The Glory and Beauty of Christ 8

May 5, 2015

John 17:24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

This view or sense of the divine glory, and unparalleled beauty of the things exhibited to us in the gospel, has a tendency to convince the mind of their divinity… He that truly sees the divine, transcendent, supreme glory of those things which are divine, does as it were know their divinity intuitively; he not only argues that they are divine, but he sees that they are divine; he sees that in them wherein divinity chiefly consists; for in this glory, which is so vastly and inexpressibly distinguished from the glory of artificial things, and all other glory, does mainly consist the true notion of divinity: God is God, and distinguished from all other beings, and exalted above ‘em, chiefly by his divine beauty, which is infinitely diverse from all other beauty. They therefore that see the stamp of this glory in divine things, they see divinity in them, they see God in them because they see that in them wherein the truest idea of divinity does consist. (Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, Yale Edition, 298)

The Lord Jesus desired for His people to see the glory which the Father had given Him. If Edwards’ was right, there is a beauty in this sense of divine glory. In fact, in the Gospel there is an unparalleled beauty of the divine glory set out and exhibited to those who hear the preaching of the true Gospel. He goes on to say that God is “distinguished from all other beings, and exalted above ‘em, chiefly by his divine beauty, which is infinitely diverse from all other beauty.” When we see that these things are true, we see with some degree of clarity that rationalism is not the whole story and is just a small piece of it in some ways. We also see why Christ prayed for His people to see His glory. He wanted them to see more and more of the beauty of God on display in the glory that He had given and shared with the Son. But we must also take note that the beauty of God is displayed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and in Christ Himself.

The Gospel is not just a series of facts that a person must give mental assent to, but it is the display of the beauty of God in Christ Jesus. The Gospel is not just some information that we are to tell people about Jesus so they can make a choice about Him, but instead it is the very beauty of God in Christ Jesus. The Gospel is not just a fact of history, but instead it is the display of the very beauty and glory of God in Christ. This is to say that we have not understood the Gospel and we are not speaking of the Gospel until we see and speak of the wonders of the glory and beauty of God. The only way to speak of the wonders and beauty of God is to show how Christ is the beauty and glory of God on display, but that is true primarily in the Gospel.

The stated importance of this will of course be denied by many and that is because they are caught up with rational things and moral things. But when this part is denied, the rational itself becomes ugly and morality becomes nothing more than rules to live by. Christ Himself is our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption from God. Those things are not just intellectual things that we grab with our minds; those are things of great beauty when we behold them in Christ. God saves sinners to the praise of the glory of His grace and redemption is a large part of the grace He shows to sinners. His glory is not just the object of intellectual apprehension, it is glorious and beautiful. The Lord Jesus Christ is the display of perfect beauty in the world. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the zenith point of the display of perfect beauty. But of course a person must have eyes to see and ears to hear in order to see this stupendous beauty.

The greatest defense of the Gospel is not by means of rational reflection, science, and philosophy; but the greatest defense of the Gospel is declaring the wonders of the glory and beauty of Christ. Christ is life and His life is the light of men (John 1:-5). The hearts of men have the basic truths of God put in them and when Christ is declared the truths of God that men have suppressed come up and accuse them. When Christ is set forth and His beauty is seen in His Person and in His works, the hearts of men cannot really deny the blazing truth even though most will try. The greatest way to build people up in the faith is for them to behold the beauty and glory of God in Christ and in the Gospel of Christ. Christ is the desire of the nations and Christ is the loveliest of all and can be nothing else. All things were created through Him and so all the beauty in the world puts Christ on display, but again it is the glory of the Gospel where His beauty is primarily seen. How our church services should be in reality nothing more than coming to behold the glory and beauty of the risen Lamb of God. That would, after all, portray heaven.

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Real Repentance 20

May 4, 2015

Matthew 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 “Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; 9 and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.

It is the Spirit’s office to convince of sin, because he only has the power; nothing that others can say, or I can think, will bring me to a true sense and feeling of it without him. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

While the statement of Adam is true (above), it is used often in a wrong sense. When a person speaks to another on account of sin, the person being spoken to will say that it is the Spirit’s job to convince of sin and that the person speaking is trying to take the Spirit’s place. It is correct that it is the work of the Spirit to convict, but that is not the same thing as people speaking to others about their sin. It is the correct way to speak to people about their sin to know that it is the Spirit who must convict them if they are going to be truly convicted. If we don’t approach people that way, we may come across as external moralist, act as if we are better than they, or perhaps act as if the person has it in his or her power to repent of sin. People can only truly repent of sin that the Spirit has convicted them of, though people can have an external repentance apart from the convicting work of the Spirit.

John 16:7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. 8 “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; 11 and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.

There is a huge difference between those who see that they have sinned, want to be free of the consequences of that sin, and so they stop their outward sin and those who are convicted by the Spirit in the depths of their souls. Those who see that the consequences of the sin will not be good for them (usually in this world, though some see it in some sense as eternal as well) are never really driven from the power of pride and self. Sin is viewed through the eyes of self and the consequences of sin are viewed through the eyes of self. The Spirit, however, brings a deeper conviction of sin than that. He convicts of sin in such a way that men see their sin as against God and are driven from all hope in self. The Spirit, though He will strive with men at times without bringing the deepest conviction, will set to work to convict men in such a way as to deliver them from themselves and their pride and hope in self.

Acts 2:37 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?”

The passage just above shows what happens when the Spirit comes with power on the soul of people and brings them to a real conviction of sin. It is true that not all may feel the same degree of piercing that these people had. This was the day that the Spirit was poured out and Peter was preaching with great power in the power of the Spirit. These were men and women who had cried out for the release of a murderer and to crucify Christ. They saw that the guilt of this sin was upon them and they knew that they were guilty of a horrible sin. They knew this and felt this because the Spirit had worked this conviction in their souls. Here you have those who had cried out for Christ to be crucified and now they were crying out for the followers of that Christ to tell them how to be saved. This was surely the convicting work of the Holy Spirit.

Surely this is very instructive about real repentance. It is not just people learning that they have sinned and so they stop. It is not just behavior modification. It is the Spirit piercing the soul with the Scriptures and showing people who they are. It is the Spirit opening minds with light to show people that they have sinned against God and as such there is nothing they can do to save themselves. It is the Spirit showing men their utter inability to convert themselves and give themselves a new heart. It is the Spirit bringing men to an end of self and pride so that they will look to Christ and Him alone. Such we see the difference between real repentance and a false repentance, not to mention real evangelism and false evangelism. Those who teach real repentance and real evangelism are messengers who leave men in the hands of the living God to do the work. Those who teach false repentance and false evangelism leave men in their own hands and leave them with enough strength to do some work.

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Gospel Preaching 17

May 4, 2015

Romans 1:7 to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. 9 For God, whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of His Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you, 10 always in my prayers making request, if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you. 11 For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established; 12 that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine. 13 I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that often I have planned to come to you (and have been prevented so far) so that I may obtain some fruit among you also, even as among the rest of the Gentiles. 14 I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 So, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

Romans 16:25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past,

What should be the topic of preaching if not Christ and the Gospel? What should men be preaching if not the Person and works of Christ as magnified in the Gospel? Should men be preaching through books of the Bible rather than Christ and the Gospel of Christ? If one is preaching through a book of the Bible and does not preach the main point of the book, then one is not preaching that book with the same intent as the original author did. The Old Testament pointed to Christ and the Gospel of Christ as Christ Himself taught in Luke 24. Perhaps it is easier to preach books of the Bible in a scholarly way than it is to pray and seek for light and understanding so that one can preach the grace of the Gospel as set forth in and by Christ. But we are still commanded to preach Christ and the Gospel of Christ and nothing else is Gospel preaching. The glories of Christ far exceed what a man can preach if he had 100 lives to live and do nothing but preach. One is not preaching as he ought to preach (though no one preaches even close to what should be done) unless he is preaching Christ and Him crucified.

“Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. (Luke 24:44-47).

Can one preach morality without preaching Christ and the Gospel? I would argue that one cannot preach true morality without preaching Christ and the Gospel. There is no morality apart from the Greatest Commandment and there is no keeping the Greatest Commandment (at any level) apart from the work of Christ in the heart. A great aspect of the Gospel is the good news that sinners may be turned from sin and their inability to love God to a heart that does love God by the power of God. A sinner that has reached the point of understanding sin feels the weight of his enmity toward God and knows that he must love God and that all he does is out of a motive that is for self and pride rather than love for God. An unconverted sinner may not love God but feels the power of his enmity toward God and knows that he must have a changed heart to love God as part of his conversion. This is simply another way of saying that a person must preach Christ and the Gospel of Christ if a person is going to preach true morality. To put it a different way, true morality is to glorify God in all we do and that cannot be done apart from sinners being saved to the glory of God and having the life of Christ manifested through them.

What other reason can men have for not having Christ and the Gospel of Christ as the center of their preaching? It is possible for one to strive to be a doctrinal preacher and so the person thinks that he is preaching doctrine as commanded by the Bible. But what doctrine can be conceived of that is not set forth in its fullness in and by Christ? What doctrine is not intended to glorify God or to set out the glory of God? Christ Himself is the shining forth of His glory (Heb 1:3) and the human flesh of Christ was the very tabernacle of His glory (John 1:14) and it was Christ who has explained the Father (John 1:18). If one is to preach about doctrine which is all meant to set forth the truth of God in some way, then one must preach Christ and the Gospel of Christ. It is the Gospel where God has most fully manifested Himself. One cannot preach doctrine in truth apart from Christ and His Gospel.

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Gospel Preaching 16

May 3, 2015

Romans 1:7 to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. 9 For God, whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of His Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you, 10 always in my prayers making request, if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you. 11 For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established; 12 that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine. 13 I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that often I have planned to come to you (and have been prevented so far) so that I may obtain some fruit among you also, even as among the rest of the Gentiles. 14 I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 So, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

Romans 16:25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past,

The Gospel cannot be preached apart from preaching Christ and Him crucified. The Gospel cannot be preached apart from preaching a whole Christ. We cannot take it for granted or assume that people know much of Christ at all, and even if they do they still need to hear the wonders and glories of Christ. There is no preaching the Gospel apart from preaching Christ and there is no preaching Christ apart from the Gospel. People are not saved by hearing a message about some acts that took place, they are saved by Christ Himself. People are not saved by agreeing that a few facts are true, but they are saved or they are given the power to become children of God when they receive Christ Himself. It is Christ who saves as opposed to anything or anybody else.

People are sanctified through the preaching of Christ because He is our sanctification. People are sanctified through the preaching of the Gospel because sinners always need the Christ of the Gospel and they always need to be cleansed from their sin. Paul was not eager to preach the deep things and the mysteries to people apart form Christ to the Romans, but instead he longed to preach the Gospel of God’s Son to them. He wanted to give them what they needed to mature and grow, so he preached Christ and the Gospel to them. He wanted to have them be established in the faith, so he sought to establish them according to the Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. This surely shows that Gospel preaching should never stop in the churches, but once it does biblical preaching has in truth stopped regardless of whether men are doing expositions or not.

Hebrews 6:1 Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God.

Notice that in the passage above we are told to leave the elementary teaching about Christ. But what does the writer then do? He starts chapter 7 with speaking about Christ and Melchizedek. Chapter 8 speaks of Christ as our new High Priest and moves into how that relates to the New Covenant. Chapter 9 is about how Christ is the One whom all the sacrifices pointed to and how this is how people enter into the presence of God. Chapter 10 speaks of how the law cannot make anyone perfect, but Christ can. Without going on, the point is that the writer did not stop speaking of Christ and the Gospel and then to on to more mature things, but instead the writer continued to speak of Christ but in more than elementary ways. He did not stop writing about Christ and the Gospel. In the same way preachers are not to stop preaching Christ and the Gospel but they are to move on to things where people can grow in their knowledge of Christ and the Gospel rather than always remaining at the basic level.

No person ever matures beyond the desperate need of hearing Christ preached. Truly converted people are still sinners and after conversion they see far more of their sin than before conversion. Sinners are attacked and wounded and they must hear about the blood and righteousness of Christ for sinners such as they are. Wounded sinners don’t need to hear more moralism, but they need to hear of Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that He saves sinners from beginning to end and it is all by grace alone. Sinners are not saved because they become better, not because they praise God, and not because they attend worship services. Sinners are saved when God looks to the blood of Christ that covers the sinner. Sinners, converted or not, need Gospel preaching.

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Gospel Preaching 15

May 2, 2015

Romans 1:7 to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. 9 For God, whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of His Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you, 10 always in my prayers making request, if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you. 11 For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established; 12 that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine. 13 I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that often I have planned to come to you (and have been prevented so far) so that I may obtain some fruit among you also, even as among the rest of the Gentiles. 14 I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 So, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

Romans 16:25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past,

The Gospel of His Son which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of God, the Gospel of the glory of God, and the Gospel of the grace of God is utterly glorious. However, modern day theories of preaching have found better ways of doing things. The Gospel is thought to be for unbelievers and so dry intellectual sermons are prepared for believers. People are given duty after duty and law after law in order that they will be useful in the kingdom and serve the church. People are prepared in the intellect to know things line upon line. People may be taught some theology in some circles, but that is of the intellectual kind only. But of course in some places certain things are taught that sneer at theology and do things that are called “practical.”

What must be seen in our day and all other days is that the Gospel is what all sinners need. People are not converted and then they have no need of the Gospel, but believers need the Gospel as bad as unbelievers. It is the Gospel that weak believers need to hear. It is the Gospel that believers with tender consciences need to hear. It is the Gospel that believers with hard hearts need to hear. It is the Gospel that intellectual believers need to hear. It is the Gospel that non-intellectual believers need to hear. What they don’t need to hear is what is termed “the gospel” in our day because it is no gospel at all. It is a message that depends on the will and power of man as if God had worked all He could do and now it depends on what man does. But that is not a true Gospel at all, it is a false message with false hope. What all people need to hear is a steady diet of the true Gospel of Christ alone and grace alone over their entire life span.

What did Paul want to go and preach to the believers at Rome? He wanted to preach the Gospel to them. As seen in Romans 16:25, the Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ is what establishes believers. It is not all the things that people do and carry out in the modern day that establishes people, but it is the preaching of the Gospel and of Jesus Christ that builds them up and puts them on firm footing. It should also be noted that preaching the Gospel and preaching Jesus Christ are one and the same thing. No matter what is preached of Jesus Christ it will always be related to the true Gospel. No matter what aspect of the Gospel is preached it will always be the preaching of Jesus Christ. The problem today is that people attempt to preach a message to get people saved that is quite apart from the true Christ and the true Gospel. People don’t need to hear a plethora of watered down nonsense, they need to hear the glories of God in Jesus Christ and the Gospel of grace alone.

Modern preaching also focuses on morality and expositional preaching. There are word studies and history in the sermon, but precious little of Christ and the Gospel. There is a lot of showing how things fit together in a section of Scripture, but there is almost nothing showing how all Scripture is to fit together and manifest Christ Himself. There are many words of application as to doing moral things, but so little of how to seek Christ for more of Himself by grace alone. It would seem that in modern preaching there is little of Christ, little of the Gospel, little about the cross, little about imputed righteousness, and certainly little on sin. But Paul was eager to preach the Gospel to believers and to see them established according to the Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. Yes, preaching the cross is offensive to men. Yes, preaching Christ is offensive to men. But not preaching them thoroughly Sunday after Sunday is offensive to God. Oh for men to be broken and preach Christ and His Gospel!

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The Glory and Beauty of Christ 7

May 1, 2015

John 17:24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

There must be a standard of beauty and there can be no standard for the beauty of God but God. It is not a matter of determining if He is beautiful, but simply to behold Him in His glory and to behold His beauty. The Lord Jesus Christ is the brightness of His glory or the shining forth of His glory and as such in Christ we behold the beauty of the living God. The problem with seeing this beauty is our own sin which is a deformity. Sin is the ultimate ugliness (so to speak) which means that those who love sin love what is ugly and so have no discernment toward true beauty. The Scriptures are quite clear that the holiness is the beauty of God, which means that those who love sin see no beauty in God at all.

2 Chr 20:21 And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the LORD, and that should praise the beauty of holiness,

Psa 29:2 Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

Psalm 96:9 O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.

Psa 50:2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shone forth.

Clearly, and without any question at all, holiness is beautiful and sin is hideously ugly. The Lord was to be praised by special singers for the beauty of His holiness. Interestingly enough, we don’t have songs written like that in our day and hardly a record of what they sang in the biblical days. We have songs that sell millions of copies about human beauty and human love, which is really fallen and sinful beauty and fallen and sinful love, yet where are the songs about the beauty of the Lord and His holiness? It would appear that the songs that are so popular have nothing to do with the true God but instead are man-centered and focused on sinful forms of love.

From Psalm 29:2 we can say with some degree of certainty that the glory of the Lord that is due to His name is to worship Him in the beauty of holiness. This would require, at the very least, two things. One, that human beings would worship the Lord in regard of His holiness and glory. Second, human beings would seek to be holy as a way of glorifying the Lord and in order to worship Him rightly. Is it possible for human beings to worship a thrice holy God without pursuing holiness themselves? Is it possible for human beings to love a thrice holy God unless they love Him in His holiness and therefore seek to be holy? There can be no doubt that the Lord loves holiness and it is His holiness that He swears by, so we cannot worship God unless we love and adore holiness.

The Lord is to be worshiped in the beauty of holiness, but of course no man can work up holiness in his own strength and power. Holiness must come to human beings who seek humility, death to self, and then long for Christ to be their lives. The beauty of a human being is really Christ Himself. Apart from Christ no human being has any true beauty and yet with Christ any human being is beautiful. It is Christ who adorns the human soul. It is Christ who beautifies the soul as He is the salvation of that soul. It is Christ who is the beauty of righteousness and it is Christ who is the beauty of wisdom. Ugly sinners can become beautiful with Christ. Those who don’t have Christ, regardless of how much they are praised for beauty in the eyes of fallen man, are truly ugly because of sin.

In John 17:24 Christ prays for His people to behold His glory which was given Him by the Father and part of that is that He was loved by the Father before the foundation of the world. That glory what Christ wants His people to behold is that which shines out in Him from the Father. It is the beauty of real and infinite holiness. It is the beauty of a triune love which flows from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father. All who have Christ in them share in that love that flows between the Father and the Son and it flows by the Holy Spirit who works in us the fruit of love. Oh the darkness of the human heart when it prefers sordid ways of sin to being ravished by the infinite love of God. Oh how dark is the human heart that prefers honor for self rather than seeking the honor and glory of God in and by Christ. The very beauty of all things came into being through Christ and all things reflect His beauty, but the very beauty of God is what shines through Him more than anything else. Let us adore and worship.

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The Glory and Beauty of Christ 6

April 30, 2015

John 17:24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

One of the attributes of God is His beauty. While we don’t often think of God and His glory in terms of beauty, when we think of what true beauty is there can be no doubt that God is glorious in beauty. How can God be anything but utterly beautiful since He created such a beautiful universe? He created all true beauty and it reflects something of Himself and His glory. In a sense the beauty of God is His symmetry with Himself and within Himself. His beauty does not refer to a physical appearance, but it refers to His delight in His majesty and the loveliness of His own being to Himself and of the appearance of His own glory. Jonathan Edwards put it like this: “His infinite beauty is his infinite mutual love of himself” (vol 6, Yale, p. 363).

When we meditate upon the thought of Edwards (just above), what else could be beautiful but how God is in Himself? Scripture, speaking of women, says that true beauty is from the inward person (I Pet 3:3-5). The true beauty of God also comes from His inward nature, that is, the Trinity. People will pay money to watch a “love story” and people will weep upon watching plays and movies about what they think of as love. Can there be a more glorious love story in Scripture than the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father? Can we think of a greater love than the love of an infinite God and how He loves Himself within His being which is the basis, source, and origin of all true love?

What can be more beautiful than beholding the infinite love of God (as triune) in His eternal being who took human flesh and made that human flesh His tabernacle of glory? What can be more absorbing to the soul than to behold the glory of God shining forth in Jesus Christ? Can the soul that sees itself in truth as sinful and unholy fail to behold the beauty of God in the Gospel of grace alone? Can the soul that sees itself in truth as utterly without merit and utterly without ability to gain merit or do anything spiritual fail to see the Gospel of Christ alone which is built on His merit and ability without any found in the sinner?

Psalm 19:1 tells us that the heavens are telling of the glory of God. Is that beautiful to the soul? But if the heavens are telling of the glory of God and that is beautiful to the soul, then how much more is Christ who is the very shining forth of the glory of God beautiful to the believing soul. How utterly adorable is this Messiah who was forever in the bosom of the Father and then took human flesh out of love for the Father and then out of that same love for the Father went to the cross to suffer the wrath of the Father for the glory of the Father. How utterly and indescribably beautiful is the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. It is there that we see the beauty of the justice of God and the love of God on display.

The King James Version on 1 Chr 16:29 gives us this: “Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.” The Lord loves holiness and there is a beauty in holiness. A holy man or woman is not one who is better than others as such, but is one who is partaking of the holiness of God more than others. There is no merit or credit to us in holiness since we only share in His holiness (Heb 12:10), but instead a holy person is holy by grace alone and when God looks upon us He sees the beauty of Himself in us. Christ, His perfect image, is the mirror which He beholds the beauty of Himself and His glory. When sinners are regenerated and are joined to Christ, God looks upon sinners and sees the beauty of His own holiness in them.

How wonderful it is to worship God in the beauty of holiness because we can know that He is beholding Himself and the beauty of His own holiness in us. How this should humble us and drive us deeper and deeper into self-abnegation and the denial of self. It is only to the degree that we die to self that His self or His glory of His beauty is in us. No, we cannot deny self by the work of self, but self must be denied by the work of a true holy One and that is the work of the Holy Spirit. We should seek Him to work this death in us that we may have more and more of the life of Christ in us and that life of Christ is a holy life. The more of Christ we have the more we will have the beauty of God shining in us and through us. The more we have of Christ the more beautiful we will be in the eyes of God. After all, Psalm 149:4 tells us that “the LORD takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.”

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Real Repentance 19

April 28, 2015

Matthew 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 “Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; 9 and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.

Is there any such thing as regeneration, or a change of nature, from sensuality to purity of heart, from flesh to spirit, from sin to holiness, from the world to God? So the Scripture says, and that nothing less is being Christian. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

The heart of the unregenerate sinner is set on self. The heart of the unregenerate sinner is controlled by pride and self-love. The heart of the unregenerate sinner will pursue pleasure in one thing or another, but it will seek pleasure. The heart of the unregenerate sinner will pursue honor (may be the pleasure sought) by doing things that get people to praise self. This may be in open sin or it may be in the pursuit of strict religion. But the unregenerate sinner wants the honor and praise of men and will go to extremes to obtain that.

The new heart is expressed well in Psalm 115: where the cry or prayer is “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, But to Your name give glory.” This is a true sign of a new heart when the cry of the heart is not for the glory to come to self, but instead for all glory be to God. It is true that an unregenerate heart can say those words, but the unregenerate heart cannot truly desire for itself to obtain no glory. The unregenerate heart may lie to itself and fight the desire it has to receive glory from its religious actions, but the desire will be there for honor and glory. The unregenerate heart does all for self and does all in a way where it will be admired by others or perhaps it will do things so that God will admire it (it thinks) or it will admire itself.

Jesus warned the disciples not to be like the Pharisees in Matthew 6 who did all their works of righteousness (in name) to be seen of men. They prayed to be seen by men. They gave alms to be seen of men. They fasted in order to be honored by men. In other words, they did their works of righteousness in order to be noticed by men and did not do them out of love for God. This is, of course, a way of pride and self-love and the desire of pride to be exalted and honored rather than God. It is using the things or ways that God has given us to seek Him as ways to seek self. It is using what God has given as means of His glory and using them for our own. It is spiritual idolatry and also spiritual adultery and theft.

All of this should teach us that real repentance is not easily done and in fact with men it is impossible. Real repentance is a work of God in the soul and He does it by grace alone. Regeneration is the work of the Spirit who does it by grace in the soul, so we should not expect that the fruit of real repentance is a work that is in the power of man to perform either. It takes a change of nature to be turned from sensuality to purity of heart. This change cannot be done by the power or will of man, but instead it takes a new heart that will turn the heart from self and the senses of self to love holiness and God.

Real repentance requires a turning from the flesh to spirit, but once again the flesh of man cannot turn the flesh of man to love spiritual things. The fleshly heart of man can only love what feeds the flesh of man and so a true repentance can only come from another power and that power is the Holy Spirit. The flesh of man in its great blindness and pride may deceive itself into thinking that it can turn from fleshly things, but it can only turn from the outward fleshly things. The heart itself must be turned or man will turn from outward fleshly things by the power of pride in the heart which is fleshly. Real repentance, then, must be a work of the Holy Spirit and cannot be the work of man himself.

Turning the heart from sin to holiness and from the world to God is also a Divine work instead of a human work. The nature of sin is to love self and do all for self, while the essence of holiness is to do all out of love for God. The nature of sin, on the other side of it, is to fall short of the glory of God which is to fail to glorify God in all that we do. Being turned from that to do all to the glory of God is of course a Divine work and not the work of the flesh or of man. Holiness is the work of the Holy Spirit and spiritual work is the work of the Holy Spirit. Being turned from worldly things to God is a Divine work in creating a new creation. That alone is real repentance.

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Real Repentance 18

April 27, 2015

Matthew 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 “Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; 9 and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.

Is there any such thing as regeneration, or a change of nature, from sensuality to purity of heart, from flesh to spirit, from sin to holiness, from the world to God? So the Scripture says, and that nothing less is being Christian. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

If we think of repentance in accordance with the basic definition of it, then repentance is turning from one thing and turning toward another. One cannot repent, that is, turn from one thing without have another object to turn toward. This is very important. A person has not repented in the inward man if he has only turned from outward sinful actions. The reason a person sins is because of a heart that is full of pride and self, so when a person turns from outward sin and yet the heart has not been changed that person has not truly repented because the heart is still full of pride and self. The person sins outwardly because of a sinful heart and the person stops sinning outwardly because of that same sinful heart.

Now the sensitive soul that the Spirit has awakened and is working in to reveal sin will look at self and realize that he is full of pride and self and is moved to do a lot of things out of that pride and self. This can cause a lot of disconcernation and trouble of soul. What we must remember is that Christ came to save sinners and saved sinners are still sinners. Christ did not save sinners on the condition that they turn from all sin and become perfect, but instead He saved sinners with a full knowledge of all their future sin. Christ breaks His people from sin slowly and surely, but He does not remove it all until they reach glory. It is also true that those who are truly converted will see more sin in their hearts and minds than those who are unconverted will. The true believer has more light and so will see more of his own black heart than those without light can. Part of the sanctification process that Christ takes the soul through is to reveal sin and then to reveal Himself and His grace to that sinner. This is how we grow.

True repentance happens at regeneration when sinners are granted a new life and a new heart. Sinners are turned from the absolute control of pride and self to the kingdom of Christ. But again, sinners under the control of Christ are not perfected in practice but may instead grow even worse in their own eyes. However, the absolute power of sin has been broken over the soul. The unconverted sinner can do nothing but what is sensual, but the one granted real repentance now longs (imperfectly) for holiness in the heart. The unconverted sinner is nothing but flesh, but the one granted real repentance is now focused on spiritual things. A word of caution is once again needed at this point. A spiritual person lives in a fallen world and so there will always be things that will make a sensitive soul think that it is sensual, and indeed that soul may be sensual to a point. But that soul will not be controlled at all times by things that are sensual. It may not see much of a longing for spiritual things, but there will be a longing. In fact, the longing for sensual things may be greater much of the time than the longings for spiritual things. Some of this may because of remaining sin and some may be because sinners need to grow some in order to recognize true spiritual longings. The body has memories and those can be very strong. But as faith as a mustard seed is true faith, so true spiritual longings are evidences of true spiritual life and of real repentance.

Real repentance also means that the soul is turned from the world to God. We can see once again that the soul is turned from something and turned toward a new object of sight and love. The Scriptures tell us that love for the world is inconsistent with love for God, so we must be turned from the world to God. How can the love of (for) God dwell in those who love nothing but the world? This turning from the world is a turning from sin and this turning to God is a turning toward seeking true holiness. These are not all separate and distinct things, but instead all the negatives are one thing and all the positives are one thing. This is, quite simply, what it means to be a Christian. The heart must be changed and not just the outward behavior. Real repentance must include the heart or there is no real repentance at all. If the heart/inward person/soul/loves/desires/motives/intents are not changed and turned from, then how can one say that s/he has been turned to God and holiness? This is not to say that we must leave the world and use nothing that the world uses, but we use them for different reasons and with a different love. Real repentance is real and it occurs at the deepest parts of the soul even though that turning from the darkness to the light may reveal a lot of sin in us. Nevertheless, we have been turned.

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Real Repentance 17

April 25, 2015

Matthew 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 “Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; 9 and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.

I should consider the Ethiopian’s skin and the leopard’s spots more than I do, that I may pray more feelingly, and cast myself wholly upon divine power. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

Jeremiah 13:23 “Can the Ethiopian change his skin Or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good Who are accustomed to doing evil.

The impossibility of changing our own heart and doing truly good works is set forth in the Scripture and by Adam by these two illustrations. Can a person change the color of his or her skin by simply deciding to do so? Can a leopard change its spots and become one color just because it decides to do so? Clearly, the answer to both is no. Without question neither the Ethiopian nor the leopard can change the skin by a simple choice or an act of the will. But the weight of the point in Jeremiah seems to have been lost at most points and times. Since the skin cannot be changed by a mere choice, can something that comes from the heart be changed without the heart being changed by God? Those whose hearts are used to doing evil and the heart itself is evil, can that person change that heart any easier than the Ethiopian his skin and the leopard its spots? No, it not easier but instead it is harder.

The doing of good is far harder than the natural man realizes, even if the natural man is very religious. It is not only hard to do good works, it is impossible to do good works (truly good) apart from Christ working that in a person. As the Scripture says, “apart from Me you can do nothing.” This is to say that apart from Christ we can do nothing good or nothing spiritual. Now it is possible to do outwardly good things and yet since they are coming from a bad heart they have bad intentions and motives. That means that while the act is good in appearance it is not truly good. Those who are accustomed to do evil have hearts that are hardened and even their outward works may have little appearance of good.

An example of this could be the Chicago gangster of the early to the middle of the 1900’s. He was a man who could order or carry out the killings of people, perhaps several at a time, and yet he was a man known to help the poor and to be quite generous in giving. What this points out is that the man was the same man with the same heart in all that he did. All the outward good he did came from the same heart that did a lot of evil. Another way of looking at this would be from the viewpoint of God as set out in Scripture. Nothing that the man did was from love for God, but instead was moved and motivated by love for self. Even though the man did a lot of outward good, his heart had no love for God and so he could be moved to do outward good and evil from the same heart. Only a heart that has been granted repentance in regeneration can in fact do a good deed out of love for God.

We come face to face with the nature of true repentance when we look at things like this. Man fell from God in the fall and as such all he does is from self and out of self. Man’s heart is full of pride and self-love and all he does is from that heart, regardless of whether it is outwardly good or not. The heart is where the motives and intents of the outward good and outward evil come from, so all actions are evil that come from an evil heart. True repentance, then, cannot be limited to the outward actions or forced inward thoughts. True repentance must flow from a repentant heart or a heart that has been regenerated to where Christ is the life of that heart and the love of God can flow from it rather than love of self.

True repentance is radical, that is, it is the deepest part of man. Real repentance is when the very heart itself is changed and the heart is now inclined toward God rather than self-love. Though God does not completely deliver man from the power of sin in this life, by grace He is working in that heart and it will have an inclination toward Him. This is why His people persevere in this life. The Ethiopian does not need to change his skin, but he does need a new heart. But no human being can change his heart and this is why the heart must be turned from self-reliance and self-power to living on the power of God in grace. Real repentance is what God alone can do which is why salvation is by grace alone. Real repentance, however, while beyond the power of man to actually do, is not

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