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, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, 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 as 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 but to unbelievers, because it's not a daunting, intimidating size, and it's on 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 or the

Creed, 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 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 as a 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 us all, whether we are 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 that has great significance not only for our relationship with Christ, but ultimately for 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, 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 points.

The first thing that you want to say or that we would want to say is, you know, what do the 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 testify to the coming

Messiah in terms of when this would happen, what type of person he would be, and ultimately what his identity would be.

So that's 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 we have to wrestle with in terms 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, 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. So it's those things, 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 where I teach at Westminster Seminary, California, in Escondido, California, is the importance of studying the

Scriptures in the original languages, and this is especially important for ministers of the gospel, because 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 translated is I Am. That is the same

Greek phrase that Jesus takes upon his own lips at several points throughout the gospel 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' verbal way of affirming his deity, that he is the great I Am, but also through his actions, and even through the symbolic significance of his actions, the text tells us this.

On another occasion, I think Jesus does the same thing when, 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 jeer him a bit, and 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 635 and John 648,

I am the bread of life, you know, here he does this in the broader context of talking about the manna that came down from heaven that God sent

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 4th and 5th 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, and 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, and for 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 and 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 check that one, or either that or ask one of my colleagues.

So I'll have to quad punt on that one and say it sounds great, but I'd need to double check.

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's 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, as well as the

Lutherans holding to a form of presence. And so then the question is, you know, how and why?

And in one sense it boils down to the question of what does, you know, what is is?

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

Does he mean literally, you know, this is my literal physical body contained in the bread, or that the bread somehow transforms into my body, or does is have a metaphorical reference, a symbolic reference?

And so that's the first, you know, the first issue is that 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, a good shepherd, I am the door, you know, and whatnot.

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

So that's the first thing of the interpretive questions. I think secondly, there are differing theological perspectives on this particular question, so that the

Roman Catholic 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 of bread and wine.

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 the

Church, that it's the Church that dispenses salvation, and the means by which the

Church does this is through the sacraments, and in particular for Rome, it's 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 that takes precedence, but the

Word, the Gospel, and hence the call for faith, because according to Roman Catholics, you can consume the

Body and Blood of Christ apart from faith. Whereas historically, I think the

Reformed churches have always maintained that, no, you have to have faith in order to benefit from the 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 the Roman Catholic Church and other forms of Christianity don't get together, is because of 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 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 win 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 Bice 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, Vody Balcom, 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. Make sure you greet me at the

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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 chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson 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, you know, that places the Scriptures at the highest position of authority, as Protestant Reformation always has done so since the 16th 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 students.

We have two degrees, the Master 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 give students some good 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 Trip 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 Trip and Zion, I would appreciate it.

Will do, for sure, absolutely. 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 edu, wscal .edu.

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 Shepherds 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.

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, such as we were just 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 clothes himself 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, if you will, of 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.

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. Yeah, no, I think that this is one of those instances where Jesus uses the backdrop of the

Old Testament to explain who he is. And in this particular context, this occurs during the

Feast of Tabernacles. And the Feast of Tabernacles was an annual celebration that Israel would conduct where they would go out and camp out.

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

Feast of Tabernacles. So they would set up tents and that they would reenact the Old Testament exodus.

There's a sense in which I think for most Jews 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 Jews, you know, a decade is but a blink of an eye, so that when observant Jews will celebrate the

Passover, it's almost as if for them that the Passover was just a couple 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 himself as the door and then as the

Good Shepherd. 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 sheep herders.

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 royalty or 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 said, 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, 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 for us.

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? No, absolutely, yes.

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 secure it?

And 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 my life down, I lay down my life for the sheep, not for others, not for the goats, and so I think that 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 the, 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, and even might be, 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. But 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.

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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

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We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com. g3conference .com.

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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

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. 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,

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USA. 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. Sure. I think that this is a statement that Jesus makes that, to me, and I would suspect to a lot of Christians, is a source of great comfort and hope, because, 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.

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 source of hope for us, or it hopefully should be, especially when we look death in the face, whether 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 the one, 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' statement.

Yeah, wasn't that basically Lewis' 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' 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. I think that it's an instance where, you know, 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 a 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 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 15, verse 1.

Sure, I think that when Jesus says that he is the 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 were in and around vineyards, so they understood 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, 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 that God planted this vineyard 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 backdrop of Israel as the wild vine,

Jesus comes in and he says, I am the true vine, and if anybody desires to bear good fruit, you have 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 to expand the metaphor a little bit, 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 and 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 the earliest days of the 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 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 that kind of starts to get us into the covenant 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 dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Don't go away. We will be right back with J. V. Fesco after these messages. Lynnbrook Baptist Church on 225

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This is Chris Arnzen. 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 chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen 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 Pastors 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 Pastors Study, hosted by my dear friend Pastor Bill Shishko of 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. Yeah, sure, basically back in the early portion of the 20th century, in the 1915, 1919, 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 through a series of events that occurred, 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 by an author by the name of Pearl 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 because of 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 in America, but the 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, oh fine, whatever, we'll let them have it.

It's too much of a hassle. But yes, they founded the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the mid -1930s, and then so the denomination has been in existence for some 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, 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 Sharpens Iron 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 Sharpens Iron 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, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

chrisarnsen 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, it's, in one sense, it's been a subject of interest of mine over the years.

But as I've been doing some studying, a lot of research in 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. The Covenant of Redemption, which just may briefly define it, which is the eternal intra -trinitarian agreement among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In some versions, it's among Father and Son. And then the Holy Spirit is factored in in other ways.

But the intra -trinitarian agreement to not only plan redemption, but to execute it.

So, 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 monograph books, there are few books 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, is that there are a lot of conversations about the doctrine of imputation that get traced back to the

Covenant of Redemption. And in particular, I've had a significant interest in the doctrine of justification.

That's been kind of one of my 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 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, and then put the doctrine together in terms of stating, giving a definition of the doctrine, and then showing how this doctrine relates to other subjects that are related to it, such as the doctrine of the

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, and it's so, so, so important.

I think that that's what separates, you know, a Roman Catholic understanding of justification 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, but I've written a book on the subject 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 % 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 very clearly in the doctrine of imputation, that it's

Christ's righteousness, his 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 is so, so important, you're absolutely right. 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 alchemy. Alchemy was the idea that you could take lead and turn it into gold with some sort of chemical reaction, mixing of chemicals, and it's an alchemy where we think that with 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 of the two, and I think that's one of the things that the New Testament and 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 Father assigns the sin and 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 722, where the author of Hebrews says that he was made the surety of a better covenant.

And it's echoed in so many other places in the Scriptures, but especially prominently 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, that double imputation, that Christ bears our sinfulness 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 CJ 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 catechize and 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 a defective 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 brought back onto the path of, you know, correct doctrine, 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 of church discipline for doctrinal error, 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, and what the church is saying 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 that places your soul in jeopardy, 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, you know, 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 Scriptures that God is 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

Scriptures, but you're departing from basically the entire tradition of Western Christendom here.

You know, so I wanted to make sure in no uncertain terms that they were on a heretical path.

I said, you are teaching heresy. This is false doctrine of the worst sort. So yeah, absolutely,

I think that when we encounter people like that in love, the loving thing for us to do is to confront them with the truth, and just like, 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 perform a careful surgery that 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 in Lyndonhurst, 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 -focused 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 -focused publications titles. They are one of the primary sources in the

United States for Christian -focused publications, so you can get that book from them at cvbbs .com,

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs 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 dot edu. Do you have any other contact information you'd like to provide? Dr.

Fesco No, that's it, just wscal .edu. That's the website there. If people wanted to ask me particular questions, my address is up there, academicdean at 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. Dr. Reagan 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.