since the Redeemer shall suffer the bruising of his heel in the work of recovery.

6. That this work of redemption shall involve the gathering out of an elect seed a ” peculiar people” at enmity with the natural offspring of a race subject to Satan.

7. That this redemption shall involve & perpetual conflict of the peculiar people, under its representative head, in the effort to bruise the head of Satan, that is, ” to destroy the works of the Devil.”

8. This redemption shall involve the ultimate triumph, after suffering, of the woman’s seed ; and therefore involves a triumph over death and a restoration of the humanity to its original estate, as a spiritual in conjunction with a physical nature, in perfect blessedness as before its fall.

Such, then, is the gospel theology here revealed, in germ, through the very terms of the curse pronounced upon the destroyer of the race. It will be seen that here are all the peculiar doctrines of salvation, by grace, which every Christian accepts, who exercises the faith which is unto salvation. And in the broader and higher sense of the terms, Moses, as truly as Mark at the opening of his evangel, might have prefixed to this third chapter of Genesis the title,” The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.”

The Strongest Evidence for the Deity of the Son

We ask every man coming before our Presbytery committee for ordination to give some biblical proofs of the deity of Christ. Without fail, each appeals to either John 1:1 or John 8:58. Some will go to Hebrews 1:1-4. Those who have evidently sharpened up on their biblical knowledge may give us Colossians 1:16 and 2:9. But in all the exams that I have been a part of, I have yet to hear someone appeal to what Geerhardus Vos styled, “the strongest evidence for the deity of the Son” in the Scriptures, namely, Romans 9:5.

In his great letter to the Romans, Paul enumerated the privileges that Old Covenant Israel had despite their long history of unbelief and unfaithfulness (Romans 3:1-7 and 9:1-5). In chapter 9, he brought this argument to a climax by asserting that the greatest privilege that Israel had was that the Messiah came into the world as an Israelite, though He was “God over all blessed forever.” Here we have the clearest defense of the two natures of Christ in all of the Scriptures. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, there has been no small debate over how the words of this verse should be translated. Briefly consider the following English translations and their variances:

The Authorized (King James) Version translates Romans 9:5 in the following manner: “whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen”

The New King James Version: “of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.”

The American Standard Version: “whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.”

The New American Standard Version: “whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”

The English Standard Version: “To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.”

The New International Version: “Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised!”

Young’s Literal Translation: “whose [are] the fathers, and of whom [is] the Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed to the ages. Amen.”

Wycliff Bible translates: “whose be the fathers, and of which is Christ after the flesh, that is God above all things, blessed into worlds. Amen.”

The Douay-Rheims version: “Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever.“

The New Revised Standard Version: “to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever.”

The Revised Standard Version: “to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. God who is over all be blessed for ever.”

The Living Bible: “Great men of God were your fathers, and Christ himself was one of you, a Jew so far as his human nature is concerned, he who now rules over all things. Praise God forever!.”

The noticeable difference between all of the above mentioned translations and that of the Revised Standard Version and the Living Bible is that in the latter two the word order differs with regard to the last clause. The latter two translations turn the statement about the deity of the Son into a doxology to God the Father. This is true of several other translations–not least of which are those belonging to non-Christian cults.

So what are we to make of the variants in the translation of this verse? In his Reformed Dogmatics, Vos took up this question and provided some extremely insightful answers concerning the right translation of this verse. He wrote:

59. How many translations are there of Romans 9:5?

a) The customary translation, “… from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God above all, to be praised forever, Amen.” So understood, these words provide the strongest evidence for the deity of the Son.

b) Others, however, would have it translated, “From whom Christ is to be praised forever.” The final words would then refer to the Father.

c) Still others would translate, “From whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is above all. God is to be praised forever.” The final words must then refer to the Father.

60. Why is the first translation the correct one and the latter two to be rejected?

a) Because Christ is the antecedent and it is not arbitrary here to think of Him when the apostle continues, “who is …”

b) Because the words “ ‘according the flesh,” by virtue of the contrast implied, demand a description of the deity of the Lord (cf. Rom 1:3).

c) The words applied to Christ stand in the closest connection with what precedes, since they add a new link in the chain of Israel’s’ privileges.

d) If a doxology to God the Father occurred here, the word order in the original would not agree with what is always the word order in such doxologies.

e) After Paul has lamented the sad apostasy of Israel, one does not expect a doxology to God in this context.1

1. Geerhardus Vos Reformed Dogmatics (vol. 1) Chapter 3, Questions 59-60.

Further Resources

Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ “Christ…who is…God” – One of the finest expositions of this verse in church history.

John H. Skiton’s “Romans 9:5 in Modern English Versions” in The New Testament Student at Work (vol 2) - One of the most thorough and helpful academic study of this subject.