27 Things That Help Spiritual Progress by James Fraser of Brea (1639-1698)

This post first appeared on the Reformation Scotland blog:

No doubt none of us are where we would be or even perhaps should be spiritually. That was certainly Paul’s confession (Philippians 3:12-13). We need to grow in grace (2 Peter 3:18) not just have it. But how do we go from merely desiring to make progress to actually getting moving? What can help us along the way? Sometimes it’s not always the things that we would expect. When experiences make us more humble we may go forward more discerning and less self-reliant. Maturing in patience as we grow slowly is also steady progress.

James Fraser of Brea (1639-1698) endured imprisonment on the Bass Rock for “illegal” preaching. This very high rock in the sea off the Scottish coast was purchased by the government expressly for imprisoning presbyterian ministers. Along with many others he suffered much in those fearful conditions. He was also imprisoned at a later period in Blackness Castle but survived the times of persecution. During many varied experiences the Lord taught him greatly.

Fraser records the things, through the Lord’s blessing, did him good spiritually. He says: 

“I cannot deny but the Lord has shown me kindness and done me good, and that a little one has become a great nation”. Although “I am poor and needy,” yet the Lord remembers me (Psalm 40:17). Despite the fact that “I came over this Jordan with my staff,” now I am by the Lord’s blessing, “become two bands” (Genesis 32:10). I have thought it fitting to declare the things which in my experience, through the  Lord’s blessing, I have found to be most helpful in furthering me in the ways of holiness, peace and fellowship with God. And I have found these twenty-seven things especially blessed for doing me good.

1. The Company of Believers

When they have been full in communicating their condition, believers have encouraged me and eased my griefs. By their godly life I have been provoked to good works. I have been kept in life, recovered out of decline, enlightened and edified by them (Ecclesiastes 4:4, 9-10, n; 1 Corinthians 12:7; Hebrews 10:24, 25). Iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17).

2. Observing Providence

I have found great profit by observing the Lord’s providences and searching into God’s purpose in good or bad events. This has made me see much love in things, freed my understanding from confusion and made me know my duty (Micah 7:9; Hosea 14:9; Psalm 107:43; Jeremiah 8:7; Genesis 25:22; Exodus 3:3-4).

3. Meditating on God

I have found that meditating on God’s attributes has done me much good: especially His love, power, sovereignty, and holiness (Job 22:21; John 17:3). By this means I have been conformed to His image, and my love, fear, and faith have been produced and increased (Psalm 9:10; Ephesians 3:18-19).

4. Meditating on the Gospel

I have found great good by long and serious study of the covenant of grace. I have pondered its nature, freedom, fullness and unchangeableness and how faith secures its blessings. Meditating on the gospel, gospel promises, offers, and invitations has strengthened and sanctified me. It has given me more knowledge of Christ and His ways than anything else that I exercised myself in. I have found it indeed the “ministrations of life,” (Galatians 3:2: Hebrews 11; Romans 1:16-17).

5. Solitude

Sometimes the Lord has confined me at home in not calling me elsewhere. Ordinarily this has been a gathering time and I have never ordinarily been better than when alone. Solitude has done me good, Proverbs 18:1; Numbers 6:2-3; Hosea 2:14). God has often visited me in a solitary wilderness.

6. Outward Afflictions

I have found outward afflictions and hard measures from the world doing me good, humbling my soul, mortifying me to the world. They have made Christ and His consolations sweet, whom I did not care much for before. I found it good to bear the yoke in my youth. I have learned dependence on God and have had much experience of His love supporting me under afflictions, sanctifying them to me, and delivering me out of them, (Lamentations 3:27; Psalm 94:12; Hebrews 12:11; Psalm 119:67, 71; Proverbs 29:15; Hosea 5:15).

7. Waiting on God

I have found quietness in spirit, moderation and calmness in speaking, and advisedness doing me good; and while I have waited on God in silence, His spirit has breathed (Isaiah 7:4 and 9:15; Exodus 14:13; 2 Chronicles 20:17; Philippians 4:7; Lamentations 3:26; 1 Peter 5:7).

8. Private Devotions

I have found much good by the diligent practice of private duties, such as prayer, meditation, reading, self-examination, and such like. I have thereby been strengthened, quickened, and drawn near to God; they have been as food and drink (Matthew 6:6; Luke 22:46; Psalm 1:2-3; Job 8:5; Proverbs 18:1).

9. Fasting

I have found extraordinary duties (e.g. fasting) and making best use of other opportunities over and above the morning and evening sacrifice [devotions], do me much good. Much of the Lord’s mind has been revealed by these (Daniel 10:12) and strong lusts have received a dead stroke. I have been consciously comforted at these occasions. After long sickness, these have given me health (Psalm 126:6; Jeremiah 1: 5-6; Isaiah 58:7-8; Mark 9:29).

10. Hearing Faithful Preaching

I have found the Lord kind to me since I stopped hearing the sermons of the conformists [i.e. the ministers that conformed to the state domination of the Church]. Since that day the scales have been falling from my eyes. While I was listening to those ministers I was still kept in bondage (2 Corinthians 6:17-18; 1 Corinthians 5:7).

11. Others Praying for Me

I have found much good from and by the prayers of others; for since I made use of some for that purpose, I have found much good. I have observed, that those of us who seek the benefit of other’s prayers were the most thriving Christians and those who neglect this decay and wither (Job 42:8; James 5:16; Ephesians 6:19; Romans 15:30; 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2).

12. Seeking the Spiritual Good of Others

I have found very much good by doing good to others, by instructing, exhorting, and teaching them, and praying for them, especially poor ignorant people. At the very time I have been speaking to them, a glorious light shined on my soul, and made me apprehend those things I have been declaring to them more clearly. When full of confusions and sorrows going about this duty, my heart has been lightened and my talents improved (Isaiah 32:20; Ecclesiastes 11:1; Proverbs 11:25).

13. Understanding True Christian Liberty Aright

I have found the serious consideration of true Christian liberty, and of the easiness of Christ’s yoke, and Christ’s love in commands, in opposition to a slavish spirit and scrupulous fearful conscience, do me very much good, and make my heart engage in the service of God (1 Kings 12:4; Luke 1:74; Romans 7:1, 4, 6, and 6:14; Nehemiah 9:35; Deuteronomy 28:48). Likewise, making use of considerations against discouragements (1 Samuel 12:19-20).

14. Meditating on Baptism

I have found much profit and strength by considering baptism and what it seals. Scruples and difficult have been cleared up and removed by this. Assurance has been strengthened and I have been emboldened to draw near to God (Romans 6:1-12).

15. Reading Spiritual Books

The Lord has blessed to me the reading of practical writings. By this means my heart has been put into a good condition and received much strength and light. The writers most blessed to me have been Isaac Ambrose, Thomas Goodwin, Andrew  Gray and especially Samuel Rutherford. I have been blessed most of all by Thomas Shepherd of New England’s works. The Lord has made him the ”interpreter, one of a thousand” to me. Under Christ I have been more obliged to his writings than to any other means for wakening, strengthening, and enlightening my soul. The Lord made him a well of water to me in all my wilderness difficulties.

16. Thinking the Best of God’s Dealings

I have found it good to put a good construction on the Lord’s ways, when they have been outwardly very sad (Exodus 20:19).

17. Commending God to Others

I have found much good by speaking to the praise and commendation of God. When many times not so affectionately, yet sincerely out of the sense of duty, I have begun to praise Him to others, I have found my tongue to have affected my heart (James 3:2; Psalm 105:3 and 145:5-6). The Lord has rewarded me consciously for this.

18. Inward Trials

I have found much good by sore and long inward trials, being “poured from vessel to vessel,” changing and being changed, lifted up, and cast down.  The greatest way of being settled is by these. “By these” (Hezekiah says) “shall men live” (Isaiah 38:16). These humbled me, kept me awake, and ever crying to the Lord. They have given me much experience of the Lord’s kindness, and acquainted me with the exercise of saints in Scripture (James 1:2).

19. Overcoming Difficulties

The Lord has uniquely owned me in resisting strong temptations, engaging with difficult duties, and slaying inward indisposition. Also in loss and contempt from the world outwardly. The fruit of this has been very great. Such fruit has included praying under indisposition, reproving acquaintances and forsaking ways and thoughts very pleasing to the flesh (Jeremiah 2:1-2; Hebrews 11:6; Romans 2:7; Matthew 5:10 and 16:24).

20. Humble Submission

I have found much good by studying and exercising the duty of humility and submission (James 4:7). Duties are easy to a humble spirit. It eases the soul of disquiet and makes burdens easy. “Hell is not hell to a humble soul” (Thomas Shepherd). I have always found help when humbled.

21. Meditating on the Lord’s Dealings with Me

Seriously meditating on the Lord’s dealings with me as to soul and body and calling to mind His manifold mercies has done me very much good. It has cleared my case, confirmed my soul concerning God’s love, and my interest in Him, and made me love Him. What good writing in this journal has done me! What previously hidden wells of water my eyes have been opened to see! (Psalm 107:4 and 18: 1-2). Scarcely anything has done me more good.

22. Making Vows to God

Making and renewing vows to and covenants with God (although weakly engaged in and performed) has produced life and kind thoughts of God. It has been a means to recover me out of spiritual decline and keep me from further backsliding (Deuteronomy 29:12-13).

23. Meditating on the Main Things

Meditation on the most common general truths has done me good e.g. death, heaven, judgment, sin, God’s being and providence, man’s fall, and Christ’s death, etc.

24. Not Delaying Duties

Speedily going about duties without trifling or delaying. A duty done in time is worth twice as much as delayed duty.

25. Writing on Doctrine

By writing on points of doctrine e.g. Scripture, God’s attributes, Christian duties, sermons, experiences etc. These have kept my heart like fresh water.

26. Self-examination

Serious and deliberate self-examination has greatly helped to establish me. I have been testing myself, looking at the qualifications of saints and hypocrites in Scripture and their sins and failings. I have studied the nature of true saving grace and the difference (according to Scripture) between false and true grace.

27. Avoiding Unnecessary Temporal Concerns

I have found much good by being kept from too much temporal or secular business. For various reasons I did not have this at the beginning of my Christian life. Although my concerns called for diligence,  I do not regret this because it meant that my heart was wholly taken up with my soul’s condition and not diverted from this (Proverbs 18:1).

The Struggle of the Christian

"So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members" (Romans 7:21–23).

In verse 21, Paul states a “law,” by which he means an axiom or proverbial truth. He says whenever he wants to do something good, evil is right there to trip him up. It seems in our most dedicated moments, in our times of greatest personal devotion to Christ, that’s when the most wicked of thoughts will creep into our minds. It seems such horrible temptations are cast up out of our hearts right when we are serving Christ most intensely.

Verse 22 is the proof that Paul in Romans 7 is not describing a pre-conversion experience, or even an experience of being backslidden. Paul states that he delights in God’s law in his inner being. The unbeliever hates the law of God, so Paul must be describing his present condition, a condition of true spirituality. Notice that it is Paul’s innermost self that delights in God’s law. There is another inner self that is at enmity with God and delights in sin. Which self is the deepest? It is the innermost self, and this is the self that has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit.

The law of sin, Paul says, is at work in his “members.” Paul is not saying that his physical body is evil while his mind is good. Rather, he is using this language to contrast the innermost regenerated self with the peripheral aspects of his personality. Sin is still raging powerfully in the peripheral parts of his person, and these “members” go pretty deep. But at the bottom, at the core of his being, there is love for God and His law.

Only the redeemed man really hates sin and his sinful tendencies. Only the redeemed person will cry out “What a wretched man I am!” as Paul does in verse 24. Do you ever feel this way about yourself? Much of what Paul is describing concerns his sinful motives, intentions, and desires, all of which give rise to sinful behavior. Do you ever experience the kind of moral anguish and brokenheartedness Paul displays here? If so, rejoice, for it shows that you are one who loves God and His law. It was our Lord Himself who said, “Blessed are they that mourn (their sin); they shall be comforted."

Paul, the Carnal Christian

"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin" (Romans 7:14 NKJV).

In this verse we see a contrast between the law and Paul himself. He contrasts the law as spiritual with himself as carnal. There have been those in evangelical Christianity who have set up a rigid distinction between “spiritual Christians” and “carnal Christians.” What we see in this verse should give us pause for thought.

Paul says, “I am carnal.” Remember that Paul is writing this after his conversion—he is using the present tense. Thus, if anyone was ever a carnal Christian it was the apostle Paul. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Paul declares that he is—at the time he is writing this letter—carnal. That should be a warning for us lest we think that there are Christians today who have transcended carnality beyond what Paul himself achieved.

The word 'carnal' here is a form of the Greek word sarx, which is usually translated “flesh” in the New Testament. Sometimes this word refers to our physical existence, and is a synonym for the Greek word soma, meaning “body.” Sometimes, however, this word refers to our old nature, our sin nature. It refers to the condition of the whole man prior to his conversion.

The whole man, body and mind, outside of Christ is “flesh.” In Romans 7:14, Paul contrasts “flesh” and “spirit,” and indicates that it is the moral sense of “flesh” that is involved here. The word Spirit should be capitalized, because the reference is to the Holy Spirit. The law is spiritual because it comes from the Spirit of God.

But haven’t Christians been liberated from bondage to sin and from the “flesh”? What Paul means is that even though he has been redeemed and made a new man, he is still afflicted with a principle of indwelling sin. He is still to some degree a creature of the “flesh,” sold under sin.

Romans 7:14–25 describes the inner conflict of the believer. It seems confusing partly because what goes on inside the believer’s heart is confusing and distressing. The more we come to know of God, the more we see our remaining corruption. Paul’s attitude, of grieving over sin and wrestling with it, is that of the truly spiritual person. He is diligently pursuing the new life in Christ, but continues to lament the ongoing ravages of his sin.

The Holiness of God's Law

"So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good" (Romans 7:12).

What is the usefulness of the law for the Christian? The best discussion of this that I have found is in John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 2, chapter 7. Here Calvin sets out the three uses of God’s law. I highly recommend it to you. Let me summarize Calvin’s remarks for you today.

The first benefit of the law for the believer is that it reveals to us what righteousness is. If we hold up the law and look into it, as into a mirror, it will reveal to us how hopelessly unrighteous we are. Thus it shows us our need of the Savior and drives us to the foot of the cross. It humbles us, and that is a great benefit for us.

This seems to contradict what we have been seeing in Romans 7. Paul has been arguing that the more the sinner sees of the law, the more he rebels against it. Thus, the law seems rather to incite evil than to restrain it. But though this is true, there is also a sense in which the law restrains evil. The threat of punishment does restrain many people from evil acts, and this second function is a real benefit to society.

The third function of the law is the most important. The tremendous value of the law is its revelatory function. The law of God reveals the character of God and also what is pleasing to God. The daily instruction of the law advances us to a purer knowledge of the divine will. Thus, the law incites the spiritual man not to rebellion but to obedience and faithfulness.

If the law is holy, just, and good, and we want to be holy, just, and good, we must diligently study it. How much do you know of God’s law? Do you know the major places it is found in Scripture? Do you know how to read the Old Testament laws and how to sort them out in terms of their relevance? As you continue your daily Bible reading, learn to recognize that which is positively enjoined as a commandment. Begin marking them in your Bible, and you will soon be amazed at how many you find, particularly in the New Testament.

The Misuse of God's Law

"For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death." (Romans 7:11)

We notice here, and throughout Romans 7:7–12, that it is not the law that is the enemy but sin. It was not the law but sin that deceived me and killed me. What was the instrument that sin used to slay me? It was the commandment of God.

Let’s take an analogy. Is there anything evil about a sword? No. A sword is just a sword. It has no will or mind. If I pick up a sword and kill someone with it, it is not the sword that is put on trial and sentenced, but rather it is I who am guilty of using the good sword in an improper manner.

Just so, Paul says that my sin deceived me and killed me by using the law. The enemy is my sin, and since it is my sin, ultimately the enemy is myself. I have destroyed myself by misusing God’s law. Instead of using the law as a list of things to do to please God, I used it as a list of things to rebel against. The more I knew about the law, the more consistent and ferocious my rebellion became, says Paul.

Paul wants to make it clear that the law is good. Verse 12 reads, “So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.” How much more clearly could the apostle speak? It is not that grace is good and law is bad. Rather it is that the law is good and sin is bad. Obedience to God’s law never brought about spiritual death. The problem is with me. The more of God’s law I see, the more I misuse it against myself. Thus Paul says that “in order that sin might be recognized as sin, [the law] produced death in me through what was good” (v. 13). The law, which was given to produce life and good works in me, was actually producing death in me because of the perversity of my sin and the way my sin was misusing the law.

Do you find it irksome to obey people in authority over you—employers, teachers, parents? Do you find that there is something in your heart that wants to disobey, even if only in some slight way, the things you have been instructed to do? These are some of the ways in which our sinfulness uses the commandments of others to cause us to act in self-destructive ways. Where in your life would you make a change from self-destructive patterns of rebellion to an attitude of willing obedience?

Liberated from the Law

"So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God." (Romans 7:4)

Romans 7:1–6 is sometimes misinterpreted to mean that the law has died, and so Christians need no longer pay any attention to it. It is not the law that has died here, however, but it is we who have died. In our death—to the degree we have died—we have been liberated from the law.

In what sense have we died to the law? We have died with Christ. Our old self has been put to death in the death of Jesus Christ. The destructive fruit that the law worked in us, inciting us to sin, has died. We have been made alive in our inward self. The law has not died, but our former selves have died. Our new selves are alive. We still have a relationship to the law, but it is a radically different relationship from the one we had before.

The ideal purpose of the law in the Old Testament was this: It was a rule to spell out for us what righteousness required. It showed what the fruit of godly living would be. But it became the occasion for the curse to be laid on us, because all of us broke the law and none of us brought forth the required fruit of holiness. In our flesh we could not obey it. As a result, the relationship we had to the law was a relationship of curse and death.

But now the flesh has been put to death, and we have been resurrected into a new life in Christ. We have been grafted into Christ, and this is so that we might bring forth fruit unto God. What the law failed to elicit from us, Christ wants to see born from our relationship to Him. We still must heed the law, because we are still called to “serve,” or obey. The law no longer is a curse to us, though. Instead, it helps us see what Jesus wants us to do. In our new resurrected life we can now call God’s law our friend.

The psalmist cries, “Oh, how I love Your law! I meditate on it all day long” (Psalm 119:97). Is this your response to God’s law? Or do you fear it, and view it as an enemy? The Christian no longer needs to fear the law. Today ask God to give you a hunger and thirst to know His law, not as a threat against you but as a guide for pleasing Him.

Guilt and the Christian Life

"Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him" (Zechariah 3:1).

One of the main ways Satan and his legions have of paralyzing the believer is through accusation. One way is for the Devil to get us to commit some public sin or indiscretion, and then accuse us and destroy us. But beyond this, Satan works with our guilty consciences to make us feel despair. Every Christian sins every day, and thus the problem of sin and guilt continues to be a roadblock to Christian holiness and health.

We see a picture of this in Zechariah 3. This chapter is part of the “night visions” of Zechariah, and in one of these visions, the prophet sees the current high priest, Joshua, standing before the Lord. It was the task of the high priest to minister before the Lord on behalf of the people.

Zechariah saw Satan standing next to Joshua to accuse him. Of what was Satan accusing Joshua? We can see it in verse 3: “Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel [of the Lord].”

Normally the high priest wore “garments of glory and beauty,” which symbolized his position as God’s anointed and glorified leader. Now, however, Joshua was dressed in degrading garb. His filthy garments represented the defilement of his life and of his office. Satan was pointing these out to the Lord, and Joshua was standing ashamed. But then “the Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you!’ ” (v. 2). The Lord refused to hear Satan’s accusations, and instead stripped Joshua of his filthy garments and reinvested him with beautiful clothes (v. 4). This is how God deals with us as well. God refuses to hear Satan’s accusations because He deals with us only through His Son.

This story in Zechariah 3 shows us what happens when we bring our sins and ourselves before the Lord. We shouldn’t allow Satan to burden us with them. Rather, we are told to confess our sins, confident that God will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Has Satan been weighing you down with guilt over some sin? Confess it and forsake it, and then arise in the confidence that you are now once again robed in Christ’s glory.

Satan and the Christian

"Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8).

While many modern people will readily admit that they believe in God, very few will admit to believing in the Devil. It is true, of course, that for most people, the “God” they believe in is a figment of their imagination, and not the Holy Creator and Judge. All the same, it is noteworthy that despite the presence of so much horror and wickedness in the world, most people reject the idea of a powerful personal spirit being called Satan.

This is not the perspective of the Bible and of the Christian faith. The Bible tells us that there is indeed a realm of fallen angels, and that their chief is Satan, the Devil. The first thing the Bible shows us about the Devil is that he is clever. He is able to present himself as an “angel of light” and to deceive us (2 Corinthians 11:14). It was as a clever deceiver that he approached Adam and Eve in the garden and persuaded them to sin.

Secondly, the Bible presents Satan as formidable. For the most part it is Christ who is compared to a mighty lion in the Bible, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. In 1 Peter 5:8, however, Satan is also compared to a powerful lion. He is not as powerful as Christ, but he is a lot stronger than you and I are.

Paul states that we are called to make war on the Devil. If we are “strong in the Lord and in His mighty power,” then we can take our stand “against the Devil’s schemes” (Ephesians 6:10–11). He tells us that though we must contend against the world and the flesh, our battle goes beyond “against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).

The fact that we face unseen enemies who attempt to seduce us to sin forces us to realize that this is a struggle we cannot fight in our own power. How do you fight against a demon? By prayer we can wage this war, as we ask God to send His Spirit to protect us and to set His angelic hosts around us. Today ask Him to make you more aware of the reality of this struggle and to prepare you for the temptations, defeats, and victories of the Christian life. Satan tempts from without, and the flesh lusts from within. Being surrounded as we are, many refuse to join the battle and simply surrender. May it not be so with you!

The Flesh and the Spirit

"For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish" (Galatians 5:17 NKJV).

The fierce struggle between the flesh and the spirit in the Bible is not to be understood as some kind of war between the body and the soul. Rather, what the New Testament means in speaking of this struggle is the war between the power of sin in our natural, fallen humanity against the influence of God the Holy Spirit in our lives.

The struggle of sanctification lies in the fact that the flesh is not totally annihilated at conversion. The flesh does receive a death blow, and its power is broken, but it is still very much alive and struggling as long as we live in this life.

As we noted, this “flesh” is not the same as the physical side of our nature. Paul in Galatians 5:19–21 gives a list of sins of the flesh. This list includes such things as adultery and drunkenness, which obviously are indeed connected with physical desires and lusts. But the list also includes lying, envy, and hatred, which are not physical actions but attitudes and dispositions of the heart.

In Romans 8:9, Paul states that Christians are not controlled by their flesh but by the Spirit of God. Every Christian is spiritual in this sense, but at the same time, every Christian commits sins and is still carnal or fleshly. This same Paul writes in Romans 7:14, “I am carnal, sold under sin.”

When we are converted we are translated essentially from flesh to Spirit, but the struggle against the flesh still goes on. We deceive ourselves if we think we don’t have to worry about the inclinations of our old fallen nature coming along and inclining us to evil. The Bible tells us to be aware of this fact, so that we endeavor to feed the spiritual side of ourselves, and starve the flesh.

Have you ever noticed how graphic the biblical language is? The verbs in particular evidence a zeal and a vitality, a strength and urgency. Lusts is not a passive term; war suggests casualties and death. Do you “war” against the flesh? Have you “crucified” the old nature? Paul and Jesus wrote with an intensity regarding sanctification. Do you live out the biblical verbs?

The World Versus Christianity

"I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world." (John 17:14)

The Christian has three enemies: the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Today we need to think about the first of these. In the New Testament, the word 'world' is used sometimes simply to refer to the earth as opposed to heaven. In this sense, there is nothing bad about the world. The New Testament also, however, uses 'world' in a moral sense. We see this in John 17:14, where Jesus tells the Father that the “world” hates believers. The world is that sphere, or group of people, that has no affection for the things of God. The world, in this sense, exists in tension against the kingdom of God.

Jesus goes on to say, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the Evil One” (John 17:15). It is most important to realize that Jesus does not call us to segregate ourselves from the present evil age. This has been a continuing problem in the history of the church, as some Christians have made it a policy to separate themselves from anything that in the least smacks of worldliness.

One of the doctrines that emerged among the Pharisees was the doctrine of salvation by segregation. For this reason, the Pharisees were incensed when Jesus “defiled” Himself by spending time with publicans and sinners. They failed to realize that the world is the arena in which God is working to save sinners. Christians must be involved with the people of the world in order to reach them.

How do we do this? By being in the world but not of it. Paul wrote in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The Christian is to work in the world, but without sin.

What does the term “keep your distance” mean with reference to the Christian and the world? Have you found that line which marks the boundary of how “near” you ought to come to the world, and yet is not so far away as to become separatists? As we mature in Christ we should be able more and more to invade the world with the transforming Good News of the kingdom. “Frontline ministry” should be the ultimate goal of each believer.

What God Most Wants From Us

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:33).

The chief goal of the Christian life is righteousness. Righteousness is what God wants from us more than anything else. We see this in Matthew 6:33. In this verse, the word first is the Greek word protos. This word not only means first in sequence or chronological order, but it also carries the idea of “foremost in importance.”

One of the most frightening statements in the New Testament is found in Matthew 5:20, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Some of the commentators take this verse to be referring to justification. According to this view, Jesus is saying that we must possess perfect righteousness in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. How can we sinners have this perfect righteousness? Only in Christ Jesus. Jesus alone truly fulfilled the terms of this verse, and thanks be to God, His righteousness is credited to my account.

I think it may be possible that this verse does ultimately refer to justification, but I think we need also to consider its relevance for sanctification. The fact is that Christians, being justified by faith, are to live as righteous (just) people thereafter. Christians must be people with a passion for holiness and righteousness.

So what is this verse saying? It says that unless our lives begin to manifest a quality of righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, there is strong evidence that the faith we profess is not genuine. The true Christian is a person who grows in authentic righteousness.

Bible scholars have a category entitled “The Hard Sayings of Jesus.” Matthew 5:20 is one of them. Don’t yield to the temptation of diluting, defusing or dismissing such passages and the implications. If you have become complacent in your faith, pray that the Holy Spirit would properly “disturb” you with this and other similar passages.

Weekend Reflection: "The Siege of Heaven" by R.C. Sproul

"Jesus once made a remark that has puzzled Bible readers for centuries. He declared: “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12 NKJV).

What did Jesus mean? How does the kingdom suffer violence? On the surface, it seems to suggest that people can storm the gates of heaven and gain entrance by some sort of power play. It suggests that unworthy people can besiege the kingdom with military strength. But this interpretation does violence to everything the Bible teaches about the nature of God’s kingdom. God is not powerless to prevent the unworthy from sneaking into His presence. No man by sheer effort can gain access to the Father. The pagan can lay siege to the heavenly Jerusalem yet never provoke the surrender of Zion.

No, I think Jonathan Edwards was correct when he saw this verse as referring to the passion by which new believers pursue their quest for God’s kingdom. It describes the zeal by which those who are awakened by the Spirit press into the kingdom.

Where John the Baptist said, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2), Jesus declared the very presence of the kingdom (Luke 17:21). With the appearance of Jesus, the King of the kingdom arrived. This sparked an unprecedented national repentance. Those who were awakened rushed to embrace Christ. The repentant sinner leaves no stone unturned to embrace his King. The zeal and the passion of the newly awakened are forceful. It is violent not in the sense of the use of physical arms but in its urgency and intensity.

It means a determined effort with one’s eyes fixed upon the goal. Indeed, there is an analogy drawn from warfare. When the gates of a walled city are opened, the victorious do not hesitate to push through. No soldier surrenders to lethargy or weariness at the moment of triumph.

Those who press into the kingdom sign up for the duration. We are not permitted the luxury of quitting. We cannot retire from sanctification. When we dedicate ourselves to God, we dedicate ourselves to lifelong service.

Our goal is not trivial. It is worth fighting for. It is worth fear and trembling. It is the high calling of Christ. Indeed, it is the highest calling. It is worth all the blood, all the sweat, all the tears. It is for Him that we rise up again after repeated failures. It is He who is our destiny.

Growing in the Christian Life

"He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly." (Mark 8:23–25)

I've been focusing on Romans 6 over the past week where Paul set before us the prospect of a new life in Christ, complete with goals and priorities God has established. “Pleasing God” is the theme of the next six days that will focus on the struggles in this new life.

We have to be very careful in drawing “spiritual applications” from the narratives of Scripture. The story of Jesus’ healing the blind man in Mark 8:22–26 is not a parable but a real historical event. All the same, I believe that this event shows us some principles that at least illustrate some of the basic aspects of the Christian life.

Every Christian begins his spiritual pilgrimage because of the immediate work of God. We all start by spiritual birth, which is not something that happens gradually. When the Spirit regenerates your heart, you are taken from blindness to sight, from death to life. So all of us begin our Christian life instantly by a work of God that He accomplishes without human means.

But that’s only the beginning. The Christian life thereafter is a process. Our sanctification is something that takes place gradually. It is a process that continues throughout our entire lives.

When we are regenerated and the light breaks into us, it is as if we see things that we never saw before. Our whole outlook on life changes because of the touch of the Lord. But it is as if we see men as trees walking. We see, but we see imperfectly. From there we need another touch of Christ, and another, and another, so that our vision of the loveliness of Christ and of the presence of the kingdom of God becomes sharper and sharper.

Walking with Jesus day by day means staying in contact with Him. We not only need the first touch, but the daily touch of the Master. That’s what you are doing now, isn’t it? As a result you are getting a sharper focus on the kingdom, and a clearer understanding of your duties in it. Don’t let these daily devotions become routine, but stir yourself up to make real personal contact in prayer and study with Jesus Himself.

Holiness and Eternal Life

"But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:22–23).

As Romans 6 draws to a close, Paul speaks of the consequences of our lives. In verse 21 he writes, “What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!” Think back, Paul says, to the days before Christ turned your life upside down. What good did that life do for you? It could only lead to death and shame. By way of contrast, in Christ you are now reaping benefits that result in eternal life.

Romans 6 ends with a glorious summation of the Gospel in verse 23. Paul says that “the wages of sin is death.” You were a slave of sin, but you were a slave who earned some wages. Wages are given in response to merit. What did you merit from your sin? What did you earn? Paul makes it clear: You could only earn death.

On the other hand, “the gift of God is eternal life.” Notice that life is not earned but is given freely by God. You once lived as a wage-earner to sin, but now you live a life that is graciously given apart from merit.

At first glance it looks as if verse 23 contradicts verse 22 which says that eternal life is the end point of the fruit of holiness and righteousness. Holiness and righteousness are the result of yielding as a slave to Christ. But this does not mean that eternal life comes to us as a result of our earning it through righteousness. Rather, the entire process, from conversion to glory, is a gift of God. Our salvation is gracious from beginning to end. All that we have is of God’s grace, from regeneration to glorification.

As Romans 6 comes to a close, consider this: God assures you that your old life is dead, and that you have full access to a new life. Are you taking advantage of this gift? Are there areas in your life—behavior patterns, relationships, secret desires—that you know are incompatible with the new life in Christ? Take time to ask the Spirit of God to bring before your mind things that need to be changed, and then resolve to live in the newness of the resurrection life that is guaranteed you in Christ Jesus.

Who Shall Be Our Master?

"But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted" (Romans 6:17).

It is interesting to see the real act of charity in this verse. Paul does not know by name the people he is addressing, and he certainly does not know the state of each soul. Paul knew, though, that surely there were some in the church at Rome whose profession was invalid. Jesus had warned there would be those who would say, “Lord, Lord,” but whose hearts would be far from Him. All the same, Paul addresses them all as believers.

Paul does not try to separate the true believers from the false, but rather he encourages all those who have professed Christ. He says that he praises God that they have turned from sin to God. Now they are obeying the form of teaching that the Gospel brings.

Paul has no fear of teaching or doctrine. Paul speaks of doctrine not as an abstract science, but rather as something obeyed. It is that “you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness” (v. 18).

Being Christ’s slave and thus a slave of righteousness is one of Paul’s central themes. As he argued in verse 16, “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?” All men serve something. The question is whether they serve sin and die, or serve God and live.

Paul’s first words to the Romans were “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus” (Romans 1:1). As Christ’s slave, Paul had been turned from sin to newness of life and that is what he was encouraging the Roman Christians to do.

Americans have a particularly difficult time understanding this teaching because of the memory of slavery in our own land. We must not focus on the condition or state of slavery as much as on the Master. When Jesus is the Master, obviously the state of slavery is redefined. Paul, who knew the horrors of one form of slavery was yet willing himself to be the slave of Christ. Ironically, teaches Paul, this slavery actually leads to freedom. Have you discovered this in your own life?

Sharing in the Life of Christ

"The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:10–11).

Christ did not die for Himself. Neither was He raised from the dead merely for Himself, but He was raised for us, that we might also participate in life everlasting. We will participate in the exaltation of Christ. He is the first-fruits of all those who will be raised from the dead.

Paul is particularly concerned here, however, not with that future glory, but with our living with Christ right now. Christ is alive now, and the power of His life is alive in us now. If we identify with the Cross in justification, then we must also identify with His life in the present. “If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him” (v. 8). According to verse 10, Christ died to sin and now lives unto God. Now, if we are identified with Christ’s death in our baptism (v. 3), then we must also be identified with His present life. Just as He now lives unto God, so must we.

All of this flows from our justification. In justification, God took my sins and put them on Jesus. When God killed Jesus, He killed my sin. If God reckons our sins dead on the cross with Jesus, then we also ought to reckon ourselves dead to sin. We need to agree with God. God counts us dead to sin, and so we ought to count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Thus, Paul is saying that we need to consider our old life is dead. It’s over. Let it be buried. We can’t go back.

If we have embraced Christ, what we now must do is live a new life following Him. We have no choice. The old life is dead. In this way Paul makes it clear that anyone who has been declared justified by God must inevitably lead a new life in righteousness.

Paul speaks of “counting ourselves” as dead to sin and alive to righteousness. This is an act of the will and the mind. Often we have to argue with ourselves, to remind ourselves that the old life is indeed gone and that we really do have the power to live new lives. Although Paul cannot say everything in a single verse or chapter, later in Romans he will remind us that the power to live this new life comes by the Spirit. Do not be deceived into thinking you can walk independently. The new life is a supernatural one which requires more than the natural resources you possess.

True Faith Yields Holiness

"We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." (Romans 6:4).

During the Reformation, the great fear of the Roman Catholic Church was that Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone would lead people into gross acts of misconduct. After all, if all we have to do to be saved is believe, then perhaps it does not matter how we live. Not so, said Luther and the other Reformers. They maintained that any authentic justification and any true faith must yield a changed life.

This is Paul’s theme in Romans 6. In this chapter, Paul shifts his attention from justification to sanctification. Justification is God’s legal declaration that our sins are forgiven and we are righteous in His sight. Sanctification describes the process that follows justification, by which our lives are daily changed and brought into conformity with Christ’s righteousness. Paul’s focus in Romans 6 is that true justification leads to sanctification.

In verse 4, Paul argues from analogy. Jesus died; He was buried; He was raised again. Thus, says Paul, our old corrupt lives are dead and buried when we embrace Christ. Just as Christ came out of the tomb with a new power of resurrected life, so also the Christian is to show a new life.

Paul goes on in verse 5 to say, “If we have been united with Him in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection.” It is impossible, says Paul, to be identified with Christ’s death without also being identified with His resurrection. Further, says Paul, the whole point of crucifying our old self with Christ was so that we would no longer be slaves to sin (v. 6), but instead would be freed from its power (v. 7). For this reason, we can and must live new and godly lives.

It would be an unwarranted conclusion to think Paul is saying Christians no longer sin. That we are free from the dominion of sin, Paul will make very clear in Romans 7. While Christians still have to fight against indwelling sin, here he insists that the essential domination of sin has been broken. We are exhorted to live as people who are personally assured of the final outcome, as those who have read the book of Revelation. Until Christ returns, however, our lives must grow into increasing conformity with Christ’s.

Weekend Reflection: "Our Union with Christ" by John Gerstner

I hope you appreciate this reflection on our union with Christ from Dr. John Gerstner...

"It is truly an incredible proposition that we have union with Jesus Christ. According to Ephesians 1:4, “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” This means that union with Christ began before you began. It began before you were ever in your mother’s womb; before you ever drew breath; before you ever had a thought or committed a sin. You are as eternal as God is. You have been in Christ as long as Christ has been, which is forever.

How can we, as the revolting, wicked persons we actually are, be in Christ Jesus—even in the mind of God—before we are converted and changed and sanctified? The answer is that as truly as we are in Christ Jesus eternally, just so truly Christ Himself is the Lamb of God who was slain before the foundation of the world. His atonement is, in the eyes of God, as eternal as your election in Him and your union ultimately in Him is to be. We have been in union with the Lamb before the Lamb was ever slain.

We are also told in Romans that we are buried with Him, we were raised with Him, we ascended into heaven with Him, we are in the heavenlies with Him. In other words, in all of His redemptive activity, we were with Him. We sing a moving hymn, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Yes, you were. And not just by way of sympathetic, sentimental identity with Christ’s incredible love for you. But in a more fundamental way than that. In a more profound sense, you were there in Him when they crucified your Lord. You were nailed to the cross with Him at Calvary. You were buried in the tomb with Him. You were raised with Him. And you are with Him in the heavenlies even now.

It reminds me of the great theologian A. A. Hodge’s reported remark as he was dying, when someone was reading to him the passage from Paul, “I am persuaded that nothing shall separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.” Hodge didn’t like the translation because it put the preposition in where it didn’t belong, and he didn’t even want a preposition between him and His Lord. The truth of the matter is that Christ’s righteousness is becoming our righteousness at the same time it is becoming His righteousness because we are even then, one with Him.

Galatians 2:20 is the passage that states it in the most dynamic way: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Here Christ gives Himself for us and we are identified with Him as He actually carves out our redemption by the shedding of His own blood. He becomes the very principal and spring of our whole activity. Now we can say with the apostle in Philippians, “For me to live is Christ.”

Our union with Christ is described in the Bible in many other ways: the vine and the branches, the foundation and the building, the body and its parts. However, I doubt if there is any metaphor quite so precious, quite so intimate, quite so close to verisimilitude to the real experience as is the metaphor of the union between husband and wife (Ephesians 5:28–30). There it says that “husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body.” Then in verse 32, Paul says that “this is a profound mystery.” But here the apostle is not referring to the mystery of marriage—of loving someone so much that in doing so you love yourself. Rather, Paul is speaking in reference to Christ and the church. What he is saying here is that the institution of human marriage was introduced primarily for the purpose of showing us what the heavenly marriage, the union of Christ with his people—the church—actually is.

God could have produced our progeny without marriage. But God has made us in such a way that we have our most intimate relationships, as well as reproduce our kind, through the rite of marriage where two persons become one person, one flesh. God made the institution of marriage to be the classic metaphor of what union with Christ actually means.

Jonathan Edwards wrote about the glorious benefit of being united to Christ in this way:

By virtue of the believer’s union with Christ, he doth really possess all things. I’ll tell you what I mean by possessing all things. I mean that God, three in one, all that He is and all that He has and all that He does, all that He has made or done—the whole universe, bodies and spirits, light heaven, angels, men and devils, sun, moon, stars, land, sea, fish and fowl, all the silver and gold, kings and potentates as well as mere men, are as much the Christian’s as the money in his pocket, the clothes he wears or the house he dwells in, as the vittles he eats, yea, more properly his, more advantageously more his, than if he commands all those things mentioned to be just in all respects as he pleased at any time by virtue of a union with Christ. Because Christ who certainly doth thus possess all things is entirely his so that he possesses it all, only he has not the trouble of managing it. But Christ, to whom it is no trouble, manages it for him, a thousand times as much to his advantage as he could himself if he had the managing of it all. And who would desire to possess all things more than to have all things managed just according to his will?

Long before I ever read this statement, I used to think about how much I love libraries. If I were a billionaire, I couldn’t have the libraries I now have. For as Edwards says, “By virtue of the believer’s union with Christ, he doth really possess all things”—and “all things” certainly includes libraries. I often hide out at the magnificent libraries at Yale and Harvard and the best one of all, at the British Museum. The books there, in a sense, all belong to John Gerstner—they’re mine. Every time I go in there I thank God for them. And like Edwards, I’m thankful that I don’t have to bother with the management of these books. Somebody else takes care of the books—I don’t even have to go get them when I’m there. Somebody else brings them to me. The point is that if you aren’t a Christian, you don’t have a solitary right to anything; if you are a Christian, you have a right to everything because it’s all yours in Christ.

It is an inestimable privilege of not just being loved by Christ, not just being redeemed by Christ, but actually being brought into a union so intimate with Him that each of us actually becomes one person with Him.

New Book: "The Survivor's Guide to Seminary"

My new book, "The Survivor's Guide to Seminary," is now out on Amazon. It is available on Kindle or in paperback. If you know of anyone heading into ministry, going to seminary, wanting to serve the church, etc. I believe this book will be a great benefit. It is both comprehensive enough to be helpful and yet concise enough at 145 pages to be read quickly. It is also deeply practical. Here's a bit from the book description:

Heading to seminary? Great! But don't go unprepared. "The Survivor's Guide to Seminary" should be the first book you read to get oriented to the challenges ahead. Long enough to be helpful and short enough to be read quickly, "The Survivor's Guide to Seminary" covers the following topics: 

1. Preparing Your Mind for Seminary 

2. This Isn’t Sunday School 

3. The Cognitive and Contemplative Pathways 

4. Having the “Talk” – What Are You Going to Do With This Degree? 

5. Your Professional Image and Its Cultivation 

6. The Six Über Skills of Seminary 

7. Thoughts On Thinking 

8. Thoughts On Building a Theological Library 

9. Thoughts On Life Together: Your Seminary Cohort as Community 

10. Stress and Its Maintenance 

11. Spouses: A Few Thoughts on Marriage and Seminary 

12. May God Bless You in Seminary (and you bless God) 

Get the book, read it, and thrive in seminary!

When God is Satisfied

"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood." (Romans 3:25 KJV)

Have you ever wondered about these long, hard words that are found in the Bible: expiation and propitiation? Both of these words are important for an understanding of the atoning work of Jesus; but what do they mean?

The word expiation begins with the prefix ex, which means “out of” or “from.” Expiation means to remove something. In biblical theology, it has to do with taking away or removing guilt by means of paying a ransom or offering an atonement. It means to pay the penalty for something.

Thus, the act of expiation removes the problem by paying for it in some way, in order to satisfy some demand. Christ’s expiation of our sin means that He paid the penalty for it and removed it from consideration against us.

On the other hand, propitiation has to do with the object of the expiation. The prefix, in this case, is pro, which means “for.” Propitiation has to do with what brings about a change in God’s attitude toward us, so that we are restored to the fellowship and favor of God.

In a sense, propitiation points to God’s being appeased. If I am angry because you have offended me, but you then appease me, the problem will be removed. Thus propitiation brings in the personal element and stresses that God is no longer angry with us. Propitiation is the result of expiation. The expiation is the act that results in God’s changing His attitude toward us. Expiation is what Christ did on the cross. The result of Christ’s act of expiation is that God is propitiated. It is the difference between the ransom that is paid and the attitude of the One receiving the ransom.

One of the great Puritan pastors, Richard Rogers, was once criticized: “You Puritans with your preciseness! Why are you so precise, making life uncomfortable for the rest of us?” Rogers responded, “Oh sir, I serve a precise God.” The Bible sometimes uses long and technical terms because God wants us to understand with precision what He has done for us in Christ Jesus so we can grow in understanding and appreciation for Him. Today ask God to give you an increased desire to learn even these more technical, yet very crucial, biblical insights.

Man's Indebtedness to God

"Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." (Matthew 6:12).

Sin has three dimensions or aspects that are dealt with in Christ’s atoning work. Sin involves debt, crime, and an estrangement between the persons of God and man. I want to focus on the difference between pecuniary and penal debt.

If I borrow $10,000 from Bill, I owe him a pecuniary debt. Suppose I simply cannot pay it back, but my best friend comes forward and says that he will give me the money to pay it back. Is Bill obligated to take this repayment? Certainly, because the only responsibility I have to Bill is to pay the money back. Once I’ve repaid him, even if it’s with my friend’s money, I am debt-free.

But now suppose I stole $10,000 from Bill, and I am arrested for robbery. Then my best friend comes forward and says that he will pay Bill the $10,000. Is Bill morally obligated to take that repayment? No, not at all, because in addition to the financial dimension, a crime has been committed. There is more involved than mere money.

In a robbery, there is a pecuniary debt that must be paid off with money, but there is also a penal debt that must be paid by punishing the criminal. Suppose my best friend also offers to take my punishment? He can offer it, but it will be up to Bill to accept.

In order for Jesus’ payment of our debts to be accepted, God had to decree that He would accept that payment on our behalf. Suppose Jesus had simply appeared and died for my sins. Would God be under any obligation to accept that payment? No. There first had to be a judgment by the Governor of the Universe that He would accept a substitutionary payment for my debts. This prior decision by God the Father is pure grace on His part.

In light of our two-fold indebtedness to God, consider how presumptuous it is when people refuse the work of Christ and replace it with their own “good” works. Aside from their inability to perform even a single “good” work, they would obligate God to accept their offering. In your prayer time today pray for those who teach and preach that they might have significant opportunities to speak the Gospel truth regarding the only way of salvation.

The Problem of Forgiveness

Our insistence that according to the Gospel the cross of Christ is the only ground on which God forgives sins bewilders many people. “Why should our forgiveness depend on Christ’s death?” they ask. “Why does God not simply forgive us, without the necessity of the Cross?” As the French cynic put it, “The good God will forgive me; that’s His job (or His specialty).” “After all,” the objector may continue, “if we sin against one another, we are required to forgive one another. We are even warned of dire consequences if we refuse. Why can’t God practice what He preaches and be equally generous? Nobody’s death is necessary before we forgive each other. Why does God make so much fuss about forgiving us and even declare it impossible without His Son’s ‘sacrifice for sin’? It sounds like a primitive superstition which modern people should long since have discarded.”

It is essential to ask and to face these questions. Two answers may be given to them immediately. The first was supplied by Anselm in his great book Cur Deus Homo? at the end of the eleventh century. If anybody imagines, he wrote, that God can simply forgive us as we forgive others, that person has “not yet considered the seriousness of sin,” or literally “what a heavy weight sin is” (i.xxi). The second answer might be expressed similarly: “You have not yet considered the majesty of God.” It is when our perception of God and man, or of holiness and sin, are askew that our understanding of the Atonement is bound to be askew also.

The fact is that the analogy between our forgiveness and God’s is far from being exact. True, Jesus taught us to pray: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” But He was teaching the impossibility of the unforgiving being forgiven, and so the obligation of the forgiven to forgive, as is clear from the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant; He was not drawing any parallel between God and us in relation to the basis of forgiveness. For us to argue “we forgive each other unconditionally, let God do the same to us” betrays not sophistication but shallowness, since it overlooks the elementary fact that we are not God. We are private individuals, and other people’s misdemeanors are personal injuries. God is not a private individual, however, nor is sin just a personal injury. On the contrary, God is Himself the maker of the laws we break, and sin is rebellion against Him.

The crucial question we should ask, therefore, is a different one. It is not why God finds it difficult to forgive, but how He finds it possible to do so at all. In the words of Carnegie Simpson, “forgiveness is to man the plainest of duties; to God it is the profoundest of problems.”

The problem of forgiveness is constituted by the inevitable collision between divine perfection and human rebellion, between God as He is and us as we are. The obstacle to forgiveness is neither our sin alone, nor our guilt alone, but also the divine reaction in love and wrath toward guilty sinners. For, although indeed “God is love,” yet we have to remember that His love is “holy love,” love which yearns over sinners while at the same time refusing to condone their sin. How, then, could God express His holy love?—His love in forgiving sinners without compromising His holiness, and His holiness in judging sinners without frustrating His love?

At the Cross, in holy love, God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience Himself. He bore the judgment we deserve in order to bring us the forgiveness we do not deserve. On the Cross, divine mercy and justice were equally expressed and eternally reconciled. God’s holy love was “satisfied.”

All inadequate doctrines of the Atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and man. If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to His, then, of course, we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely “hell-deserving sinners,” then and only then does the necessity of the Cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before.

The essential background to the Cross, therefore, is a balanced understanding of the gravity of sin and the majesty of God. If we diminish either, we thereby diminish the Cross. If we reinterpret sin as a lapse instead of a rebellion, and God as indulgent instead of indignant, then naturally the Cross appears superfluous. But to dethrone God and enthrone ourselves not only dispenses with the Cross; it also degrades both God and man. A biblical view of God and ourselves, however, that is, of our sin and of God’s wrath, honors both.

Sin and Christ’s Atoning Work

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

The work of redemption is that which Jesus accomplished for us. In theology this is called the atoning work of Christ, or simply the Atonement. The atoning work of Jesus Christ was made necessary by human sin, and there are three aspects of sin that we need to consider.

First, sin is a failure to do what we are obligated to do. God as Creator has given us responsibilities for which He holds us accountable. If we fail to carry out these responsibilities, we incur a debt.

Next, sin is an expression of enmity, a violation of the personal relationship human beings are supposed to have with their Creator. When we sin against God we break that relationship. We express not love and devotion to Him but rather a kind of hostility that is serious and must be addressed.

Finally, the Presbyterian Westminster Shorter Catechism says that “sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.” In modern English that means any time we break the law of God, we sin.

We have to keep these three concepts of sin clearly in mind if we are going to understand what is necessary to restore a relationship between God and fallen humanity. If a crime has been committed, then we have to deal with penal sanctions. If a debt has been incurred, then we have to come to grips with what we call pecuniary sanctions. Enmity has to do with personal relationships, and these need to be healed.

If I steal $1,000 from a man, I may not feel that I owe him anything, but I do. I may not feel that I have committed a crime, but I have. I may not feel that I’ve acted in a hostile fashion toward him, but he feels it. Whether I realize it or not, a bad situation exists, one that must be corrected or else I will suffer for it. Sooner or later, sin must be dealt with. God will hold each responsible to render a life’s account.

Whether men feel the need to be reconciled to God or not, the fact is they are facing a God who is a “consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). The Bible tells us that a proper fear of this God is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). Today ask God to give you a proper fear of His intolerance of sin, that you might cling to Jesus and His Atonement with greater desperation.