The Incarnation: A Crucial Doctrine (John 1:14)

Biblically speaking, what was the purpose of the incarnation? This question is of utmost importance and is not to be trivialized. To misunderstand the purpose of the incarnation is to misunderstand the righteousness of God and the necessity of penal substitution through a pure and sinless sacrifice for the purpose of legal pardon of sinners. When it comes to giving pardons there are only two possibilities: the pardon will either be legal or illegal. In other words the pardon will either uphold the law (legal) or nullify the law (illegal). Of the two kinds of pardons which one do you believe is the kind God gives?

God never gives illegal pardons. God only gives legal pardons. In simple terms, God is righteous and just and will never do anything wrong or unjust. Therefore God cannot and will not illegally pardon. So the question must be asked: “How can God pardon sinners and remain righteous and just in the process?” The right answer to this question will show that the incarnation is a crucial doctrine and that our pardon came at a great cost to God.

The Gospel of John answers how God can pardon sinners and remain righteous and just in the process. The Old Testament sacrificial system with its tabernacle illustrated that God would provide the only law upholding means of pardon. The innocent would have to die in the place of the guilty for pardon to be extended. The sinner’s death penalty for violating God’s Law had to be paid by an innocent substitute. This is called Penal Substitution, meaning penalty substitution.

Could the death penalty for a man really be paid by an animal? Never! That is why the Bible says, “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). The sinner’s death penalty for violating God’s Law would have to be paid by an innocent man. Therefore the incarnation of Christ was a necessity for penal substitution and legal pardon. The Gospel of John shows Jesus as the fulfillment of the Tabernacle because He was God in flesh come to live a sinless life, die a sacrificial death, and experience a supernatural resurrection so that God could be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

This was the primary purpose of the incarnation – to make propitiation (legal pardon) for the sins of the people. It would not and could not be an innocent animal that allowed God to give a legal pardon but only an innocent, sinless man. The uncreated Son of God had to become a man to achieve our legal pardon. John said, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Amazing truth – the Son of God on earth as a man! Even more amazing is the reason He was on the earth as a man – “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)!

According to God’s Word, God could not have pardoned any other way, “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendents of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted” (Hebrews 2:14-18).

Penal substitution is the only way God can legally pardon. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Therefore the incarnation was necessary for the realization of penal substitution (legal pardon) and that is the primary biblical interpretation for the incarnation. If God could have legally pardoned any other way, surely He would have done it!

Our salvation cost God everything! There has never been and never will be a greater demonstration of love than the truth that God sent His only begotten Son into the world as a man to die as a substitute for sinners (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). The incarnation is a precious doctrine; it is a marvelous doctrine; it is a crucial doctrine. No one can be saved apart from pardon based on faith in Jesus. God does not save any other way – there is no other way.

Atheism's Real Problem with the God of Christianity

In the previous post where I reviewed Challenging the Verdict by Earl Doherty, I promised that I would address the deep rooted and real problem that atheists have with the God of Christianity. Allow me to catch you back up to speed. In his book, Doherty unknowingly revealed the inability of evidential apologetics to answer his deep rooted and real problem with Christianity, namely, that the God of Christianity is unjust and His method of atonement is both illogical and immoral. Doherty said, “Should we not expect a just Deity to fashion a punishment fitting the crime? . . . What, after all, was Adam and Eve’s purported ‘sin’? Eating fruit, even a forbidden one, hardly sinks to the depth of depravity” (124). A few pages later Doherty said, “But why did he require such an ultimate sacrifice in order to forgive humanity its sins? Is there not, indeed, some logical if not moral contradiction in ‘redeeming’ men of sins like murder through an act of murder on their part? Why did he not embody the act of redemption in something more exemplary, perhaps by having Jesus perform a few thousand hours of community service? What a moral example that would have set” (126). No amount of external evidence (empirical facts) can give an answer to these objections. God’s revelation of the meaning of these facts is needed to answer Doherty’s deep rooted and real problem with Christianity.

Since God is being accused of injustice, immorality, and ignorance for both His stance toward sin and His method of atonement, we must allow Him to speak and justify His actions (Romans 3:4). So to understand and see the justice, morality, and wisdom of God in both His stance toward sin and His method of atonement, we will have to consider God’s revealed meaning of redemptive history as it specifically pertains to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

First, the resurrection of Jesus means that God is Creator and transcendent Lord. This means that naturalistic evolution is false, because the resurrection of Jesus is only possible in an open system in which God intervenes and miracles are possible. The resurrection of Jesus, since it means that God is Creator and transcendent Lord, also means that there are no “brute facts.” The facts do not speak for themselves but must be interpreted only by God’s revealed meaning for them. As Dan Phillips says of God as Creator and transcendent Lord, “He created all things in heaven and on earth, including heaven and earth themselves. In doing so, God created all facts. And thus God assigned meaning, value, and significance to everything. That means, then, that there are no “brute facts,” only created facts, with their meaning designed and assigned by God” (Dan Phillips, The World-Tilting Gospel: Embracing a Biblical Worldview and Hanging on Tight, Kindle Edition, 91).

Second, the resurrection of Jesus means that Adam was the first man created by God as both the progenitor of and representative for all people born through his seed. This means that theistic evolution is false because of the solidarity of all people with one man. To believe in the resurrection of Jesus as revealed by God as the means by which He saves sinners from among humanity is to believe in solidarity with an original, historical, first man. There could be no solidarity on the basis of theistic evolution because there would be no definite, definable place where the head of the human race, as its sole representative, plunged the race into sin. Therefore no one would be born with a sin nature traceable to an original ancestor.

There would be no solidarity under the system of either naturalistic or theistic evolution. Without solidarity, Jesus could represent no more than one person. The ratio, without solidarity, becomes a one for one ratio. Each individual sinner would have to have a different individual Savior or else Jesus would have to continually come and offer Himself over and over again for each individual sinner.

Third, the resurrection of Jesus means that God is covenant maker who promises life for obedience to and death for disobedience of His covenant. One of God’s assigned meanings of the resurrection of Jesus is that He keeps His promises. He is a covenant keeping God. He is truth and in Him there is no darkness at all. It is impossible for God to lie since to get anything out of something, it has to be in it. There is a reason one cannot get “blood out of a turnip.” Since God is truth there is no lie in Him. Therefore it is impossible for God to lie (Hebrews 6:18). God keeps His promises. He gives death for disobedience (Romans 6:23).

Adam, as the progenitor and representative of all men earned death for breaking God’s covenant and in order for God to remain true, death reigned from Adam on (Romans 5:12). On the other hand, Jesus, the progenitor and representative of all who have faith in Him earned life for keeping God’s covenant and in order for God to remain true, He raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 2:24) and will raise all who are in Christ (1 Corinthians 15:21-23). God keeps His promises. He gives life for obedience (Leviticus 18:5).

Fourth, the resurrection of Jesus means that Adam was a covenant breaker who earned death for himself and all his offspring through their solidarity with him. Adam transgressed and disobeyed God’s command and became a covenant breaker. Adam became a capital offender. One may question why disobedience to God’s covenant is a capital crime. The human mind, even among atheists, can determine that murder is a capital offense that deserves capital punishment. However, “lesser sins” that the laws of the land do not consider capital offenses are considered capital offenses in God’s kingdom. From this truth the unregenerate human mind recoils and objects.

Why is murder a capital offense? Is it because there is something so unloving about the act of murder that it is hideous? Is it because the murderer is so unloving that he is dangerous to society? Is murder a capital offense because there is no greater display of hatred toward humanity? Murder is the greatest crime that can be committed against humanity because it violates the greatest commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” in the grossest manner and is therefore a capital offense deserving capital punishment.

What is the greatest crime one can commit? Logically, the greatest crime a man can commit is the violation of the greatest commandment. Is there a commandment greater than “love your neighbor as yourself”? Surely, and logically, the greatest crime that a man can commit is a violation of the greatest commandment against the greatest Being. What is the greatest commandment? Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment (Matthew 22:37-38).

Should the crime of murder, of not loving a fellow man, an equal being, be greater than any crime of not loving God, the greatest Being? Logic demands that there is no greater crime than not loving God and therefore any crime that violates love for God is a capital offense that deserves capital punishment. When Adam disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit he committed a capital offense because of the nature of his crime. Adam failed to keep God’s commandment, violated God’s covenant, and earned death because not loving and obeying God is a capital offense that is greater than not loving and killing a fellow human being. All men who are born naturally into Adam’s race naturally have the same hatred for God and His commandments.

Fifth, the resurrection means that Jesus is the second Adam, born without the agency of a human father in order to bypass imputation of Adam’s sin nature. In order to accomplish obedience to God’s covenant and thereby confirm the covenant promises of God, Jesus would have to live in perfect obedience to the Law of God. However, if Jesus were a natural born descendant of Adam, He would also inherit Adam’s sin nature. Here the purpose of the virginal conception of Jesus is made clear by the redemptive- historical context of the resurrection.

The virginal conception of Jesus also implies the divinity of Jesus. Here the mystery of the hypostatic union or the two natures of Jesus is revealed as one of God’s meanings of the resurrection of Jesus. He is the Son of man and the Son of God in one person. He is fully God and fully man in the one person of Jesus Christ. In order to accomplish God’s covenant with man, the Son of God, with supreme love for God, would have to become the son of man, without a sin nature.

Sixth, the resurrection of Jesus means Jesus is the covenant keeper and redeemer who earned life for Himself and all his offspring by their solidarity with Him through faith. “In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that he might redeem those who were under the Law” (Galatians 4:4-5). Jesus lived perfectly under the Law of God, kept His covenant, and earned life. Jesus lived in perfect obedience to God because of His perfect love for God doing what Adam did not do and what no natural born descendent of Adam could ever do. As Phillips says, “So we must recognize in Jesus the quality that every other human being since Adam has lacked: utter, comprehensive, all-consuming love for God that flowed from a sinless heart and issued in a flawlessly, perfectly holy life” (The World-Tilting Gospel, 117).

Adam failed to love God with all his heart and as a result he violated God’s command, became a capital offender, and earned death for himself and all his offspring. God’s covenant with Adam was that if he disobeyed he would die. The wages of sin is death. By implication, God’s covenant with Adam meant that if he obeyed he would live. The wages of obedience is life. This truth is expressed in God’s Law given to Israel before the time of Christ. “So you shall keep My statutes and My judgments, by which a man may live if he does them” (Leviticus 18:5).

There is a one major problem though. Adam has already failed to love God and committed a capital offense. All of Adam’s offspring have inherited his sin nature to the point that none are able to obey God and therefore none can earn life (Romans 3:20, 28). All are doomed, unless God has a solution for the dilemma of how He can pardon capital offenders and give them life instead of death, while He remains true in the process.

Here is where the Gospel really becomes offensive and is viewed by those who are perishing as foolishness. God’s solution for the dilemma of how He can pardon capital offenders, giving them life instead of death, is through Penal Substitution. Someone would have to live a perfect life of loving loyalty to God and then suffer the penalty of capital punishment as a sacrifice for and a substitute of capital offenders.

Earl Doherty objects, “But why did he require such an ultimate sacrifice in order to forgive humanity its sins? Is there not, indeed, some logical if not moral contradiction in ‘redeeming’ men of sins like murder through an act of murder on their part? Why did he not embody the act of redemption in something more exemplary, perhaps by having Jesus perform a few thousand hours of community service? What a moral example that would have set” (126).

Others object and say that it is illogical and immoral to execute and innocent man and to set free a capital offender. How can God do this without committing two injustices? After all, God’s Word says, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 17:15). The answer is the resurrection! The resurrection not only makes Penal Substitution logical and moral, it is an absolute necessity for God who is truth. God promised life for the one who obeyed His Law. Jesus did obey God’s Law perfectly. The death of Christ was at the hands of sinful men. Men in violation of God’s Law were responsible for the execution of Jesus so that it was not the Law that promised life executing Jesus but godless men (Acts 2:23). Since Jesus was innocent and was dying by God’s plan as a substitute for sinners, His resurrection from the dead was an absolute necessity and certainty (Acts 2:24). The Law of God based on the Word of God owed Jesus life and since it is impossible for God to lie, it was impossible for death to hold its prey.

Penal Substitution is a logical and moral impossibility for any court system in this world. No human court can accomplish justice through Penal Substitution. In its attempt, any human court would become guilty of two injustices. Executing an innocent man is unjust even if the innocent man is willing. Setting free a guilty man on the basis that an innocent man has died in the place of the guilty man is unjust. Without the power to raise men from the dead, Penal Substitution cannot be a justice serving means of pardon. However, with the ability to raise men from the dead, Penal Substitution becomes the only means by which a righteous God can pardon sinners while He maintains justice in the process (Romans 3:23-26).

Doherty’s solution for maintaining justice while pardoning a capital offender is “having Jesus perform a few thousand hours of community service” (126). However, even atheists know that justice has not been served when the punishment does not equal the crime. Doherty’s question, “Should we not expect a just Deity to fashion a punishment fitting the crime?” now needs to be asked to Doherty instead of being asked by Doherty. Under Doherty’s scheme of atonement, God would allow capital offenders to go free without the penalty matching the crime as Doherty claims God should do.

Jesus lived a perfect life under God’s Law to fulfill its precepts, died a sacrificial death to pay the penalty of breaking God’s Law for sinners, and experienced a supernatural resurrection to fulfill the Law’s promise of life for the one who obeyed it. Jesus earned life for Himself and all who have solidarity with Him through faith.

Seventh, the resurrection of Jesus means that He is both Lord and Judge. No explanation needed! God is just, moral, wise, and loving!

Book Review: Challenging the Verdict

Doherty, Earl. Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Christ”. Ottawa Canada: Age of Reason Publications, 2001.

After opening the front cover of Challenging the Verdict, one finds an advanced review of the book written by Lee Salisbury, a former evangelical church pastor; now writer and speaker for atheist groups. In his advanced review, Salisbury claims that Strobel and his “expert witnesses” in The Case for Christ sacrifice intellectual integrity, speak half-truths and misrepresentations in defense of Christian doctrine. On the other hand, Doherty is praised by Salisbury for his reasoned refutation and maintenance of intellectual integrity. If Salisbury’s review is accurate then Doherty will have proved with reasoned refutations, truthful representations, and intellectual integrity that the Gospels are not history and that Christianity is a myth. Challenging the Verdict will have, as is claimed on the back cover, demonstrated the deficiencies, the fallacies, and the selective and misleading use of the evidence inherent in The Case for Christ.

Enough of the “atta boy” awards until the claim of Doherty’s superior reasoning powers are validated. Doherty has claimed that he will “expose the fallacy, distortion of evidence and extensive misinterpretation of the record inherent in the ‘case’ for Christian orthodoxy . . .” (2). He has claimed that Strobel’s “overall case has been marked by shallow argument and deficient reasoning; special pleading (meaning a selective adoption and interpretation of evidence); and techniques that can be said to be fundamentally misleading, in that a particular conclusion has been established ahead of time, and evidence and argumentation is often selected and applied in light of this desired conclusion” (6). It is only fair that the reader hold Doherty to the same standards of logic, honesty, and integrity that he claims Strobel violates.

Did Doherty achieve his purpose? No! Instead of reasoned refutations, truthful representations, and intellectual integrity, Doherty used shallow argument and deficient reasoning; special pleading; and techniques that are fundamentally misleading and violate intellectual integrity.

However, before establishing these failures of Doherty, his accomplishment in his book needs to be verbalized. Doherty unknowingly revealed the inability of evidential apologetics to answer his deep rooted and real problem with Christianity, namely, that the God of Christianity is unjust and His method of atonement is both illogical and immoral. Doherty said, “Should we not expect a just Deity to fashion a punishment fitting the crime? . . . What, after all, was Adam and Eve’s purported ‘sin’? Eating fruit, even a forbidden one, hardly sinks to the depth of depravity” (124). A few pages later Doherty said, “But why did he require such an ultimate sacrifice in order to forgive humanity its sins? Is there not, indeed, some logical if not moral contradiction in ‘redeeming’ men of sins like murder through an act of murder on their part? Why did he not embody the act of redemption in something more exemplary, perhaps by having Jesus perform a few thousand hours of community service? What a moral example that would have set” (126). No amount of external evidence can give an answer to these objections. God’s revelation of the meaning of these facts is needed to answer Doherty’s deep rooted and real problem with Christianity.

The failures of Doherty are threefold: (1) he failed to provide reasoned refutations, (2) he failed to provide truthful representations, and (3) he failed to provide intellectual integrity.

Instead of reasoned refutation, Doherty resorted to shallow argument and deficient reasoning. Doherty attempted to prove that changes have been made to the original text (also called by Doherty both original eyewitness accounts and source material) of which he admits we do not possess (7) through the postulated source document known as Q (12) of which he admits that we do not actually possess a copy of it (85). We do have copies of the Gospels; we do not have a copy of Q; and Doherty expects us to believe that he is demonstrating through reasoned refutation that the evangelists made wholesale changes to their source material (7). No thanks! I am not into myths.

Instead of truthful representations, Doherty resorted to special pleading. Here Doherty attempted to prove that the Scriptures are inconsistent and contradictory (145). Doherty presumed from the outset a fixed interpretation of the Gospels (146) to show them inconsistent and contradictory. He especially pitted the Gospel of John against the synoptic Gospels. Here is one of Doherty’s representations of inconsistency and contradiction in the Scriptures: the synoptic Gospels record that Jesus stumbled while carrying His cross to Calvary because of His weakened condition and had to receive help by Simon of Cyrene to carry His cross. Yet John’s Gospel says, “He went out, bearing his own cross” (John 19:17). Because of this Doherty said, “Yet another indicator, by the way, that John is fashioning his Jesus character the way he wants him, and not the way any tradition said” (151). ROFL – that means that I am “rolling on floor laughing.” Does “he went out bearing his own cross” contradict the other Gospels that record he began the journey carrying his own cross?

However, that is not the thrust of Doherty’s argument to truthfully represent the inconsistencies and contradictions in the Scriptures. To make his case, Doherty attempted to show that the Gospel of John is inconsistent with and contradicts the synoptic Gospels by claiming that the Gospel of John does not portray Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice for sin (17). Doherty’s argument rests on the assumption that the Lord’s Supper in John 13 is not the same as the Lord’s Supper in the synoptic Gospels because it lacks the Eucharist elements (229). But wait! The Gospel of John establishes that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrificial system beginning with Him as the tabernacle (John 1:14), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and proceeds to Him making atonement on the Mercy Seat (John 20:12 compare to Exodus 25:18).

Doherty is under no illusion as to the significance of the Lord’s Supper (Eucharist). He knows that it portrays Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice for sin and that it declares him to be that very thing (p. 17). Doherty even went so far as to say, “In fact, there are elements within the Gospels that are decidedly un-Jewish, such as the Eucharist, which involves the eating and drinking of Jesus’ flesh and blood” (p. 169). One wonders how Doherty can then say, “The establishment of the Eucharist…is notably missing in John and elsewhere” (p. 233), since John 6:54 says, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” This oversight by Doherty is so astonishing that one must conclude he is guilty of special pleading.

Instead of intellectual integrity, Doherty resorted to misleading techniques. Doherty completely ignores the literary genre of the epistles (that these are letters to churches or Christians) and treats them as though they should be the Gospels (Christological biography). This is a misleading technique that confuses categories for the sake of making arguments and marshalling evidence in ones favor. In so doing, Doherty is able to make the claim that the epistles do not speak of Jesus Christ as a historical, human figure but as a cosmic Son of God who shares in God’s nature. As an example, Doherty said, “The death and resurrection of their Christ is never placed in an historical, earthly setting. A crucifixion on Calvary and the empty tomb story, the rising from the grave outside Jerusalem, are not to be found outside the Gospels” (55). In this way, Doherty can postulate a mythical Christ in the epistles with a contradictory historical, human Christ in the Gospels as an “evolution in Christian traditions within the first few generations of the faith” (39).

Having conveniently confused categories, Doherty is then able to demand evidence from the epistles that does not belong in the epistles. The mantra in Challenging the Verdict becomes the Jesus of the Gospels is not the Jesus of the epistles because the epistles do not repeat the Christological biography of Christ (21, 24, 28, 29, 39, 55, 64, 66, 83, 94, 99, 101,103, 104, 105, 135, 139, 159, 162, 170, 171, 176, 200, 210, 218, 225, 231, 235).

Not only does Doherty violate intellectual integrity by conveniently confusing categories, treating the epistles as though they should be the Gospels, he also violates intellectual integrity by conveniently creating categories in which to put any opposing evidence so that it can be declared inadmissible. For instance, coherence becomes either reading the content of one set of documents into another (104) or “the evangelists constructed their story by drawing on scriptural elements in the process known as midrash” (134). Midrash is the practice of copying and reworking passages from the Old Testament in order to build up a new story based on old material (112).

Another conveniently created category by Doherty is close correspondences become plagiarisms. Speaking of the close correspondences between the Gospels, Doherty said, “Most scholars have concluded that the close correspondences between Mark and the later evangelists, overall and in many small ways, does indeed make them technically plagiarisms” (173). What happens when there seems to be no correspondences? No correspondences become radical revisions and contradictions (17).

Confusing categories by treating the epistles as though they should be the Gospels and creating categories by which to declare as inadmissible any evidence to the contrary, is an exercise in misleading techniques and is not intellectual integrity. Doherty has failed to provide reasoned refutations, truthful representations, and intellectual integrity. Naturalism will have to continue its search for its hero – Doherty has failed.

I have not forgotten Doherty’s deep rooted and real problem with Christianity. I will address that problem in the next post.

Lordship: The Death Blow to Legalism and Antinomianism

The apostle Paul was often misunderstood and falsely accused of evil for preaching the good news of justification by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He was especially misunderstood and mistreated by the legalistic Jews who thought that the good news of Jesus Christ was a message against the people and against the Law. “When the seven days were almost over, the Jews from Asia, upon seeing him in the temple, began to stir up all the crowd and laid hands on him, crying out, ‘Men of Israel, come to our aid! This is the man who preaches to all men everywhere against our people and the Law and this place…” (Acts 21:27-28).

Paul was perceived as being anti-Semitic (against the Jews) and antinomian (against the Law) because of his preaching of the gospel. The root word for Law is nomous. If we say that someone is autonomous we are saying that he is self-ruled or self-governed. Auto means self and nomous means law. So to say that someone is antinomian is to say that he is against the Law – he is against being ruled or governed. This was the accusation brought against the apostle Paul from the legalistic Jews. They accused Paul of antinomianism – being against the Law and preaching against the Law. For the legalist, the true gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is seen as antinomianism. The legalist perceives the gospel to be that which nullifies the Law and therefore that which gives a license to sin.

However, the apostle Paul proved that the good news of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ was that which actually established the law and not that which nullified it (Romans 3:31). Listen! Even the Lord Jesus Christ said that He didn’t come to abolish the Law – He said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).

The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled the Law completely. He upheld the Law in principle through His sinless life; He upheld the Law in penalty through His sacrificial death; and He upheld the Law in probity through His supernatural resurrection. Probity means integrity or uprightness. The supernatural resurrection showed the Law to be that which is good and it showed the Person of the Law, God the Father, to be just, good, and right in all His dealings. Therefore when we exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ we do not nullify the Law but establish the Law by trusting in the One who completely and perfectly upheld the Law through His life, death, and resurrection.

But for the life of him, the legalist cannot comprehend that faith establishes the Law. The legalist cannot see how grace isn’t the same as antinomianism. So after establishing the truth of imputed righteousness through the grace of Jesus Christ who upheld the Law on our behalf, whose grace is greater than multiplied sins, the apostle Paul anticipated the false accusation of antinomianism – “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase” (Romans 6:1)?

You see, the legalist would attempt to carry Paul’s message of justification by grace through faith to what he believed to be its final conclusion and would inevitably come up with the charge of antinomianism. The legalist would reason: if justification is by grace through faith then the Law has been nullified and men have a license to sin.

The legalist believes that the only remedy against sinning is the Law. The legalist also believes that God cannot be pleased apart from works of the Law. So the legalist adds Law to justification in violation of the plain and clear teaching of the Scripture. So the legalist, being under the Law, has not died to sin because the power of sin is the law (1 Corinthians 15:56), and so there is no deliverance from sin through the Law.

However, the legalist has no real understanding of the working of the gospel so he sticks with his faulty logic rather than looking into how the gospel actually is not that which gives men a license to sin. What the legalist needs is an explanation of the wonder working power of the gospel.

So Paul answered the question that would be raised from the legalist – “May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it” (Romans 6:2)? God in His wisdom and power has designed salvation in such a way that those who are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ have died to sin so that there is no way that the gospel of grace promotes sin or gives a license to sin.

“May it never be” is a strong and forceful way of saying that the gospel is not that which promotes or perpetuates sin. So the legalist is immediately confronted with the truth that his understanding of the gospel is wrong. If he would examine the gospel closely and see how faith in Jesus establishes the Law, puts one to death in Christ, and raises him with a new life principle under loving and loyal obedience to Jesus as Lord, the legalist would understand how the gospel doesn’t promote sin. Jesus said, “If you love Me you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15).

Any man under the principle of being ruled by the Law is doomed because by the Law comes the knowledge of sin and no flesh shall be justified in God’s sight through the works of the Law. However, any man under the principle of being ruled by the Lord because of his love for the Lord is blessed and justified because we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law and that we are justified without any cause in us by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. We love Him because He first loved us.

Can’t you see how loving loyalty to Jesus as Lord because He loved us and gave Himself up for us doesn’t make one lawless? This is how it works: while unsaved we all lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest (Ephesians 2:3). Our life principle was under the lordship of sin and the principle of Law cannot give life to a sinner but actually gives power to sin. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

You see, God put us to death with Jesus our Lord who did fulfill the principle of the Law and died on our behalf so that he could put to death the lordship of sin in our lives and raise us up with Jesus to walk with a new life principle – loving loyal obedience to Jesus as Lord.

Salvation restores that which was lost – obedience to God through obedience to Jesus and is what the Bible calls the obedience of faith. Salvation is a Lordship issue! Lordship is the death-blow to legalism showing it to be the lie that it is.

Imputation

After having established the truth of justification by faith, the apostle moved into his discussion on the blessings of that justification: that we have peace with God; access to God; we exult in the hope of the glory of God; we have assurance of God’s love for us; we have assurance of final salvation; and we exult in God Himself through Jesus Christ our Lord.

But what we may not realize and may not have stopped to consider is how can the sinless life, sacrificial death, and supernatural resurrection of one Man bring about justification for as many as have faith in Him. It may seem that under penal-substitution one Man could only die for and save one man. Why isn’t there a one for one ratio in salvation with each sinner needing his or her own savior who couldn’t be anyone else’s savior? How is it that Jesus can be the Savior of innumerable souls and not just the Savior of one individual?

Actually the answer to that question is of utmost importance and is what the apostle Paul was establishing in Romans 5:12-21 – the basis of justification through imputation. The basis of our justification through one Man is imputation through headship.

The first man, Adam, was given headship over the human race. All men descend from him. Even Eve had Adam as her origin. This means that Adam was created first; that Adam by virtue of the created order was the head of the race; and therefore Adam was the federal representative for all men. This made Adam responsible for all men and that whatever Adam became all men would become by the very law of nature in procreation – each will reproduce “after its kind.”

The fall of man into sin changed man’s nature to that of a sinner and therefore all men born into the world through the agency of a human father are born with a sin nature. In the fall of man it was Eve who sinned first and then Adam. However, we read that sin and death entered through Adam and not Eve because Adam was the head of the race and responsible for it.

So the consequences of the fall into sin was that death spread to all men because all sinned in and with Adam and all receive a sin nature from Adam who is our representative head. All who have an earthly father have a sin nature because of the imputation of the guilt of one man – Adam. This is the reason for the virgin conception of Christ. God bypassed the necessary imputation of the sin nature of Adam to Christ by Christ not having an earthly father. Although Mary had a sin nature and was a sinner, the woman is not the head of the race and the sin nature is not imputed because of her but because of the man. Therefore, because of the virgin conception of Christ, He was not born with a sin nature.

To understand this better let’s consider he angels. The angels don’t procreate. Their full number was created when God created the angels and there aren’t any being born and there aren’t any more being made. So no – you’ll never be an angel! The angels do not have a federal head or representative – when Satan fell he didn’t cause the fall of all the angels and his sin was not imputed to any other angel. The other angels that fell, fell on their own and each fell from a pure and perfect state into sin. Since there was no imputation of sin from one head angel neither can there be the imputation of righteousness from one savior for angels – if they were to be saved each would have to have a different savior – and that is not going to happen!

It is on the basis of federal headship that not only can one man be responsible for the fall and sin nature of all men but that one Man can also be responsible for the salvation and rescue of innumerable souls and not just a one to one ratio. The last Adam, Jesus Christ was born of a virgin so that the sin nature of Adam was not imputed to Him. He lived a sinless life in perfect obedience to God which qualified Him to lay down His life in one full and final act of obedience – His obedience to the point of death, even death on a cross, as a substitute or sacrifice because of our transgressions. Our sin was imputed to Him so that He could pay our debt. The Lord Jesus experienced a supernatural resurrection because of His innocence and because the death that He died was not His own but for others. It is on this basis and this basis alone that His righteousness can be imputed to those who have faith in Him – He was raised for our justification.

As the last Adam, Christ is the federal head of the redeemed race and all who are in Christ will be made alive! This is how one Man can save so many!

The Purpose of the Incarnation...The Real Purpose of Christmas

This is a repost of The Purpose of the Incarnation which I first posted on July 10, 2008. I felt the necessity to repost this at this time being we are in the Christmas season and particulary because of the trivialization, misinterpretation, and misrepresentation by many in our day concerning the true purpose of Christmas. Many in our day are reducing the love of God as found in His sending of His only Son to some form of "warm fuzzies" and are minimizing the purpose of our Lord taking on flesh and blood in order to live a perfect life by faith and then to die in the place of sinners in order for God to justly save sinners. So here it is:

Biblically speaking, what was the purpose of the incarnation? This question is of utmost importance and is not to be trivialized. To misunderstand the purpose of the incarnation is to misunderstand the righteousness of God and the necessity of penal substitution through a pure and sinless sacrifice for the purpose of God legally declaring the unjust, just, while God remains just. In simple terms (not trivial), God is just (right) and always will be and He will not violate who He is. Therefore God cannot and will not arbitrarily declare an unjust creature, just, without there being an actual legal transaction securing both the justness of God and the justness of the unjust. There has to be an imputation of the justness of a just substitute to the unjust or else God will not declare him or her to be so.

Therefore the incarnation was a necessity for penal substitution, for atonement! This was the primary purpose of the incarnation – to make propitiation for the sins of the people. I will establish this biblically but first I want to look at a few examples of misinterpreting and trivializing the incarnation.

Probably the most famous (should be infamous) for his misinterpretation of the incarnation and atonement would be Charles Finney. Concerning Christ and the atonement Finney said, “He can not plead as our Advocate that He has paid our debt, in such a sense that He can demand our discharge on the ground of justice. He has not paid our debt in such a sense that we do not still owe it. He has not atoned for our sins in such a sense that we might not still be justly punished for them. Indeed, such a thing is impossible and absurd. One being can not suffer for another in such a sense as to remove the guilt of that other. He may suffer for another's guilt in such a sense that it will be safe to forgive the sinner, for whom the suffering has been endured; but the suffering of the substitute can never, in the least degree, diminish the intrinsic guilt of the criminal. Our Advocate may urge that He has borne such suffering for us to honor the law that we had dishonored, that now it is safe to extend mercy to us; but He never can demand our discharge on the ground that we do not deserve to be punished. The fact of our intrinsic guilt remains, and must forever remain; and our forgiveness is just as much an act of sovereign mercy, as if Christ had never died for us” (Charles Finney, Christ Our Advocate, VI. What His plea in behalf of sinners is, Number 7).

So according to Finney man could have been forgiven based on the mercy of God alone and apart from the incarnation – “Our forgiveness is just as much an act of sovereign mercy, as if Christ had never died for us.”

Since Anselm (1033-1109) most of the Church has understood Christ's death in forensic, i.e., legal categories. In Cur Deus Homo, Anselm argued that God having willed to redeem us, he could so in no other way than by the incarnation.

Not so, however, for the Pelagians. In their scheme, it has been considered unjust for Christ to have suffered vicariously for sinners. How can one righteous person suffer for others, especially the unrighteous? This was Pelagius' argument and has been followed in more Modern times by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875).

Hugo Grotius was the major proponent of the governmental theory of the atonement. He trained as a lawyer rather than a clergyman. Following closely in his footsteps in the nineteenth century was another lawyer and proponent of the governmental theory of atonement, Charles Finney. According to the governmental theory of atonement, the purpose of Christ’s death was not to satisfy the demands of God’s just nature so that He might be able to do what He otherwise could not have done, namely, forgive sins. The governmental theory of atonement separates the person of God from the government of God so that sin is not a violation of God’s person but of His laws. However the two cannot be separated and to violate God’s laws is to violate God’s nature, His person.

Another example of misinterpreting and trivializing the incarnation is seen in writings of many in the postmodern movements of our day. Such as Ron Martoia in his book Morph. Seeking to justify being like the world to win the world (cultural relevance), the incarnation is grossly misinterpreted by Martoia as God’s desire to be culturally relevant. He says, “The quintessential example of genius intersection is, of course, the incarnation: God’s presence, voice, and message piercing and penetrating 1C culture. As we simply observe the potency of the incarnation, several things come to mind. God sent Jesus as a person. God could have sent the message packaged any number of ways. He didn’t choose a CD player to herald the good news, a Web page that automatically pops up every time someone logs on, or an MP3 download into our ear canal. The fact that he sent a person bespeaks God’s desire to be relevant, understandable, approachable, and relational (Ron Martoia, Morph, Group Publishing, 2003, pg. 17).

Could God have redeemed any other way? According to Martoia, “God could have sent the message packaged any number of ways.”

Did God send Jesus for the purpose of cultural relevance? According to Martoia, “The fact that he sent a person bespeaks God’s desire to be relevant, understandable, approachable, and relational.”

But according to God’s Word God could not have redeemed any other way, “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendents of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted” (Hebrews 2:14-18).

Penal substitution is the only way God can forgive and remain just. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Therefore the incarnation was necessary for the realization of penal substitution and that is the primary biblical interpretation for the incarnation. If God could have redeemed any other way, surely He would have done it! But because there was no other way – what a demonstration of the love of God in penal substitution – “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Faith not Works!

As Paul preached the gospel of the finished work of Christ and established the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone, he would have been accused by many of the Jews of preaching against the people and against the Law. This is exactly what happened to him in Jerusalem when Paul was seized in the temple. “When the seven days were almost over, the Jews from Asia, upon seeing him in the temple, began to stir up all the crowd and laid hands upon him, crying out, ‘Men of Israel, come to our aid! This is the man who preached to all men everywhere against our people and the Law and this place…’” (Acts 21:27-28).

That the gospel would have been viewed by many of the Jews as a message against the people and against the Law is self-evident in the book of Romans. Paul has already dealt with the guilt and condemnation of the Jew by the Law and answered the question that would have naturally arisen in the mind of the Jews – “Then what advantage has the Jew” (Romans 3:1). Then Paul went on to establish the truth that through works of the Law no flesh would be justified in God’s sight ; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20). This most certainly would appear that Paul was preaching against the Law. However, Paul went on to establish the truth that the righteousness of God comes to sinners on the basis of faith in the only One who ever fulfilled the Law, not for His own sake but for ours (Romans 3:21-29). It is on this basis that faith does not nullify the Law but actually establishes the Law so that there is no contradiction between the gospel of the finished work of Christ and the Law that must be fulfilled for justification (Romans 3:31).

The doctrine of justification by faith apart from works of the Law is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18-24). To the Jews the gospel is a stumbling block because they think that their justification is a matter of being Jewish and relying upon their ability to keep the Law (Romans 2:17). To the Greeks the gospel is foolishness because they think that their justification is not a legal matter and therefore the obedience of Christ to the Law has no significance as far as their forgiveness is concerned. However, the apostle Paul taught that justification is a matter of faith in Christ and His works and not a matter of works or lack of works of the individual. This proves both legalism and libertinism to be false doctrines concerning justification.

To prove his point, the apostle Paul appealed to the Old Testament and showed that it taught the exact same thing that he was teaching – “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets” (Romans 3:21).

In Romans 4:1-25, Paul proved four aspects about justification by faith from the life of Abraham in the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets: (1) how the Old Testament proved that justification is by faith and not works (Romans 4:1-8); (2) how the Old Testament proved that justification is by faith and not circumcision (Romans 4:9-12); (3) how the Old Testament proved that justification is by faith and not the Law (Romans 4:13-16); and (4) how the Old Testament proved that justification is by faith in God (Romans 4:17-25).

Justification by faith apart from works proven in the Law and the Prophets (Romans 4:1-8)

First, the truth that justification is by faith and not by works is proven by the Law (Romans 4:1-5; Genesis 15:6).

Paul stated the truth that Abraham wasn’t justified by works (Romans 4:1-2). Abraham is given in the Bible as the prototype of saving faith (Romans 4:16) and the apostle Paul pointed to the justification of Abraham to show that the gospel he was preaching was not in violation of the teachings of the Law and the Prophets. Abraham, before he was justified, was an idolater (Joshua 24:1-3) and therefore wasn’t justified on the basis of works. Since this was true of Abraham then even Abraham had nothing to boast about in his justification (Romans 4:2) because his justification wasn’t based on what he did but on what Someone else did (John 8:56).

Abraham was justified by faith and not works (Romans 4:3). The word “credited” or “counted” or “reckoned” or “imputed”, however it is translated, comes from a Greek word that means, “to put to ones account.” It is a banking term and it is used eleven times in this chapter. Since Abraham did not earn his justification through works but instead it was credited to him, Abraham’s justification was a gift and was not earned (Romans 4:4-5). Wages are earned. Wages are what are due for work done (Romans 4:4). The last thing Abraham would have wanted was for God to give him what was due him for the work of his idolatry and sin. Credit is unearned; it is a gift of grace (Romans 4:5). Abraham received what he didn’t deserve and didn’t receive what he did deserve because of faith in God concerning His testimony about His Son (1 John 5:10).

Second, the truth that justification is by faith and not works is proven by the Prophets (Romans 4:6-8; Psalm 32:1-2).

God credits righteousness to man apart from any of his own works and based solely on the work of Another – if anyone works God pays the wages that is due (Romans 4:6). One can either trust the finished work of Christ or his own work. He can receive justification as a gift or he can receive condemnation as a wage because of failing to live perfectly in the light of God’s Law.

It is not on the basis of works that any man will be justified because God justifies lawless, ungodly sinners (Romans 4:7). What work can a lawless, ungodly sinner do to be justified? Justification by the Law is out of reach for any born in Adam. Justification is only brought near and in reach through faith in Jesus Christ the second Adam (Romans 10:8-13). For the one who has faith in the finished work of Christ – His upholding the precepts of the Law through His sinless life; His upholding the penalty of the Law through His sacrificial death; and His uphold the Person of the Law through His supernatural resurrection – God removes the sinners record and replaces it with Christ’s record (Romans 4:8). In this there is a double imputation. Our sin was imputed to Christ and His righteousness was imputed to us (2 Corinthians 5:21).

How great is our God!

Boasting Excluded

“Boasting is the response of pride to success. Boasting: ‘I deserve praise because I’ve achieved so much’” (John Piper). Since boasting is the response of pride to success and boasting says, “I deserve praise because I’ve achieved so much,” then we should not be surprised at all when we learn that boasting in our salvation as though we had anything to contribute to it will be excluded. This is what Romans 3:27-30 teaches.

There will be no human pride in the redemption of any sinner because not one single sinner has ever contributed even the smallest iota to his or her salvation. The only thing that we as sinners have achieved is we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We have broken God’s Law, we have all turned aside, each one has turned to his own way, and together we have become useless (Romans 3:10-12).

Consider your salvation and see the truth that you have absolutely nothing to boast about in yourself:
1. You were guilty before God and deserving His wrath and condemnation (Romans 3:9-20).
2. You were justified apart from the Law (Romans 3:21) or you could never be saved because you cannot keep the Law.
3. You were justified by faith in Christ (Romans 3:22-23) or you could never be saved because only He could keep the Law and then die a sacrificial death for the Law you have already broken.
4. You were justified as a gift by His grace without any cause in you (Romans 3:24) or else you could never be saved because there is nothing in you that deserves the gift of justification.
5. You were justified by the redemption which is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24) because Jesus achieved it all and you achieved nothing.
6. You were justified by God giving you mercy in a legal manner through Christ who upheld the Law in principle through His sinless life and in penalty through His sacrificial death (Romans 3:25) or else you could never be saved because there would be no mercy.
7. You were justified on the basis of your faith in the sinless life, sacrificial death, and supernatural resurrection of Jesus Christ as the only means in which God could remain just in justifying the guilty (Romans 3:26) or else you could never be saved because God will in no wise justify the ungodly in an illegal manner that would cause Him to be unjust.

Where then is boasting (Romans 3:27)? It is excluded! What did you achieve? Nothing! What did you contribute to your salvation? Nothing! What good was there in you that caused you to deserve the gift of justification? None! Where then is boasting? “For consider your calling brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before God” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). It is excluded!

What did God achieve through Jesus Christ in our redemption? Everything! In whom then should we boast? “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:30-31). Who gets the glory? He does (1 Corinthians 1:31)!

Where then is boasting in what you have achieved? Gone! Silenced! Excluded! “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law" (Romans 3:28).

Where then is boasting in being God’s chosen people? Gone! Silenced! Excluded! “Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is He not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one” (Romans 3:29-30).

Boasting is excluded for all!

Christ: The Mercy Seat

In our study of the good news so far in Romans 3:21-25 we have seen some very wonderful aspects of this good news. First we saw in Romans 3:21 that God’s righteousness does not come by works of the Law. This is good news because if God’s righteousness does come by works of the Law then no man can be saved because no man can keep God’s Law. If the righteousness of God comes by works of the Law then it is way too far out of every man’s reach. But verse 21 says, “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested….” To which every hopeless and helpless sinner should proclaim, “Hallelujah – this is indeed good news!”

Second we saw in Romans 3:22 that God’s righteousness does come by faith in Jesus Christ. This is good news because now that which was impossible for us to attain and was totally out of our reach has now been brought near and within our grasp by the work of Another on our behalf. Since the righteousness of God comes by faith in Jesus Christ it is very near as Romans 10:8-13 says, “But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart – that is the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for ‘Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”

Third we saw in Romans 3:23 that God’s righteousness is provided for any sinner who will believe. This is good news because all have sinned, whether Jew or Greek, and whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed. There is no partiality with God and nothing makes one man more or less savable than another.

Fourth we saw in Romans 3:24 that God’s righteousness is provided as a gift to believing sinners without any cause in them to earn or merit the gift. This is extremely good news or only those who were smart enough or rich enough or famous enough or powerful enough or whatever enough could be saved. As believers we would do well to remember that God has declared us righteous without any cause in us, based solely on His grace, through the redemption from sin’s penalty that is in Christ Jesus.

Fifth we saw in Romans 3:25 that God’s righteousness which is provided to us as a gift of His grace was purchased at a great price and high cost to God. This is good news because the only way that a holy God could justify sinners and remain just Himself in the process was through the sinless life and sacrificial death of a willing Substitute on behalf of guilty sinners. This was none other than the sinless Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. God did not have to give His Son and could have justly sent us all to hell. But even at such a great price and high cost to Himself, God did not spare His own Son but delivered Him over for us all (Romans 8:32). What a loving God we serve!

Now let’s look a little deeper into this matter of the great price and high cost that God paid for the gift of our salvation. We will do this by considering Christ as the mercy seat.

Our text says, “Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (Romans 3:25). If you have the NIV it says, “God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in His blood” (Romans 3:25 NIV). The word used here for “propitiation” or “sacrifice of atonement” means a sacrifice that turns away, satisfies, or appeases God’s holy wrath against sinners who have violated and not upheld His holy Law. So in propitiation the just wrath of God as the just penalty of God’s Law against ungodly, law-breaking sinners is turned away, appeased, or satisfied because His Law has been actually upheld through His wrath having been actually poured out on a sinless substitute.

So to speak of the cross of Christ as a propitiation or sacrifice of atonement is to speak of the sinless life of Christ and the sacrificial death of Christ as the only means of satisfying the justice of God and the only grounds by which He may extend mercy to any sinner. The Hebrew equivalent to the Greek word used for propitiation is used in the Old Testament in reference to the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies, where the high priest went once a year, on the Day of Atonement, to make sacrifice on behalf of the people. Therefore we could translate this verse as “whom God displayed publicly as a mercy seat in His blood through faith."

This brings us to one of the most wonderful illustrations of the work of Christ that is to be found in the whole Bible – Christ: the Mercy Seat! In order to understand this illustration and what Christ accomplished we must go back to the Old Testament and explain the symbolism of the work of Christ as found in Ark of the Covenant.

First though, we will start with Moses’ going up on Mount Sinai and receiving the two tablets of stone on which God wrote His Ten Commandments. While Moses was meeting with God on Mount Sinai and receiving Ten Commandments he was also receiving instructions from God on the construction of the Tabernacle and its furnishings. In Exodus 25:10-22 we read about the instructions for constructing the Ark of the Covenant. In Exodus 25:16 we read that the two tablets which contained the Law of God was to be put into the ark. In Exodus 25:17-21 we read about the instructions for constructing the mercy seat, the lid for the Ark of the Covenant. “You shall make a mercy seat…” literally a propitiatory (Exodus 25:17).

While Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving not only the Ten Commandments on the two tablets of stone, he was also receiving all the necessary instructions for the construction of the Tabernacle and the proper regulations of divine worship (see Hebrews 9:1-5). But because Moses was gone for so long the people got out of control (Exodus 32:25), made a golden calf, and offered it burnt offerings and peace offerings; and the people entered into immorality (Exodus 32:1-6).

So when Moses came down with the Law in his hands which he was supposed to put into the Ark of the Covenant after its construction, he became angry and threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain (Exodus 32:19). But God commanded Moses to bring two new tablets and He once again wrote the Ten Commandments on the new tablets (Exodus 34:1, 28). These unbroken tablets of God’s Law were placed in the Ark of the Covenant when the tabernacle was erected and the Ark was placed in the Holy of Holies (Exodus 40:17-21).

The broken tablets speak of man’s inability to keep God’s Law. However, the unbroken tablets speak of the Lord Jesus Christ, who in the fullness of time, was born of a woman, born under the Law, and kept the Law perfectly. Just as the unbroken Law was kept in the Ark of the Covenant so the Lord Jesus Christ kept the Law totally and therefore He was without sin, without spot, and without blemish.

But the Ark of the Covenant had on it a lid called the mercy seat. Inside the Ark was the unbroken Law which demands justice through the execution of any sinner. There is no mercy in the Law – only justice – but God in His love has provided a way to maintain the justice of His Law and to extend mercy. This is the purpose of the mercy seat. At each end of the mercy seat were two cherubim (Exodus 25:18). It was on the mercy seat in between the two cherubim that once a year the high priest came in and sprinkled the blood of the lamb on the mercy seat showing that the payment for sin against the Law had been made by an innocent substitute – one that had not violated or broken the Law. The reason that flawless animals were required by God in the sacrificial system is because they were to illustrate the flawless life of the Lord Jesus Christ who would then die to uphold the justice of God’s Law in order that God could legally extend mercy to those who would receive it.

So in essence, the Mercy Seat was an illustration of the death bed of the innocent substitute who would never break God’s Law but who would die for those who had. “But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying” (John 20:11-12).

The High Cost of Salvation

Salvation is a free gift but it is not cheap! The salvation which comes to us freely as a gift by God’s grace was purchased at a great price and high cost to God. Three words are used in Romans 3:24-25 that express the high cost that God paid for our salvation: (1) redemption, (2) propitiation, and (3) blood.

Redemption carries the idea of delivering, especially by means of paying a price. Basically and fundamentally our redemption is from under the Law which has a two sided meaning. In other words when we speak of our redemption from under the Law we must see it and speak of it as two sides of the same coin.

First we are redeemed from under the Law because we are in bondage to the Law. Now the Law is not some evil task-master and that is not why we are in bondage to it. Men are in bondage to the Law because it is the expression of the perfect and just demands of a perfect and just God. God is Law-giver and Judge and His Law must be upheld perfectly or else the penalty for violating His Law must be upheld perfectly. So without being redeemed from under the Law men who have not upheld the precepts of God’s Law perfectly must face the penalty of God’s Law which God will uphold perfectly. The only way for you and I to be redeemed from under the Law is for Someone to uphold the Law perfectly in its precepts and then die a sacrificial substitutionary death to uphold the penalty for violating the Law perfectly. Does anyone know what His name is?

Second we are redeemed from under the Law because we are in bondage to sin. The reason that we are in bondage to the Law is at its root because we are in bondage to sin. This is the flip side of the coin of being redeemed from under the Law. We cannot keep the Law because of our sinful passions and therefore we are in bondage to the Law because we are in bondage to sin. So in order for us to be redeemed from under the Law we must be saved from or redeemed from sin. The Bible speaks of our being redeemed from sin as being redeemed from every lawless deed (Titus 2:14) and as being redeemed from our futile way of life (1 Peter 1:18).

The apostle Paul spoke of this two-sided truth in Romans 7:1-6: “Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning her husband. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.”

There is a high cost to being redeemed from under the Law and from our sin!

Propitiation carries the basic idea of appeasement or satisfaction. In human terms, propitiation means appeasing someone who is angry, usually by a gift. But this is not what it means in the Bible. In the Bible, propitiation means the satisfying of God’s holy Law, the meeting of its just demands, so that God can freely and legally forgive those who come to Christ. So in propitiation the just wrath of God as the just penalty of God’s Law against ungodly, law-breaking sinners is appeased or satisfied because His Law has been actually upheld through His wrath having been actually poured out on a sinless substitute – God’s own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Propitiation isn’t something that we do for God but something that God does for Himself and for us. There is no gift that we could give God that would satisfy His wrath for our violation of His Law. So propitiation is always the work of God and never the work of man.

In propitiation the penalty for violating God’s Law which incurs God’s wrath is turned away from the deserving sinner onto the undeserving Substitute in order that the Law is upheld, the sinner can be legally forgiven, and the Law-giver is satisfied and remains just.

There is a high cost to appeasing or satisfying the wrath of God for violating God’s holy Law!

Blood tells us what the price was that redeemed us and made propitiation for us. Jesus had to die on the cross in order to satisfy the Law, redeem men from under the Law, and justify lost sinners. Our salvation cost our Savior His life. We read that life is in the blood and therefore we know that when Jesus shed His blood for our forgiveness that He gave His life. We also read that without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

There is a high cost to our salvation and so we should not neglect so great a salvation.

If you want to know what our salvation cost God the Father then take a good look at Genesis 22

If you want to know what our salvation cost the Son of God then take a good look at Psalm 22

As we look at the cross of Calvary we see that our salvation cost God everything and yet He was willing to give it in order to redeem us and maintain His own glory and the fame of His name!

Why Preach the Gospel?

The context of Romans 1:18 begins in Romans 1:14 where the apostle Paul stated that he was “under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So for [his] part, [he was] eager to preach the gospel to [those also who were] in Rome” (Romans 1:14-15). Paul then went on to state the truth that he would preach to them nothing but the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified for it and it alone is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ reveals the righteousness of God and the righteousness that is from God on the basis of faith (Romans 1:16-17). The gospel of God which concerns His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:1-4), is the only remedy for sinners who are rightly under the wrath of God for their unrighteousness and ungodliness.

Don’t forget that Romans is the Holy Spirit inspired explanation of the Gospel. After establishing both the content and the intent of the Gospel which he preached, Paul went on to explain the gospel and why he preached it. From Romans 1:18 through Romans 3:20, the apostle established the truth that all men are sinners – the Gentile and the Jew. Because all men are sinners all men are rightly under God’s wrath and are in need of rescue from the wrath to come. So in the Holy Spirit inspired explanation of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit speaking through the apostle Paul began with the wrath of God against sinners.

Now let me ask you: doesn’t the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ reveal God’s wrath against sin? Doesn’t the crucifixion of the sinless Son of God for our sins demonstrate first and foremost God’s wrath against sinners? When we look at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ we should immediately comprehend and see God’s wrath against sin – He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf; He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him and by His scourging we are healed. This is called Penal Substitution and is the only way that a holy God can forgive sinners and still be holy and just.

The wrath of God is the starting place of the Gospel. Men must know the danger that they are in before they will seek a remedy. Just as men don’t seek out cancer treatments without knowing that they have cancer so men do not seek refuge in Jesus Christ without knowing that they are sinners who rightly deserve the wrath of God. Jesus said that it is not the well who need a physician but the sick and so men must know of their sin-sick condition and its inevitable outcome before they will seek help from the Savior. The fact of a man’s guilt must be established before he can be a recipient of God’s grace or else you no longer have grace but what is earned. Much of today’s evangelism is the offering of grace without guilt which is not really grace and then you end up with response without repentance and no one will live who doesn’t repent.

Beware of preachers who claim that they are not called to preach God’s wrath but are only called to preach God’s love. They are not preaching the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ if the wrath of God and the love of God are not balanced in the proclamation. The apostle Paul mentioned the goodness of God which leads to repentance right in the middle of this section dealing with the wrath of God and he mentioned both side by side (Romans 2:4-5). Paul didn’t get to the Gospel being a demonstration of the love of God until Romans 5:8. So the starting point of the gospel is the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men establishing their guilt before God’s grace and love are offered. It is against the backdrop of the just wrath of God against sin that the brilliance and magnificence of the grace and love of God are magnified.

To avoid offering a magic-genie Christ or a utilitarian Christ we must accurately proclaim the Holy Spirit inspired gospel. Preaching only the grace and love of God apart from His wrath against sin is to misunderstand and misapply the purpose of the death of Christ which leaves people in their sins while giving them a false sense of assurance of salvation. When we are not balanced in our proclamation of the Gospel we will be in danger of either turning the grace of God into licentiousness by focusing primarily on God’s grace and love and thereby offering grace without guilt which leads people to believe that they can be saved from the wrath to come without actually being saved from their sins or we will be in danger of denying God’s grace by focusing primarily on the wrath of God and thereby leading men into legalism where they are motivated by fear of punishment and attempt to establish a righteousness of their own derived from keeping the law. Only proclaiming the whole gospel and keeping the truth balanced will help people to understand and properly apply the death of Christ on their behalf so that they are neither licentious nor legalistic but actually loyal to God because of His love for them as shown against the backdrop of His wrath.

While many may desire to downplay or deny the truth that God is a God of wrath it doesn’t nullify the truth that He is. Our text says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” So we see here that men suppress the truth about God, especially the truth about His wrath, even though God reveals and demonstrates His wrath from heaven. Most people like to believe that God is not and cannot be a God of wrath, especially when it concerns them. Just as in Jeremiah’s day so it is in our day when men believe and false prophets preach that God isn’t that way – “They have lied about the Lord and said, ‘Not He; misfortune will not come on us, and we will not see sword or famine.’ The prophets are as wind, and the word is not in them, thus it will be done to them’” (Jeremiah 5:12-13).

Let’s look at some major ways that God has revealed His wrath and the certainty of His wrath from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men:

One - God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment (2 Peter 2:4)
Two - God did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly (2 Peter 2:5)
Three - God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter (2 Peter 2:6) – “made them an example” means that God exposed them openly to public view the same as a corpse lying in state.
Four - God, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe (Jude 5).
Five - God did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all (Romans 8:32).

The greatest revelation of the wrath of God from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men was demonstrated at the crucifixion of the sinless Son of God in the place of ungodly and unrighteous men – “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God…” (1 Peter 3:18).

So why preach the gospel? Because the gospel of God which concerns His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:1-4), is the only remedy for sinners who are rightly under the wrath of God for their unrighteousness and ungodliness.

Penal Substitution: Flatly Unbiblical?

This is a response to Nick at http://catholicdefense.googlepages.com/PenSub.htm who left a comment on my blog about The Purpose of the Death of Christ and stated that he was having a debate on Penal Substitution because he believes that it is flatly unbiblical. His article entitled Problems with Penal Substitution is evidently supposed to expose Penal Substitution as contrary to Scripture, blasphemous, and heretical. However, as we reason from the Scriptures we will see that Penal Substitution is neither contrary to Scripture, nor blasphemous, nor heretical but is indeed the heart of the Gospel and sound biblical doctrine.

Note to Nick: Nick, this is in no way an attack on you but is a defense in gentleness and reverence using both Scripture and logic to destroy the speculations that you have raised against the knowledge of God. I pray that you will be able to see and comprehend that Penal Substitution is the only way that God can justify the ungodly while He remains just.

I am going to take three quotes from Nick’s article to show that he fails to expose Penal Substitution as contrary to Scripture, blasphemous, and heretical:

Morally and rationally, the view fails because it entails an innocent
individual, Jesus, receiving a punishment. Punishment, especially one coming
from a just God, cannot be inflicted on the innocent, nor can a punishment be
transferred. A just judge can rule that a guilty individual either be pardoned
or punished, but the guilt can never be transferred. Because sin is first and
foremost a personal offense to God, the option to pardon or punish is entirely
His.

The view would fail morally and rationally if an innocent individual received a punishment in the place of the guilty if that innocent individual was unwilling to receive that punishment as a means of releasing the guilty from the punishment he rightly deserves. However, there would be no moral or rational failure if an innocent individual was willing to receive a punishment in the place of the guilty and ANY judge would be just to transfer the guilt of the law-breaker to the innocent law-keeper and to transfer the innocence of the law-keeper to the guilty law-breaker. No one forced Jesus Christ to receive the punishment of the guilty in order to release them from their punishment but He willingly laid down His life for His sheep – “No one has taken it [His life] away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative” (John 10:18).

You said, “A just judge can rule that a guilty individual either be pardoned or punished, but the guilt can never be transferred.” Actually a just judge who is sworn to uphold the law cannot rule that a guilty individual be pardoned and that judge remain just. An unjust judge could rule that the guilty be pardoned but not a just judge. A just judge could only rule that the guilty be punished. God is a just Judge and will not arbitrarily pardon the guilty – if He did then He would be unjust! So in actuality in your scheme of things God would not be just if He justified or pardoned the guilty without upholding His own law against those who offend Him. Also if all that God has to do in order to remain just in justifying the guilty is to exercise His option to pardon then Christ died needlessly. Penal Substitution is the only way that God can justify the guilty because it is the only way that His law is upheld and He remains just.

What God reveals as unacceptable behavior for men is likewise unacceptable
behavior for God. Man should not tell lies, God does not tell lies. Man should
not murder or punish an innocent person, God cannot and would not murder or
punish an innocent person.

Let’s take this quote in two sections: “What God reveals as unacceptable behavior for men is likewise unacceptable behavior for God. Man should not tell lies, God does not tell lies.” Precisely the point and reason God does not have the option to pardon apart from His sentence of condemnation being fulfilled either against the sinner or against a substitute on the sinner’s behalf. Even the Old Testament saints were pardoned based their faith that their sins would be paid for by another – the whole sacrificial system and the Word of God witnessed to this truth (see Romans 3:21-26).

Next you said, “Man should not murder or punish an innocent person, God cannot and would not murder or punish an innocent person.” There is no law against an innocent substitute willingly paying the debt or the penalty of another. As long as there is an agreement between the judge and the willing substitute that the debt or penalty incurred by the substitute will completely satisfy the demands of the law and the court against the guilty party then the judge remains just and has upheld the law while the guilty goes free. Even if the penalty paid by the willing innocent substitute is capital punishment then the substitute has freely given his life as a ransom and has not been murdered.

Also the law of non-contradiction applies here – if the option to pardon or punish is entirely God’s then God also has the option of punishing a willing and able substitute in the place of others. If God does not have the option to punish the innocent then neither does He have the option to pardon the guilty.

Also, those passages do not clearly teach penal substitution: 2
Cor 5:15 and 1
Pt 3:18 are some very weak attempts to garner credibility, they don’t come
close. Isaiah
53 is the closest to such a notion, but when read carefully does not result
in Penal-Substitution either, especially considering the few direct NT
references to Is 53 (53:4,
Mat 8:14-17; 53:5-6, 9, 1 Pt 2:18-25; 53:7-8, Acts 8:30-35; 53:12, Lk 22:37, Mk
15:27-29*) don’t teach Penal Substitution at all, quite the opposite in
fact. The NT is abundantly clear the cross was an act by wicked men, NEVER is it
said to be a point where Jesus suffered Divine Wrath.

Actually those passages and others do clearly teach Penal Substitution and a careful reading of Isaiah 53 establishes the absolute fact of Penal Substitution – Jesus did suffer Divine wrath – “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10).

The New Testament is also abundantly clear that not only was the cross an act by wicked men but that it was also an act of a holy God – “This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to the cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23). What men intended for evil, God intended for good.

And here is the beauty and grandeur of the wisdom, ways, and power of God – not only was God right to punish a willing innocent man in the place of the guilty, He was also right to raise that Man from the dead because the punishment and death He endured was not for sins that He committed but was as a substitute for those whose lawless deeds would be forgiven on the basis of faith in Christ and not by works of the Law. “But God raised Him up again putting and end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24).

Now what do you think would be the response of a guilty person who deserved the death penalty be to a willing substitute who took his deserved punishment and then that substitute was raised from the dead because he was in fact innocent? Would not the proper response be that the guilty man would no longer live for himself but for him who loved him and gave himself up for him? – see 2 Corinthians 5:15.

Penal Substitution is God's plan of salvation and it is God's Gospel - 1 Corinthians 15:3!

The Ancestry of the King...His Divine Heredity

Matthew 1:16 and 18 makes it clear that Jesus Christ’s birth was different from that of any other Jewish boy named in the genealogy. Matthew pointed out that Joseph did not “beget” Jesus Christ. Rather, Joseph was the husband of Mary, by whom was born Jesus who is called Christ. Jesus was born of an earthly mother without the need of an earthly father. This is known as the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.

It is the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ that proves that God is His Father and that He Himself is God and not just another man. Had Jesus have had an earthly father then we wouldn’t believe in His deity (that He is God). Had Jesus came into the world without the agent of an earthly mother then we wouldn’t believe in His humanity. But the virgin birth proves that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man.

It is surely no accident that the beginning of Matthew’s gospel is devoted to establishing both the regal humanity and the deity of Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus’ being both human and divine, there is no gospel. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is the central fact of Christianity. The essence and power of the gospel is that God became man and that, by being fully God and fully man, He was able to reconcile men to God. Jesus’ virgin birth, His substitutionary atoning death, resurrection, ascension, and return are all integral aspects of His deity and the gospel.

After establishing Jesus’ human heredity, Matthew proceeded to establish His divine heredity.

First there was a miraculous conception (1:18)

In His birth Christ was conceived in a borrowed unused womb. We will see that in His death Christ was buried in a borrowed unused tomb. In this section of Scripture we see how God operates. He chooses the things that are not to shame the things that are. He chose Mary and Joseph, two godly but unknown and poor young people, to bring the King of glory into the world. We are reminded in First Corinthians chapter one that God operates in this fashion and that in His choosing us it wasn’t because of our being somebodies but because of our being nobodies. O what a Savior!

This verse makes it plain that Joseph was not the father of Jesus Christ. Joseph was Jesus’ legal earthly guardian-father. Mary and Joseph had been betrothed. To the Jewish people in that day, betrothal (engagement) was equivalent to marriage – except that the man and woman did not live together. They were called husband and wife and at the end of the engagement period the marriage was consummated. If a betrothed woman became pregnant, it was considered adultery.

Second there was a natural misunderstanding (1:19)

Joseph knew that he hadn’t had relations with Mary and yet she was pregnant. But because he was a “righteous man” he didn’t want to disgrace her and planned to send her away secretly. To send away means to divorce.

Legally Joseph could have divorced Mary and had her stoned for adultery but he showed grace and because of it he himself would soon become the recipient of grace – the grace of the Lord Jesus. Because Joseph was a righteous man he was in a predicament. He knew he shouldn’t go through with the marriage but he also knew that he should show grace – so what was he to do?

Third there was a divine explanation (1:20)

While considering what to do the Lord answered Joseph’s predicament by giving him an explanation of what was going on – Mary was pregnant by an act of the Holy Spirit. Joseph was given a couple of commandments in his dream from the angel – (1) do not be afraid and (2) take Mary as your wife. Joseph, the son of David, would be included in the glorious privilege of the arrival and raising of the King.

Fourth, the King’s divine heredity was proven in His names and His birth fulfilling prophecy (1:21-23)

The virgin will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus. The name Jesus means “Yahweh is salvation.” Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua. The name Jesus was given to our Lord by God. He would be named Jesus because He will save His people from their sins.

All this took place so that what was spoken of through the prophet would be fulfilled: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). Immanuel translated means, “God with us.” This One is God. He is God in flesh and God with us. Jesus is His human name; Christ is His official title; and Immanuel describes who He is – He is God! The King was a Jewish male who was also the divine Son of God.

Finally there was obedience to the commands of the Lord (1:24-25).

After Joseph awoke from his sleep he took steps of obedience that are always necessary to be included in the blessings of God. Notice the verbs of action that characterize obedience – he did; he took; he kept; he called. He did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took Mary as his wife, he kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son, and he called His name Jesus.

Matthew has given conclusive proof that Jesus Christ is the Son of Man and the Son of God who alone is the King of kings and Lord of lords. The question is – is Jesus your King? Do you love and serve Jesus as King because He first loved you and gave Himself up for you?