The Dobbs decision is a significant legal victory that will protect many unborn people. Of that, there can be no doubt. States will, at least until the next fight, be able to legislate their own protections for children in the womb. But that also means that states will be able to legislate as much wickedness as our deceitful hearts can imagine. It is in one sense a great victory, and in another sense, business as usual. It is a great victory, also, for reason, logic, and definitions of words.
If we believe that Scripture clearly teaches the sanctity of human life, if we don’t define "sanctity of life” as complete bodily autonomy, if we just had a five-day VBS about the sanctity of human life, if we support Clarity Pregnancy Care Center with our offerings and advertising dollars, why did we not say anything about the Dobbs decision at worship this past Sunday? This is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of what we do when we gather for worship. Worship begins when God calls us, it is filled with our response, and it concludes when God sends us out. Worship is God-centered, not man-focused. Worship addresses our needs by addressing our greatest need—Jesus Christ. For many of us, we have had months now of nothing but news about the Supreme Court. We’ve heard conservative praise and liberal disdain. We’ve heard about how much votes matter and how elections have consequences. Worship is an opportunity to distance ourselves from the wickedness and madness of a world hell-bent on destroying itself from the inside out. Worship, however, is when we focus on what God has already said, not talking heads with manicured mustaches. When the Obergefell decision was handed down, the only mention of it in worship was when Pastor Robb said that no minister of Mt. Pisgah would be performing weddings that did not reflect a monogamous, heterosexual, and covenantal marriage as ordained in Genesis 2 and restated throughout Scripture. It’s not as if that was the first or last time that biblical marriage was preached on or taught about at Mt. Pisgah. There wasn’t a lot that needed to be said that we hadn’t been saying already. We definitely do not hide from the controversial issues of our day. As long as Mt. Pisgah's current leadership is in place, we will hold fast to a biblical, traditional theology of marriage and the family. We will teach on the sanctity of life from womb to tomb, just like we did at VBS. King David was knit in his mother’s womb, and John the Baptist praised God in his mother's womb. It is unequivocally nonsense to believe that what takes place in the womb is anything less than life worthy of equal protection. It is also nonsense to think that the progressive arguments about “choice” and “rights” actually have anything to do with “choice” and “rights”. We must be intellectually rigorous and honest, not emotionally selective and lazy, and we must see through the thinly veiled buzzwords to understand what is really being argued. All that is to say that I make no apology for holding to the Christian understanding of human life that was assumed in the West until a bunch of hippies changed their minds in 1973. King Jehu turned the temple of Baal into a public bathroom. We should do the same with the paper Roe vs. Wade was printed on. But that brings me back to worship. The sermon series are planned months in advance. The pulpit is where God speaks, not where the preacher rides his hobby horse. The next sermon series throughout the rest of the summer will be on a smattering of theological topics so that if you’re gone on vacation one weekend (not all the weekends), you don’t miss an integral part of the series. That isn’t to say that we would not halt a series for a week or two if the need arose. But that would have to be something extraordinary that affected Mt. Pisgah in a peculiar way. For instance, when we paid off all of our building debt, we had a guest speaker and a break in the preaching series. But the next week, we were back on track in God’s Word. If we preach the headlines every time anything of consequence happens in this world, we would be doing you a great disservice. God does not respond to this world; the world must respond to him. So we preach through books of the Bible, or we preach on individual passages. Who knows, this summer, you may very well get a sermon on the sanctity of human life… God sets the pace of worship, not the president, judges, or forked-tongued politicians. This is a principled stance that guards against having to return to milk instead of solid food over and over again. A steady diet of Scripture is what the church needs, not pastoral punditry in the pulpit. We preach Christ and him crucified, not the headlines. Next week, back to the London Baptist Confession where we belong!
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The notion of a substitute is not difficult to grasp. We have substitute teachers, sugar substitutes, all kinds of replacements. But generally, substitutes have an underwhelming quality. They are not the same as the original and are somehow less than fulfilling. We like substitute teaches because we think we’ll just watch a movie in class, but we rarely learn as much from a sub as we do our regular teacher. We like sugar substitutes for the health benefits, but any enjoyment of real sugar is gone.
So we must dispense with popular notions of “substitute” to understand how Christ could be our substitute before a holy and righteous God while not being less-than. How could Christ stand in our place as our substitute and satisfy the wrath of God’s justice? The Confession begins by saying, “Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are justified; and did, by the sacrifice of himself in the blood of his cross, undergoing in their stead the penalty due unto them, make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God's justice in their behalf; yet, inasmuch as he was given by the Father for them, and his obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stead, and both freely, not for anything in them, their justification is only of free grace, that both the exact justice and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.” We begin by confessing that another paid our debt. So, sin is to be considered something of a debt before God. This was a common Jewish understanding of sin, hence Jesus teaching his disciples to pray that God would forgive their debts in Matthew 5. Hebrews 10:13 tells us, “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” The debt was “fully discharg[ed]”. There is no other need for any sacrificial system to continue, now or in the future. How could one man put an end to the Levitical system by a single sacrifice? Here we see the importance of Trinitarian theology practically applied. Jesus Christ was fully God, fully man. There was no mixture of natures or the creation of a third nature. One segment of the Athanasian creed says, “Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Yet there are not three gods; there is but one God.” It is not a trifling matter to see that God paid the debt he owed to himself. Why do we turn the other cheek? Because that’s precisely what our Savior has done. He has returned upon himself the penalty of sin. The notion of Jesus Christ as our substitute is incredible simply because he was innocent of all sin. He did not deserve to die, especially in suffering as he did. But even more incredibly, we can say that not only did God provide a substitute, but he substituted himself in our place. God most certainly did not die on the cross; it is nonsense to say that the one being who embodies eternity in himself could come to an end. Neither did God suffer in Christ’s humiliation. As a man who shared our nature as well, he suffered and bled in his flesh, as a sinless creature, on behalf of his sinful brothers and sisters. Yet in his divinity, which was not tarnished by humanity, he successfully overcame the power of death in his resurrection. In the God-man, God the Father has “unite[d] all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10). The Confession continues, “God did from all eternity decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did in the fullness of time die for their sins, and rise again for their justification; nevertheless, they are not justified personally, until the Holy Spirit doth in time due actually apply Christ unto them.” “The fullness of time” comes directly from Ephesians 1:10, when Paul says Christ is the plan for all ages. Christ is how all things are redeemed, the source of all wisdom, the purpose behind God’s decrees, and the means of unifying heaven and earth. His bodily ascension is perhaps the greatest evidence of that. It is necessary to say that the London Baptist Confession is the confessional document of the Particular Baptists, or, it at least has roots in that strain of Baptist theology. Particular Baptists hold to the doctrine of election, which says that God has decreed to save some and to pass over others, permitting them to live according to their own desires. In that way, God is not unjust; he simply allows some to sleep in the bed they have made and live according to their nature. This stands in contrast to the General Baptists, which have Arminian heritage. They believe that Christ’s death, resurrection, and exaltation made salvation possible but not effectual (it only takes effect for some). They interpret passages speaking of Christ dying for the whole world to mean that Christ paid for the sins of every single person but that only some will believe it to be true. Scripture speaks of both election, or God’s sovereign choice, and the responsibility of every person to believe. Jesus never offered an invitation. He issued commands to believe. “Repent and be baptized” is not an option. But he also spoke of the Father determining who would be sent to the Son for salvation, such as in John 6. We are creatures, not equals. God has, by his gracious appointment, determined that there will be those he pardons for their sins through the substitutionary atonement of his Son. He has also, by his judicious purpose, determined that some will be passed over and permitted to continue in their rebellion against him. You have no more authority to consign yourself to hell than you do to save yourself. However, both Particular and General Baptists believed that the Holy Spirit applied redemption in real-time. No one is born saved. God may have appointed some to believe in eternity past, for Paul says that God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4). But that does not therefore mean that we are born living in the power of the Spirit. There is still a conversion yet to take place, whether it’s at age 5 or 95. That conversion is the beginning of the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God. Speaking of the Christian life, the Confession says, “God doth continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified, and although they can never fall from the state of justification, yet they may, by their sins, fall under God's fatherly displeasure; and in that condition they have not usually the light of his countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.” The only one who continues living without sin is Jesus Christ. Believers remain justified and forgiven, but we continue to fight the good fight. Our justification is not under threat, but our peace certainly is. Continued sin has the effect of causing us to doubt our security in Christ. In our brightest moments, we see the kindness of God in calling us into his marvelous light. In our darkest moments, when we commit the same sins with which we have struggled for so long, we must humble ourselves, repent of those particular sins, and seek the face of God again. We do so by the Spirit guiding us back to the Scriptures and the comfort found there. Believers do not make light of our sins, even if they are forgiven. We have a greater awareness of their deceitfulness and wickedness. And that awareness of the ugliness of sin and the beauty and patience of God is what draws us to return to his Son in confession again and again. The perennial struggle of the good Christian is the relationship between faith in Jesus Christ and the life we live, or good works. Do works have a role in our salvation? Are works necessary in any capacity to inherit eternal life?
This relationship is at the root of many denominational differences. On the one hand, some churches drift toward works-based salvation, where the sinner cooperates with grace and never fully receives justification until death, if at all. This is essentially the position of the Roman Catholic Church on salvation. On the other hand, some churches drift toward a total rejection of any ethical or behavioral standard, even after salvation has taken place. This is the practical position of many evangelical/nondenominational/seeker-sensitive churches. Are either of these positions rooted in Scripture? I’m not a proponent of always looking for a via media, because it assumes that we’ve reached the extremes on both sides and that the truth is in the middle. Who’s to say the middle way can’t be just as wrong as the extremes? If you’re asking the wrong question, every answer will be wrong, as well. Scripture must reform our understanding of the relationship between faith and works, and the Confession is a helpful summary of Scripture’s teaching. The next paragraph on justification says, “Faith thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.” We must be crystal clear that justification is the declaration of righteousness by God the righteous judge. In the context of asking the question, “Who can boast about being saved?”, Paul says, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28). This is not a scenario where Paul only mentions faith or only mentions works; he clearly mentions both and says whether faith or works has a role in our being justified. Without hesitation, we are justified by grace through faith. When speaking of the place of the rite of circumcision to the Galatians, Paul writes, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). He’s not speaking about the good works we normally think of, such as walking old ladies across the street. Christians are not Boy Scouts. He’s speaking of a clear command from the Old Testament, one that signified entrance into the covenant. But under the new covenant made in Christ’s blood, Paul has the guts to say that circumcision is a practice that carries no significance. He doesn’t even argue that baptism has replaced circumcision, thereby making baptism necessary for salvation. He simply and clearly says that even religious good works don’t move the needle. Only faith whose object is Christ Jesus can do that. Faith “is the alone instrument of justification.” Now we come to the reason why a middle-way is not all that useful. We must articulate a biblical position, not a pragmatic one. Faith alone is the mechanism of salvation. No good works merit God’s action. But faith brings good works with it, which also have been decided in God’s foreknowledge. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10). God gives faith, and God gives us good works to do. Faith does not even come from good works; it is a gift. From beginning to end, we live and move and have our being by grace. The good works we do are even prepared for us by the one who gave us faith. And we perform these good works, throughout the rest of our natural lives, still by grace, for Paul says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Salvation never stops being completely a gift and a work of God. If God has prepared both faith and works, and if faith comes first, then works are evidence of faith. This helps us better understand what James means when he says that faith without works is dead. James goes on to say, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (2:14-17). But what about when James ties together faith and justification? He also says, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar” (James 2:21)? And what about a few verses later when he says, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (v.24)? Those two verses are often used as prooftexts that you are required to do good works to be justified. But the hinge of James’s argument is actually few verses earlier: “But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (v.18). James is arguing that we should not separate faith and works at all! And that is actually Paul’s argument, as well. Paul is saying that God declares us just by faith. James is saying that we demonstrate our faith by our works. Justification is both a declaration and demonstration. We must take the argument of the author in context. You say you have faith, but it is not saving faith if it is not accompanied by the works that God has prepared or you. Next time, we’ll try to understand how Christ’s sacrifice made our justification a reality. Many have said that justification is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. Martin Luther, Balthasar Meisner, and Johann Alsted are just a few of the Lutheran or Reformed theologians who acknowledged that the critical mass of Christian salvation is how one is justified before a holy and righteous God.
If there’s even a hint of truth to that statement, then we must have a clear and precise knowledge of how Scripture describes what takes place at justification, when it takes place, and to whom it takes place. The Confession begins, “Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing Christ's active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God.” It would be good to be reminded presently of the golden chain of redemption of Romans 8: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (vv.29-30). Justification is near the end of the chain. God knows those whom he will save, he predestines them to that salvation, he calls them by his Spirit, and when the Spirit indwells them, he justifies them. It is the Spirit of God who applies to individuals the redemption purchased by the Son. R.C Sproul was famous for popularizing the Reformation truth, “Regeneration precedes faith.” We have become so accustomed to praying for the Holy Spirit to come upon us that he have entirely neglected the simple truth that the indwelling of the Spirit is what prompts those who have been called to be justified. We tell people that if they pray a prayer of repentance, then the Spirit will fill them. That’s actually backwards from the clear Scriptural witness. That is a defining tenet of revivalism and pentecostalism, which has become as common and gone unnoticed in the church as a piece of old furniture. Acts 2:38 says, “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’” Is Peter saying that the Holy Spirit comes after repentance and baptism? Do we have to be baptized to receive the Spirit and so be saved? Is it left to our will to be saved? That contradicts the rest of the book of Acts, as well as the remainder of Scripture, so we need to revisit that conclusion. For instance, when Peter is with Cornelius and his household in Acts 10, he says that as he was speaking, the Holy Spirit fell on them (v.44; cf. 11:16). Then in Acts 10:47, Peter tells them to be baptized with water. Scripture interprets Scripture. Therefore, Peter must be speaking of baptism more broadly in Acts 2:38. He is speaking of baptism as if it is the sum and substance of salvation. There is a baptism of the Spirit that precedes baptism with water. We should also keep in mind that Acts 2:38 falls within the greater event of Pentecost. It was a spectacular, one-time event. In receiving the Spirit, we have Christ’s righteousness accounted to us. In Scripture, it is an accounting term (used especially throughout the book of Romans), meaning that a certain amount of money is transferred from one ledger to another. Something of value is transferred to another, simple as that. Our salvation is premised upon Christ’s righteousness being counted as our own and our sinfulness being counted as his own. The theological term for that is “imputation”. We actually believe in a double-imputation, or a two-way-imputation. Christ’s righteousness is granted to our account, and our sinfulness is placed in his account. If we only receive his righteousness, then our sins were never dealt with. If he only received our sinfulness, we never received his righteousness. “Imputation” is a carefully chosen word. It is to be distinguished from “infusion”. When grace is imputed to us, God himself is justified in declaring us pardoned. The one who was offended paid for the offense himself. It is all or nothing, empty or full. There are no partially-declared court rulings. It is this or that, pardoned or imprisoned. The Roman Catholic position is that of infusion. If you think of a blood transfusion, your blood is not being replaced. Someone else’s blood is being blended with yours, in hopes of having enough healthy blood to keep you. Good blood hopefully trumps the bad blood. In Roman Catholic theology of justification, God’s grace is blended with our works, our efforts at righteousness. We must work with the grace that we’ve been given in order to maintain or grow in righteousness. As they are prone to say, “grace perfects nature.” The Confession also speaks of both the “active” and the “passive” obedience of Christ. Like many theological terms, they are not found in the pages of Scripture, but they are helpful categories. Think of theology as a dictionary; when you are defining a word, you don’t use that word in the definition. That’s a circular definition, and it’s not helpful. Christ’s active obedience is his faithfulness to the law of God. By completely and perfectly fulfilling the demands of the Mosaic law, he remained perfectly righteous. It was that righteousness that was imputed to us. By giving up himself in accordance to the covenant of redemption formed between the three persons of the Trinity, he was passively obedient. This simply means that he voluntarily did nothing to stop the wickedness of evil men against him as foreordained by the Father. Hopefully you see the richness, as well as the importance, of the doctrine of justification. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and we will continue next time by looking at the place of faith in justification. |
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