Jesus Christ (Part II)

All right, I would be remiss if we didn't pray. Lord God and Father, we come before you in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. We only have audience with you through him, through his blood, and I thank you that you gave his blood to buy us and to sprinkle us clean from all of our sins.

Pray before you now that you would bless this time. I pray that it would not just be informative, but that it would be life-changing. I pray that for those that would listen to this online, that you would lay hold upon their hearts and you'd bring about that conviction of sin and repentance, turning from sin, and to place all of their faith and all of their hope on Jesus Christ and his sacrifice and his righteousness and his work alone.

And if they have already done that, Lord, that they would continue in the grace of God. I pray that you would draw people from all sides of the city of Edmonton and all corners of the world to hear the gospel and to believe and be saved.

I thank you this night for this opportunity. Please be with my mouth and my tongue and be with our understanding. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, brothers and sister, we are here tonight and we're going to consider the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

And this is gonna be the second part. There's gonna be a third part, Lord willing, after this. If you have the pamphlet which has the statement of faith on it, you can turn to that. In the section that I'm gonna be covering, it says, by the blood of his cross, he satisfied the wrath of God, obtained for us eternal redemption, the gift of faith, the forgiveness of sins, spiritual adoption as sons and daughters, life everlasting, and he defeated the powers of darkness.

Amen.

The Cross at the Center of Christian Theology

What more could be said? What, a lot more could be said, actually, as we will find out. But together with the resurrection, the cross of Jesus Christ holds the center of the Christian message in all our theology.

It is the ABCs with which God teaches his elect and draws them to salvation. But it is not something that we graduate from, but it's something that we stick there. And then everything else that we study centers around and is formed in the gospel, so that the cross is the mold into which all theology is poured and everything comes out cruciform.

But not only is this study that we're about to have insufficient to mine all the riches of the sacred doctrine, but time itself would fail to be long enough for us, and we could only carry a few shekels away.

Now, here's a few shekels. By the blood of his cross, he satisfied the wrath of God. In a word, propitiation. Propitiation. Comes from Luke 18, 13, where the tax collector beats his breast, doesn't even raise his face toward heaven, and cries out to God and says, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

In that statement, be merciful to me, we could translate it, be propitious to me, a sinner, or be propitiated to me, a sinner. Basically, let your anger be removed from me. Leon Morris says, even as he asks for forgiveness, he recognizes what he deserves.

Sinners deserve something. What do we deserve? What do sinners deserve from God that he would request God to be merciful to him? Romans 1, 18, it says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Everything that follows in Romans 1, 18, the wrath of God is expressed towards sinners in giving them over to their own heart's desires. And all the corruption that flows from that and the end result, death.

Death, not just first death of a physical kind, but second death, eternal separation from God. This wrath that God expresses towards sinners, the tax collector is asking, do something with that wrath other than pour it out on me, which I deserve.

Turn that wrath away from me, though I deserve it, I'm asking you to turn that anger that I justly deserve away from me. He's asking for forgiveness. That wrath of God gets picked back up in Romans 3, 21 and on.

It says, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. So the way that a person, a sinner, can be made right with God, it has been openly revealed and it's not on the basis of the works of the law, although the law and the prophets, the scriptures bear witness to it.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward, here's our word, as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

Now, him putting us forward, what is the result of this? What was this to accomplish? It says this was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he's holding himself back in patience, he had passed over former sins.

Think of all of the sins of God's people that God withheld himself from unleashing himself his anger on, which he would be right to do, but he held himself back on, so that he unleashes his anger upon his own son.

It was to show his righteousness at the present time, the time of Christ's coming and the new covenant, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. If God were the kind of God that just swept sin under the carpet, forgave it without actually dealing with the sin, then he would not be just, he'd be a justifier, but he himself would turn out to be wicked.

What God does is he does not bend in his justice the slightest, he deals with sin and sinners the persons that have committed the sins on a strict, absolute, just scale. And yet he's able to justify at the same time.

And he did this because it says Jesus here, God put forward, he's published Christ as propitiation, propitiation, propitiation in that verse could be translated the mercy seat. We go back to the Old Testament with the tabernacle or the temple, and it had all of the different furniture within the temple.

The one thing in the very, the epicenter of God's holiness is the holy of holies, that only piece of furniture in there was the Ark of the Covenant. And the lid of that Ark was called the mercy seat. Now, if we could translate, if we did translate it, mercy seat, it still says the same thing, because that's the place where God's wrath is satisfied for the sake of the sprinkled blood, which symbolizes the death of a substitute, a sacrificial victim, death has passed, a death has come to an individual and wrath has been poured out.

And now blood is poured out that symbolizes that death has happened. Now that's okay for bulls and goats upon a literal Ark made out of acacia wood and covered on all sides with gold, but in order for a human being, one sinner, nevermind the sins of all of the people that would benefit from Christ's death, but if even one sinner is ever to have all of their sins taken away and to go into God's present, symbolizes by the holy of holies, to go into God's presence forever and be accepted, it takes something better, infinitely better than blood of an animal.

The only way for us not to go to hell for eternity is for an eternal person to suffer the equivalent of hell on the cross for us. Either we die and suffer under God's wrath and punishment forever, unendingly, or someone whose death is so valuable and whose person is eternal that his suffering of the equivalent of our hell can cause God's wrath to be satisfied so that we no longer have to face it.

Matthew Henry said, Christ's sufferings were short, yet the value of them made them fully satisfactory. In the sufferings of damned sinners, what is wanting, what is lacking in value must be made up in an endless duration.

The Puritan Thomas Manton said, though Christ paid the same debt as that which is due from lost souls, yet through the excellency of his person, it was done in a shorter time. And then he makes this illustration.

A payment in gold is the same sum as a payment in silver or brass, only through the excellency of the metal, it takes up less room. Christ is the gold, and he was there at the cross and he suffered in our place.

If we are to suffer, it is of no value whatsoever to blot out one iota of our sins. And so he is the propitiation, Christ himself. He is the one, he's the sacrifice, the once for all sacrifice that cannot be repeated, that not only takes away sin, but turns away God's anger from individuals.

Now, liberals, liberal theologians hate the doctrine of God hating people for their sins and thus requiring a sacrifice to appease his anger. They think that this notion is pagan, it's a leftover of paganism to say that God is angry, he's an angry deity, and he demands some sacrificial victim in order to appease and turn away his anger.

They think that that's not the biblical Christ-like God that they see in the Bible, and they would rather translate hilasterion, the word we get for propitiation, they would rather translate that as expiation.

So not taking away God's wrath, but merely taking away sins, removing guilt from us, removing sin from us, and thus they would relieve us of the idea of God being angry with the sinner himself. George Ladd said, if hilasterion means only expiation, the question must be answered.

Why should sin be expiated? Why should it be taken away, removed? What would be the result to humanity if there were no expiation? It is evident that if people die in their sins, they have the divine displeasure to face, and this is but another way of saying that the wrath of God abides on them.

Either way, you can't escape it. If the death of Christ is to take away sins, which it is, but only to remove sins and not to turn away God's anger, that is a contradiction in terms. Christ's death, he satisfied the wrath of God.

Well, why do people still go to hell then? If his wrath is satisfied, why is there the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness? Why is there people still dying and going to hell when they experience forever the wrath of God?

1 John 2 says, he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. People say, well, then why do people still go to hell? Or they will say, because he's the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, he satisfied the wrath of God for everybody, then everybody gets saved.

That's universalism. Arminianism goes another way and says, he's the propitiation for everybody, and yet that propitiation doesn't actually apply to you. It doesn't get imputed to you if you don't receive it yourself.

Thomas Schreiner said, I think that this verse actually supports limited atonement, that is that Christ's death was designed to satisfy the wrath of God for his elect only. It's sufficient because of Christ's worth and sacrifice, sufficient to save even the non-elect.

If a non-elect person were to believe, they would be saved because of the value of Christ's death, yet the design of Christ's death was to satisfy the wrath of God so that it would no longer touch his people.

So he says, I think this verse actually supports limited atonement instead of contradicting it, rightly interpreted, because I don't think it says Jesus is the potential satisfaction for the sins of all, but he is the satisfaction for the sins of all.

But I don't think all here means all without exception, but all without distinction. Not all without exception, but all without distinction. Christ Jesus is the sacrifice for all. That if you would believe, you will be saved.

When I say all, I'm not saying he is the sacrifice that turned away the wrath of God, even for those that are suffering in hell and that will suffer in hell hereafter, but that if you repent and trust all in Christ, there's no wrath for you.

Christ has taken it, and this actually shows the love of God. The liberals want to say that God cannot be angry, wrathful and love at the same time, and yet scripture intertwines them both. 1 John 4, he says, 1 John 4, 10, in this way the love of God was manifested.

Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. So Christ taking the wrath of God is actually the supreme demonstration of his love. If you have a question, feel free to ask at this time.

Eternal Redemption Through the Blood of Christ

Point number two, shuckle number two. He obtained for us eternal redemption. The greatest picture of redemption in the Old Testament was,.

Was?

The greatest picture of redemption in the Old Testament was? Starts with an X. It was drilled into the memory of the Jews as they redeemed their firstborn, and when they celebrated Passover, they remembered that it was the Lord who bought them out of slavery in Egypt to Pharaoh to be his own special people, his own treasured possession to purchase slaves.

God acted, he intervened, he sent Moses, and there was 10 plagues which bankrupted Egypt so that God could free his firstborn son, Israel. It says that it's his firstborn son in Exodus 4. And this Passover would be celebrated, this blood be sprinkled, which would, now it's not only the Egyptians that are under God's disfavor, but if even the Israelites would not have the blood of the lambs smeared on the doorposts and on the lintel of their house, their firstborn would die.

And they would remember this annually as they would celebrate Passover, God redeemed us from slavery. It was all pointing forward to Jesus who embarked on the second Exodus at the cross and resurrection to purchase slaves from sin.

The first Exodus was by a mighty hand, an outstretched arm, but the second by Christ crucified in weakness without stretched arms, Jesus fulfilled all that the Old Testament pointed to and in his death provides for sinners, slaves, redemption.

He buys us, he buys us. Mark 10 .45, the Lord says, even as the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Jesus is making a payment and it's himself. Hebrews 9 .12, he entered, or actually back up a second, the same notion of payment in Acts 20 .28.

Paul says to the Ephesian elders, telling them that the Holy Spirit has made them overseers of the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. That same verb is used in 1 Timothy 3 .13 for deacons who gain a good standing.

Christ, by his blood, obtained the church, he bought us. Just as in the Old Testament and even in the ancient Near East in Africa, they do dowry, you pay some kind of payment, whether it's monetarily or whether it is you're trading oxen or cows or something like that to pay for your bride, Christ did that.

From heaven he came and sought her to be his perfect bride and with his own blood, he bought her and for her life, he died. Hebrews 9 .12, the quality of this redemption and its effect. He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

At 1 Peter 1 .18 and 19, you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers. Now this, whether they are Gentiles or whether they are Jews, futile ways. Not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

Everything, even the whole Jewish economy and system of sacrifice is worthless compared to the precious blood of Christ. It's a once for all sacrifice. Revelation 5 .9, the elders sing to the Lord, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, that's a historical fact, and by your blood, you ransomed people from every tribe and language and people and nation.

Now that's the interpretation of the fact and you made them a kingdom and priests to our God, they shall reign on the earth, that's the result of that fact. Christ's death does something. It doesn't just potentially do something.

He ransoms sinners from futile ways out of many different people groups and then makes them his own special possession. Again, that was the greatest picture of the Old Testament, the Exodus. It's fulfilled in Christ's death and resurrection.

Now, one might ask, who was the ransom paid to? And our poor friend, Origen, in the Old, not in the Old Testament, he wasn't in the Old Testament. In the Old Church, the Old Catholic Church, he theorized that Christ paid a ransom to Satan, that because we are Satan's captives, we are slaves of sin and of the devil and he has the power of death, Hebrews 2 says, well, then Christ paid that ransom to Satan.

What's wrong with that, though? What do you think? Yeah, yeah, the devil could not tell his sovereign, you owe me the blood of Christ and then I'll free sinners. Not only that, Ezekiel 18, four says, behold, all souls are mine.

The Lord owns everybody. All are his creatures and all are his subjects. We're in God's dominion. Now, spiritually, unbelievers are in the devil's dominion and it takes Christ's death to transfer us out of Satan's dominion, out of the dominion of darkness and into the kingdom of his beloved son, yet it remains fact that everyone belongs to God.

It's as the American gospel, second part says, we are saved by God, from God, for God and so the devil's not our, we need not only to be saved from sin, we need to be saved from God, God's anger and God's justice and he saves us from that.

He buys us, purchases us for his own use. The main application of this, if Christ bought you, you're his possession and he can do with you whatever he wills, not only now on the basis of you're his creature, but much more so, you are his purchased possession by his own blood.

He gave his own heart's blood for you. Point number three, shekel number three, he obtained for us the gift of faith. Now, this might be the most controversial of the articles here, because it assumes two things.

That faith is itself a gift given by God to us, to believers, to his elect and then number two is, is that Christ, through his death, actually secured that for us. So, I'm gonna break this down into two things.

Number one, that saving faith is a gift. There's generally, we can say this, based on these questions that you have to ask yourself if you don't believe this. Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

Ask yourself that. Who has given a gift to God that he might be repaid? Ask yourself that question and then ask yourself this, what do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

Those are two major questions that you have to ask yourself if you don't think that faith is a gift. John the Baptist said to, I believe it was his disciples, he said, a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.

So, that's just generally, okay? Whatever we have that is from the Lord, any gift, any ability, that's all from God. Everything we receive from God. God, it's his donation. Everything that happens to us is by God's design, the good things and the bad.

As Job says to his wife, shall we receive good from the hand of the Lord and not evil? Consideration number two, repentance. The other side of the coin of conversion is also granted. 2 Timothy 2 .24, Paul's telling Timothy to respond with gentleness when he's correcting his opponents because perhaps God will grant them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.

Acts 11 .18, after Peter reports how the success that happened among the Gentiles in bringing them to faith and the people grow quiet and they say, then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance unto life.

Granted, repentance unto life. So, if the flip side of the coin, repentance is granted, why not the other? And then also, think of this too, coming to Christ, a synonym for faith in Christ, coming to Christ is granted.

In John 6 .44, Jesus said, no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Later on, in verse 65, he says, that is why I told you no one can come to me unless it is granted by my Father.

Drawing is the same as the Father granting that person to come to Christ, what is coming to Christ. The whole context talks about believing in Jesus. So, believing in Jesus is given. I don't wanna belabor this, but I wanna make this very clear.

And then specifically, it actually just says it in Ephesians 2 .8 and 9. For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, literally not out of you, it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.

Salvation is there included, it's not of works, it's a gift of God. But faith is included in that too, it's the gift of God, it's not a result of works. And then in Philippians 1 .29 it says, for it has been granted to you for the sake of Christ that you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.

It's granted, faith in Christ is granted, suffering is granted too. That is a gift from God to the individual for the sake of Christ that we would be conformed to the image of Christ and we'll only realize the kindness of that gift in the resurrection.

Here and now, it's painful but in the resurrection we'll see wow, what a good gift. So, number one, saving faith is a gift, number two, that he obtained it. In Philippians 1 .29, it is for Christ's sake that we believe in him but contemplated in that there is suffering.

We suffer because he suffered for us. We believe because he suffered for us. He obtained for us the gift of faith. Under this too, what is the blood of Christ? It is the blood of the new covenant. What is a part of all the benefits of the new covenant that the blood of Christ would put into effect, that he would purchase?

It's not just forgiveness of sins and redemption and resurrection and the gift of the spirit. All of those things are true but in the promises of the new covenant, it is to put the fear of God in our hearts that we won't turn from him.

And it's a new heart and a new spirit. There's now a willingness, there's now a compliance, there's now a softness. There's one heart and one way. Each and every believer that has been saved and will be saved goes the same way, trusting in Christ and following Christ.

So, Christ, by dying, made sure all these preparations are all here and accounted for. Christ obtained the gift of faith for us. As 2 Corinthians 1 .20 says, for all the promises of God, find their yes in him.

Forgiveness, Adoption, and Everlasting Life

Shackle number four, he obtained for us, and I'm gonna lump this together, the forgiveness of sins, spiritual adoption as sons and daughters, life everlasting. There are these, these three, they're interrelated and it's cool seeing this afterwards.

These three are the great pillars that hold up the great structure of salvation. Sin defiles us and offends God and is only rectified when we are forgiven. Sin kills us and it's only fixed by the implantation of eternal life.

Sin robs us of God's smile and favor, but it is not only made better, but wonder of wonders, God adopts us to be his own children. It's not just that we have what Adam had in the garden of Eden, but it's better than that, where God takes us into his own family, into his own household.

These three abide, but the greatest of these is adoption. So, number one, forgiveness. Forgiveness is that he sends our sins away. They're out of his sight. And this because of the blood of Christ that secured that payment for sin.

The soul that sins must die. Christ died to take away, to remove from us our sins. He sends our sins away because they were imputed. That is a big word that means they were counted. They were attributed to Christ.

When he hung on the cross, as 1 Peter 2 says, that he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. When God looked at his sacrificial victim, his son, the son whom he loves, his only son, he saw him bearing there the sins of every one of his sons and daughters, so that he was suffering in their place.

He remaining sinless in his person, yet suffering the equivalent of our punishment as if he had committed them himself, though he didn't. So that all of Christ's obedience, everything his whole lifetime sent up to God as a sweet aroma leading up to his death, all of that righteousness could be imputed, attributed to the believer.

2 Corinthians 5 .21 so perfectly spells out. He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ. That is a legal work that God does. We don't actually become the righteousness of God in our conduct here and now, just like Jesus didn't become sin in his conduct.

He didn't become defiled on the cross by our sin, but he was paying the payment for our sin. And so God could look at him legally and judicially and see that this fine was paid in his person. And Christ did this as very many portions of scripture testify to and spell out in such beautiful language what this forgiveness is like.

As Psalm 103 .12 says, it's to remove our sins from us as far as east is from west. It's to blot them out like a thick cloud and mist as Isaiah 43 .25 and 44 .22 say. It's to cast all our sins behind his back as Isaiah 38 .17 says.

He treads our iniquities underfoot, Micah 7 .19. And this promise in the new covenant, Jeremiah 31 .34, that he would not remember our sins anymore. All of that's picturing the exact same thing. This isn't, these are pictures.

This isn't God actually literally taking a mass, a clump of sin and throwing them behind his back or standing up from his throne and trampling on sins. This is him forgiving. That's the great picture.

And that's what Christ has bought for us. Every one of our sins. We don't have to go up some, ascend some steps on our knees to blot out any of our transgressions. We don't have to be nice to people, even to our father and mother in order to forgive and blot out any one of our sins.

We don't have to do good works though our conscience will say you have sinned here. And then we think to make up for it. Christ did it at the cross. All of these Old Testament images are fulfilled not by continual Levitical sacrifices and not by papal authority and not by taking the mass and not by going out and doing a mission with the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons or any other cult.

It was not to offer himself repeatedly as a high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own. For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Christ put away sin once and for all by his own sacrifice. Then adoption. Thomas Watson, a Puritan said, it were much for God to take a clod of dust and make it a star. It is more for God to take a piece of clay and sin and adopt it for his heir.

Another Puritan, Thomas Vincent said, there is neither beauty nor any lovely qualification nor anything in the least to move and incline God to adopt any whom he doth adopt. But it is an act only of his free grace and love.

That we have such a doctrine in the scriptures is proof of the inspiration of God's word because there is nothing in us that would actually serve to move God to do this. It's the work of Christ. And that it was through his death that he obtained this.

In Ephesians, not Ephesians, Hebrews two, first starting in verse 10, it says, for it was fitting that he for whom and by all things exist in bringing many sons to glory, in bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

For he who sanctifies, that's Jesus, and those who are sanctified, that's us, all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers.

This is Jesus pictured here in Psalm 22. In the midst of the church, the congregation, I will sing your praise. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, behold, I and the children God has given me.

It's through the work of Christ, through his sufferings, through his coming in the likeness of sinful flesh and an account of sin, his taking a body and a soul and uniting it to his divine nature, and then going through life, being tempted and resisting temptation, and then suffering at the hands of sinful men that qualify him to be our flesh and blood savior.

And not only that, but that we would receive adoption as sons, that he would send forth, as Galatians 4 says, the spirit of adoption into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So because of the work of Christ, we have the spirit of Christ who testifies that we are children of God.

And if children, as Romans 8 says, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. And this spiritual adoption, this, we are the children of God already, but it will be completed in a physical, eschatological adoption, the fulfillment in the resurrection when we come home to a new earth.

Romans 8, 23 says, and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit, that's what we have right now, that's already grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons.

What is that? The redemption of our bodies. So my brother in Christ asked me to read this verse, and he said, are we adopted yet or not? It seems like this hasn't actually taken place yet. And when we read this, we have to say, it is already and it's not yet.

Already we have the first fruits of the spirit. Already we are redeemed. There's that word there too. You could say, look at that and say, well, are we redeemed yet or not? Yes, we are. But there's coming the fullness of redemption, that redemption of our bodies.

Are we raised with Christ right now? Ephesians 2, we are raised with Christ. But do we have resurrection bodies?

Not yet.

Are we temples of the Holy Spirit? Already, yes. But do we have spiritual bodies, bodies that are controlled and subdued by the Holy Spirit perfectly?

Not yet.

And then third, Christ obtained for us life everlasting. In Romans 5, Adam brought death through his sin, through his one act of disobedience. Christ, the last Adam, brings life through his climactic act of obedience.

Not to the neglect of his lifetime, but climactically in his death. In verse 15, it says, for the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many.

And the free gift, pay attention to that, is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

The free gift there is not only righteousness, but as we see, it's life itself through the work of Christ, through the death of Christ. Life through death. Romans 6 .23, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Now, he can do this by his death because Christ's sinless death obtained resurrection life for himself. Why did he, why was he resurrected? Because he died sinlessly. There was no cause in himself that called for death.

Death could not hold him. His sinless life was the vindication, or rather, the resurrection was the vindication of his sinless life. So just as Christ's sinless death obtained resurrection life for himself, and thus, resurrection life, eternal life for us.