November 28, 2016 Show with J. V. Fesko on “Who Is Jesus? Knowing Christ Through His ‘I AM’ Sayings” AND “The Trinity & the Covenant of Redemption”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio

platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues

facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one

man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we

converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another

wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear

from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host.

Good afternoon.

Cumberland County,.

Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening

via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this

28th day of November 2016.

I trust that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday

gathered with friends and loved ones and feasting over fine food that somebody slaved

over and most of all giving thanks to our sovereign God for the innumerable

blessings that he bestows upon us every single day including the very beating of our hearts and

the oxygen that we inhale within our lungs and we thank our

dear Lord and Savior for that.

And of course those of you who had a time of sadness and sorrow perhaps

you're grieving over the loss of a loved one.

I know exactly what that is like although I cannot say I'm in your shoes nobody can say that they are in someone else's

shoes.

But I certainly know the pain of grief having lost both my parents and a precious

wife of nearly 20 years so I know how sometimes the holidays

can be the toughest times of all.

So I want to let you know that I am saying a special prayer for those of you

who are experiencing deep grief during the holiday season.

And today I am very delighted that we have for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron

J .V. Fesco, author, academic dean, professor of systematic theology and historical

theology at Westminster Seminary in California and we are going to be discussing two of his

books today.

The first hour we are discussing his book Who is Jesus? Knowing Christ Through His

I Am Sayings which was published by Reformation Heritage Books and during the second hour

we are discussing his book The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption published by Christian Focus

Publications and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first.

Time on Iron Sharpens Iron J .V. Fesco.

Hey Chris, thanks for having me and it's a pleasure to be.

With you today and I look forward to our discussion.

I am looking forward to it as well and let me give our email address right off the top

of the bat right off the bat here for those of you listening who want to ask a question

about some of the most important issues facing life and that is

who is Jesus Christ, what has he accomplished and who

is the Trinity and if you could give us an email with your questions our email address is

chrisarnsen at gmail .com c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com

and please give us your first name your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of

the good old USA and we look forward to hearing from you at some point during the broadcast with your

questions.

I want to read a commendation for our first topic which is

on the book as I mentioned just a few minutes ago, Who is Jesus?

John Fesco sets out to answer the question who is Jesus?

He does so not merely by allowing Jesus to speak for himself by his works as well as his

words but also by showing how his words and works as well as his unique person and character are

deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible.

He shows us Jesus is the pinnacle of God's purpose and salvation and gives us every reason to trust him

with our lives and respond to him with heartfelt adoration and that was written by Mark

G Johnston, minister at Bethel Presbyterian Church in Cardiff, Wales.

Many of you may remember that I interviewed Pastor Johnston not long ago here on Iron Sharpens

Iron during his visit to Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

I was very blessed by his conference that he conducted just before

Reformation Day with Dr. Sinclair Ferguson and I'm sure that you

can get the recordings of that conference from Grace Baptist Church in

Carlisle.

But this book, this is an excellent book to give I

think not only to any Christian that you know but to unbelievers because it's not a

daunting, intimidating size and it's on a obviously a very primary subject

that hangs eternity on the way that

you answer the question of who is Jesus.

And in this book you start out by asking the question, is Jesus son of God

or merely man?

If you could respond to that.

Yeah I think that you know historically the church has claimed that Jesus is the son of God, that he's you know to

quote the confession of the creed that he's God of God, light of light, very God of very God.

But I think along the way there's also this notion that develops in subsequent

history that Jesus is just an ordinary man and I think you see this especially

in 19th, 18th, 19th century classical liberalism that claimed that

Jesus was just an ordinary prophetic figure and was not divine.

He instead had that identity thrust upon him unjustly by the church but that he was a

good teacher, that he was a good man.

And so you often see people saying this, well I think I can accept Jesus the good man

and I don't have problems with him in terms of his teaching about love and those different types of things, but

it's the church's teaching that I have a problem with.

Or a more sophisticated version of the same argument may be that well I don't have any problem

with the founder of Christianity that is Jesus, it's just that I have a problem with say the apostle Paul

and that Paul says things about Jesus that are untrue or that exaggerate

Christ's significance.

And so that I think is a perennial question for believer

or unbeliever and that we need to ask that fundamental question, who is Jesus?

And if he is the son of God then quite obviously

only for our relationship with Christ but also our eternal destiny.

Amen.

And obviously it's not just the liberals who.

Say that Jesus is merely just a great man or prophet or

guru of some kind of history, of those that believe he existed.

And I think that the majority of people on the planet earth know

that Jesus existed as a historic figure.

There are some fringe atheists that deny he even existed, but even among atheists that is not

a popular view as I understand today.

Most atheists actually believe he did exist as far as I can tell from the prominent atheist

apologists.

But obviously we have cults like the Jehovah's Witnesses and so on who

reject that he was truly God.

Although some of these cults that reject the deity of Christ

will still claim the title son of God for Jesus, but they actually say that that

proves that he is not God himself.

How do you respond to the typical Jehovah's Witness or someone in some other cult

that has an Aryan view of Christ that he was not God or some other view that strips

Christ of his deity and will say, see he's the son of God, he's not God.

How do you respond.

To that?

Yeah, I think that there are a couple of important things that I want to say.

What do Scriptures teach?

Because ultimately Jesus' identity rests upon the testimony of Scripture,

and it's not just the so -called red letters and what Jesus supposedly said, but

if the Apostle Peter has anything to say about it, he tells us in 1 Peter that the Spirit of

Christ was inspiring the prophets of the Old Testament to give witness and test

the terms of when this would happen, what type of person he would be, and ultimately

what his identity would be.

So that's the first thing, is draw them into the Scriptures.

And then the second thing is, when we look at various passages of Scripture,

we want to, you know, ask, what do they teach?

And so, for example, with the opening of John's Gospel,

John makes some pretty clear statements, and it's not just a statement that

of John's teaching of the New Testament, but it invokes categories and language from the Old

Testament.

In the beginning was the Word, John writes in John 1 .1, and that Word, I think it

evokes the opening chapters of the Bible in Genesis, when God spoke the

creation into existence.

And he says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.

And here, so we see two distinct persons here, the Word and God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God, all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that

was made.

So just those opening statements from John's Gospel, you know, places a

serious question before us in terms of, you know, what do the Scriptures teach, and who do

they say that Jesus Christ is?

And then third, and I think this is perhaps equally as important because we get it from the testimony of

Scripture, is what did Jesus himself say about himself?

What did he claim to be able to do?

And in many respects, Jesus regularly takes upon

himself both the name of God, I Am,

very explicitly at numerous points in the Gospels, as well as his actions,

whether in terms of their symbolic significance or in terms of the actual things

that he is doing, tells us that he is God in the flesh.

So for example, raising somebody from the dead is only something that God can do.

Walking on water, according to the Old Testament, is only something that God can do.

The names that he invokes, symbolic significance of his actions,

as well as even the actions themselves.

So bring them to Scripture, have them wrestle with what Scripture says, and what the Scriptures say

Jesus is, and who he is, and then wrestling with the very things that Jesus himself says

and does that gives us his identity as God of God, and

light of light of, you know, very God of very God.

Yes, and you, before you go into the actual I Am sayings of Christ

in the Gospel of John, you start out with Jesus the Great I

Am, and there are a couple of very memorable moments in the Scriptures where that name

I Am of God is used that even many people that just have very

cursory knowledge of the Bible story would know, even those that are not even Christian that may have

seen the movie by Cecil B. DeMille, The Ten Commandments, starring

Charlton Heston, and the Jehovah declares himself to be I Am from the burning bush.

Then you also have Jesus Christ making that declaration when he's being arrested, and the

guards who are arresting him fell to the.

Ground.

If you could comment on Jesus the Great I Am.

Yeah, no, I think that this is so important to us in that one of the things that we stress here

at our seminary, at the Seminary of California in Escondido, California,

is the importance of studying the Scriptures, and this is

especially important for many.

As useful and as much as a blessing as our English translations are, there are

some things that lie slightly veiled in English translation, and I think at a number of

occasions it's when Jesus invokes the divine name.

In Exodus 3 -14, when God in the flaming bush revealed himself

to Moses, you know, and he told him, take off your shoes for you're standing on holy ground,

and Moses asked him, who should I say sent me when I go to speak to Israel and when

I go to speak to Pharaoh?

And he says, tell them that I Am sent you.

And the way that the Greek translation of the Old Testament translates that phrase

out of Hebrew is it translates it as ego eimi.

That's the Greek phrase that it uses, ego eimi, which literally is

the same Greek phrase that Jesus takes upon his own lips

of John, for example.

He says in John 6 -20, when he's walking on the water, he says,

do not be afraid, and then he utters the phrase ego eimi.

And as he's walking on the water, he says the divine name.

He's not just saying, hey guys, it's me, he's instead saying I Am.

And within that context, as Jesus is walking on the water, something that only Jesus,

I'm sorry, something that only God himself can do, and then he invokes the divine name,

it's not only Jesus's verbal way of affirming his deity, that he is the great I

Am, and even through the symbolic significance of

hislessness.

On another occasion, I think Jesus does this in John

chapter 8, where he talks about, you know, when you lift the Son of Man up,

then you will know that I Am.

And he says that two different times there in John 8, but the most, I think,

significant time that he says that is when he talks about Abraham,

and the crowds begin to to say, you know, how can you know Abraham?

You know, Abraham was so long ago, and this is where Jesus again takes upon

himself and invokes the divine name, and he says in John 8, 58, before Abraham was,

I Am.

And at that point, again, the crowd at this point understood what he was claiming, and even

sought to kill him for it.

And then as you just mentioned just a few moments ago, another instance where Jesus

invokes the divine name for himself is when the mob in John chapter 18, verses

5 and 6, as well as in verse 8, when the mob comes to

arrest him, he again, you know, invokes the divine name, and as you said, the crowd there

fell on their faces out of fear.

And I think that there, for a brief moment, they recognized what Jesus

was claiming, they recognized who he was, and then they, you know, to

use the inverse of it, they didn't come to their senses.

The inverse of that occurred, they ignored their senses, and, you know,

rushed headlong into their rebellion against God, and proceeded with their efforts to

arrest, and then ultimately to crucify Jesus.

But again, that is yet another instance where he invokes the divine name, and there the

crowd even recognized it, and I think feared Christ, if only but for a moment, before they

redoubled their efforts in their rebellion.

And you start with the I Am sayings in John

6, 35, with I Am the Bread of Life, if you could.

Tell us about that statement of Jesus.

Yeah, no, I think that, you know, there's a number of ways in John's Gospel that

John records for us not only the words, but also the actions and the teachings of Jesus.

And we just, you know, we're just reviewing the ways in which Christ invokes the divine name, I

Am, and that's one of the ways that Jesus uses that phrase, I Am.

But there's another way that Jesus uses the I Am phrase, and

that's when he is describing the nature of his ministry, or the nature of

his work, or the nature of his identity.

I recently did a conference on this particular subject, Jesus's I Am sayings, and I

explained to them that if I said, I Am, and then I followed it with a

series of things that described my nature, you know, if I am a human

being, I am a father, I am a minister of the Gospel, I am a husband,

I'm a fan of Star Wars, you know, these are all things that describe who I am.

And this is the nature of Christ's I Am sayings throughout the Gospel of John,

when he describes his own work and his own person, so that, as you said,

you know, when he says in John 6 .35 and John 6 .48, I am the bread

of life, you know, here he does this in the broader context of

the manna that came down from heaven, that God fed Israel.

Here, the crowds had just received the miraculous

feeding that Jesus gave them the day before he left, and they were hungry, they woke

up the next morning wanting more food, and so they not only wanted Jesus to feed them,

but they also wanted him to assert his role as a political deliverer.

And so they were, I think, somewhat egging him on, trying to encourage him, hey, you need to feed us,

and not only do you need to feed us, but, you know, Moses, he was a great leader, and he fed

Israel, so if you want to be a great leader, you too need to feed us.

Jesus responded with that by reminding them, first of all, he says, hey, Moses did not feed

you, God fed you, and he fed Israel with manna that perished,

and then, so against this backdrop of the Old Testament and the Exodus narrative,

he tells them, I am the bread of life.

In other words, you have to consume me in order to live

eternally.

Now, at this point, Jesus is not talking about in terms of a crass literalism and saying that, you know, here

you have to begin to consume my literal flesh, but rather the emphasis, the

emphasis that Jesus regularly places throughout that passage in John chapter 6,

and it's an emphasis that we find throughout John's Gospel, is you have to believe, you have to believe,

you have to believe that the Father has sent me, you have to believe that I am the bread of life.

And in this respect, I think Saint Augustine, the great fourth and fifth century

theologian that lived in North Africa, he put it best when he said that

faith is our mouth and the means by which we consume Christ,

the bread of life.

And so here, he tells the crowds, you have to believe in me, you have to consume me, and he

likens himself to that manna from heaven.

But of course, this is a manna that is far greater in that it is imperishable,

and it does not impart merely temporal life as it did with the Israelites and the Exodus, but

consuming Christ, the bread of heaven, which means believing in him, ultimately imparts

eternal life.

We have a listener in Slovenia, Joe, who says, please ask

Brother Fesko to explain his perspective and understanding as to why so many denominations and Christian

churches cannot or are unwilling to understand that Jesus' I

Am statements, in reference to himself in John 6, are meant to be understood

metaphorically and not applied literally to the bread of the Lord's Supper.

Thanks for addressing this topic.

That is a frequent topic for me in evangelism among Roman Catholics and others influenced by them in

Slovenia.

Yeah, you know, that actually reminds me, was it Lady Jane Grey, the young girl

who was eventually executed for heresy when she was sticking to

her Protestant faith, even by threat of death?

And I believe that she was mentioning the fact that when she was trying to, when the

clerics were trying to get her to confess that Christ was present in the Eucharist

physically, she said that Jesus also said that he is a vine and a door.

Does that mean he's really a vine or a door?

Was that Lady Jane Grey that said that?

I can't remember specifically.

I think that sounds right,.

But I always tell my students that's why these things are written down in books.

I can go look them up, so I'd have to go double or either that or ask one of my

colleagues.

But as far as our friend Joe in Slovenia's question, he wants to know why so many denominations

are unwilling to understand that Jesus' I Am statements are to be taken metaphorically when

it comes to the bread of life, specifically he mentions about the Lord's Supper.

I'm not sure that so many denominations do that.

I mean, I know that the Roman Catholic Church does, the Eastern Orthodox Church,

and perhaps some of the high church Anglicans take that as to a

liberal physical meaning in regard to the bread.

But if you could respond to Joe in Slovenia.

Yeah, no, I mean, in the one sense this is, I think, the tragedy of the Reformation, one of the great

tragedies of the Reformation in that, you know, here Protestant theologians broke

rightly and correctly from the Church of Rome, and one of the issues was over the Lord's

Supper, but then sadly, and this is the tragedy, is that we were unable to remain

unified on this particular point.

As you mentioned, the Anglicans, high Anglicans, holding to some form of real

presence, or as well as the Lutherans holding to a form of

presence, is, you know, how and why.

And in one sense it boils, you know, what is, is?

You know, when Christ says, this is my body, does is mean,

does he mean literal physical body

contained in the bread, or that the bread somehow transforms into my body,

or does is have a metaphor?

And so that's the first issues

of Bible interpretation, or hermeneutics, more technically.

That's one of the dividing reasons, you know, as to why we can't align together on this

particular point.

And that when we look at a number of these passages in Scripture, I think that, yeah, I think it's clear, say, for

example, in John 6, that Jesus' reference there is metaphorical, because

otherwise, why wouldn't he just simply say, here, let me get a knife and, you know, break

off a piece of my flesh for you, and you can consume it that way?

Same thing at the Lord's Supper.

And as you noted, he invokes plenty of other metaphors.

I am, you know, the good shepherd, I am the door, you know, he

invokes those other things, and we don't think that Jesus is a literal physical door.

So that's the first.

I think, secondly, bring theological

perspectives on this particular question, so that the

Church teaches that Christ is physically in the bread and

the cup, that it's Christ's physical blood and his physical body, although it retains

all of the characteristics, and why?

And they want to do this because, you know, not only because of their reading of Scripture, but because of the

way that they understand the individual's relationship to

Church, and the means

by which the Church does this is through the

Lord's Supper.

And you see this even in classic Roman Catholic architecture, where at the front and center of the

sanctuary is the altar, and that typically the pulpit or the

podium or the place from whence the Word of God comes is off to the side,

because it's the sacrament that takes precedence over everything else.

Whereas in the historic Protestant understanding, granted with some

differences of opinion between the Reformed and Lutheran wings of the Reformation, is that it's

not the substance of the sacrament, and

hence the call for faith, because according to

Roman Catholics, you can consume the body and blood of Christ,

whereas historically I think the Reformed churches have always maintained that, no, you

have to have faith in order to benefit from this sacrament of the Lord's

Supper.

And so we place salvation not in the sacraments, as Rome would, but rather

in the preaching of the Word.

And here this is where you get this classic Reformation architecture that

changes the interior distribution of the building, where the altar

is no longer called an altar, it's called a table, the Lord's table, and it now is

either in the back of the sanctuary, or it's placed in the middle of the sanctuary, or it's placed

under the pulpit so that the pulpit stands out as being prominent front and

center, because it's the preaching of the gospel that goes forth.

And so it's those two big reasons as to why I think, you know, the Protestant Reformation

and other forms of Christianity don't get

competing interpretive opinions as to when something is a metaphor and when there's a

literal reference, and then because of competing theological interests

or competing theological claims.

Well, by the way, our friend Joe in Slovenia.

Just emailed me, and he did some research while you were answering his question, and I was correct

about Lady Jane Grey.

She was the 16 -year -old English noblewoman and monarch of

England and Ireland who was beheaded in

1554 for remaining true to her

Protestant faith.

This is after the Church of England had, the pendulum of the Church of England had swung back from the

Protestantism of King Henry VIII to back to Roman Catholicism, and she was

executed for that, and she was the one having the dialogue where she was basically

mocking the Catholic understanding of the literal interpretations of the I

Am sayings.

But thank you very much Joe in Slovenia, and guess what Joe, you are receiving absolutely free of

charge as our gift to you a free copy of the book we are discussing

right now, Who is Jesus? Knowing Christ Through His I Am Sayings, and that's compliments

of Reformation heritage books, and also that will be mailed to you compliments of our friends at

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com, and they

mail out all of the books, Bibles, CDs, and DVDs, and

other things that our listeners when they contribute questions to the program.

Thank you very much Joe in Slovenia for asking that question.

We're going to a break right now.

We have a number of people waiting patiently for their questions to be asked and answered.

We'll get to as many of you as we can after the break, and if anybody else would like to

join them with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away, we'll be right back with J .V. Fesco.

Chris Arnson here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia, and here's my friend Dr. James White to tell you why.

Hi, I'm James White of.

Alpha and Omega Ministries.

I hope you join me at the G3 conference hosted by Pastor Josh Vice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at

the Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st in

celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Balcombe, Conrad M. Bayway,

Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars

of what G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory.

For more details, go to g3conference .com.

That's g3conference .com.

Thanks, James.

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Iron Sharpens Iron.

And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go

is J .V. Fesco, author, academic dean, professor of systematic theology and historical theology at

Westminster Seminary, California.

We're discussing for the first hour his book, Who is Jesus? Knowing Christ Through His I Am Sayings.

And coming up in the second hour, we will be addressing the Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption.

And if you'd like to join us, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Dr. Fesco, if you could, before we even go on with more questions about the I

Am Sayings of Jesus, if you could tell us something about Westminster Seminary in California.

Yeah, we are a seminary that's dedicated to training leaders of

the Church in

the century,

and we also do so in the tradition of the Reformation through adhering to the

Reformed Confessions, the Three Forms of Unity, or the Westminster Standards.

We are in Escondido, California, and we were planted in 1979

and became our own separate, unique seminary back in 1981.

And we've now had, this coming May will be our 36th annual graduation, and we've

graduated some 1 ,100.

We have two degrees, the Master of Divinity degree, which is a professional degree for those seeking

ordained office as pastors, and then we also have Master's degrees in three

concentrations, and have a bunch of great guys on faculty here.

Some really top -notch theologians that do some wonderful work, and we have a great

student -to -teacher ratio, basically about 11 students for every one

professor, which means that, God willing, we can get one -on -one attention and

get a really good, terrific experience here at the seminary.

Well, I would appreciate you passing on my greetings to some of the faculty and staff there that I have

interviewed on Iron, Sharp, and Zion, including Dr. Robert Godfrey, and Michael Horton, and Dennis

Johnson, and Jim Renahan from the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies,

and if you could send them my greetings from Iron, Sharp, and Zion, I would appreciate it.

And the website, for those of you listening who want to know more about Westminster Seminary in California, it's

wscal .edu, W -S for Westminster Seminary, CAL, C

-A -L for California, dot E -D -U, W -S -C -A -L dot E -D -U.

Well, we do have another listener who has a question,

and I will give his full name because he is a pastor, and I'll give a little

plug to his church as well.

Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of Shepherd's Fellowship of Greensboro, North

Carolina, asks, how important is typology in the revelation of Jesus Christ in

the Old Testament text?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I think it's really, really important.

The analogy that I use in the book is I say that, imagine if you were rummaging

around in your attic and you found an old gold coin, and you thought, oh, this is perfect, I

wanted some kind of antique decoration for my office, I'll get it framed and I'll put it in my office.

And so you know that you've got some coin, and it's relatively valuable because you can tell that it's old.

But then somebody comes in to your office and says, holy cow, that's a really rare

gold coin.

In fact, that may be worth not just a couple thousand dollars, that's probably worth at least a hundred thousand

dollars.

So all of a sudden, this antique that you thought was valuable upon closer examination is

really valuable.

Well, I think that's the way that we often look at the Gospels, is that we look at them, we recognize

what Jesus has done, we see the miracles, we see his teaching, we hear his teaching, we read about it,

and we understand them, so it's valuable to us.

But I think that against the backdrop of the Old Testament, and in particular, all of the typology, that

is, all of the ways that the Old Testament gives us hints, or it

foreshadows, or it anticipates either the person or the work of

Christ, or the redemption that comes through Christ, that all of a sudden, Christ's actions, I

think, take on far greater significance.

Speaking, you know, before the break, about the typology or the relationship

between shadow and reality of the Old Testament exodus and the bread that came from

heaven, and now Jesus, who leads us, if you will, on the New Testament exodus,

because Jesus is greater than Moses, and he gives us himself, which is greater bread

than Moses ever gave Israel.

And this occurs, I think, throughout the Gospels, that Jesus

regularly, the way I like to describe it, he regularly quotes in images

and types and shadows and prophecies and promises of the Old Testament.

If Joseph had a coat of many colors, Jesus wears a figurative coat.

All of these Old Testament promises, prophecies, images, and types, and so

looking at Jesus's ministry against the backdrop of the Old Testament that

way, I think, really adds significance, it adds depth, and it

also shows us that from the very beginning of redemptive history, God has been planning

to reveal his Son, and he's been whispering along the way that, my Son is going to look like

this, my Son is going to do something like this, my Son will bring about a redemption that looks like this,

and that by the time it gets to Christ's revelation in the New Testament, God now

shouts it from the rooftops almost quite literally when he says at the baptism, this is my beloved

Son in whom I am well pleased.

So I think, yeah, there's just an absolute, you know, vital connection between the Old

and New Testaments in that regard.

You also address in your book Jesus's, I am, saying, I am the

light of the world from John.

8 -12 and John 9 -5.

Yeah, no, I think that this is one of those instances

that uses the backdrop of the Old Testament to explain who he

is, and in this particular context, this is occurs during the Feast of

Tabernacles.

And the Feast of Tabernacles was an annual celebration that Israel would conduct

and camp out.

They would put up tents or booths, sometimes called the Feast of Booths, or the

Feast of Tabernacles, and that they would reenact the Old Testament exodus.

There's a sense in which I think for, that their sense of history

is much, much more intimate than our own.

I think for us as Americans, a decade is a really long time.

But for, I think most, a decade is but a blink of an eye, so that

when observant Jews, almost as if for

them that the pebble of days ago.

That's how many of them look at it this way.

And I think that's the type of attitude that colored the Israelite celebration of

the Feast of Tabernacles in Jesus's day.

They're joining hand in hand with Israelites of the past to celebrate the exodus.

Well, on the pinnacle night of this celebration, it would

be marked by dancing and by the lighting of a lot of candles

and massive lights to remind them of when

the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire by night especially led Israel.

It was a reenactment of the pillar of fire by night as they lit these massive lights and these

candles.

Well, it's in this context that Jesus stands up in the midst of the crowds

and he cries out, I am the light of the world.

Now, I think it's significant that Jesus says these things for two reasons.

First, within the context of celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, he's

making, I think, another claim against that backdrop of Old Testament typology

that just as the pillar of fire led you by night, I am that

pillar of fire.

I am that light.

I am the one that gives you eternal life and that shines the light of the gospel in this sin

-darkened world and leads you out of bondage into freedom

through the redemption that comes from me.

But secondly, he says, I am the light not merely of Israel,

as that pillar of fire was something exclusively for Israel, but he says, I am the light of

the world.

In other words, Jesus is not a regional player, if you will.

He's not in regional theater.

He is a cosmic deity.

He is not limited simply to the people of Israel, but when he says, I am the light of the world, he's saying, I

am the one through whom people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, to use the language from the book of

Revelation, I am the one through whom people from every nation can find

salvation.

I'm not just a savior for the Jews, I'm also a savior for the Gentiles.

Yes, in fact, that was an Old Testament

command of the Jews to be a light unto the Gentiles themselves.

That's correct.

That's right.

And so it's interesting that his people, although obviously

Jesus Christ, who existed in

eternity past, and always has existed, and always will exist,

is uniquely certain things, but his disciples, those who are followers of

his, and even going back to Jehovah before Jesus was known by

the name Jesus, we are at times on this earth, we

share in these names that he has been given.

Some of these names have been exclusively reserved for him, but as we were just

saying, that we are to be a light, although the

old covenant saints were to be a light to the Gentiles, so in some senses we take on,

or are at least supposed to take on, some of these characters that are

expressed to be.

Descriptions of Christ in the scriptures, aren't we?

Yeah, no, I think that's right, in that the way I think the dynamic works here is that it's Christ who,

you know, it's Israel who foreshadows Christ, to invoke that category of typology again,

and that here Israel gets called that they're supposed to be a light unto the Gentiles, and

so now Jesus, and I would say he's the true Israel, he goes and takes that

responsibility upon himself, and so therefore anybody united to him

by faith, anybody indwelled by Christ, anybody that is united to Christ and has a

saving relationship with him, therefore takes on those characteristics,

whether in terms of the verdict passed over him in his justification, so we're just, or

the holiness that is supposed to mark him, just as we're supposed to be holy, or in this particular case,

that he is alighted to the Gentiles, and so we carry out that mission at Christ's

command through the Great Commission, as we then take the message of the gospel

and spread that light among the Gentiles.

So yeah, I think you're right there in terms of the connections between Christ as the head of the.

Church and our responsibilities as the church.

And we move on from there to another passage in the book,

another chapter.

We touched on it earlier already when we were talking about Lady Jane briefly, but the door,

Jesus says, I am the door in John 7, I'm sorry, John 10 verses 7 and 9,

and he also says that he is the good shepherd, I am the good shepherd, from John 10 verses 11

and 14.

If you could comment on that.

Yeah, sure, that's another passage that's important, where he weaves these two statements together in

one discourse, where he identifies.

What I find, I think, particularly interesting about this is that when Jesus

invokes this characteristic, that when he says, I am the good shepherd, and then I

think, you know, a sub -point to that is, I am the door, is that I think that people believe that

Jesus invoked this characteristic because he was working in and among sheepherders.

He was, you know, evangelizing and he was preaching to people that lived in an agrarian

culture, they were around animals all the time, animal husbandry was common,

and so I think people think, well, he was just trying to connect to his audience.

I don't want to completely dismiss that, and that may have been one small contributing factor to it,

but I think the overall motivating factor for Jesus identifying himself as the good shepherd and then

correlatively as the door, is that in the ancient world, long before Jesus ever walked the

dusty roads of Israel, is that kings regularly identified themselves

as shepherds.

And in fact, you have in some cases that archaeologists have dug up where they have these murals

that were painted in the ancient world that showed ancient Near

Eastern kings as shepherds and conquering lions and protecting

their sheep.

And so I think that Jesus invokes this language, invokes this title, I am the good

shepherd, because people in the ancient world would have naturally understood the

connection between the claims of royalty and

identifying oneself as a shepherd.

Shepherds were kings and kings were shepherds in the ancient world.

And this identifying themselves as shepherds wasn't a literal thing, but rather it was symbolic.

It was a way to say, I look out for and I care for my sheep, my people.

But what Jesus does with this imagery, and this is where I think it's quite powerful, is that he turns it

upside down, and that nowhere in the ancient world, as far as we're aware, do you find

this shepherd imagery used in the way that Jesus uses it.

Jesus identifies himself as a shepherd, which would identify him as a king, but

unlike these ancient kings in the world in which Jesus lived, Jesus says,

I lay down my life for my sheep.

And so this is, I think, really unheard of, that the shepherd, the king, would lay his life down

for the sheep.

And that this is where I think this door imagery comes in, where he says, I'm the door, nobody can come in

to the sheepfold except through me.

So he identifies himself as the king, but in an amazing manner, he

also says that he lays down his life for the sheep.

I once had, when I was preaching a sermon, I had somebody object and say, I don't like being called a sheep.

And I said it as gently as I could, but the bottom line was, well, get over it, the Lord Jesus has called you that.

You're not arguing.

With me, you're arguing with Jesus.

And he should be trembling with terror if he were to be referred.

To as a goat.

Exactly, exactly.

And I said, you know what, you know, because he says, I don't like to be called a sheep, because sheep are just property, they were

sold, they were slaughtered, you know, they were just, you know, they were a thing.

And I said, ah, but doesn't that make it all the more amazing that Jesus willingly lays down

his life for something, for a creature that is so lowly?

And I, you know, to me it invokes that language from the prophet Isaiah, that all we like sheep have gone astray.

So I said, in this respect, I think it's rather fitting that the Lord calls us sheep, but even all the more

amazing that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, for us, we who are sinners, we

who were rebels, we who rejected God's authority, and that while we were still sinners,

as Paul says, Christ died.

Yes, and I think this is another.

Excellent verse for those of us who cherish the

doctrine of particular redemption or definite atonement, sometimes called limited atonement,

because the Good Shepherd laid his life down for the sheep, he didn't lay his life down for the goats.

His atoning blood was shed specifically.

For his sheep, was it not?

You know, along with that question, you know, you want to pose the question, when

Jesus dies and he pays the penalty for sin, does he merely open the

possibility for salvation, or does he actually...

I think the abundantly clear answer from the Scriptures is that he

provides the salvation, he actually secures it for us, not merely

the possibility of it, and I think that that gets captured in this saying, as you mentioned here, in

terms of John 10, I am the Good Shepherd and I lay down my life

for the sheep, not for others, not for the goats.

That's definitely important.

It's not merely the possibility of salvation that Christ gives us, but he actually gives us eternal life

through his work.

We have Joseph in Medford, Long Island, New York, who says, I have heard that the Gospel of

John is so thorough and perfect in its contents

that no other book would be needed for God to

use it to draw them to salvation, to draw the lost to salvation.

Of course, all of the Bible is inerrant and is God's Word, but do you agree with that

statement that I have heard?

Yeah, I think it's a really rich book of the Bible.

I mean, it's one of my favorites, and that's not in any way to discount the other books of the Bible.

I think that, you know, we would say if we had no other book of the Bible, the book of John, except for the book of John,

would that be sufficient in and of itself to tell us as to who Jesus is and what he has accomplished

and what he did in his earthly ministry and his identity?

And I think the answer is a resounding yes.

And in that respect, I think John's Gospel is an incredibly useful

instrument, if you will, for personal evangelism, where you can sit down with an unbeliever

and if they have time and you have the patience to walk them through, you know, the

various claims that Jesus makes throughout that Gospel, that it presents an abundantly clear

message, I think well -suited to the task of evangelism.

And that's one of the reasons why, you know, that motivated me to write the book, is because of

these numerous I -N statements that, you know, the message is very clear.

The message is obviously, I think, clear in many other books of the Bible as well, but I think that this is a

definite go -to book, if you will, if you're looking for.

A good tool for evangelism.

Yes, and of course, God can use anything to draw the lost to himself.

He can even use the stammerings and stutterings of an

ignorant person, according to the world standards, ignorant, who

knows the Gospel that is in his inerrant word, and

just proclaims that Gospel through his love for the lost, even if he's inarticulate.

He might even have mental

brain damage, he might have brain damage or what have you, but he may know the truth of the Gospel and share that,

so God can use absolutely anything.

In fact, he has even used the enemies of the Gospel to bring people to salvation.

There have been people who started reading God's Word because the Jehovah's Witnesses came to the

front door, and that was a catalyst for them to delve into their Bibles, and they

wound up hearing the truth of the Gospel and of the Scriptures,

in spite of the false teacher.

That was at the door.

Yeah, no, I think the analogy that I would use here is, I would say, you can send a person to the

refrigerator to get a meal, and they'll find the meal of the Gospel in the refrigerator, or you can

present it to them on a plate, all in one place, such as in the Gospel of John, and they can get a meal.

But either way, a person can be fed in both manners.

Great,.

And by the way, Joseph in Medford, since you are a first -time questioner,

you're not only going to get a free copy of this book, Who is Jesus?, by J .V. Fesco, you're also getting

a free New American Standard Bible, a beautiful edition with an embossed cross on the cover, compliments

of the publishers of the New American Standard Bible.

So we need your full mailing address, and we'll have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship that out to you as soon

as possible.

So thank you for contributing that question.

And by the way, I don't know where you go to church in Medford, Long Island, New York, but there are two excellent

churches there.

There's Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Medford, Long Island, New York, and there's also Calvary Baptist Church in

Medford, Long Island, New York, both churches of which adhere to the doctrines of sovereign grace.

So I highly recommend you look them up if you don't have a good church already that you attend.

Well, we're going to a break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail

.com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We'll be right back with J .V. Fesco right after these messages.

So please do not go away.

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Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV and

occasional guest on Chris's show Iron Criticizing

Iron.

I think that's what it's called.

Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new

hometown.

It is going to be a bang up conference called the G3 Conference,

celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation with Paul Washer,

Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

We hope to see you there.

Learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

Thanks, Todd, I think.

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia,.

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?

Or am I trying to please man?

If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do

than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in.

Our guest today for the full two hours, with about an hour to go, is J .V. Fesco, author,

academic dean, professor of systematic theology and historical theology at Westminster Seminary in

California, and the last hour we discussed who is Jesus, knowing Christ through his I

Am Sayings, and we're going to continue that topic for a little bit, just so we can get through the

few sayings left that are provided in the book from the Gospel of John, and then

coming up right after that we will be discussing the book The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption,

also by our guest J .V. Fesco, the first being published by our friends at Reformation Heritage

Books, the latter being published by our friends at Christian Focus Publications.

So if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own,

our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at

gmail .com, and please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and

your country of residence if you live outside of the good old U .S .A.,

and we are up to the I Am Saying of Jesus from John 11

-25,.

I Am the Resurrection and the Life, if you could expand on that.

I think that the statement that Jesus makes suspect

to a lot of Christians is a sort of, you know, this comes

on the heels of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, and as I said at the beginning of the show,

that Jesus confirms his identity not only as God through the

things that he says, but also through the things that he does.

And in this particular case, Jesus raises, you know, somebody from the dead, in this

case he raises Lazarus.

And the narrative there in the 11th chapter is quite clear.

We, you know, Lazarus has not merely swooned, he hasn't gone into a coma.

You know, sometimes I think that people look at the Bible and they think, well, people in the first century,

you know, were simple people, and they didn't understand science and all of these things, and it's probably that Lazarus just

passed out.

And I love this narrative because I want to say, you know, they may have not had some of the

technology that we have, quite obviously, but they weren't stupid either.

I mean, people can tell when somebody is dead, and in this particular case, I really love

the statement that comes out of the King James when Jesus says, you know, roll back the stone,

and they say, oh, but Lord, he stinketh.

You know, he's been there for a while now, for a couple of days, and he's begun to rot.

You know, so this is not a question of mistaken death.

Lazarus was dead, and I think what gives us great hope is not only does Jesus

say, I am the way, or sorry, I'm the resurrection and the life, but he confirms

this by raising Lazarus from the dead, that here is somebody that was

once dead and now completely revived and alive.

I think that gives us hope in terms of, not only does it point forward, I think, to Christ's own

resurrection from the dead by the means by which he conquered sin and death, but

it also gives us hope in the face of death, you know, ourselves, so that when we look at

graves, when we look at the tombs of Christians, those who are united

to Christ, we know that they're not ending places, that they're not the final word in the

person's life, but that through Christ, when he cries out with the blast of the last

trumpet, as he, you know, says in John chapter 5, you know, when he calls the

dead to life, that just like Lazarus was raised from the dead, so we too shall

be raised from the dead, and that death will give way to life, and we will dwell eternally

with Christ, you know, with our resurrected bodies.

So I think that that is a great...should be, especially when we look

at death in the face, whether in the death of a loved one or even when we

face death ourselves in our own battles in life, whether it's through illness or

whether it's, you know, through an untimely end to

our existence.

So who but God can bring life out of death, and that, I think, is

a powerful testimony as to Christ's identity.

And you moved on in your book to John 14, verse 6, where

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, a very powerful statement

declaring his exclusiveness in regard to the salvation of

sinners, that he is the only way.

Yeah, I think absolutely.

I think one of my favorite explanations of this passage comes from C .S. Lewis in his

book, Mere Christianity, where he says that Jesus gives us one of three options.

He says that Jesus is either a lunatic, because he says who but a

lunatic would claim to be the only way to salvation, the only way to the Father, unless he

truly was.

And if he wasn't, then he's a loony, that he's somebody on the

level that believes himself to be a poached egg, which is

pretty funny.

On the other hand, he says if he's not a lunatic, then he's

got to be a liar, because if he's not telling the truth and he's claiming to be the only way,

then he's a liar on the level of a demon, somebody that would purposefully

mislead people, claiming to be the only way, when in fact he wasn't really the only way.

Or, if he's not a lunatic, if he's not a liar, then he is absolutely

the Lord and giver of life.

He is God in the flesh, which means that he is the way, the

truth, and the life.

And he says if that is the case, then we have to fall down on our faces and worship him as God in the

flesh.

So he's either Lord, liar, or lunatic.

So I love that explanation from Lewis, and I think it really helps us understand the significance.

Of Jesus's statement there.

Yeah, wasn't that basically Lewis's way of stopping people dead in their tracks when they tried to

have their cake and eat it too with Jesus?

They would say, you know, I love Jesus, I believe in Jesus, but he really isn't God.

I mean, I think that he's just a wonderful figure from history who we can learn a lot from.

He was a great person that we can

imitate in our lives, the perfect model of humility and sacrifice.

But he really wasn't God.

I mean, you don't have to believe he was God.

Wasn't that Lewis's way of just having people have a cold glass of water splashed in

their face to get them to wake up to.

See the inconsistency and the lack of logic in their reasoning?

No, absolutely.

Like you said, you can't claim that Jesus is

simply a good man because he claimed a lot more than that, and so you either have to

accept his claim to be Lord, the I Am, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, or you have to

reject it.

There is no middle ground.

You can't just give him the title of good man or a good teacher, because how could he be a good teacher if he was

claiming to be the only way, the truth, and the life, if he really wasn't?

So yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

I would hope it should be a bucket of cold water upon those types of claims,.

That Jesus is merely a good man.

Yeah, that's why, like for instance today, the vast majority of Jewish folks who

are not Christians, Jews that do not believe Jesus is the Messiah or God in the flesh, they

think that he, at least they will publicly typically, say that he was a wonderful figure

from history and so on.

But if you read some of the things that the rabbis were saying in the first century, very

politically incorrect statements about Jesus, about him being, you know, influenced by demons

and so on, you know, basically if Jesus is not God, those

Jews were right from the first century, as unspeakably horrible as those things that they said were.

If he is not God and if he is not the Messiah, they were right, and the modern pluralist.

Is wrong.

Am I right?

Yeah, no, I think, yeah, you have to pay attention to not only to what Jesus says,

but also what do his critics say?

What were his adversaries saying about him?

And they understood the nature of his claims, and they rejected them.

And not only did they reject him, but they attributed to him the exact opposite.

So this whole pluralistic type of notion that we can come to Jesus and fashion him

after our own image or after our own conception of deity is really

difficult to square when we take a close examination of what the scriptures teach about Jesus and about

what Jesus himself says about himself.

Right, yeah, it's interesting.

That those modernists and pluralists who want to have a Jesus that is not God,

they forget or they choose to not mention the fact

that he was executed for a reason.

Now, we know as Christians that God had ordained this, but on the earthly

plane, he was executed because of his claims of deity.

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely.

And if you could move on to the true vine in John.

Chapter 15, verse 1.

Sure, I think that when true vine, this again, I think a lot

of people come to this and they think, well, Jesus was lecturing or teaching in an agrarian

culture.

They, you know, were in and around vineyards, so they understood that what this imagery would have

been like, and so Jesus is simply invoking this to make a connection to his audience.

Again, that may be a small reason as to why he invokes it, but I think the overwhelming

evidence points in the direction that he is once again using Old Testament imagery.

In this particular case, he invokes the imagery that comes from Psalm 89, where the psalmist

likens Israel to a vine taken from Egypt.

Or, for example, in Isaiah chapter 5, where the prophet likens Israel to a vineyard,

and the Lord took the vineyard, he planted it, he put a hedge around it, he

plowed the ground to make it rich and fertile, he put a watchtower in it, he prepared a

vat so that he would be able to process the grapes to make wine.

And instead of yielding fruit, the fruit of grapes, the prophet says that

the vineyard yielded wild grapes.

Now, I'm a city boy, so I don't know anything about viticulture, except that you can buy wine in the grocery store.

And, you know, the whole imagery there is that wild grapes, as I've found through research,

are really in...they cannot be used for fruit.

They're sour, they're basically useless.

It's more or less what you have is a weed, and it's an uncontrollable weed, and if it's not exterminated,

it can take over your garden.

And so when the prophet Isaiah says he vineyarded and got wild

grapes instead of the fruit that he desired, the idea is that he

characterizes those wild grapes as bloodshed, as injustice, as

idolatry.

So against that old testament of Israel as the wild vine,

Jesus comes in and he says, I am the true vine, and if anybody

desires to bear, good to be united to me.

And my Father is the vine dresser.

So notice, the Father's role doesn't change.

He's the vine dresser in both Psalm 89, Isaiah chapter 5, but the

one that changes is it's no longer Israel, it is Jesus, the true Israel who comes in.

He's the true vine, and he produces the fruit that the Father

was looking for.

And in this context, Jesus says, I am obedient to my Father's will.

I do what he wants and what he commands.

And he says, you know, if you are obedient, you'll prove that you love my Father, that I

am in you, and that you are connected to me, the one true vine.

So I think in that respect, it's some important teaching that Jesus gives us, not

only about salvation, in terms of that he is the one true vine, the one that gives

life, but also in terms of our sanctification, the idea that if we

want to produce the fruit of holiness, of righteousness, of good works, then it's

only by being connected to Christ and in being in union with him that we will be enabled to

produce that fruit, or it's only when we're

connected to the one true vine that that life -giving sap of the Holy Spirit

that flows from Christ to the believer, that's what enables us,

or that's who enables us to produce the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience,

goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self -control, what Paul identifies as the fruit

of the Spirit.

We have Seth in Randleman, North Carolina, who asks,

what are your thoughts on those who agree that Jesus is God, but say that he was more

loving than God and not as judgmental?

I think what he means is more loving than the Father, and basically implying that

God the Father was full of wrath, whereas Jesus is full of love.

You very often have these people that have a bad cop, good cop

analogy of God, as if the God of the Old Covenant was the only

wrathful and mean and horrifying God, and thankfully now God in Jesus is

all purely love and forgiveness and mercy and sweetness.

But that's not really true as far as pitting the Father against the Son, is it?

No.

I mean, in fact, this idea goes back to

post -apostolic period of church history, where people such as Marcion,

not Martian as in somebody from Mars, but Marcion, M -A -R -C -I -O -N,

Marcion taught that there was the angry God of the Old Testament, the Father, and then there was the

loving God of the New Testament, and this is, again, it goes back, you know, nearly

1 ,750 years, a long period, long time ago.

And the idea is popular, but I think that it really, you really have to ignore a

lot of the teaching of Scripture in order to come to that type of conclusion, and I would

point out a couple of things in that regard.

First, you know, take a look at the Old Testament in particular and note how long

-suffering God was with the Old Testament Israelites.

I mean, you know, I say this knowing that if I were in their shoes, I probably would have been just as rebellious,

but if there was ever a group of people that deserved punishment, it was, you know, the Exodus generation, for example.

How much did they complain?

How much did they, you know, accuse God of trying to kill them?

How much grief did they give Moses?

There was the Korathite rebellion, and then Miriam had to be stricken with leprosy.

I mean, this is, with good reason, the prophets called them a stiff -necked, you know, people,

and called the Exodus generation by, I think, similar terms.

Again, going back to that imagery used by the prophet Isaiah, that they were a

wild vineyard.

But then, conversely, when you look at the New Testament, Jesus is very clear in his

condemnation, for example, of the Pharisees, when he called them a

brood of vipers, you know, saying those things.

But in particular, I would want to draw, secondly, our attention to a passage of Scripture, which is just

one example of many.

You know, and this is a very familiar passage of Scripture, I suspect, to many Christians, but I wonder if we've

given it thought in light of this particular question, you know, that supposedly, God

the Father is the angry one, and God the Son is the loving one.

But yet, in John 3, 16, we read, "...for God so loved the world, that

he gave his only Son.".

So it's the Father, the loving Father, who gives his only Son.

And yes, the Son comes and lovingly lays down his life for his sheep, as we've, you know, heard from

John 10, but it's the Father who sends the Son.

But then, conversely, notice that "...whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved

through him.".

So here is this idea that it's the Father who sends the Son.

And then it's the Son who, in obedience to the Father, which is a

sign of redemption, but the Son, in obedience to the Father's command, lays

down his life.

So I don't want to say that it's, you know, we don't want to pit any one member of the Trinity ever

against one another to say that, you know, the Father was thinking one thing and the Son was thinking another,

and that the Father was angry and the Son wasn't.

That's not at all the case.

Redemption is always an action of our triune God, but in this case, each

person of the Godhead has a distinct role that they play in redemption.

And in this case, the Father lovingly sends the Son, the Son lovingly lays

down his life for his sheep, and then the Father and the Son, in love,

send the Holy Spirit, who, in love, applies the work of redemption to fallen

sinners.

So yeah, I think that when we think of it in those lights, in the light of those passages of Scripture and those

teachings, I think it's a proposition that just cannot stand, that there's an angry

God of the Old Testament and a loving God of the New.

Thank you, Seth, in Randleman, North Carolina.

Give us your full mailing address, because you have also won a free copy of this book.

You've won the last copy of this book that we have to give away, Who is Jesus? Knowing

Christ Through His I Am Sayings by J .V. Fesco, published by our friends at Reformation Heritage

Books, and we hope that you enjoy that.

Coming up now, after our final break, we are going to be discussing the second book that our

guest has written, not that he's only written two, but that it's the second one we are addressing today,

The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption, which is published by our friends at Christian Focus Publications,

and we are going to be dedicating the rest of the program to that book.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our question is, I mean, our email address is

chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We will be right back with J .V. Fesco after these messages.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a half hour to go

is J .V. Fesco.

And now we are going to be discussing during this last half hour his book, The Trinity and

the Covenant of Redemption, published by our friends at Christian Focus Publications.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

And before I return to our guest, I want to remind you that my dear friend of

nearly 30 years, perhaps even over 30 years, Bill Shishko, who is an

ordained Orthodox Presbyterian minister, he is hosting the

program A Visit to the Pastor's Study, which is a 90 -minute program

heard every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 30 p .m. Eastern Time on

WLIE radio on Long Island.

You can hear that program every Saturday if you live in the New York Tri -State area

on 540 AM on the dial nearly anywhere in New York, New Jersey, or

Connecticut, even parts of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts as well.

But if you don't live in those areas, you can hear the program anywhere on the planet Earth via live streaming at

wlie540am .com.

That's wlie540am .com.

Listen every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 30 p .m. to A Visit to the Pastor's Study, hosted by

my dear friend, Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

And that reminds me, our guest today, J .V. Fesco, is also a minister in the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Are you not?

Yes, I am.

That's correct.

Almost getting close to 20 years almost in the denomination as a.

Minister, so yeah.

If you could just describe that denomination for our listeners who may not have.

Heard about the Orthodox Presbyterian Church before.

Basically back in the early portion of the 20th century, in

the 1915s, 1919s, 1920s kind of thing, basically the first two decades, there

was significant controversy at Princeton Seminary where a

number of the professors, including J. Gresham Machen, professor of New Testament, was

concerned about the liberal drift at the seminary, and so he

ended up, you know, leaving and founding a new

seminary at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

That happened in the late 20s, and then right around that same time, Machen was

also equally concerned about the drift in the mainline church in the Presbyterian

Church in the U .S., and it was particularly a book buck.

She wrote this book called The Good Earth, and she was a missionary in China,

and basically said that you don't need to have the, you know, you don't have to use the

gospel in evangelism, and that was a significant concern to him, and so he ended up founding the

Independent Mission Board to send missionaries that believed in the gospel of Jesus into the

foreign mission field, and long story short, Machen ended up getting

defrocked.

They stripped him of his ordination, setting up this Independent Mission

Board and opposing the Christless missionary endeavor of the

PCUS, and so he ended up founding, at the initial point, it was called the

Presbyterian Church PCUS, threatened them with a lawsuit,

so they pulled the name and they changed it to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

So I like to tell my PCA friends, actually, where I'm in the PCA,.

The old original PCA.

How did the later PCA get away with it?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's interesting.

I guess maybe the PCUS thought, ah, fine, whatever, we'll let them have it.

It's, you know, too much of a hassle, but yes, we found 1930s,

and then, so the denomination has been in

existence for 85 years, and you know, still, praise

God by His grace, going strong and growing slowly but surely, and so yeah, it's a

fantastic denomination.

I like to say it's the most perfect imperfect church.

You know, I really enjoy being a part of it, and you know, so it's a great denomination, so

yeah.

Yes, and I can echo that, even though I'm a Reformed Baptist.

I have many dear friends in the OPC, and let me

give a shout out to my friend Bill Shishko again, and also to Jason Wallace in the Salt Lake City, Utah

area, who's an OP pastor.

We've got a whole number of OP folks, Greg Reynolds and

Jody Morrison, who's right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and a whole bunch of fine OP

folks that have become my friends, and I'm better for knowing them, and I guess one lesson to be

learned by what you just described in regard to the fundamentalist modernist controversy

is if you're in a bookstore or a library, pass the buck.

If you see Pearl Buck, just keep walking, meaning if you see her books on the shelf, I

mean.

Well, I wanted to just give a couple of accolades for this book that we are going to be talking about now,

and that is The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption.

My friend Dr. Joel Beakey, who's been a guest on Iron Sharp and Zion many times, he

says, some books today exegete the shining truths of the holy scriptures.

Others mine the treasures of Reformed orthodoxy, and yet others interact with influential

theologians of the modern era.

This book is one of the few that does all three and does them well.

That's Dr. Joel R. Beakey, president of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

And finally, Michael Horton, who's also been a guest on Iron Sharp and Zion a number of times,

he says, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption displays the vitality and richness of the covenant of

redemption for other doctrines, not least the Trinity.

In both method and substance, this is an exemplary work that will edify as well as inform.

That's Dr. Michael Horton, professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary in California.

And just want to give our email address again, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We do have a few listeners already waiting to ask questions, but if you could let our listeners know, what

was the catalyst behind writing this.

Very thick and thorough book?

Yeah, I mean, it's in one sense, it's been a subject of interest of mine over the years, but

as I've been 16th and 17th century Reform

Theology, it started to really, you know, become evident

and obvious to me that as important as the doctrine is, I couldn't really find that

many books on the subject.

Which is the eternal intra

-trinitarian agreement among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in some versions, it's among Father and Son,

and in other ways, but the intra -trinitarian agreement to

not only plan redemption, but to execute it.

You know, it's quite common in the sense that you find it in a lot of 16th and 17th

century works, but there are few solitary or

monarchs that are dedicated exclusively to the subject.

And then I think that there was a second reason behind it, you know, as far as wanting to research and do

some work on it, the

doctrine of imputation that get traced.

And in particular, I've had a significant interest in the

doctrine of justification that's been kind of one of the main interests in my

writing over the years, and it's one that I continue to want to press, you know, into the future,

and looking at it from various different angles and whatnot.

And as I was reading about the doctrine of justification in my research, I regularly found, you

know, mention of the covenant of redemption, and particularly as it pertains to doctrine

of imputation, and I thought, hi, you know, I want to read more about this, and I want to study more about this, but

there isn't a whole lot out there, so let me put something together, hopefully, and see what I can do

to contribute positively to the ongoing discussion, and hopefully put out a

volume that would be useful to people in the Church today that would have a summary of the

history of the doctrine, and then show the exegetical footing for

the doctrine together in terms of stating, giving a definition of the

doctrine, and then showing

how Trinity, the doctrine of predestination, the doctrine of imputation, and then the order of

salvation.

And so the overall intent there is to, you know, I've written this one, and then hopefully I'll do

follow -up volumes on the covenants of works and redemption, or sorry, works and grace, the

covenants of works and grace.

Well, I already know that I have to invite you back on to continue on the

subject of this book, because we've only got about 15 minutes left, so I know that I want you to return,

but what you're talking about when you're talking about the doctrine of imputation, that is really

at the very heart of the Protestant Reformation, is it not?

Yes, it is.

Yeah, important.

I think that that's what separates, you know, a Roman Catholic understanding

from a Protestant doctrine of justification, and in fact, God willing, it's going to

be out, I think it's going to be out in the UK maybe in a couple of days, and then it'll

be out here in the States called Death in Adam, Life in Christ, the Doctrine of Imputation.

And so some of this research ended up in that book a little bit, but yeah, I mean, the doctrine

of imputation is so, so important.

Yeah, in fact, it not only separates the Reformers and their

heirs from the Church of Rome, it really separates

the Reformers and Biblical Christianity, because obviously we don't believe in these truths

because the Reformers taught them, we believe in them because they're Biblical.

They come from the inerrant scriptures, the God -breathed scriptures, but it also separates

Biblical Christianity or Reformational Christianity from really the entirety of the

world's religious systems, doesn't it?

Because whatever version or understanding

of salvation or being justified before a higher being or being

admitted into heaven, whatever kind of version other religions have for that, because obviously they don't all

use the same language or the same dictionary that we have, they all involve

men's efforts in some way in meritoriously earning

a higher state or a higher place either in this life or the

next, whatever their understanding of it.

Whereas the Bible and the Reformers were basically saying that it is Christ

alone, it is God alone, soli deo gloria, it is God alone that deserves

100 percent of the praise, honor, and glory and.

Credit for the salvation of the lost, am I right?

No, absolutely, and I think that we find that captured

righteousness as perfect law -keeping and suffering that God accredits to our

account through imputation, and you see that, for example, in Romans 4 and Romans 5, quite

clearly 2 Corinthians 5, 21 is another passage, Leviticus 16,

Isaiah 53, those are all passages that speak to the doctrine that

highlight the fact that it's Christ's work that saves us

and not our work, or in terms that Luther used, that we're saved by an alien

righteousness, a righteousness that is not our own.

So I think that that...

Yeah, and the Roman Catholics call that

illegal fiction,.

Don't they?

They basically say that it's ridiculous to

believe that God is not

transforming the actual person and making them righteous and therefore

worthy of heaven when it comes to justification.

The idea that he is just being saved or justified before God because of

Christ's perfect obedience being imputed to him, they think that that's nonsense.

Now, obviously, we also have to give pause to the notion

that there are many evangelicals who have a false understanding that gives way

to easy believism and cheap grace, where they will say just because a person has some kind of a

said faith and intellectual understanding or professed belief in Jesus that they are

going to heaven without having a transformed life, that they will live any way they choose for the

rest of their lives in rebellion against God and still go to heaven.

That's also a nonsensical and unbiblical concept, is it not?

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

It is unbiblical, to say the least.

But unfortunately, a lot of people believe in that understanding of justification.

Yeah, they think it's some sort of, you know, alchemy.

Alchemy was, you know, the idea that you could take lead and turn it into gold with some sort of chemical, you know,

reaction of mixing of chemicals, and it's an alchemy where a little bit of

God's grace and a little bit of our works, that we can combine those two to create the gold of salvation, and

it's not possible.

I mean, like you said, there's no mixture.

Many passages in the Old Testament make so abundantly clear, but it especially comes to the fore in books, say, like

Romans or especially in Galatians, where the Judaizers were trying to combine their own

good works or adherence to the law with God's grace and faith in Christ to come up with salvation, and

Paul was quite exercised and concerned that that just simply was not the case.

Yes, and isn't it also true that just as Christ's righteousness

is imputed to his elect, that our wickedness was imputed to

him on Calvary?

Right, and that's the nature of what, you know, where it goes all the way back and gets driven

back to the covenant of redemption, that in the covenant of redemption, the Father appoints the

Son as the covenant surety.

In other words, as the one who has the legal responsibility for taking upon

himself the covenant obligations for those who will be saved.

And in this particular case, the sin or the

guilt of the elect to Christ, which he then, you know, makes payment for in

history on the cross, and then he decrees to impute the righteousness of

Christ or his perfect law -keeping to the elect in

history when they make their profession of faith, you know, as they embrace

Christ by faith alone.

And that all gets planned in the covenant of redemption when Christ is assigned the

role as covenant surety, and we find that, for example, in Hebrews 7 .22, where the

author of Hebrews says that he was made

the surety by an

oath, the oath that he appoints Christ a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, for example,

in Psalm 110.

And so yeah, imputation, and

then imputes to us his righteousness, finds its origins in Christ's appointment

as our covenant surety in the covenant of redemption.

Yeah, it's been known as the great exchange, right?

Absolutely, and a glorious exchange it is, for sure.

Yes, we have C .J. in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who

says, Do you believe that a right understanding of the Trinity

is essential to salvation?

The reason why I ask this is that I have heard a number of Trinitarian

apologists say that if you were to interview your average Christian, you would

likely get a modalist description of the Trinity, which would therefore mean that

most Christians don't really understand the biblical concept.

So how then, therefore, can we hold that as a litmus test of genuine salvation?

Yeah, you know, in one sense that's a tough question, because it asks me to sit in the seat of

God and to say, you know, you're in or you're out.

And so we certainly can't answer that question from that vantage point, but we can answer the

question from the standpoint that we have as human beings, or in particular, I can as a

minister of the gospel.

And I can say that as a minister of the gospel, I have an obligation scripturally to

inculcate people into a biblical understanding of who God is,

and that requires me to inculcate them and teach them that God is a triune God,

that God is one in substance, three in person, and that any time that

I inquire of somebody's faith and I say, you know, what do you believe,

you know, and if they were to give me understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity,

I would do my best to work with them, to disciple them, to encourage them.

And in this particular case, I think that in most churches, I suspect that practice any form

of formal church discipline, that it's one thing if somebody were to be genuinely

mistaken and then corrected and discipled, and

it would be another for somebody to be an

ardent, willful opponent of the doctrine of the Trinity.

In those cases, I think that you'd find most churches performing some sort,

and in that particular case, to deny the doctrine of the

Trinity would basically put somebody under church, would render them liable to church discipline

when they place somebody under church discipline, is that as far as we are concerned

and can humanly tell, you are in a state of grievous sin,

and that you may not be in a state of salvation, and that you need

to search the Scripture, search your heart, pray and repent of these things, that you might be restored into the

fellowship of the Church.

And so that's the way that I would put it, to say that I can't say with absolute certainty, you know, 100 certainty,

oh, you're in error, therefore you're not going to be saved on these particular questions, because of that

fine distinction between somebody who is a genuine believer but mistaken

versus somebody who is perhaps not a believer and a proponent of

serious heresy.

But I can say that if we don't believe in the teaching of the Scripture, one

in substance and three in person, that it's the Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

all of whom are God, equal in power and glory, then that does put us in jeopardy, I

think, of being out of a state of salvation.

So I would never want to show up to the throne of judgment believing anything other than.

The doctrine of the Trinity in that respect.

Amen.

And wouldn't you say that it would be right and

logical and even biblical to address

those that are teachers, those that are heretical

evangelists and missionaries who are aggressively

adopting as their main mission in life to destroy the biblical teaching of the

Trinity and to tear it from the minds of those who claim to

believe in it, that those people would be in a different category than your average

uneducated person in a pew?

It seems like, for instance, even the Apostle Paul, when he was addressing the Church of Galatia,

he was saying the harshest things about the Judaizers, these false

teachers that were adding works to faith for salvation,

and yet he was still calling, even though using harsh terms as well for

the average Christians in the Church of Galatia, he was calling them his brethren at the

same time.

So he seemed to be.

Treating them in some sense differently.

Would you agree with that?

Yeah, no, absolutely.

In fact, you know, I recently had basically, you know, I don't say this to be

cruel, but rather just to be, you know, very truthful, even sometimes when the truth may hurt.

I had some heretics at my door a couple of months ago telling me that I had to believe

that there was a Queen of Heaven, and that men were made in the image of God, and that women were

made in the image of the Queen of Heaven.

And I said, you know, and they had all kinds of objections against the doctrine of the Trinity, and I said, look,

I want you to understand why I'm saying this.

I'm saying this because I'm concerned for your soul, not because I want to insult you, but

believing what you believe, you will go to hell.

There is no Queen of Heaven.

You're denying fundamental teachings of the Scriptures, not only of the

Scripturically, the entire tradition of

Western, you know, so I wanted to make sure and know

that they were on a heretical path.

I said, you are teaching heresy.

This is false doctrine of the worst sort.

So yeah, I think that when we encounter people like that in love,

the loving thing for us to do is to, and just like a, you know, a doctor

who wants to have to confront a patient and tell the patient you have cancer, and you know, you

have to remove the cancer in order to restore your health, that's the way we have to approach, I think, false

teachers.

We have to confront them with their cancerous teaching so that hopefully we can

remove that cancerous teaching from their hearts, and that's

obviously in the end only something.

That the Spirit of God can do.

Amen, and CJ and Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, give us your full mailing address because you have won

this beautiful book, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption by J. V. Fesco, compliments

of Christian Focus Publications who have brought this book into print and who have provided us

with these free copies to give away, and we are certainly going to be God

willing, that is, having J. V. Fesco back on Iron Sharpens Iron to continue his

discussion of this book because it is a very thick and thorough book, The Trinity and the Covenant of

Redemption.

If those of you who were not able to win a book would like to investigate how to purchase a copy,

you can go to ChristianFocus .com.

ChristianFocus .com, especially if you live in the UK, and we do have a number, quite a number of listeners in the UK,

but you could also go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service who carries all of the Christian Focus

Publications titles.

They are one of the primary sources in the United States for

Christian Focus Publications, so you can get that book from them at

Cvbbs .com.

C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com.

And I thank you so much, Dr. Fesco, for being our guest today.

I look forward to having you back.

I know that the Westminster Seminary of California website is wscal .edu.

W -S -C -A -L .edu.

Do you have.

Any other contact information you'd like to provide?

No, that's it, just wscal .edu.

That's the website there.

If people wanted to ask me any particular questions, my address is up there,

academicdean .wscal .edu, and I'd be happy to answer some questions from that venue.

And like you said, Chris, I do hope that, yeah, we can work out the details, and I'd love to be back on so that we could

discuss in greater detail the covenant of redemption.

I think it'd be a lot of fun and hopefully informative and edifying for your listeners.

Great, and I hope all of you listening.

Always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a

sinner.

We look forward to hearing from you and your questions tomorrow for our guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

God bless.