Jesus Christ the Virgin-born Incarnation, What We Believe, Part 7

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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01:05

Welcome to the Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide Biblical interpretation and application.

01:11

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:22

Well, welcome to the Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, joined by my good friend,

01:28

Pastor Jim Osmond from Kootenai Community Church up there in Idaho, Northern Idaho.

01:34

How are you, Jim? Yeah, doing very well. Thanks for having me on the program. Glad to be here replacing

01:39

Bud for a couple of weeks or a couple of programs, however long this takes. I mean, you guys are working through the doctrinal statement.

01:45

I don't know what kind of false doctrine Bud was spilling out while he was your co -host, but I'm here to mop it up. Well, maybe what it is is we wanted to let you come in so Bud had something to mop up when he came back.

01:58

Could be. So, we're continuing in on our series that we're doing on what we believe.

02:04

This is from the doctrinal statement at strivingforeternity .org. And if you want to read along with the statement, not if you're driving, please.

02:12

If you're driving, keep two hands on the wheel. But if you're home and you just want to read along with us, go to strivingforeternity .org.

02:21

Under the About section is something, just look at the little arrow, you drop that down, and it says,

02:27

What We Believe. And that's what we're going through, is the doctrinal statement of striving for eternity.

02:32

This is an ongoing series we're going to do so we can dig into, you know, you read a doctrinal statement and maybe you don't realize how much is packed into the words that are trying to be really concise, really articulate, really precise, and having use of words that have a great amount of meaning.

02:53

And we're trying to ward off a lot of error as well. And so, doctrinal statements are very important, and a lot of people don't put a lot of time into doctrinal statements.

03:02

And so what we want to do is go through our doctrinal statement for a couple reasons. One, so that you see how much is behind the scenes in what we're saying.

03:11

In other words, the more you study theology and you start reading doctrinal statements, you start seeing things go,

03:16

Oh, oh, that's what they're trying to say. They're trying to say that's wrong and this is right. As we go through this, you hear us talk about all these different groups and individuals who have a theology that would be wrong or an error compared to scripture.

03:31

And that's what a systematic theology is going to do, is provide the way we look at all of scripture.

03:38

And here we're going to categorize everything into different theological categories, and that's what systematic theology does.

03:45

And a doctrinal statement is a really concise version of a systematic theology. And if you get a one -pager, it's not going to give you as much detail as ours.

03:54

I think ours is about 12 pages. Yes. Andrew, did you,

03:59

I don't know if you covered this at the very beginning when you were going through this with Bud, but the more thorough a doctrinal statement is for a church, the better.

04:06

And that's actually counterintuitive for most people. Did you guys cover this at all in any detail? Go for it.

04:12

Well, listen, when I first took over pastoring Kootenai Community Church, our doctrinal statement could fit on an 8 .5x11

04:18

sheet of paper, just one of them, with lots of white space and really big font and big spaces between the lines.

04:25

And we quickly came to the conclusion that what we needed was a more thorough, more robust, more specific and precise doctrinal statement than what we had.

04:32

And so we changed it. It's now 17 little mini pieces of paper long, very thorough, very robust.

04:38

And the reason that is, and it's always good to look for a church with a very precise, very well laid out, very thorough doctrinal statement.

04:46

And the longer the better, because most churches, what they instinctively want to do is have a boned down version of a doctrinal statement that's very thin, where we can all agree, we're just going to state the essentials, right?

04:56

We believe that God exists as a trinity. We believe in the deity of Christ. We believe the deity of the Holy Spirit. We believe in seven or eight non -negotiable, essential doctrines, stages, generically.

05:07

And they think that in doing that, they're going to be getting all kinds of unity around these things. So many people come in, there'll be so much unity, and actually the exact opposite happens.

05:17

What you have happening is all these people who can sign on to that bare minimum united statement, but then these people who can all agree to this very thin doctrinal statement, surprisingly end up having all these various beliefs on all of these other issues.

05:34

And they bring all of that with them. They think that that doctrinal statement unites us because it's so generic. So we're all united on this, but actually what you are united on that very thin layer of doctrine, but then you are divided on everything else.

05:48

And if you have a robust doctrinal statement as a church, and everybody signs on to that, then you find out that, look, we're united not just on the thin stuff, but we're united on all of these other issues where we all think alike.

05:59

And if we all think alike on so many things, we're going to think alike on a lot of stuff out of that.

06:05

So you actually end up weeding out division, and when people want a robust doctrinal statement, when a church puts in place a robust doctrinal statement, a lot of people think that's going to divide the church.

06:15

Well, if we take a stand on all these issues, it's going to divide the church. No, it's going to create unity, because everybody that signs on to that is going to be there, and the people who sign on to that very specific doctrinal statement are going to be so united on so many other things, you actually weed out and prevent division, and that's a very important thing to remember.

06:32

Yeah, I mean, I recently was talking with someone, and I was asked to research a church. And I looked at their church.

06:38

Their doctrinal statement was six lines. It told me absolutely nothing. Yeah, stay away.

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Stay away. Don't walk. Run. Run. Yeah, because, look, folks, doctrine divides.

06:51

That's not a bad thing. Doctrine also unifies. It divides from error and unifies on truth, and that's what the purpose of doctrine is.

07:02

And so don't be afraid of doctrine. That's why we have—you know, our doctrinal statement in Striving for Eternity is 12 pages long, because we want to answer these things, and that's what we're digging into here and doing with you guys, so that you see how much is in this.

07:18

So what we're doing this week is we're continuing on the doctrine. If you go to the

07:23

What We Believe section at Striving for Eternity, so go to strivingforeternity .org, and then

07:29

What We Believe, there's a little—all the doctrines are there. Just expand the one on God, and we're looking at the second section under there,

07:38

God the Son. Now, the last episode, we looked at our first three paragraphs, and today we're going to try to take on the next three paragraphs.

07:50

So, Jim, if you wouldn't mind reading for us, starting with Jesus is virgin -born. All right,

07:56

Jesus Christ is virgin -born, Isaiah 7, 14, Matthew 1, 23, and 25,

08:02

Luke 1, 26 -35. He is God incarnate, John 1 and verse 14.

08:09

And the purpose of the incarnation was to reveal God, redeem men, and rule over God's kingdom.

08:16

Psalm 2, 7 -9, Isaiah 9, 6, John 1, 29, Philippians 2, 9 -11, Hebrews 7, 25 -26, and 1

08:24

Peter 1, 18 -19. Paragraph 2, in the incarnation—or the second paragraph we're dealing with,

08:29

I should say— in the incarnation, the second person of the Trinity laid aside his rights to the full prerogatives of coexistence with God, assumed the place of a son, and took on the existence appropriate to a servant, while never divesting himself of his divine attributes,

08:47

Philippians 2, 5 -8. Paragraph 3, Jesus Christ accomplished our redemption through the shedding of his blood and sacrificial death on the cross.

08:55

His death was voluntary, vicarious, substitutionary, propitiatory, and redemptive,

09:01

John 10, 15, Romans 3, 24 -25, and 5, verse 8, and 1

09:06

Peter 2, verse 24. Okay, so there's going to be a lot of here that we're going to say that is repetitive from last week on purpose.

09:15

One of the things, folks, that I try to do is the repetition is good for learning, and that's why

09:20

I'm going to say things that I know we're going to get to later in the statement, but they tie in to some of what we're saying here.

09:29

I do that on purpose because for some of you who this is new to, you need the repetition.

09:36

To those of you who know some of these terminologies, then you just rejoice in hearing the truth.

09:41

So it's good for all. So let's start with Jesus Christ is virgin born.

09:47

We looked at this in the last episode in the importance of this, but let's start with Isaiah 7, 14.

09:56

As we look at Isaiah 7, 14, Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.

10:03

Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and you shall call his name

10:10

Emmanuel. So let's deal with some issues here that people come up with, Jim. Some people say that that prophecy really isn't about a virgin, someone that's never had sexual relations, that that's not really talking about.

10:28

This just means a maiden, an unmarried woman, and this was something that was a prophecy in his day.

10:34

So it really wasn't prophesying that Jesus was going to be born of someone who never had intercourse.

10:42

What's your thoughts? There are people who make the claim that the word that Isaiah uses there,

10:48

Alma, actually just refers to a young maiden. And that is true, the assumption being that the young maiden was a virgin.

10:54

So the word includes the idea of it being a young maiden, that is a young unmarried woman, and therefore she was a virgin.

11:00

So it doesn't just mean a woman who's young in age, but there could be a promiscuous prostitute.

11:06

The idea was a woman who is of a young, marriable age, but was also a virgin.

11:13

And of course, though the word could just refer to a woman who was young, it doesn't only refer to a woman who is young.

11:21

So in the book of Matthew, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Matthew gives us the interpretation of that passage, where the

11:27

Spirit is then indicating that the passage is to be interpreted as a virgin, one who was not with child.

11:33

Because Matthew and Luke are both very specific that the one who was born of Mary, the

11:38

Lord Jesus Christ, was born prior to any sexual intercourse on Mary's behalf, and he was born without a human fatherly seed from this world.

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So therefore, Matthew's telling us that that interpretation is that Isaiah was speaking there in terms of a woman.

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And there was a sign, a partial fulfillment of that sign in Isaiah's day, but not necessarily the full fulfillment of that sign in Isaiah's day.

12:08

So yeah, there was a way in which that sign was given in Isaiah's day and fulfilled in Isaiah's day, but Matthew, under inspiration of the

12:16

Holy Spirit, is saying that there is a greater fulfillment of that, that really what the Spirit of God had in mind was yet a future fulfillment of that in the

12:23

Lord Jesus Christ, and in Mary being pregnant with child without any sexual intercourse.

12:29

And that's important, because you're saying Matthew by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, right?

12:35

Because a Jewish person is not going to accept the New Testament, and that's the problem. But anyone who accepts that the

12:40

Bible is inspired, therefore we look at this and say, no, God is giving us the further revelation.

12:48

But being virgin -born is very important in another matter as well. That is the fact that as we look at this, we mentioned this last week, the fact that sin, according to Romans 5, verses 12 to the end of the chapter, makes it clear that sin is passed on from father to child.

13:09

And we said, dad, sorry, but if your wife blames you when the kids misbehave, she's being theologically accurate, okay, it is your fault.

13:17

You passed on that sin nature from you to your child. It goes from Adam to his children, so we take that to say that it is from the father to the children.

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That is the importance of being virgin -born, that he had no human father, so the sin nature was not passed on to Jesus.

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And so he doesn't have that, he has a nature that isn't tainted with sin, that is not enslaved to sin.

13:44

And that becomes the importance of virgin -born. Here's an interesting thing, Jim, most people maybe don't know,

13:51

I think this audience is pretty educated and they like to study the scriptures, so I think they probably know this.

14:00

But most religions, where you have a religion that you're born into a religion, say

14:05

Islam, if you're born where the father is a Muslim, you'd be a Muslim. Now you'd have to say the thing to be a proper

14:14

Muslim, but most religions are based on the father's religion, and not so with Judaism.

14:20

Judaism is the only religion based on the mother, that I know of. So it's very interesting, the question, if you're

14:26

Jewish, was your mother Jewish, not whether your father is Jewish? Can't prove this in scripture, so I'm saying, this is my hypothesis, could it be that that's the case because Judaism would be passed on to Jesus through his mother and not his father?

14:45

Hey, all the religions of the world, they always focus on the male being the leader, and here you have one that's focused, why is this one different?

14:54

I think it could be because God knew Jesus was going to come born of a virgin.

15:01

But there's something else we have to deal with with this. That is a different view of a virgin birth.

15:06

There's another group, Jim, that agrees that Jesus was born of a virgin, but they have a different view of Mary being a virgin, and that would be the

15:16

Roman Catholics. Because what they would say is that he was born of a virgin and that Mary was a perpetual virgin, that she remained a virgin, which then presents some problems in scripture, because we see other people mentioned as Jesus' brothers and sisters.

15:33

Yeah, and the Catholics would say that they were his cousins. That's exactly right, and a lot of people don't know that.

15:40

I remember talking with some Catholics, and that was the argument. These young teenagers, and they said, well, there's no

15:46

Greek word for cousin, and so they use the term brother to mean cousin. And I went, really?

15:52

What do we do then with the word for cousin that we see in Colossians 4 .10

15:58

used for Barnabas' cousin Mark? Catholics really hate that when the scriptures just don't work with their theology.

16:05

Yeah. But when we talk about Christ being virgin born, we have to understand that it means that Jesus Christ was conceived in a supernatural way.

16:20

He had no earthly father. So we have to remember that when we talk about this issue.

16:29

It means that. It doesn't mean Mary was always a virgin. Another thing that Catholics will teach when we speak of virgin born, and this is why we're saying, and I've actually thought about changing this to virgin conceived, because actually, technically, he was born the same way everyone else is.

16:49

Yeah, that's true. It's the conception that is supernatural, not the birth. And so it's really a virgin conception.

16:58

But the thing is that some people argue, Roman Catholics, that in order for Mary to give birth to God, she had to be sinless.

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And this is what some people will, Catholics will refer to as the immaculate conception.

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Now, many non -Catholics think the immaculate conception is dealing with Jesus' birth, and it is not.

17:25

It actually has to do with Mary's birth. They believe that in Mary's birth, she was conceived without a sin nature affecting her, and so she was perfect so she can give birth to perfection.

17:38

Now, in case you ever come in contact with Catholics and discuss this, let me give you a simple way of arguing that.

17:44

I remember being, I was in a Catholic church at this time, and I had all these teenagers that were

17:50

Catholic missionaries that are talking to me, and I'm evangelizing them, and there's three priests over at the side, and I asked them this question, because this came up.

18:01

And they said, well, Mary had to be perfect to give birth to perfection in Jesus. And I said, really?

18:08

Then what about Mary's mother? And there was just silence. And one kid goes,

18:14

I've always wondered that. And so the kids start getting nervous, and one kid turns to the other and goes, go talk to the priest over there and ask him.

18:21

So he walks over, talks to the priest, and then the priests leave. And the kid comes back.

18:27

Now, I'm thinking they're either leaving to call the police on me, which they really shouldn't since they invited me in, but they abandoned the kids to me is what they actually did.

18:36

And the kid comes back, and all the kids are like, what did they say? What did they say? And the kid goes, they said, we don't know.

18:43

Because there is no answer to that. See, if Mary had to be perfect to give birth to perfection, then her mother had to be perfect, and so on and so on and so on, you're going to have to go all the way back to Eve.

18:55

You see, the real miracle is not Mary being born, because there's nothing special about Mary.

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Sorry, Catholics. There's something special about Jesus. And I already gave you why Jesus could be born of a woman without having a sin nature.

19:10

It's because she didn't have a father. See, Scripture has answers for this, but cultic groups do not.

19:18

And so when we talk about virgin born, this is all what's meant in the virgin born, is that he was conceived,

19:24

Jesus conceived in a supernatural way without a human father. The importance of that is because of the fact that he didn't have the sin nature passed on to him.

19:33

There was nothing special that we needed about Mary. So Jesus is virgin born. He is

19:39

God incarnate. Now, we looked at this in detail last episode. We're going to go into it more here. God incarnate means

19:45

God becoming a man. As it says in 1 John 1, God became flesh. The word became flesh.

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He took on flesh, took on those attributes. Yeah, incarnate just means in the flesh, is what it means.

20:00

Like carnal, the idea of flesh, carnal incarnate, it means in the flesh. So when we talk about God being incarnate, we're talking about God taking upon himself human flesh.

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Which is an amazing thing to think about. I don't know about you guys. Have you ever sat and thought about that?

20:16

How does God take on flesh? I mean, he's a spirit. He took on flesh.

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It's so hard for our human minds to conceive these things. But this is where we go back to what

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Scripture says and say, well, this is what Scripture says, and we accept it, even if our minds can't comprehend it.

20:38

But let me give you an encouragement with that. God is greater than our ability to understand.

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This is one of the things I do with Muslims all the time. I have Muslims that will tell me that the

20:50

Trinity is wrong. And the reason they say it's wrong is because they can't comprehend it. How could God die?

20:55

They can't comprehend it. So one of the things I'll ask with a Muslim early on in a conversation is, is God greater than your ability to understand him?

21:03

And they always go, yep. Okay. I tuck that away for the conversation. Then when we get into discussing the

21:09

Trinity or how God could die on the cross, and they go, that makes no sense. I say, that's right.

21:16

And that's why we know your religion is a man -made religion, and the

21:21

God of the Bible is not. Because your religion, you can understand. A human mind can understand it.

21:28

But we've already agreed that the God that exists is greater than our ability to understand.

21:34

We're not going to understand everything about him just like the Bible says. Mm -hmm.

21:42

Very good. So as we look at it, not just that he became incarnate, but the next part is, and the purpose of the incarnation.

21:51

So now we know the purpose. Now we're going to get the purpose. What are we saying is the purpose of incarnation? The purpose of the incarnation was to reveal

22:01

God, redeem man, and rule over God's kingdom.

22:07

There's a lot there. Let's start with the reveal God. And we looked at this as well last week.

22:12

But if you look at Philippians 2, verses 9 all the way down to 11, you're going to see that this is saying that Jesus Christ revealed himself as God.

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In verse 6, Although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.

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So this is something that we have to recognize. We saw it in Hebrews chapter 1, that he is representing

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God. He is the best representation we have of God.

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When we look at it, Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets, in many portions, in many ways, in these days he has spoken to us in his

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Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the world.

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So what we end up seeing is that this is the best representation of God.

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That's what Jesus meant when he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. He wasn't saying that I and the Father are the same person, but rather I and the

23:37

Father are the same substance, so that all that you could see in the Father, you have seen in me. His eternal power, his

23:44

Godhead, his grace, his love, his kindness, his wisdom, his power, his strength, his majesty, his glory.

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The disciples had seen all of that revealed in human flesh over the course of those three years, so that everything that they could hope to see in the person, in getting a visible representation of the

24:01

Father, they could see visibly in Christ. So that if one were to look upon Christ and to gaze upon him, you see everything that there is to see in the

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Father. If you were able to look at the nature and substance of the Father, you see it manifested in human flesh.

24:17

And so that's better than actually looking upon attributes from a distance, as it were. If we were to just gaze upon God and his nature and his character, we would see certain things, but there would be certain aspects of his nature and character which would be invisible to us to the naked eye, or to being able to see him.

24:33

But to see Christ live that out in human flesh was to see the nature of the

24:39

Father incarnate, incarnate in the flesh. So that is exactly what

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Christ did in revealing God to us. He revealed it in a way that could only come in incarnation, through incarnation.

24:52

Yeah, I just finished up my devotions going through John. I just finished up John.

24:59

And what is it that Jesus says? When they ask him, show us the Father, he says, have

25:05

I not been with you so long? What is he saying? You've seen me, you've seen the Father. You've seen me, you've seen the

25:11

Father. Because he's saying that you've just seen the essence of the Father. So what he did was he revealed

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God to man in a way greater than ever before. In a way that we would never understand before.

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And so not only did he come to reveal God, but he came to redeem men.

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You see this in 1 Peter 1. He redeemed us more precious than gold or silver.

25:39

He did what no man could do. Why? This gets back to what we looked at last episode.

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Because he's eternal God. Being eternal God, he could pay an eternal fine. Only Jesus, only the

25:54

God -man can redeem men. This is important. As a man, having never broken the law, he can be a substitute.

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As God, being eternal, he can pay an infinite fine. And so he has to be both.

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Otherwise, we have no salvation. So this becomes important.

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This is why the incarnation is so important. Because he's God, he becomes a man, then he can be that substitute.

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He can be that sacrifice for us and redeem people. But a third purpose that he has in the incarnation that we argue is to rule over God's kingdom.

26:39

Now, we get into the kingdom. Is this where we get to talk about pre -millennialism and post -millennialism and non -millennialism?

26:46

Or is that later? Oh, no. We could talk about that now and let folks know the scriptures. By the time we get done with this, people will look at the end of the statement and realize where I land.

26:58

I'm pre -millennial, pre -tribulational. But this is something there's lots of discussion on.

27:05

And maybe Bud didn't want to stick around. He took some time off because he knew this was going to come up and he figures, hey,

27:12

I don't want to. He doesn't want to let his views of end time. But no.

27:18

And we have differences. There are differing views. This is the view that we would have. But one thing that all are going to agree to is

27:26

Jesus Christ is the prophesied Davidic king.

27:33

We all agree on this. That it was prophesied in the Old Testament that there would be a king that would have an eternal kingdom that would live forever, that would be a kingdom forever.

27:45

And in that, Jesus Christ is the fulfillment. Now, there's differing views.

27:50

Some people say he's ruling that kingdom now through the church. There's others,

27:57

I think, the more biblical position. I'm sorry, I just think it is. You could disagree and tell me you think your position is more biblical.

28:04

But I think he will rule in a literal way, just as scripture had said, for a thousand years, just as the scripture says in Revelation 20, that he will rule for a kingdom.

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Now, he is the fulfillment of the Davidic kingdom. And so, he is that king that's eternal.

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But I do believe that part of the incarnation is also so that he can rule in an earthly way.

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Now, Jim, I'm going to let you talk about this in a minute, because I know we've actually, on Apologetics Live, you've done one of the podcasts on the

28:43

Christian podcast community is your sermons from Kootenai Community Church. You just happen to have an offhanded comment, which is just so funny that your sermons are so rich that your offhanded comments just become something that we got to dig into, study, and research.

29:00

And we ended up doing a, you ended up, you and I did a whole two hours on it.

29:06

Then Drew from Matter of Theology, another one of our podcasters, he did a show, an hour show, responding to you.

29:13

And then the two of you got together and did a two -hour Apologetics Live discussing it. And so there's a lot here.

29:21

But suffice it to say that I'm going to argue that the incarnation is necessary for Jesus to be that Davidic king to rule in a physical way in a kingdom.

29:34

And therefore, I would argue, based on that, that the incarnation is necessary for that, and it has to be an earthly human kingdom.

29:41

There we go. There we go. Now you can preach. That's exactly right. Because if amillennialism is true, and if postmillennialism is true, then the incarnation is not necessary to their eschatology.

29:55

It's in their eschatology. I'm not saying that they deny the incarnation, but it's not necessary to the fulfillment of their eschatology.

30:03

Whereas if there's only one eschatological position that believes that the incarnation is essential for its fulfillment, and that's premillennialism.

30:12

Likewise, there's only one eschatology that believes that the bodily resurrection of Christ is essential for its fulfillment, and that's premillennialism.

30:21

So if it can be shown that the incarnation and the bodily resurrection of the Messiah are necessary from Scripture for the literal fulfillment of the promises to David, then only premillennialism is true, and postmillennialism and amillennialism cannot be true.

30:37

That's going to be the subject of one of my books eventually. I can't wait to not read that one.

30:46

So Drew Van Ida, man, a great guy, a great young man. I got to meet him at G3, which was fantastic, and we finally got to connect, touch base there.

30:56

A great guy, and just gracious, and even though he and I would disagree on eschatology, we did have a very good measured, maybe you can include the links to it in the show notes of this episode, but a very good measured discussion on that very issue, which was,

31:10

I think, demonstrated how Christians should be able to talk about areas like this where we disagree. But anyway, yeah, you're exactly right.

31:18

If the incarnation of Jesus Christ is necessary for the fulfillment of David's promises, then postmillennialism and amillennialism cannot be true.

31:30

Only premillennialism would require that. Now that is, again, not to say that postmillennialists and amillennialists deny bodily resurrection.

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They don't. It's not to say that they don't believe in bodily resurrection. They do. It's not to say that they deny the incarnation.

31:42

They don't. And it's not to say that they feel that the incarnation is non -essential to our salvation.

31:48

They don't believe any of that. But they would have a hard time arguing that these things are essential qualities for the fulfillment of the

31:55

Davidic covenant, specifically the promises, the sure and certain promises made to David.

32:01

Yep. And I think that's, it's an argument, I really think, I focus here in the doctoral statement on the incarnation.

32:11

Your sermon focused on the resurrection. And I think that that is two very good, strong arguments for premillennialism.

32:19

Now, folks, if you disagree with us, the email address is info at striving4eternity .org.

32:27

Info at striving4eternity .org. I'll send them all to Jim and let him know. Something else we should point out there,

32:36

Andrew, is that in your statement it says that the purpose of the incarnation was to reveal God, redeem men, and rule over God's kingdom.

32:43

That is really three offices of Christ, prophet, priest, and king. To reveal God is to function as a prophet.

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To redeem men is to function as a priest. And to rule over God's kingdom is to function as a king. So you've got the threefold office of Christ there in that doctoral statement, prophet, priest, and king.

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A prophet mediates between God and men by revealing God to men. A priest mediates between God and men by functioning on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, offering sacrifices, prayers, interceding, etc.,

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representing men to God. And a king mediates between God and men in ruling over men on behalf of God.

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And Jesus Christ, as the incarnate God -man, is able to do all of that. As God is perfectly able to represent

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God to us, as men he is perfectly able to stand in and represent us before God. And as the

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God -man, he is perfectly able to rule over men as men in behalf of God as God.

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So it is just incredible how all these doctrines now just come to fruition, to fulfillment here in the person of Christ.

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You see now why the humanity of Jesus is absolutely necessary, why the divinity of Jesus is absolutely necessary, why the combining of these two things into a being whose essence, whose natures in humanity and divinity are indivisible, but must coexist in the same person at the same time in functioning in all of these ways.

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His humanity, his human nature, and his divine nature come into that three -fold office of prophet, priest, and king, which accomplishes the revelation of God, the redemption of men, and the mediation of the ruling on behalf of God over man in the kingdom.

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So all of it, past, present, future, it all just comes together right there in a perfect package in the person of Christ. You can see the necessity of all of those doctrines which you've covered so far, as well as the way in which all of them relate to one another and function together in the same person.

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And it's because of the Incarnation that only Jesus can do this, because if you look in the Old Testament, priests and kings are two separate groups.

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You can't have, in fact, Saul got in trouble for acting like a priest because he can't do that.

34:52

Yeah, and there was a prophecy in the Old Testament, I think it's in Zechariah, where it refers to the priest who is king, or the king who is priest, and that is that looking forward to the

35:00

Messiah was the only time that the Jews could ever expect the combining of those two offices. For the sake of, and because of human depravity, those two offices were kept separate, so as not to be blurred, the last thing you wanted was an average human, a normal sinful human functioning as both prophet and king, sorry, or prophet or priest or king altogether, because then the nature would be blurred.

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Only the God -man, the perfect sinless God -man, who's infinite and perfect, only he could actually function as prophet, priest, and king, and the same person at the same time without messing up all of those offices.

35:37

So therefore, in the Old Testament, God kept those separate and distinct so as to not confuse the roles, but in Christ, we see him beautifully performing all of these functions in perfection without ever confusing the roles and the distinctions there in him.

35:51

And this is important to see how, you know, even these statements, there is so much here that we're opening up with and being able to see how this affects other doctrines.

36:00

In a good doctrinal statement, there's going to be consistency throughout, and that becomes the issue, is that you want to see that consistency.

36:09

You want to see that the views we have are going to be carried throughout, and they all interrelate with one another.

36:17

So you're going to see that, and that's why this study, it's encouraging to look into things like this.

36:23

So let's move on into the next paragraph. It says, in the incarnation, the second person of the Trinity laid aside his right to the full prerogatives of coexistence with God, assumed a place of a son, and took on an existence appropriate to a servant while diversifying himself while never diversifying himself of his divine attributes.

36:47

Now we looked at this... Divesting. Divesting. Divesting himself, sorry. Never divesting himself of his divine attributes, yeah.

36:53

We looked at this last episode, and we went into some detail. We want to go into detail again because it is important to remember.

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Jesus took on human attributes. We talked about that. We looked last week about him taking on human characteristics.

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This now is focusing on more of what he kind of gave up, and this is, if you look in Philippians chapter 2, we have this here, chapter 5 through 9.

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Have this attitude in yourself, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a bondservant, that's the word slave, and being made in the likeness of men, being found in the appearance of man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death on the cross.

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For this reason also God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.

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The point here is that what he did in the incarnation was not to give up those attributes, to empty himself of those attributes, but to empty himself in the sense of being humiliated.

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That's what humbled means. He humiliated himself in taking on the role of a slave, even to the point of death.

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What kind of death? The death on the cross. I want to be really precise with this so we see.

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Where we talked about this last episode, it was on the idea of him taking on human characteristics.

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This now is on the fact of his death was the focus of what he was able to do, and we're going to get to this in the next paragraph, in voluntarily submitting himself to a death.

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He took on, it's the idea, he didn't just take on human characteristics, but he became a slave to his own, he became part of his own creation and even allowed them to treat him as a slave unto death.

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So you see, this is kind of the opposite of that same coin that we looked at last episode.

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The other was him adding the attributes. This is him not using those attributes. That doesn't mean he gave them up.

39:28

That's the importance of saying he never divested himself of these divine attributes.

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As we mentioned last week, this is the idea that you might hear of the kenosis theory. The word emptying in the passage in Philippians 2, in verse 7, is the word kenosis.

39:44

The kenosis theory is that he stopped being God. That when he's on that cross, he gave up his deity.

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And that's how God can turn his back, as people will say, and you hear this, every Good Friday service that people do, the seven words of Jesus, and almost every time that I go to those,

40:02

I hear somebody, I was so glad when I've been asked to do it, they've always given me, so far, always given me the words, my

40:09

God, my God, why have thou forsaken me? Because so few people understand that. And what I hear over and over and over again is people will say,

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God forsook Jesus because he stopped being God. No!

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That is heresy. He never stopped being God. If he stopped being God, then when he died, that death was not eternal.

40:30

And if his death was not eternal, we have no salvation. Let me quickly answer that dilemma now for some of the people who, you're listening and you're going, well, then what does it mean?

40:40

Back in Jesus' day, they didn't have a Psalm 22. They had the Psalm, but they didn't have a number 22 on it.

40:49

They didn't have chapter breaks and verses. That came 700, 800 years after Christ. How did you refer to Psalm 22?

40:58

You gave the line of the quote of the first line. This is very similar to what you may see in the back of a hymnal.

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You can't remember the hymn and some hymnals will have the first line of the hymn and they give you that first line and then the number.

41:13

That's Jesus' way of identifying Psalm 22. So now, go read Psalm 22. Think about what

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Jesus was doing on the cross and you'll realize what he was saying. He was referencing

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Psalm 22 in an exact explanation of what was happening to him on the cross. It was not that he gave up his attributes.

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No, because Psalm 22 actually, prophecy prophetically portrays crucifixion.

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It's the closest description of crucifixion that could have been written in David's day when he describes being forsaken and his bones being out of joint and his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth and being thirsty and hungry.

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Them gambling for his garments. For my garments they cast lots. Being forsaken by a friend. That entire psalm describes actually

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David's experience in a very graphic and poetic way but it couldn't be a better description of crucifixion 700, 800 years before crucifixion was ever invented as a form of torture.

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So all Jesus was saying when he was quoting that first line of Psalm 22 was not, hey,

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Psalm 22 verse 1 describes how I'm feeling though it would have. He felt forsaken because he was bearing the wrath of the

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Father on our behalf. He would have felt in his humanity as if he were forsaken. So it's not Jesus just saying, hey,

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Psalm 22 verse 1 describes me. It was Jesus saying, Psalm 22 describes me.

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Everything that you're seeing take place right here in front of you outside of the city of Jerusalem that describes me.

42:48

That psalm is describing this event. This is what David was prophetically writing about was this event.

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So that is not Jesus saying that he was forsaken that the Father turned his face away, turned his back, abandoned him, he ceased to be

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God. None of that at all. It was in fact Jesus saying everything in that psalm was written, it was me.

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I'm the fulfillment of that. What David said was me. Because if you look halfway through that psalm,

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David actually in verse 1 describes what he felt. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

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Halfway through the psalm, David describes not what he felt but what is actually true. The Lord has not forsaken his servant.

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So David expresses what was true halfway through the psalm. I'm not forsaken even though he expressed how he felt in verse 1 that I am forsaken.

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We can say the same thing was true of Jesus. Jesus was not forsaken by the Father because the psalm makes that clear. But Jesus would have felt and experienced the anguish of one who was forsaken by the

43:46

Father even though he was not forsaken which the psalm later on describes. Wait a minute,

43:51

Jim. You're saying that context matters? Once in a while, yeah. All the time, right?

43:57

I mean, this is the thing. It's like people make these mistakes when interpreting scripture because they just don't look at context to realize wait,

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Psalm 22 is not saying what if you only look at verse 1 but the whole psalm is not saying what people think verse 1 is saying.

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So before we get into the third paragraph that we want to look at today, I want to just give a word to our sponsors.

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It's actually kind of hard to sometimes break. We're having this very theologically heavy discussion and then we've got to go somewhere to our sponsors.

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Yeah, just let me not even push in the clutch. I'm just going to grind the gears one more time for you and talk about the fact that this is now, we're a couple hours into recording and I am exhausted,

44:42

Andrew. Here I'm trying not to make a transition and you're just going to tee it up though.

44:49

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I'm going to go lay down on a MyPillow while you do this. Okay. Well, hopefully

45:02

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Please go out and do that. We greatly appreciate it. Let's get into the last paragraph,

47:21

Jim, that we want to look at for today. This one is a packed paragraph.

47:27

We'll hope to get this done in a timely manner, but this is so rich in this.

47:33

Jesus Christ accomplished our redemption. We could just stop there and talk about the fact that it is only through Jesus Christ we have redemption.

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Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no other way to the Father but through Christ.

47:49

That was the idea of redemption. He is our redemption. Now, let me explain something.

47:55

What I was thinking when putting this is, you could have

48:00

Islam without Muhammad. Now, think about that. There's nothing special about Muhammad that means you could take the teachings he taught and you can have them from any human being.

48:13

You could have Mormonism without Joseph Smith, though both of these religions, they have great reverence for these leaders, but there's nothing special of Joseph Smith.

48:23

He's just a man who got these supposed teachings from an angel. I will note that there is some similarity with those two that I just mentioned.

48:32

If you ever study them, and you can look at Mormon Research Ministries, mrm .org,

48:39

and Eric Johnson has actually a corresponding thing between Mormonism and Islam. Interesting things.

48:44

They both go into a dark area where they get revelation. They both have an angel visit them with this new revelation.

48:52

It's real interesting. But anyway, you want to say something about that? The devil doesn't have any new lies.

48:58

He just gives them to different personalities, that's all. It's the same lie, just a different spokesman.

49:04

Yeah. I mean, think about it. Do we need Buddha for Buddhism? No. I mean, all these are based on a moral system of teaching, and so there's nothing unique about that.

49:15

But after what we just got done talking about, about the incarnation, you see, this is the thing.

49:21

Christianity is based on a person, not a teaching. It's not based on a moral system.

49:27

But it's based on our redemption being through a unique person who's fully God and fully man.

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And being fully God, he could pay an infinite fine. Being fully man, he could be a substitute for us. That's how we could have justice and mercy married together.

49:41

See, any other religion, you can't have that. They can't have real redemption because God either has to be just or merciful, but can't be both.

49:49

You see, justice and mercy are mutually exclusive. If the law said that if you hit a person, they must hit you back, and I walked up and hit

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Jim. I wouldn't do this. He's much bigger than me. But if I walked up and hit Jim, and the law now says that Jim must hit me back,

50:06

Jim has a choice. He can show justice and hit me, or he could show mercy and not hit me.

50:13

But if he attempts to hit me lightly, that's neither justice nor mercy. And what most people think of is that God will be just and merciful by hitting us lightly, by letting us go somehow, then you don't have justice or mercy.

50:29

You see, it's only within Christ being a redemption, Him being fully God and fully man, and this is the importance of it, because in the

50:36

Incarnation, the way He provides this redemption is the fact that He's fully God and fully man.

50:41

Being God, He can pay that fine. Now that the eternal fine's paid, the justice is served, now

50:49

He can have mercy and let us go. Why? Because the payment was made.

50:54

No other religion has the payment paid. That's the problem. And so even within Catholicism, which would agree with this to a point, but where they stop is they add works to our faith, and we'll get to that later on when we look at salvation.

51:12

But see, they might have the right view of Christ in the redemption, as far as His Incarnation and Him being fully

51:19

God and fully man, they can have all that right, but when it comes to our salvation, they add to it.

51:25

And any time you add to the work of Christ on the cross, you say, we need something more to do for our salvation.

51:34

What that does is diminish the work that Jesus did on the cross. Go back to your algebra, right? If you have something on one side and you bring it over to the other side, you have

51:45

A plus B on one side, you bring it to the other side and you're going to reduce it on the other side.

51:52

So this is what ends up happening. If you add something to salvation, you reduce the work that Jesus did on the cross, and that affects the whole thing of what

52:02

He accomplished and what He died for. So Jesus Christ accomplished our redemption. How did

52:08

He do it though? Through the shedding of His blood and His sacrificial death on the cross.

52:17

All right, so let's unpack this a bit. And folks, I hope you're seeing how much, we've only looked at three paragraphs here today and there's so much here that we're able to impact.

52:28

That's what a good doctrinal statement does. Go ahead, Jim. Yeah, well, you missed a word there and it's a key word and it's the word accomplished because you didn't camp on that and we could camp on that.

52:40

What does it mean that He accomplished redemption? Because we're not saying that Jesus Christ made salvation possible or that He started the work of redemption or that He contributed to the work of redemption or that He made men savable or that He did most of it and left a little bit up to us.

52:56

You're saying He accomplished something. He finished something on the cross and secured something on the cross.

53:04

So we're not just talking about He redeemed in the sense that He made now, He made it able for the

53:10

Father to save us. He made it possible for the Father to save us. Didn't make salvation possible, didn't make salvation probable, didn't make salvation available.

53:18

He accomplished something. So now the question is, when we talk about Him accomplishing something, what do we mean by accomplished and what did

53:25

He accomplish? If He accomplished redemption and if He accomplished the propitiation and accomplished substitution and accomplished salvation, then of course that ties into who we think it is that Christ died for, what

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He did in that death, what He paid for in that death, how that death is now made available to us, how that death is imputed to us, what righteousness and imputed righteousness looks like.

53:53

All that's tied up into that word accomplishment, which we can get into here in just a moment. But I want you to skip over that because we're not saying that salvation is just possible now.

54:02

Yeah, that's an important thing. I didn't mean to skip over that because that's an important word. I just got so caught up in the redemption.

54:09

But yeah, this is what is meant when Jesus said on the cross, it is finished.

54:16

There was nothing left to be done now. And so this is very important because this is going to make a difference.

54:25

Okay, let me get myself in trouble. I'm going to name names, but now I'm going to name some names of people a lot closer.

54:33

Billy Graham. Oh, wait, you can never say anything negative about Billy. Billy Graham's a great Christian hero.

54:39

He is, but he said some things that were wrong. Billy Graham said that what Jesus did on the cross, he did 99%.

54:48

And it's up to you to do that final 1%. Well, if you have to do the 1%, then

54:56

Jesus didn't accomplish it at the cross. As Jim said, he made it possible. And this is a major difference we have within evangelical

55:04

Christianity because many people want to argue for our ability to choose

55:09

God, our volition, our will. They'll say it's a free will. It isn't free, folks.

55:16

Your will is enslaved to sin. It's part of the curse. Only after you become a Christian do you have a free will that the

55:22

Holy Spirit indwells you and now that curse is removed so you can have the freedom to actually choose right from wrong, to choose things that could please

55:31

God or not. But without that, no. We have a will. I agree.

55:37

We have a volition. We make choices. But those choices are enslaved to sin. So, what happens is in people's wanting to argue for what they experienced, what did we experience when we became a

55:49

Christian? We experienced that we chose God. But theologically,

55:54

God chose us. Both are in play here. And so what we end up seeing is we have to look at what is actually accomplished.

56:05

Yeah, and Andrew, I would say that the fact that we chose

56:10

God is actually something that was secured by what Jesus accomplished. Because He accomplished redemption for His chosen ones, for His elect, our choice of Him was secured in His death.

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So that the death of Christ has brought to us everything that He accomplished on the cross and what

56:30

He accomplished on the cross was securing for us the gift of repentance and the gift of faith and the means by which, that is faith, the means by which

56:38

His elect would be saved. So, I chose God not because Jesus made it available.

56:44

I chose God, or I chose Christ. I chose salvation. I came to Him willingly because Christ secured that drawing of me to Him and the gift of repentance and the gift of faith and my choice of Him.

56:57

He secured all of that through His death on the cross. He actually purchased those good things for me when

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He died on the cross, thus accomplishing my salvation. So, I, in a very real sense, did make that decision.

57:11

But, I made that decision because that decision, that certainty, that security was already secured for me in His death on the cross.

57:19

Okay, so this is something we've dealt with in the past and this is the idea, folks, if you listened to previous episodes, of this doctrine called superintending.

57:26

That God can work through a human so that everything that they chose to do is exactly as God intended it to do.

57:33

Where they can't take credit for it, God gets all the credit. We see it in the doctrine of inspiration. We see it in the doctrine of sanctification.

57:40

We see it again in the doctrine of regeneration. And that really solves the issue of who chose who.

57:46

The answer is yes, both. But, we can't choose God apart from Him doing something.

57:53

But yet, our choice is exactly as God intended it to be. And so, let's deal with this because this is something that does cause a lot of divisions.

58:04

And let me answer the way that some try to argue what we're saying.

58:10

That they want to be on the free will side that we chose and our choice comes first and what ends up happening?

58:18

Well, how does Jesus Christ accomplish this at the cross then? How can this be from back at the cross if this is something that He's saying it happened, it was accomplished then?

58:31

Well, what they will do and they will answer this as far as with election. They say, well, what

58:36

God did was God looked down the tunnels of time. And He looked through time. And as He's looking through time,

58:42

He's evaluating what people are going to do. And as He looks at that, He goes, okay, I see that person's going to choose to believe in me.

58:50

So, I'm going to elect that person. Done. That person's elect now.

58:56

Now, there's some real problems with this. Why? There's two issues and I always tell you this.

59:03

I'm going to say this repeatedly as we go through the series. When we look at any systematic theology, we have to look at the nature of God.

59:11

The nature and attributes of God. When we see who God is, the theology is going to come out of the nature of God.

59:18

And if you have something, a theological system that has His nature wrong, it's not of God.

59:25

So, let's think about this. God looking down the tunnels of time. Does that violate an attribute?

59:32

Yes. That He's not eternal. He's not outside of time. He's bound by it.

59:38

That He has to look through time. But even more so, there's a different one. That He looks through time and has to see who's going to choose

59:48

Him as if He doesn't know it. And so what ends up happening is you have a

59:53

God that's not omniscient. That's why I actually say the most consistent

59:58

Arminian would be an open theist. An open theist is one that says God's not omniscient.

01:00:04

He's just a really good guesser. He can see what people are going to do and then he reacts to it, but he doesn't know everything.

01:00:11

They're at least being consistent with it. They're just wrong. It's just heresy. Why? Because they have a God that's not omniscient.

01:00:18

They get rid of some of the attributes of God. Oops. Problem. God ends up learning something in the

01:00:26

Arminian system. He learns who it is who is going to embrace Him if given the opportunity to do so.

01:00:32

And then God ends up, rather than being sovereign and man reacting to what God decrees,

01:00:37

God ends up in the Arminian system actually reacting to what He learns by looking down through the corridors of time.

01:00:44

So not only do you have a God who is not eternal and a God who is not omniscient, but a

01:00:50

God whose exercise of His attributes are limited by what He finds out by looking down through the corridors of time.

01:00:57

So God ends up becoming reactionary. His electing purpose, His electing action is not

01:01:03

Him choosing anything. It's Him reacting to other people's choice. Even though it might be a foreseen choice, it's still their choice nonetheless that God is there certifying.

01:01:12

And so that election then ends up not becoming the grace or the blessing or the reason to praise

01:01:18

God that is given as in Ephesians 1 when Paul says, we praise God because He blessed us with every spiritual blessing and we praise

01:01:26

Him for His grace of choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Well, if God was just putting

01:01:32

His rubber stamp on your choice, which He foresaw, then He's really not doing anything because if left to yourself without God electing you, you would have already chosen

01:01:41

Him anyway. So what does His election accomplish? In the Arminian God, election accomplishes nothing other than God just saying, yep.

01:01:48

Yeah. I agree. Yep. Rubber stamp. I like that. Good choice. Good choice, Jim. But there's something else that's also involved in the accomplishing.

01:01:56

Another area that some people go into error is the idea that you can lose your salvation. If Jesus Christ, and this is why

01:02:03

I remember the first time I was in college, I really didn't know theology. We used to go to one family's house and have dinner every other

01:02:11

Friday night. This family would open up to all the college students, have free dinner, which is what we all, you know, home -cooked meal, and then have a

01:02:18

Bible study. And so this subject came up on whether you can lose your salvation. And I remember just in my ignorance, it was the first time

01:02:27

I ever heard that you could lose your salvation. And I just remember sitting there and just asking, but what is salvation then?

01:02:35

Like, what's the nature of salvation? Isn't salvation that God accomplished all the work?

01:02:43

There's nothing for us to add to it. How could we lose that? I was confused. And here's the passage

01:02:48

I go to that helps a lot of people, I think. And this is Colossians 2, starting in verse 13 and 14.

01:03:00

When you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcised of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all, not some, all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which were hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

01:03:39

Okay, so he's saying that he has forgiven us of all transgressions, and he did that by canceling out the certificate of debt.

01:03:46

When? At the cross. How many of our sins were nailed at the cross?

01:03:52

All. Listener, tell me, is there any sin that you've ever committed in your entire life that was prior to the cross?

01:04:03

No. No. Every single sin we have ever committed is post -cross.

01:04:11

So if all of our sin was nailed at the cross, then there is no sin for the

01:04:18

Christian that wasn't paid at the cross. Every sin we commit, even the ones we haven't committed yet, the sins that if God allows us to live tomorrow, those sins we commit tomorrow, post -cross.

01:04:31

They were nailed at the cross. That's what Paul is saying in Colossians 2, 13 and 14.

01:04:37

So when we look at this, when we say it was accomplished, there is nothing we could do to lose it either.

01:04:46

Okay, so let's try to wrap this up with the last sentence, and I know that this episode will go a little bit long, but there's so much in this last sentence even.

01:04:53

His death, here's a number of things. His death is voluntary, vicarious, substitutionary, propitiatory, redemptive.

01:05:04

Five different ideas. One is voluntary. This means that no one forced him to go.

01:05:10

Now, this is something you'll sometimes hear people say, that, you know, oh, look, Christianity is based on a religion where God forces his son to die for what other people have done and so that they could be set free.

01:05:24

Well, no. No, he chose to do this. He willingly went to the cross.

01:05:30

Just because it's not something you would willingly be willing to go, doesn't mean he wasn't.

01:05:36

The way that people often refer this, that I hear at least in atheist circles, is that Jesus was the father's whipping boy, or our whipping boy.

01:05:47

And so what they try to argue is, so what they would have is these very wealthy people would, when they did something wrong, they would take a slave and the slave would get whipped for what the son did.

01:06:01

And so the slave actually takes the punishment for what the rich boy's son actually did.

01:06:08

And so what they say is that that's it. Like, we are the rich boys. We did the crime. And Jesus is the whipping boy.

01:06:15

He's taking the punishment. The difference with that is that Jesus chose to do it.

01:06:22

He wasn't forced to do it. It's also vicarious.

01:06:29

So with this, you know, this is a theological term that we would look to.

01:06:35

And when we look at the idea of vicarious, it's the idea of being performed for another.

01:06:42

So Jesus not only did it voluntarily, he did it on our behalf.

01:06:49

He did it for us. So he took our place.

01:06:57

He did what we could never do. 2 Corinthians 5, as we look at that passage, verse 21 says this, and this is probably the clearest example.

01:07:10

If you want one verse that's the gospel, I would say it's this. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

01:07:25

We become righteous because of what he did vicariously. Jim, you have something you want to say on that?

01:07:33

Yeah, I was just going to say, it wraps up the idea of substitutionary. He's doing it on behalf of somebody else, but not, you know, we can use the term, the idea of doing something on behalf of somebody else, like I might sign a document on your behalf, right?

01:07:48

I do it, I do the action for you. That's the idea of vicarious. Substitute is the idea of actually standing in the place of someone.

01:07:58

So you have the words vicarious and substitutionary. Those two, they go together. There's some overlap to those two ideas.

01:08:04

Vicarious means he's acting on behalf of somebody else, but substitute means he's actually, he is put in the place of somebody else and stands in their stead as if they were there so that he becomes the substitute, not just doing this on my behalf, but a substituting for me in that position.

01:08:22

And those are two very important words when you talk about the death of Christ. Correct. And now the fourth word is propitiatory.

01:08:30

Now this is something, propitiation means that it's the wrath was paid.

01:08:36

That's the idea. Satisfaction. Correct. Satisfaction is the idea there. And so this is the idea that what

01:08:42

Christ did on the cross satisfied the wrath of God. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What? God has wrath?

01:08:48

Yes, God has wrath because he's infinitely just and infinitely holy. And so he has to have an infinite wrath for those who break the law.

01:08:59

But what Christ did, being an infinite being, having an infinite righteousness, what he did on the cross can satisfy that infinite wrath.

01:09:09

Now we have a passage for this. And this is 1 John 2 .2.

01:09:15

And this is going to get me in trouble with some folks. But we'll see.

01:09:21

It says, And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for us only, but for those of the whole world.

01:09:33

Now this is often a passage used for limited atonement. This is an idea that what people will say is that the word world doesn't mean every person.

01:09:45

Now world can mean every human being or it could just mean all the nations.

01:09:51

It could be a generic term. Now the word whole does qualify it, meaning whole world, so it could emphasize it.

01:09:58

And there's lots of people who debate, did Jesus die on the cross for every person? So that we could legitimately say to someone who's unsaved and say

01:10:08

Christ died for you. Can we legitimately say that? That's a big debate. It gets into the debates we kind of addressed earlier.

01:10:15

And as we look at this, some will say whole world means every human being. Some will look at whole world and say it just means from every nation.

01:10:23

And I will not argue it from that point. Because I think the more important thing is he says, it's the, who are the not us?

01:10:31

So he says he was a propitiation for our sins, but not ours only.

01:10:37

So we have to identify who's the us and the not us. Now let me give you what most, what

01:10:43

I've seen the most often from the reformed camp as an answer to this, is that the us are

01:10:49

Christians or Jews and the not us are Gentiles. That he died for the elect, only for the elect, and it's the

01:10:58

Jews and Gentiles that are the elect in mind here. The reason

01:11:03

I would have difficulty with that is by the time of the writing of 1 John, Jew -Gentile distinction isn't an issue.

01:11:11

This is dealing with Gnosticism, a form of Gnosticism. So the best

01:11:16

I could argue is that the us is Christians and the not us would be the Gnostics. Now some, maybe the

01:11:22

Gnostics are also Christian. There were some Christians that came out of Gnosticism, but I would, as we said in the last episode, they have come out of false teaching into truth with more knowledge.

01:11:35

But is this a problem for limited atonement to say that Christ died as a propitiation for all people?

01:11:43

I would argue he did. I think that he died, his death was sufficient, and I'm going to be really clear on this, sufficient for every human being throughout history, but it's not effective.

01:11:57

It wasn't applied to everybody. How do I know that? Because Jesus says there's people in hell. It's really clear.

01:12:03

And so I think that as a Christian, I can offer a gospel presentation to anyone. And I do believe

01:12:10

I could say Christ died for your sins. Now we should never be a latent flowers and make an argument, make a theological argument from illustrations as he often does, but let me give an illustration to try to explain it.

01:12:24

That's what an illustration does. It explains something. It doesn't define it. And so what we'll look at is this.

01:12:32

If I went into a store and I offered to buy everybody, say

01:12:37

I go into a restaurant, I offer to buy everyone their dinner. There's going to be some people who are going to refuse the offer.

01:12:44

I know this because when I evangelize, there's been times where I will offer to buy someone's dinner, and in their pride they go, no, no,

01:12:52

I will pay it. I make my own way. And I often will use that as an illustration, say that's right. That's the problem. That's why you're going to be in hell because God made a way of escape for you, but you want to pay it.

01:13:01

Well, that's the reality. I can offer it. And if I have the money, I don't, but say I had the money to walk into a restaurant and offer everyone their meal.

01:13:09

Maybe I do if it's McDonald's and really empty late at night. Okay. But if I had that ability,

01:13:15

I had the resources, I could go in and offer that, but I'm only going to apply it to those who are part of that offer.

01:13:24

Those who reject that, it's not applied. The offer is still legitimate. Now, the issue is that what people will sometimes say with this is, well, if Christ paid the propitiation, then it can only be for the elect because that means it's covered.

01:13:41

Well, his death was satisfactory for that. The question is, is it applied?

01:13:46

And the Puritans used to refer to this, and they would say that his death was sufficient for all and effective for few.

01:13:54

And that's actually how I would see that. So I know that this may get me in trouble with some folks.

01:14:00

They may think I disagree with limited atonement because of that. I'm not. I'm saying that it's limited. But some will define the limited atonement as that Christ died only for the death of those elect.

01:14:13

I say it's effective only for those elect. I'm trying to be a little precise because I'm looking at what the

01:14:18

Scripture says, and I'm trying to wrestle with all the Scriptures. And I look at the Scripture and say, well, he's talking about the us.

01:14:24

We have to figure out who's the not us. And if those are unbelievers, then we have to deal with that. It's quantified by whole world.

01:14:31

So I look at that and say, well, somehow Jesus can be a propitiation for everybody, and it's just not applied to everybody.

01:14:39

So, Jim, I don't know if you're going to disagree with that at all or want to clarify it. Yeah, well,

01:14:44

I would parse it a little bit different, but that's probably beyond the scope of the time that we're already overboard here.

01:14:51

So the last thing then, Jim's probably going to talk to me afterwards. No, I mean,

01:14:57

I would have a different way of resolving that conflict that I think still maintains the value of the atonement being unlimited, but the application, the actual effective payment of the atonement being limited.

01:15:10

Okay. Yeah. So the last, the fifth of them is redemptive, and we looked at this redemptive already, but it is the fact that this is everything, right?

01:15:22

This is the way we are going to be regenerated. It's going to be through his redemptive work. It's not going to be through faith plus works.

01:15:32

It's not faith plus anything. It was everything. He completed everything.

01:15:38

There was no need for anything else. The only work involved in our regeneration is

01:15:43

God's. If we add anything to it, as I said earlier, anything to it, it diminishes the work on the cross.

01:15:51

The Jewish people tried to add works to it, read Galatians. They wanted to add the law.

01:15:59

And Paul says, no, you can't add anything to it. In fact, if the law could help you, then

01:16:05

Christ's death is void. It's meaningless. And so I hope that—I know we went a little long.

01:16:12

I hope this is helpful for you to see that there is so much richness that we see.

01:16:19

This is just three paragraphs within this doctoral statement, and yet you see how it interplays with so much of our theology, so much that is interconnected.

01:16:30

And if you have a good systematic theology, you're going to be consistent. You don't have to play games with the text of Scripture to make something fit.

01:16:40

If you're doing that—and people sometimes, I think, they knowingly are doing that.

01:16:46

That's intellectually dishonest, because you know Scripture's the authority, not our theological system.

01:16:53

And so we want to be judged by what Scripture says. We want to make sure we get that right. It's very important.

01:17:00

And so I hope this is helpful. Next episode, we're going to continue on. We're going to look at some more things about Christ.

01:17:07

We're going to look about the efficacy of His death. We're going to look at the whole idea of our justification.

01:17:15

We're going to look at His resurrection. Those will be some things we'll pick up in the next episode of The Wrap Report. And you know what,

01:17:22

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