2021 09 27 Solus Christus Grace Bible Church Conway AR

The Reformation Background of *Solus Christus*

We'll see about that. But do pray for G3 coming up. There's a lot of folks going to be there.

I'm going to be.

Pray for me, especially, because as I mentioned last night, the schedule right now is that I'm the warm-up act on Friday night. And I'm the warm-up act for Voddie Balcom and Paul Washer. Let me do my Paul Washer impersonation.

I don't know why you're laughing. I'm talking about you.

You good?

Don't tell him I did that. I haven't seen Voddie since all the heart stuff. So I'm looking forward to seeing him. But so I'm going to need to be on my A game. And it's interesting that my subject this evening is very similar to where we'll be at G3.

I'm not going to go to the same text that I'll be preaching then. But it is always an honor to be able to speak on a subject such as this. But once again, we're talking about the solas. So let's get to it.

And we need to talk about them first historically so that we know. Let me remind you from last evening, nobody was running around in the 16th century selling five solas merchandise, coffee mugs. For Luther, it would have been beer mugs anyways.

But what, you're shocked at that? Come on, some Baptists in here or something? Come on. If you don't know how Luther did theology and the stuff he talked about, be careful if you actually start reading about some of the things he said and what he was drinking while he was saying it.

But we are looking back in history. And we're looking at what they taught and how they taught it and what they defended. And it has been later generations that look back and have realized these were the things that marked the Reformation, these solas, these emphases.

And I did mention last evening that, for example, Luther translated the text in Romans 3 as faith alone, sola fide. And if you go to the castle church in Wittenberg up in the stained glass windows, you will see that in Latin up there.

Or was it in German? It's one of the two. I forget which one it was now that I think about it. But we are looking back at that. And we are projecting these things back and recognizing what they were talking about.

Christ Alone Against Roman Catholic Mediation

So why would there be an issue of solus Christus, Christ.

Alone?

Because no matter what you say about Rome, Rome doesn't believe what the Mormons believe, that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer. They don't believe what the Jehovah's Witnesses believe, that Jesus is Michael the archangel.

So why would someone identify solus Christus? And I think most of you who are former Roman Catholics, especially in a sort of an older form of Roman Catholicism, the more pre-Vatican II forms of Roman Catholicism, would recognize how vitally important other individuals are in the sacramental system of Rome, in the obtaining of grace, and in the final coming to have a relationship to God.

So what do I refer to here? Well, most of you would recognize the absolute centrality of Mary, the absolute centrality of Mary, even in the dogmatic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church today. Now, the current pope does not seem to be nearly as focused upon Mary as, for example, John Paul II was.

John Paul II, his papal coat of arms said, totus tuus, totally yours, and that was addressed to Mary. And so the current pope doesn't seem to be nearly as focused upon Marian devotion and things like that.

But certainly, a large portion of Roman Catholics, especially in places like Spain, Central America, so on and so forth, are still very, very much focused upon their relationship to Mary. And a lot of people who are not former Roman Catholics just don't understand how important this is theologically speaking.

Now, I don't recommend this to you. I think it's spiritually degrading in a way. But there is a book that you could read called The Glories of Mary that really represents where so much of Rome's theology of Mary in the past 200 years has come from.

Alphonsus de Liguri is the author. He's considered a doctor of the church. And it's hard for me to describe. I did not cue up my Mary quotes because I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. But the fundamental nature of the Coalitions is that we need a mediator with the mediator.

Because Jesus doles out justice, we need someone basically to make Jesus like us. And no one better can be found than his mother Mary. And so you will find prayer after prayer in this book of individuals addressing themselves to Mary and asking Mary to intercede for them, asking Mary to save them, entrusting their souls to Mary because she is the mediatrix, feminine form of mediator.

And once you understand the position that Jesus takes as judge, in essence, and once you understand that Rome does not have a finished work of Christ, oh, they'll say, yes, yes, yes, there's only one work of Christ.

But once you understand the doctrine of the mass, once you understand the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass as Rome teaches it, they believe that when the priest utters the words of consecration, and in the old Latin said, hoc es corpus meum, this is my body, that's where hocus pocus came from, by the way.

Did you know that? Hocus pocus is just a Latinized, slurred version of hocus corpus meum, the Latin of this is my body. That's where that phrase came from. You're all sitting there going, they're sort of looking at each other, do you believe him?

I'm not sure. Do you believe him? I'm not sure either. No, it's true. That's where it came from. When the priest, by his power of ordination, says those words, the miracle of transubstantiation takes place.

And the elements of the bread and the wine are changed into the body, soul, blood, and divinity of Jesus Christ. But because of Aristotelian philosophy, the accidents, what they look like, stays the same.

But the substance changes into the body, soul, blood, and divinity of Jesus. So Jesus is represented in an unbloody fashion upon the Roman altar every time mass is said. The problem is that that sacrifice perfects no one.

So you can come before that sacrifice 10 ,000 times, 20 ,000 times in your life, and still die impure and go to purgatory, or even lose the state of justification and go to hell. So you have to keep coming, and you have to keep coming, and you have to keep coming.

So there is no finished work that perfects anyone. That is why, like I said last evening, Romans 4, who's the blessed man? In Roman Catholicism, there is no blessed man. That's the problem.

That's the issue.

So you have a different gospel that does not give peace. And so can you understand why you'd like to have a mediator with the mediator to try to soften the justice that would come from his hand? And Mary becomes the individual that is appealed to.

But not just Mary. Most of you probably know the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, every single day is a day dedicated to some saint someplace. There is literally a pantheon of minority deities. And while a lot of Roman Catholics today just don't even pay attention to this, it is still the theology of the church that saints are able to intercede for us.

And in fact, in Roman Catholic theology, a saint is a person who has sufficient merit before God at the point of their death to enter directly into his presence. You see, when you die in Roman Catholicism, if you have temporal punishments of sin upon your soul, now if you have eternal punishments, you go to hell.

But if you have temporal punishments of sin, and every time you sin, you get temporal punishments, that's why you have to do penances, that's why you go to the priest, et cetera, et cetera, those are supposed to remove those things.

But if you've done your penances imperfectly and forgot to do some and things like that, you didn't confess certain sins, then your soul is impure. And nothing impure can enter into the presence of God.

Justification, Sanctification, and the Roman Catholic System

So let me contrast this. I didn't mean to go this direction. I'm sorry. But since I've said it now, and you're all honestly looking at me like, really? But you do need to understand this. Luther used the illustration of justification being like the first snow of the winter that covers over the dunghills.

Because in Germany, you kept all your animals' refuse and used it to fertilize your fields the next spring. And those things wouldn't smell very good by the end of the summer. And so that first snow comes and covers them over.

And you no longer have the ugliness. You no longer have the smell. And he said, justification is like that. The righteousness of Christ covers over us who are dunghills. It's not sanctification, where we are actually changed from being a dunghill into something else.

It's something that covers us. Now, Luther would not have denied that there is a direct connection between the two, that he who God justifies, he will sanctify. But he said, you have to differentiate between the two.

If you conflate the two, you have a real problem. And that's what Rome does. Roman Catholic apologists love to attack that illustration, love to make fun of it. The problem is, when you turn the illustration around, in Roman Catholicism, when you are baptized, you're turned into a pile of gold.

And that's why you go to heaven. You go to heaven because you are intrinsically pleasing to God. God likes to have gold in heaven. But what happens if you commit a mortal sin back into a pile of dung?

Not a pile of dung with some gold or gold, a pile of dung, but if you commit a mortal sin, you lose the grace of justification, the enemy of God, you're lost.

Boom.

Now, you can be forgiven, go through the sacrament of penance, and back to a pile of gold. But now there are temporal punishments that come along with that, so you might be a pile of gold that has flecks of dung on it.

When you commit temporal sins, not mortal sins, venial sins, then temporal punishment, and you remain a pile of gold, but now you start getting more and more dung on you. So the point is, when you die in that state, you have to be cleaned up.

And that's what purgatory is all about. Purgatory is not a second chance. Purgatory is a place you go to to be cleaned up, to undergo what's called satispassio, the suffering of atonement. But it's your suffering, not the suffering of Christ, that cleans you up.

And that's why you could buy indulgences, and you can still get indulgences. The current pope, only last year, gave plenary indulgences to people who went to many cathedrals in the world. All you have to do is walk through certain doors, and you get a plenary indulgence, which would wipe you clean of all the temporal punishments of your sins.

Even Frankie, the hippie pope, did that. So the intercession of saints is extremely important, because when they died, they had excess merit, and that excess merit goes into what's called the treasury of merit.

When Mary died, Mary didn't commit any sins, so there's a bunch of extra merit. And Jesus, he only would have had to have shed a single drop of blood to forgive the whole world. And since he bled copiously, there's all sorts of excess merit from him, too.

And all that excess merit goes into the thesaurus meritorum, the treasury of merit, that the church then controls, and can make deposits to your account in the form of indulgences. Now, how many of you knew all of that before?

A couple of you, okay, all right, good. So, do you see now what the background is to the assertion on the part of the Reformation, the Reformers, of solus Christus, Christ alone, not Christ dependent upon, or even channeling through others?

Because, for example, in the current Roman Catholic theology regarding Mary, one of the claims that Liguri's book makes is that Mary is the neck that turns the head of grace and through which all grace flows.

See the centrality that makes of Mary? Okay, and so what the Reformers were emphasizing was that Christ will not have co-mediators, co-redeemers, co-saviors. He will not have little individuals that in essence are the channels through which he has to work.

I remind you of Jesus' words in John chapter six. Remember, Jesus said, I have not come down from heaven to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given me, I lose none of it, but raise it up on the last day.

Whatever else you do with that text, Jesus has to be capable of doing what the Father wills for him to do. Jesus has to be able to be a perfect savior. He has to have that power. And so the Roman system with its many, many intermediaries has Jesus way up there as a judge.

And the Reformers said, what you find in scripture is a focus totally upon Jesus. In fact, it's fascinating to me. It's that same sixth chapter of John where Jesus makes this so clear. And Rome misses it there too.

Because what else is in John chapter six? You have to eat my flesh and drink my blood. Now, what Jesus was saying was that he is the bread of life. And you must be in him to have eternal life. The focus was completely on him.

The focus never left him. Rome has missed that and turned it into some type of Aristotelian magical act with accidents and presents and so on and so forth that nobody at that particular point in time in history would have ever thought of as the interpretation of his words.

The Exaltation of Christ in Philippians 2

And so this is our background. And is it not the teaching of the entirety of the New Testament? Turn with me to Philippians. Let's do some Bible here before you do some application. Philippians chapter two.

As I'm sure you know, this is not anything that's gonna be new, but I wanna make sure we're all on the same page. Philippians chapter two. Paul is exhorting the church of Philippi to live in peace and harmony with one another.

And the greatest mechanism for maintaining peace and harmony in the local fellowship of the church is for all of us to act in humility of mind toward one another. As he says, to think of others as more important than yourself, to put others' needs before your own.

I think we all know that sort of naturally if you've been in the church for any period of time. You know the people who are the silent servants who are always giving of themselves. They're the ones that are setting up the food trains and visiting the people.

And they're the ones that stay late to put the chairs away. And you know, and they're not looking to be recognized. And then I was talking to a brother before the service started. And I told him I used to do what those guys back there are doing.

I was a sound man when I was about 18, 19 years of age. Now that is the most thankless job in the world. If you do it perfectly, nobody even knows you were there. If anything goes wrong, everybody knows where to look.

And even if it's the doofus on the stage that messed everything up, you're gonna get blamed anyways. Just how it works. It was really bad because I was in a church with a 5 ,000 seat auditorium, a 250 voice choir and a full orchestra.

And multiple services. Oh wow, that was fun. And we knew, amongst the sound guys, we knew who of the soloists was gonna be our nightmare. And they were the ones who wanted to make sure that their voice was above everybody else's.

And they wanted their voice in the full back monitors. More me. We almost had t-shirts that said more me made up for certain of the soloists, you know. And you could just tell, they had an ego problem.

And I'll be honest with you, for those of us who knew this, sort of ruined a lot of really good solos.

You know what I mean?

But that's, it does not surprise me then that a lot of the disciplinary problems and church split problems and stuff came from that part of the church. And so this is what Paul's talking about. He says, humility of mind.

What's humility? Humility is having certain rights and laying them aside in the service of others. We may all be equal as Christians before the cross. The same blood was shed for each of us. The same righteousness has been imputed to us.

The same spirit dwells within us. You've heard it said before, the ground is level at the foot of the cross, right? And yet there are people who don't recognize that as a reality. And so if we act in humility of mind toward one another, it is the, and even if you act in humility of mind towards someone who doesn't return the favor, how many times has that brought peace within the local fellowship?

It's over and over and over again. In the middle of that exhortation, first four verses of chapter two, in the middle of that exhortation, you have a fragment from the first century hymnal of the first Baptist church, probably of Jerusalem.

It's okay, you can chuckle at that. It was meant to be somewhat funny. There wasn't a first Baptist church. The Trail of Blood's a joke, by the way, if you're ever wondering about that. I know it's really popular, especially down South, but it's historically absurd.

But anyways, this is a fragment of an early hymn of the church. Now, it might've been a creedal statement, but probably it was a hymn. And if it is, it tells us that, wow, the early church had great hymns and what they were about.

And they weren't Jesus is my girlfriend hymns.

You know what I mean?

It wasn't all about me and how Jesus helps me. It was all about him. So verses six through 11, and it may even be set off in some of your translations as poetry. How many of you in your English translations it's set off as poetry?

Just a couple of you.

Okay.

In my Greek text, it's in poetic form. It's set off in that way. So what's Paul doing? He is using, you know, if I said, amazing grace, how sweet the sound, see how easy that is? Because we have a common heritage in the music that we sing.

And so Paul is using something that would be common to the people around him, to the people he's writing to, but it's a sermon illustration. And he goes back to his subject afterwards. This is considered one of the greatest Christological passages, passages teaching about who Jesus is in all the New Testament.

And it's a sermon illustration. I've always found that fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. So what does he say? He says, have this mindset, this way of thinking amongst you. He uses the plural there.

So he's talking about in the church, which was also in Christ Jesus. So here's my illustration. You wanna know what it means to act in humility of mind toward others? Let's look to Jesus. How did Jesus act in humility of mind?

Now, I'm gonna give you my own translation. If you really wanna dig deeper into this, many years ago, man, I wonder how many years ago this was now. It wasn't as long ago as Paul was. Some people think I'm that old, but probably 2000, it was probably around 2000, I wrote an article for the CRI Journal called the Carmen Christi.

I think it was called the Carmen Christi. Anyways, you can find it online. It's still there. And I offer my own translation and commentary and go really in depth into this particular text if you wanna go farther than we do this evening.

But who, Jesus that is, eternally existing, because it's the form of the participle is used there, in the morphe theu, the form of God, who existing in the form of God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped or held onto.

Now, there's a whole bunch of debate and argument among scholars as to whether it's something to be grasped or something to be held onto. I think, as we look at the text, there is only one way to determine that that makes any sense.

But there are those who would argue that. But it's literally the to be equal with God, the status of equality with God. And given what's going to be concluding in verse 11,.

God the Father.

So at some point in time, in eternity past, the son is equal with the father, but he does not consider, and that verb means to analyze something, to give consideration to something. So this is one of those verses, mark this down.

How many of you have ever run into a oneness Pentecostal? Jesus only, folks? Okay, mark this one down. This is one of the key texts that demonstrates that the son existed as a divine person before the incarnation, which they do not.

They do not believe the son existed as a divine person. In fact, the son is simply the physical nature of Jesus, just a physical body. Why does it prove that? Because here, before the incarnation, he is considering things.

And in fact, he does two things. He considers in verse six, and then he makes himself of no reputation in verse seven. So these are actions of a person, and therefore Jesus was a divine person prior to the incarnation.

So just make a note of that if you have friends or family in those, coworkers, whatever. So he eternally exists in the form of God, but does not consider that equality he has with God the Father something to be held onto, but makes himself of no reputation.

The term there is literally to empty. This is called the kenosis from the Greek verb that is used. But Paul never uses this term literally. Every other time he uses it, it's like I did not want my labor amongst you to become empty, that is vain or of no reputation.

So he, notice, does this to himself. It's not done to him. This is a reflexive pronoun. So this is something he does to himself. He makes himself of no reputation. And how does he do so? This is fascinating.

By taking the morphe, so he has the morphe theu, the form of God eternally, but he takes the morphe doulu, the morphane doulu, because it's in the accusative, he takes a form of a servant. So this is something he does.

This is how he makes himself of no reputation by taking on a human nature. Because of who he was before, and we know from other scriptures, for example, that John tells us in John chapter 12, that when Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon his throne, in his temple vision, that was Jesus.

Look at John 12, 41. Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and he spoke about him. And the only him in the context is Jesus. John identifies Jesus as Yahweh. And so that's where he was in that glorious position.

And so he makes himself of no reputation by taking on the form of a servant, by being made in the likeness of men. This is the incarnation. This is John one, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Here is the early church confessing this reality and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself.

The very same verb that was used up, for example, in verse three, humility of mind, which he's exhorting his readers to. He's saying, here is what this glorious personage who made himself of no reputation, entered into human flesh.

And when he's found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself. Again, reflexive pronoun. This is something he does. This was not something that was done to him. He does it himself. He humbled himself becoming obedient unto death.

And then literally, even the cross death. And I think Paul puts it that way or the early Christians expressed it that way because of the fact that crucifixion was the most vile method of execution that existed.

You could not crucify a Roman citizen no matter what they did. If they tried to assassinate Caesar, you still couldn't crucify him if he was a Roman citizen. It was beneath a Roman citizen to be crucified.

There were people in that day that wouldn't even use the word. And so the death of a cross was the most vile death you could have. He became obedient to the point of death, even the cross death. Therefore, God, and again, given the end of verse 11, we know this is the father.

God the father exalted him and gave to him the name, literally the name, the above every name, the name which is above every name in order that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow of the dwellers in the heavens and under the earth.

And it really, he divides things up into three different, upon the earth, under the earth. To make sure you realize everyone, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess, celestial beings, all the authorities that exist.

Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. Now, in the original language, you have a little word called hati. It's normally translated that. But it also functions, because there were no quotation marks back then.

You all know that for the first 900 years, the transmission of the text in the New Testament, it was written in all capital letters, no spaces between words and no punctuation, right? Think about what that would look like.

All capital letters, no spaces between words, and almost no punctuation. Reading those manuscripts is really fun. You can take Greek in seminary, but you look at one of those manuscripts and you're like, what?

This term functions as a introduction of a quote. So what is it that every tongue will confess? Literally, kurios Jesus Christos, Lord Jesus Christ. Where have you heard that before? What can you only say by the Holy Spirit?

Jesus Christ is Lord, right? And what did Caesar demand you say? Kaiser kurios, Caesar is Lord. That's why Christians couldn't say it. Because they say, Jesus kurios, Jesus is Lord. And you can't put the two of those together.

So the confession of every tongue is kurios, Lord. Now you need to understand something. What was the primary language spoken by people living in Philippi? You're allowed to answer, it's okay. I know this isn't a charismatic church, so there's normally not a lot of give and take.

Philippi is a Roman colony. So what language is the lingua franca of the day? It's not Latin, it's Koine Greek. The vast majority of the people read Greek. And so how would they have access to the Old Testament scriptures, what we call the Hebrew scriptures?

They had something called the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. What is the name of God in the Old Testament? Yahweh. We slaughter it in English as Jehovah. It couldn't have been Jehovah, but that's another issue.

It's called the Tetragrammaton, Yod-Heh-Wau-Heh in Hebrew, four letters, comes from the verb to be. And guess what one word is used in the Greek Septuagint to render Yahweh? Kurios, all the way through.

Kurios, Lord.

So what do you confess? Kurios, Jesus Christos. So what's anyone who has the Old Testament scriptures gonna hear Paul saying? Who is he identifying Jesus as? There's only one Kurios, it's Yahweh. To the glory of God the Father.

It's never a situation, you never worship Jesus and diminish from the glory of the Father. There's only one God. That one divine name Yahweh is used of the Father, it's used of the Son, it's used of the Spirit.

Why?

Because we have one being of God and three divine persons who are distinguished from one another. It's not the Father who became flesh, it's not the Spirit who became flesh, it was the Son who was incarnated.

But when you see the New Testament authors applying passages from the Old Testament that were about Yahweh to Jesus, you have to believe what they're saying. And did you notice that Paul just did that and you may have not seen it?

How did he do it? Every knee will bow and every tongue confess.

Hmm.

Look back at Isaiah 45, 23. That is what Yahweh says about himself. Yahweh says, to me, every knee will bow, to me, every tongue will confess. The early church took from the language of the prophet Isaiah and even in their hymnology made application of a text that's specifically about Yahweh to Jesus.

Paul did the same thing in 1 Corinthians chapter eight. What defined Jewish monotheism? Hey, we're at a seminary, I can ask these questions, okay? It's all right, you're all sitting there going, don't ask me that question.

That's how I keep everybody awake is because I might just go, you. So now everyone's averting their eyes. I don't see, no, that's an ugly Scottish man up there. I don't wanna look at him, you know? See, you were looking at me, that was dangerous.

That's, you made the mistake there. And some of you in the back, I know you know engines, so I'm not gonna ask you about anything because I may need you to fix my truck again in the future, so I'm not gonna pick on you.

No, no. I did thank you profusely on my webcast today, however, so you need to go listen to that. I said I enjoy watching somebody who knows what they're doing. And when it comes to the thing that keeps me alive at 70 miles per hour on the freeway, I'm thankful for people who know what they're doing.

So, the Greek Septuagint, Isaiah 45, 23, identifies Jesus as Yahweh, and what was it that identified all Jewish people in the days of Paul? What would they all know? What would they all do every day? They'd get up and they would say the what?

The Shema, Shema. You're gonna learn something tonight when you walk out of here. Shema, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. That's what defined the Jewish faith, the Shema.

That's found in the Old Testament, both Numbers and Deuteronomy, and this was what they would pray. Did you know that in 1 Corinthians chapter eight, go ahead, since I mentioned to you, I'll just be really quick here and make application, because they were smart enough to have someone else speaking after me, so I can't go on and on and on.

But in talking about idolatry, even though there are so-called gods many and so-called lords many, verse five, verse six is in poetic form too.

Why?

Because it's an early creed of the church. But to us, there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for him, and one Kurios, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.

Now, if you were to take the Greek translation of the Shema and lay it next to what Paul gives you here, you would see he has taken the Shema and he has expanded it in light of what has happened in Christ.

He's expanded it out. The word hais, one, same word that's used in the Shema. Theos, same word used in the Shema. Kurios, same word used in the Shema. And the Kurios is translating Yahweh. So to apply this to the son here is, again, one of the many places in the New Testament where Jesus is identified as Yahweh.

So there's your connection. It's not some new religion. The Shema is true, but in light of what happens in history, now you have the expanded version of the Shema, which becomes the creedal statement of the early church.

The Foolishness of the Cross and the Authority of Christ

Now, I only have a few minutes, so let me try to make application like I did last night. What I am saying is one of the most amazing claims that has ever been propounded by man to be seriously considered.

I recognize that outside of the role of the Holy Spirit, no one would ever believe this message. You need to understand that to the secularists, what we believe and what we are calling them to believe is absolute, pure insanity.

We are actually saying that the one who created this vast universe, there's over 100 billion stars in our galaxy. And we now know and have only known for, we've known for less than a century, there are over 100 billion galaxies like our own.

As so far beyond, that is so far beyond our thinking, it even dwarfs the amount of money the Democrats are trying to spend in Washington. It's big out there. And we are literally telling the world that the one who not only created those things, but according to Colossians chapter one, in whom all things hold together, that holds all of it together by his power, that he was born as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem, in the armpit of the Roman Empire.

And that he never went to Rome and he never wrote a book. And he left 12 disciples to get things rolling. And we're actually telling them that was our God. And to the secular mind, they look at you and go, you are nuts.

And that's why Paul said, the preaching of the cross, the message of the cross is what? To them that are perishing, what is it?

Foolishness.

You know what the Greek word is? Moronos, moronos.

It's moronic.

And one of the stupidest things that we do in the church is when we try to make it non-moronic. When we try to sacrifice the wisdom of God to the wisdom of man, I think every professor in a seminary should have to at least once a month read 1 Corinthians chapters one and two, and be reminded of the fact that the wisdom of God is wiser than men.

Because far too many seminary professors want to be seen by the world as wise like they are. We will never be wise like they are because what we believe is foolishness to them. We are literally telling the world that our God invaded his own creation.

And having invaded his own creation, he lived amongst us. And then he gave his life in the most degrading manner possible from the world's perspective, crushed under the power of the heel of Rome, and he did it purposefully.

It's what he and the Father and the Spirit had decreed to do from time immemorial. To accomplish what could only be accomplished in that way. And when he came out of that grave, before he ascended up to the Father, to be seated at his right hand, before the one like the Son of Man was presented before the Ancient of Days and given a kingdom and people that worship him, Daniel chapter seven, he said to that small group of followers words that I'm not even sure most of his followers today really do believe.