Spiritual Counsels I: Christ Is | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Gratiae, and I'm here again with Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and the author and host of the Behold Your God study series published by Media Gratiae.

We are starting the year with our friend Thomas Charles again. We've talked about Thomas Charles in the past, but we're going to be looking at some themes regarding walking with God in the new year. We know that after a hectic holiday season, the stress, maybe the feasting of the holiday season, which really kind of starts at the end of November and there's almost no work done in America from the end of November all the way to after December.

So January gets here. We feel like it's time to tighten up. And so some people get a membership at the gym. People say it's January, must be time for the gym and Genesis, you know? So if people start a Bible reading program, there's some determination, okay, I'm going to do things differently in the coming year.

And that can take different forms. Like I said, reading through the Bible in a year, which is a great thing to do. And we're going to talk about some options that there are for you if you're considering doing that.

We'll be talking about that in some of our supporter appreciation bonus episodes. But for about a month, we're going to let Thomas Charles guide us with some really helpful essays that he's written, which are all part of this book, Thomas Charles' Spiritual Councils, selected from his letters and papers by Edward Morgan, which is published by our friends at the Banner of Truth.

And these are deep, evangelical, theologically careful, stirring essays on the subject of just walking with the Lord. So before we get started, John, remind us who Thomas Charles is.

Thomas Charles and the Welsh Revival

Yeah, you might not really be familiar with Thomas Charles. He's a Welshman and his ministry kind of spanned the latter decade or so of the 18th century into the first few decades of the 19th century.

But it was really a transitional period for the Welsh, especially those who had been converted under the preaching of what we consider the Great Awakening. But in Wales, 1735, a wave of extraordinary grace as God worked through the preaching of George Whitefield and a couple of Welshmen, Howe Harris and Daniel Rowland and others.

And then again in 1760, it's kind of a fresh wave. And then 1790, the great leader, the greatest Welsh preacher perhaps ever, Daniel Rowland, dies and it really causes the Welsh church to kind of cry out to the Lord and a new season of extraordinary grace.

That's when Thomas Charles really begins to minister. And the wonderful thing about Charles is not that he was the greatest Welsh preacher. He's not the Welsh version of a George Whitefield. He was a very stable and careful and thoughtful and warm-hearted minister.

But he really shines in guiding the movement. So what was called the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Movement became the Welsh Presbyterian Church eventually. But during this time, they separate from the Church of England.

And under Thomas Charles's leadership, they established themselves as a separate denomination. And really through Thomas Charles and some other leaders alongside him, the denomination is established on careful theology, but really warm experiential theology as well.

And we see this in this book. Now, we're gonna be reading a lot from Charles's quotes from his book here. It's not a hard book to read. In fact, we use this with a group of high school and college age kids toward the beginning of the church.

And we read through a lot of his spiritual counsels and they found it easy to read. Now, we wanna say something before we get started. Where do you start if you're thinking about walking with the Lord and it's a new year?

Well, there are so many topics, I think, that present themselves to our minds. Like, I always think of prayer, like, well, I need to read a book on prayer. Always room to grow in that. Or what about holiness?

You know, what about, you know, all these other aspects of the Christian life, evangelism or whatever. But really, we've wanted to start where we should start. And while there are many good starting points, so to speak, you know, there are many appropriate things.

We could talk about.

Starting with Who God Is in Christ

When we think about Christianity in the big picture, it's not the little phrase, I must, can't be the starting place. Like, I must do better. That feels like a good starting place, it's not. And really, we don't even start with the phrase, He has.

What has He done for us? Although that's a better starting place. But ultimately, if you want to start at the starting place, you can go all the way back to He is. So our first time with Thomas Charles, we're gonna be looking at some things that Thomas Charles says about our Savior Himself.

Yeah, I just wanna say that before we get into the quote, that that beginning, not with I must, or even He has, but beginning with He is, who is this God that I'm relating to through Christ? That's probably one of the most helpful things in the Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically study, and especially in the workbook section where we work through those things.

I know that's been a real helpful sort of paradigm change and shift in the way that I try to approach things, and I've heard that feedback from people over the years as well. So here we are implementing that in the podcast.

Here's his basic thesis for the essay that he wrote. This is the infinite greatness of the Son of God written on November 30th, 1782. Thomas Charles says, no words, perhaps in the whole scripture, set forth the dignity and glory of the person of Christ more emphatically and expressively than the following.

No man knoweth the Son, but the Father. Or as in the original, no one knoweth the Son, but the Father.

The Father Alone Knows the Infinite Worth of the Son

Yeah, this is a phrase, I think, a scriptural phrase that we're well familiar with. But what Charles is gonna do, he's gonna lay out a number of arguments that really, as he gets going, that it really becomes a sweet, deep treatment of the worth of Christ or the infinite greatness of the Son of God.

So let me kind of set the stage here. He's gonna argue that Christ's worth is beyond the knowledge of all men, not just any man, but all men. So we would say it this way. If you could go get all the theologians of the past, not just their good books, if we could just actually get them back and we could gather them in a building and we could devote a lifetime, say, to studying some aspect of Christ's worth, just one.

We don't even say we're gonna study all of Christ, but just one aspect of the God man. To view that infinite worth would be beyond that group of men. And so at the end of their life, even though they might come up with a combined, with their combined effort, they might come up with a beautiful statement about one aspect of Christ's perfection.

At the end of that life, it would still fall short of what that perfection actually is because it's infinite. So that's one argument he's gonna make. He's also gonna say that Christ is beyond even the knowledge of the angelic host.

Now, these are sinless beings and they are beings with superior abilities to man. They don't have sin clouding their picture of Christ. They have been there since the beginning of creation before the triune God with their faces covered in adoration.

They have watched the coming of the sun. They have worshiped the babe. But even they, with all those advantages, if they were to try to express to us in some angelic tongue the full worth of the God man, they couldn't.

And so that's the second big point he makes. And a third point is that the Bible does tell us that there is one person who knows the infinite worth of the son. And that is God, the Father. He knows the measure of the worth of the son.

It takes an infinite mind, the mind of the deity God, to know the infinite worth of the son of God. And that's what we're gonna be looking at in this essay.

Yeah, well, we know where we're going. Let's see how Thomas Charles takes us there. No one knoweth the son but the father. It is not sufficient to say that he is far above all principalities and powers, infinitely above all created beings, but he is so great and so infinite in his nature and in the glory of his person that none but the father, who is an infinite being, can know him.

The imagination of a creature cannot even reach him. The distance is so great and the glory so far beyond all comprehension that the mind of the highest angelic being is overwhelmed with the vastness of the idea.

Saints in heaven and believers on earth know him to be a sufficient savior for them, and this is a great deal. But what they know of him falls infinitely short of what he is. The apostle saith, he is able to do for them exceeding abundantly above all they are able to ask or think.

The divine mind only can comprehend the divine nature. A creature is known by a creature of the same order and the same nature with himself. Man knows human nature. For, I'm gonna say that again. Man knows human nature.

For as in water, face answereth to face, so does the heart of man to man. An angel knows angelic nature, and so on to the highest orders of beings in the universe. But none except the father knoweth the son.

Therefore, he must be far above all others accepting the father. And in the same manner as the father knoweth the son, the son also knoweth the father. Therefore, their minds and their natures must be equal and the same.

This gives us the largest possible idea of divine knowledge. It takes in and comprehends the divine nature of all its infinity of perfections and glory. So also, nothing greater can be said of the divine nature than that an infinite mind can know or comprehend it.

Nothing greater can ever be said or conceived of the father's knowledge than that he knoweth the son, nor anything more extensive and unbounded of the son's knowledge than he perfectly knows the father.

Our Knowledge Falls Infinitely Short

Yeah, so in that long quote there, what we said about how he's laying out these arguments, I think a couple of things really jump out at us. One is that he says we fall infinitely short.

In our knowledge.

And I don't find that a discouraging thing. You know, we're called out of the grave. Our eyes are opened by the spirit. We have, you know, in regeneration, our mind, our heart, our will is freed to know and to love and to obey this king.

But it's like having our feet set on this great continent and it's boundless. So no matter how far we walk with him, no matter how often we sit at his feet and he teaches us through his word, no matter how long eternity is, so to speak, it is an ever-stretching continent.

And we are always infinitely short in our highest thoughts of God, of what he really is. Another thing he says there is, and it's something I never thought of till I read this essay, that the largest possible idea of the infinitude of God's divine knowledge is that he can turn and look at the sun and say, I know him.

And the largest measure of the divine nature that we can think of in many ways is that we look at the divine nature and God says, I alone know this. So really, really, I think, enticing things. Now, what Charles goes on to do is he gets into some specific areas.

He just, you know, it's nice to think abstractly, you know, in the big picture, but he's going to give us a few specifics that these are things the Father knows and we only know the edge of them and this is where it really gets sweet.

Why Theology Is Not Putting God in a Box

Yeah, I think it would be a good thing to anticipate and make a correction to some wrong thinking here. There are men in areas of evangelicalism who say, you know, why do theology? You're just trying to put God in a box.

You can't know God. God's bigger than our thoughts. And so all of your books and all of your study and all of that, that's pointless because you must think God's very small and He just fits in your box.

And that's certainly not what we're saying and that's certainly not what Thomas Charles is saying. God has revealed what He's revealed about Himself and about the Son and about the Spirit and the things that have been revealed are for us and we are to give ourselves to that study.

And so we must do biblical Christology and biblical theology proper, pneumatology, but after doing our most careful and historic, you know, drawing from the best men and the best minds who have studied what God has revealed in His Word, I think the idea is that we need to then put on our dunce caps and put our hands over our mouths and say, we only know the edges of His ways and to be amazed.

So we're not encouraging an anti-intellectualism or an anti-theology, but instead to just a sense of wonder at this uncreated God. The Father knoweth the Son. When He entrusted Him with the salvation of His people and sent Him into the world to accomplish the arduous work, He knew into whose hands He had committed it and He was under no apprehensions about the issue.

He saw Him with infinite delight entering the list with Satan and He was not fearful of His veracity being sullied. When He said, the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, He foresaw Him traveling in the greatness of His strength, spoiling principalities and powers and triumphing over them openly.

He laid our help upon one whom He knew was mighty to save. He laid on Him the iniquities of us all, well knowing that the Lamb of God would be able to take away the sins of the world. He knew His capacity to govern the universe and to protect and save His people.

Therefore, He hath committed all power and authority into His hands. Yea, He hath committed also all judgment unto the Son. He knows thoroughly the infinite greatness of His love to His people and that what His power is sufficient for, that His love will forever engage Him to do for them.

He knows that this love is an eternal, free and unchangeable as it is intensely great and therefore will with infinite delight love those given Him of the Father unto the end, however many their provocations and however great their unworthiness and that He will never leave them nor forsake them.

The Father Trusts the Son’s Saving Work and Love

Yeah, wonderful statements there that perhaps we haven't considered. The Father knowing the Son perfectly knows Him from eternity past and knows the perfect competence of the Son to accomplish all the Father has sent Him to do.

So He mentions there, there's no apprehension in the Father because He knows the Son and though the Son has been entrusted with the redemption of His people, the Father knows that His veracity is in no danger of being dishonored.

Every promise beginning, you know, Charles mentions Genesis 3 with the promise that there would come one from Eve that would crush the serpent. The Father when sending the Son is never, there's never apprehension that maybe this won't, maybe He won't do what I said.

If we think about every promise in Scripture, every covenanted hope and we see Christ at the center of every one of those, we know that the Father knowing the Son perfectly did just what Charles said.

He not only knew Him, but He rested in a perfect delight knowing that the Son was suited to do all that He was sent to do. And what He starts to mention there at the end of that quote is one aspect of that, the love of the Son behind all of His actions.

And the next quote Matt's gonna read to us really picks up with that and shows how the Son, the Father knows the measure of the Son's love.

The Measure of the Son’s Love and Atonement

So Charles continues, the Father who possesses the same love, both in degree and duration, comprehends the love of the Son in all its immeasurable height and depth and length and breadth. Oh, with that infinite delight and complacency, do the divine persons contemplate the workings of each other's heart and mind toward redeemed sinners here on earth.

As the persons are distinct, so also are the workings of their minds distinct. But as their essence is the same, so also is their love, grace and mercy one and the same. We can only stand on the shore of that vast ocean of love, which inclined the Son to do so much for us who are so unworthy, but the Father knows it and comprehends it perfectly.

So distinct persons in the Trinity, distinct work, and yet of the same essence, one being. And so the love that the Father has is the same as the love as the Son has for His people and the Spirit has, and the Father knows the Son's love perfectly.

I mean, we experience the Son's love. We experience the Father's love and the Spirit's love. But Charles points out that this is something we experience in part, but we can never know fully by our own experiences what the measure of that love is, but the Father does.

The next thing Charles points out is that the Father knows not only the measure of the Son's love for His people, but He knows the measure of the merit of the Son's death, the value of His atonement.

Right.

Yeah, we tend to measure those maybe differently.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes I would measure that personally. It's not the right way. I just catch myself doing it. I think, well, how worthy is the death of the Son on the cross? Well, I look at myself in the mirror and I think, if it could cover all of that, it must be pretty big.

Yeah, we know ourselves in part, and what we know is terrible. And so if it's sufficient for me, it must be at least of that worth.

Yeah, and you think of the sins of the world, or you think of all the sins of every believer from the beginning to the end, that must be pretty big. You know, another way to measure it, and it's inadequate as well, is we might measure it by the benefits we see, not only the ones that we've experienced, but by faith we read the scriptures and we say, this is what God has said, flows from that cross, and if all of that could flow from that cross, then the merit of his death must be pretty big.

So while the only safe guide is what the scripture says about the worth of his death, the merit of his death, we know that this is only explained to us in part because it is the infinite mind of the Father that knows the infinite worth of the Son's death.

And Charles talks about that in this next quote.

The Father’s Delight in the Merit of Christ’s Death

So Charles writes, but the Father knoweth the Son. He fully comprehends the value of his merits, and therefore he is infinitely well-pleased with him with respect to his people. Behold, my servant, whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth.

The justice of God delighteth infinitely more in the satisfaction with which Christ has made for sin than in the obedience of men and angels united. We distrust him and are afraid to rely upon his merits only for our salvation because of our ignorance of the value of the satisfaction he hath made.

But the Father knoweth it fully, is well-pleased, and delighteth in it. From heaven he beareth witness that life eternal is to be obtained in his Son by those who are most guilty and unworthy, referencing there 1 John 7.

He is not fearful of resting the whole of salvation of his people upon his Son's merits. To comprehend the infinite value of his merits, neither men nor angels shall be able to all eternity. But let us endeavor to believe what we cannot comprehend.

The Father knows it fully, and the testimonial in the Father, that's a of, the Father knows it fully, and the testimony of the Father in its behalf should outweigh everything else and be a stronger recommendation to us than the united voices of all creation.

By believing the Father's testimony, our joy may be as full and our comfort as great as if we were able to comprehend its whole wondrous extent. For in believing, we rely on the testimony of one who cannot lie and who cannot be mistaken because of his perfect knowledge of the Son.

With what joy then, we should read the testimony of the Father from heaven. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

Christ Reveals the Father to Us

Yeah, wonderful points he makes there. Our limited understanding of the merits, our inability to get the full measure in our own minds, oftentimes leads us to distrust God. We're not willing to trust that what God says about the atonement is really true.

We think our sins are bigger. We think what we might add, you know, by way of, you know, promises or New Year's resolutions that, well, these plus the cross. So a distrust, ingratitude, you know, a lack of life-stirring thankfulness that he has done this.

So his recommendation is then that the only thing we can do is we have to take the word of the one person that understands the value. We believe the Father's testimony in Scripture, the Father who knows and the Father who never lies, and by believing, the fullness of that joy and peace.

Are ours.

Charles takes us to the next step. And in our next quote, we're gonna read, we're gonna see that he describes the worth of the Son knowing the Father.

So Charles writes, the divine excellencies, and could not possibly give us a just representation of them to us. But Christ is the express image of his person. He possesses the same identical nature and properties, and therefore is in every respect qualified to represent him to us.

Consequently, we are said to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

What Thomas Charles does next is essential. It's one thing to step back and see the immensity of God, the immensity of the divine Son, but it's another thing to know that this can be known. And while we can contemplate the absolute greatness of God, it is for us necessary that we can be brought near through the finished work of the Son, and that the Spirit will take the things of Christ and reveal them to us, and all that the Father has planned, and all that the Son has procured for us, the Spirit then brings and applies to our life.

And so in this next quote, he's going to talk about how the infinite God is knowable through his Son.

One of the most encouraging things about attending conferences is when people drop by our booth to tell us how one of our studies or films helped or influenced them, their families, or their church. Eventually, we started asking if they would let us record their stories to share with you.

This is Royal. We talked to him at the G3 Conference about rethinking God biblically.

We watch it as a family devotional learning opportunity. We go through one of the men of the faith at a time to learn more about them and how that theology affects our lives today. So we spend a lot of time doing that.

And again, we watch it over and over again because you miss certain things or you just want to remind yourself of what's going on. I've never been a biography guy. Theology guy, yes, probably not a lot about biographies.

But consequently, having saw the video series, I picked up probably a biography of everybody on the videos because it's so interesting. And when you get those little vignettes, it tells you a little bit about them.

But then you really do want to know more about them and what caused them to be so faithful toward God.

For more information about Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, visit themeansofgrace .org. Well, Charles concludes his whole essay with these final thoughts. What a wonderful mystery of wisdom and contrivance is expressed in the constitution of Christ's person.

He knows the Father in the same manner as He knows Himself. His mind, being infinitely large, takes in an infinite object in all its perfections. But the wonder is the manner how He has become the image of the Father to us, giving a full and exact representation of the divine nature, bringing it down, as it were, level to our capacities without diminishing anything of its excellency and glory.

He has become God with us. And at the same time that He continues what He was from all eternity, yet He is the image of God to us and God with us. He reveals the Father to us. Others have given a world a revelation from God, but none revealeth the Father but the Son.

In Him, we see the Father's excellency and glory fully expressed. He that hath seen me, saith Christ, hath seen the Father. The attributes and the properties of the divine nature are made fully known to us in the Son.

And in seeing His glory, we see the glory of the whole Trinity. Thanks for listening to the Behold Your God podcast. All the scripture passages and resources we mentioned in the podcast are available in this week's show notes at mediagratia .org slash podcast.

That's M-E-D-I-A-G-R-A-T-I-A-E dot O-R-G. You can also get there by going to themeansofgrace .org. You can watch the podcast there through our YouTube channel or subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, or anywhere you get your podcast feed.

The Behold Your God podcast is a production of Media Gratia. If you're unfamiliar with the Bible study series, documentaries, and other multimedia projects that we produce, let me invite you to have a look around for materials that you can use in your church, small groups, Sunday schools, or family worship at mediagratia .org.

If you're one of our monthly supporters, jump over to mediagratia .org where you'll find the link to this week's supporter appreciation episode. This is weekly bonus content that we produce as just one tangible way to say thank you to those of you who believe in what we do and come alongside of us monthly to help us continue doing it.

If you're interested in becoming one of our supporters, whether that's through a one-time gift or a monthly commitment of any amount, visit mediagratia .org and click on the donate button. Once you've done that, we'll get in touch and we'll give you access to our whole library of supporter appreciation material just shortly after.

As with everything that we do, we never want finances to be a legitimate barrier between our content and those who would benefit from it. If that's you, reach out to us at info at mediagratia .org. We'd love to hear your feedback there on this episode, questions, comments, or any other subject.

That might be on your mind.

Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.