The Half Gospel (2)

Last time I made a point of saying:

And how are any of the admonitions in the NT to the various churches to live as if Christ’ death and resurrection were real any less a part of the Good News? You know: Paul’s point in making these things plain is summed up when he says plainly, “such ones as these you once were” [Eph 2; Col 1] – meaning you are now something better, and have a better purpose and objective.

There are several reasons I said this, and of course the first is that it’s the first post in a series of bloggery goodness and I had to make sure I said something worth blogging about a second time.

But another significant reason for saying this is that this is part of Paul’s Gospel which, I think, is getting lost in our “Gospel-centric” movements. I say “our” because let’s face it: I was blogging about the definition and centrality of the Gospel before it was a fad. I’m an O.G. blogger – Orthodox Gospel. Before there was T4G there was centuri0n out there giving Tony Campolo the angry eyebrows, and writing open letters to Derek Webb wondering if he has both hands on the discipleship wheel, and of course declaring that others who are far more post-medieval than I am are “clowns”. I’m a Gospel-centric guy.

But here’s the thing: I suspect some people say they are “Gospel centric” and they are in fact intellectually and academically afraid that if the Gospel means more than “God did”, they are trudging into either Liberalism or Catholicism. And these are guys who, frankly, think that people who don’t baptize babies are “churchless” and that those who do not pass the cup and the bread around every week are somehow turning their back on grace.

But the Gospel is in fact, “God did for us.” For example, take a look at what Jesus says here:

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going. [John 14]

Consider it: Jesus is here at the last supper, and when he tells the Apostles that the reason their hearts should not be troubled that he is “going” is that he is going somewhere for their sakes. That is: the “good news” is not that Jesus goes [to his death on the cross]; it is in fact that Jesus goes [to his death on the cross] to prepare a place for the believers. That is: it is not just that Jesus does something, but that it is for us, and that somehow there is something that makes us different.

Jesus also said this:

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. [John 15]

”Aha!” says one of those who thinks I have gone AWOL here, “You’re confusing ‘Law’ and ‘Gospel’, Frank: ‘Abide’ is a command, and this cannot be the Gospel because it something one must do. My doing is my death, if I can be so bold: only Christ’s doing is life for me, and I’ll trust him thank you very much. I’ll put my hope in His death and resurrection, and really hold your advice at arms length because let’s face it: you’re veering into the land of the doubtful here. This is not good systematic theology, and I exhort you to turn back.”

Well, before you start wielding the systematic fire hose to get me off your theological front porch, let’s see what some actual bacon-in-the-fire Protestants thought about this.

They who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened, in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

That’s the WCF XIII.1, yes? And that’s what Christ is talking about in John 15: those in Him are not just “in him” but he is also “in them” so that they are no longer dead branches but branches full of new life.

Paul says it this way:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. [Rom 8]

I mean: that’s the book of Romans, people. This is the Reformed home court. Yet when Paul says that we do not keep the Law in order that we be righteous but that Christ kept the law in order that we might live according to the spirit of life rather than the dead flesh, somehow we start wondering what’s for lunch or how nice it is outside. Paul says here without any real qualifications that God sent Christ to fulfill the law for us in order that we can therefore walk according to the Spirit.

This is the Gospel: Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture, was buried, and was raised on the third day in accordance to the Scripture. But if it is for us, and now our sins are the things ruined and we are now in the spirit, in the true vine, headed for a place prepared for us, is it moral and spiritual beer-thirty? Can we take eternity off? Is the Gospel the good news that we have a permanent vacation?

Or should we instead say, “God loves us, and has a wonderful purpose for our lives?”

I’ll be thinking about that next week. You think about it until then, and be with the Lord’s people on the Lord’s day in the Lord’s house, because of the Gospel.

The Half Gospel (1)

The permanent fixture in my sidebar is 1 Cor 15:1-4, yes? You’ve seen it over there for ages, and I’m sure you all remember it by inclination if not by heart:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures

Now, I want you to consider two things, both of which are systematic interpretations/paraphrases of that passage.

Here’s #1:

Now I would remind you, brothers, that I preached to you, and you received my preaching, in which you stand, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that we are now OK in accordance with the Scriptures, and that we have new life in accordance with the Scriptures

You all recognize this, yes? It’s the flimsy feel-good motivational speaking that can pass for preaching in some churches, and many good people are sadly these kinds of preachers, and these kinds of Christian disciples. They want to know about themselves – and they want the Scripture to talk about them. That would be relevant, you see.

Is there really a reason to take that apart? It’s been done. We get it: It’s not good news if it’s merely about “us”. The only insight I would add to those critiques is that this is a systematic theology – it’s just a very flawed systematic theology.

Now here’s #2:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the Gospel, which was delivered as of first importance: that Christ died in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

Let me say this: for some people, this is the Gospel – which is Christ’s work only, to the exclusion of all things not actually personally done by Christ – for example, evangelism. Evangelism is not the Gospel, they point out with very fine systematic precision. And one wonders thereafter what kind of a Gospel it is that is not proclaimed, and which does not have an effect both in this life and the next on real people.

“Well, wait a minute, Frank,” comes the rejoinder from the seminary student who undoubtedly will take exception, “Of course it’s the Gospel that must be proclaimed – it’s the message that something was done! It has to be proclaimed; it has to be believed. There has to be repentance. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here because we want to make the work of Christ an objective fact of history.”

This is actually my point and my complaint toward this seminary student and his kin as they come in many shapes and sizes: if the Gospel is an “objective fact”, it’s like a rock or a golf ball. It’s just something that was or is. It’s something we describe – saying what it is, meaning of course you cannot “live the Gospel” or something like that (or so we say) becuase it is somehow apart from us.

The problem is that the Gospel is not “Christ died”, but in fact “Christ died for our sins”. Christ died for us. That makes the Gospel not merely something “out there” or even “right here” but in fact something in which we, for whom it was done, somehow participate. That is, if there is a Savior, there must then be those who are saved. Something is received, and it makes “us” different both now and forever.

If that’s not enough – and it seems like plenty, and it seems plenty obvious – think about this: if we are “saved”, what’s it mean to be “saved”? See: to say that the Gospel is only that Christ died and was resurrected is to cut off the Gospel on the God-only side of the issue. This is a mistake, it seems to me, as grand as to cut it off on the “us” only side. The “us”-only Gospel thinks the effect is the only thing; the “God-only” side thinks the cause it the only thing. But the Gospel is good news to us, and somehow it makes something of us we weren’t before.

I want you to think about something: what if the Gospel was only “Christ died and raised from the dead, just like Scripture said he would”? That is – what if what Jesus did was only prove that He was God? That’s actually pretty cool, if you ask me – but even if that’s all Jesus did, he’d deserve to be worshipped, right? If someone could prove they were actually God, they would deserve worship because God, by definition, deserves worship. But even in that case, there is an effect which cannot be denied without in fact denying the cause.

How much more is this true, then, if Jesus’ death doesn’t just prove His Godhood? What if He proves He is both Lord and Christ? What if what He has done is actually glorifying to Him because its effect is actually greater than the act of Creation? Doesn’t that mean that we have an obligation to call that part of the Good News as well?

Think of it this way, my systematic friends: even the “Solo Christo” commandos believe that someone is not really a Christian if he doesn’t practice the sacraments. These fellows are plain in their view here: it’s a necessary consequence of the Gospel to celebrate the Lord’s table, and to baptize those who are rightly named in the church – those who refuse to do so are, frankly, not Christians. Irenic footnotes are made for those who are martyred before they can be baptized and who are never in fellowship because of extraordinary circumstances, but those who frankly refuse the sacraments are simply not Christian in their view – because these things are necessary consequences of the Gospel. How, then, can those things not actually be part of the good news? How are they any less part of the good news than the sound preaching of the Word of God?

And how are any of the admonitions in the NT to the various churches to live as if Christ’ death and resurrection were real any less a part of the Good News? You know: Paul’s point in making these things plain is summed up when he says plainly, “such ones as these you once were” [Eph 2; Col 1] – meaning you are now something better, and have a better purpose and objective.

It’s in this Gospel where all of Paul’s letters reside. It is this Gospel which Paul re-preaches to the Corinthians in order for them to stop acting like lost people. It is this Gospel which Paul preaches to the Galatians so that they don’t start seeking the approval of the Law but to exceed the requirements of the Law [cf. Galatians 5] by putting on the Spirit of Christ.

And here we are, just like those churches, with half the Gospel. We can identify the doer of the Gospel; we can identify what he does. And we forget for whom he did it and what then they (meaning: we) ought to be.

This relates to some of the goings-on around the internet lately, but this is already quite a gale force blow. Stew on it and I’ll be around another day to give you a more particular application of this point.

[!] ... by which you are being saved [4] & [5]

1Cor 15: 1Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. 3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ[1] died for our[2a] sins[2b] in accordance with the Scriptures[3], 4that he was buried[4], that he was raised on the third day[5] in accordance with the Scriptures[6](ESV, emph. Added)

I was glancing at the cumulative archive this morning and noticed that I hadn't finished my series on this summary of the Gospel, so I thought I'd come back to it today before the kids woke up.

We have covered some pretty critical ground so far in that we have discussed the matter that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures -- meaning that Christ's death fulfilled the Scriptures. But what about these next parts: why does Paul include the matter that Christ was buried?

Well, in the first place, he says it because it is true. Christ died and was buried -- he didn't die and then have his body thrown left to rot on the cross, or have his body torn to pieces by scavengers. Christ died bodily, and his body was buried after his death.

But in the second place, we come back to the matter of "in accordance with the Scriptures." Christ's burial was foretold by the prophets -- which Peter pointed out to the crowd at Pentecost.

Acts 2: 29"Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, 31he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. 32This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.

And that leads us to the matter of the resurrection -- because for both Peter and Paul, the death of Christ is the necessary leaping-off point for the greatest news in the history of mankind.

Not only have the Scriptures argued that Christ would die for our sins and that he would be buried, but they have also been clear that death would not be the end of this story. If Christ had died and was buried and never came out of the tomb, there would be room left to say, "he was a great man, a good teacher, but not a savior because he could not save himself."

Instead, there was a resurrection. Paul says this about it:

1Cor 15: 12Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

20But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

Peter says this:

Acts2: 23this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

The resurrection is the final fact of the matter -- and why the Gospel is good news for men. Christ's sacrifice is completely sufficient for its task, but Christ's person and Christ's nature requires that something else be true: that death cannot overcome him, but that he overcomes death. The resurrection is our guaranty that what Jesus did was acceptable to God and was also the work of God. His walking out of the tomb, leaving it empty, was the sign that his work was not only complete but certain and without need of anyone's help.

This is the Gospel, then, according the Paul -- the most compact summary of the essential confession of the faith. It is itself the dividing line between life and death, and between truth and falsehood. We will be referring to it over the life of this blog for the sake of determining or exploring the claims of others who want to make competing claims regarding the faith.

Hope this was all helpful.

Other entries in this series: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

[!] ... by which you are being saved (note)

No, I haven't forgotten about 1Cor 15. I am just distracted. I'll be back on it over the weekend, I am sure.

[!] ... by which you are being saved [3]

1Cor 15: 1Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. 3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ[1] died for our[2a] sins[2b] in accordance with the Scriptures[3], 4that he was buried[4], that he was raised on the third day[5] in accordance with the Scriptures[6](ESV, emph. Added)

I roughly apologize for posting twice on Friday last week, but I was on a roll (I felt) and wanted to get through the whole tamale of [2a] and [2b] so that I could get on to [3] -- because there's a very keen thing to think about in this part of Paul's short definition of the Gospel.

All that preaching about dying for sin is swell, isn't it? For the believer, gosh it's like having a Coke and a pack of skittles -- it can get you fired up in a minute and keep you going all day. For the non-believer or the "seeker" (which is the nice way some people say "unbeliever"), it may be somewhat old-hat from the perspective that here's another fundie doing his Billy Graham impression. And if that non-believer doesn't feel guilty or somehow impuned, who can blame him, really? It's a lecture from a somewhat-annoying maven who is telling this person not only is he so stupid that he doesn't know he's bad but that he is also too stupid to understand how good he can really have it.

There's also the case of the nominal Christian who is reading this stuff and is getting offended because there's all this judging going on (we get letters …) -- and who is centuri0n, really, to judge anybody? First of all, this is between God and the individual (they say) so to wag a finger at someone about whether they think Christ died for their sin -- or whether they have any sins -- is intrusive and hateful. Second of all, centuri0n is just a jerk with a guilty conscience because he admits he's sinful and he just wants to think that everyone is just as bad (or worse, since they don't recognize their sins) as he is. And last, centuri0n said "bullshit", so he was sinning in trying to accuse other people of sinning because of his foul mouth.

Now how and why would I bring these things up in trying to underscore the value and meaning of Paul's proclamation that an intrinsic part of the Gospel is the phrase "in accordance with the Scriptures"? It is because these objections are exactly the same kinds of objections that Paul himself faced while preaching the Gospel. Paul is just a zealous Jew who is preaching a new philosophy (Acts 17:18); Paul is no longer a Jew because he has abandoned the Jewish law (Rom 3:5-8); Paul is exalting himself by trodding on others, and making himself feel better by running others down (2Cor 10); Paul's got an ill temper (Acts 15:38-39), he's a lawbreaker (Acts 16:19-24) and has a foul mouth (OK – I can’t find where they said that about Paul, so I’ll take that one under advisement; chalk that one up to a university education as an atheist).

But the answer that Paul says which quiets all these objections is this: Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures. Today this rebuttal has been watered down by some of the more loud voices in "evangelidom" to "that's not my opinion: this is what the Bible teaches!" This summary version seems always to miss two important facts about what Paul was teaching:

(1) Paul never preached sin without preaching the clear redemption of sinners -- that is, Paul never presented sin as unanswered and hopeless except for those who would never repent. Even in the most bleak moments in Paul's letters where he says some men are handed over to sin, it is only to underscore that they are rightly condemned as we all would be if not for the work of Christ. Even in describing the unrepentant, Paul points back to the work of Christ as the only hope in this world.

(2) Paul did not hide behind Scripture but stood on its high ground to bring people to God; when Paul says something is "in accordance with the Scripture", he is talking about the supremacy of God in these things which is revealed by God's ability to tell us ahead of time what His plan was through promises and prophecies and then in seeing them come to pass.

This second point calls out for some unpacking, I think, because there are some things there we might overlook. If what Christ has done is "in accordance with the Scripture", there is some definition of Scripture which must be a necessary part of the Gospel – in the same way that the definition of “Christ” is a necessary part of the Gospel. I think a very vivid place where this is demonstrated is here:

13That same day {This is the day of Christ's resurrection} two of them were walking to the village Emmaus, about seven miles out of Jerusalem. 14They were deep in conversation, going over all these things that had happened. 15In the middle of their talk and questions, Jesus came up and walked along with them. 16But they were not able to recognize who he was.

17He asked, "What's this you're discussing so intently as you walk along?"

They just stood there, long-faced, like they had lost their best friend. 18Then one of them, his name was Cleopas, said, "Are you the only one in Jerusalem who hasn't heard what's happened during the last few days?"

19He said, "What has happened?"

They said, "The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene. He was a man of God, a prophet, dynamic in work and word, blessed by both God and all the people. 20Then our high priests and leaders betrayed him, got him sentenced to death, and crucified him. 21And we had our hopes up that he was the One, the One about to deliver Israel. And it is now the third day since it happened. 22But now some of our women have completely confused us. Early this morning they were at the tomb 23and couldn't find his body. They came back with the story that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. 24Some of our friends went off to the tomb to check and found it empty just as the women said, but they didn't see Jesus."

25Then he said to them, "So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can't you simply believe all that the prophets said? 26Don't you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?" 27Then he started at the beginning, with the Books of Moses, and went on through all the Prophets, pointing out everything in the Scriptures that referred to him.

(MSG, Lk 24:13-27, note added)

Now before anyone takes me apart for using the Message for my example, we don't need any hair-splitting exegetical nuance to see what happened on the road to Emmaus -- and this passage reads good. What happens here is that Jesus tells these fellows that the Gospel is laid out by Moses and the prophets already. The KJV renders v. 26-27 "'Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?' And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself."

What is significant here is that Jesus, on the day of the resurrection, is saying that the Good News was there in the Jewish Scriptures, waiting for Him to come and fulfill it. God laid out the plan ahead of time -- not just as a plan, but as a revelation of His plan. God was talking about this for thousands of years in human time to actual humans in order to prepare the way for this event.

For those of you with a skeptical bent, this speaks to the heart of skepticism. What happens on the day of the resurrection is this: not only does a man who has been dead for 3 days walk out of the tomb healthy enough to walk out of the tomb and 7 miles down the road to Emmaus, but He appears as a completely healthy person. And in that fact -- that is, that the resurrection was a real act of miraculous scope -- is also the matter that this completely healthy person understands and can demonstrate from ancient writings that this is what was supposed to happen beginning with what God said as told to Moses.

There is simply no other religion on Earth which makes this claim. Sure: there are plenty of religious writings that boast an ancient heritage -- no question about that. But there is no set of religious writings which took thousands of years to compile that tell a single story hung on the hope of a future event in which the future event in question comes to pass, thus demonstrating the reliability of the text.

And when Paul says that Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, Paul is saying exactly this. Scripture was written to reveal this truth, to spell it out propositionally; Christ is Himself the Word, the true revelation which Scripture was pointing to.

Christ died for our sins in accordance with Scripture. Think about that a little while you're enjoying your weekend.

Other entries in this series: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

[!] ... by which you are being saved [2b]

1Cor 15: 1Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. 3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ[1] died for our[2a] sins[2b] in accordance with the Scriptures[3], 4that he was buried[4], that he was raised on the third day[5] in accordance with the Scriptures[6](ESV, emph. Added)

As a reader, you must be either a fanatic about these 4 verse of Scripture or a glutton for punishment if you are still with me, but I thank you for still coming back for a bit more once again.

So far, we have made quite a big deal out of 3 words: “Christ”, “died” and “our” (or, as I have used in the last post, “us”). But this next word is the second-most critical in the passage as for as the matter of Paul’s exclamation that this is the part of the Gospel which is “of first importance”: sin.

For those of you reading who are not Christians, or who attend a church where this word is never used, let’s think about something for a minute: if what we have read from Paul so far is correct, what the Gospel is saying is that God planned to kill Christ (Christ who was the Son of God, in Paul’s view, in a way which made him exactly like God in every way, which is to say, of equal value as God the Father) for men – in some way, for their benefit. As I recall history up to the point of Christ’s life, I don’t see men demanding from God that He pony up something valuable – that is, something of the highest value on the metaphysical level and not just on the physical level or in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – because it’s what they want from Him and what He actually owes them. Even the pagans saw that what ought to be right is that men pay to the Divine something to get what they (the mortals, the created ones) want, whatever that happened to be.

The Gospel says that this view – that God owes man nothing – is exactly right, but that it is also exactly why this is good news. It is because Christ died for our sin that man can look at the Gospel and at last see the kind of being God is, and the extent that God is willing to go to in order to make sure that what He has planned – and the intention for what He has planned – comes to pass.

It turns out that the question is not only “Does God owe me anything?” but “Am I square with God?” And the answer is simply no: I am not square with God. At this point, we could go through hundreds of verses that indicate that man does not live up to God’s standards and does not satisfy God by what he does for God. We could start in Genesis, and talk about Adam who disobeyed God not because he was deceived but because he wanted to; we could talk about Noah who, though God had just spared only his family from the utter annihilation of the race, got drunk and passed out naked the first chance he got; we could talk about Abraham the liar who whored out his wife, or Jacob the trickster who stole from his brother, or Moses the murderer, or David the adulterer, or Solomon the idolater, or Peter the coward, or Paul the racist zealot who could not keep peace with his friend and helper Barnabas.

We could cite Scripture on this point literally hundreds and hundreds of ways – but instead I will propose something else to you: I want you to consider me personally. If, for example, God is a holy God who is righteous perfectly and whose name is Holy, I didn’t make it out of bed this morning without failing to live up to that standard. I didn’t make it to the shower today before I was sinful and offensive to God. I certainly haven’t been any great shakes here at work today, either.

When I stand in front of this Holy God – and I stand before Him all the time, whether I think of it that way or not – I stand before Him as someone who owes him the same debt that a criminal owes to the judge when all the evidence is presented. The problem (for me) is that the penalty of any of these sins is death – so in order to pay for all of my sins, it will take more than my own life to pay off the criminal debt to the one who is the right judge of me. That is to say, I could be sentenced to death and the payment would still be insufficient.

It is in this way that what Paul is proclaiming that Christ has done is so extraordinary: Christ died for our sins. Christ didn’t die for our entertainment; Christ didn’t die because God lost at poker with us or the Devil and now has to pay up; Christ didn’t die for our education or to be a billboard for all of history. Let me also say that Christ didn't die to make me important or to give my life purpose: the purpose evident in Christ's death and in the paying of my sin debt and the releif and removal of God;s wrath against me was not to build me up but exclusively for God's purpose, and God's plan and God's glory. Christ died for our sins – as a certain payment for the debt we certainly owe which we cannot repay because we cannot stop accumulating the debt.

Christ died for our sins – and let me say it particularly that Christ died for my sins. Christ died because I can’t live 5 minutes without violating some part of God’s law. Now some of you are saying, “well, cent, that’s because you’re an ass. For the most part, I live every day in pretty good standing – I don’t do saintly works of love and charity every day, but most days I don’t really do anything wrong at all.”

I call bullshit on that – and we don’t need the whole Law of Moses to ferret out the self-deception of that statement. Let’s instead look at Christ teaching about the holy standard of God and see what he says about sin:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.(ESV, Mt 5:21-26)

So when you are muttering under your breath about that person in the office who is intolerable, or when you don’t make peace with them when they do wrong by you, you are guilty of the same law which convicts man of murder. And for those of you who aren’t familiar with that law, it’s not the one in the 10 Commandments. It’s this one from Genesis:

Whoever sheds the blood of man,by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. (ESV, Gen 9:6)

Jesus also taught:

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.(ESV, Mt 5:27-30)

Those are not soft-soaked words, or some weird kind of legalism: it says that if your intention – you motive and your desire – is for something that is wrong, you are guilty as certainly as if you had done it. Moreover, Jesus here says that it would be better for you to cut off your hand or poke out your own eye than it is to think these evil thoughts and be guilty of them.

You are not an innocent person by God’s standard. If you think you are, you don’t know yourself very well. But God’s intention in revealing this to you – and it hardly has to be “revealed” because you know who you are; you know what you hide from other people – is not to grind you into the dust, or even for you to poke out your own eye or cut off your own hand: God’s intention in revealing this is to show you that Christ died for your sins.

Christ died for your sins. Jesus was the eternal Son of God, but He chose, rather than to let you be the victim of your own desires and willingness to disobey, to die – that is to say, to be put to death by men not qualified to judge Him, for crimes He did not commit, by a means that was public and humiliating even though what He deserved was honor and worship – for our sins.

What He paid was greater than what I owed – but when He paid, He was paying for me. He was thinking of me who spit on anything associated with God, and who would have spit on Him if I had met Him in the street. He was thinking of me who has broken the law not just by intention but by doing and living for those desires. He was thinking of me who should have been nailed on a cross and been left to die, and should have suffered there for all eternity because even as I suffered I would have sinned more to curse the one who would have punished me.

Christ died for our sins. And believe it or not, that’s not the whole Gospel – it’s just the first clause of the Gospel.

If you are going to Promise Keepers this weekend in Fayetteville, AR, God be with you. I hope the Gospel is preached there and it is not merely an event or a spectator sport, but that the lives of men are changed by and for the sake of this Gospel by which you are saved.

Other entries in this series: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

[!] ... by which you are being saved [2a]

1Cor 15: 1Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. 3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ[1] died for our[2a] sins[2b] in accordance with the Scriptures[3], 4that he was buried[4], that he was raised on the third day[5] in accordance with the Scriptures[6](ESV, emph. Added)

So after almost 3 weeks of staring at this passage, we find ourselves at the place where the Gospel says Christ died -- and last time's installment outlined that Christ died for a reason which He chose, and which God Himself chose for a specific purpose, and that this death happened not symbolically or as a story from once upon a time but as witnessed by many men. Well, so what?

The primary "what" is that part of the purpose includes "us" -- the noun of which "our" is the possessive. The reason Christ died, the reason (in part) which God chose Christ's death, was for "us".

Now that brings up the question "who is 'us'?" Well, some of "us" is Paul
himself, right? The speaker, the writer of this passage must be included in the "us". But at the very end of the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says this:

The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. All the brothers send you greetings. (ESV, 1Cor 16:19-20a)

So more of "us" is the people with whom Paul is living while he writes -- Aquila, Pricilla, the churches in Asia, and "all the brethren". That's a mighty big "us" -- but there's more still.

Part of the "us" is those to whom Paul is writing -- those whom he calls "the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1Cor 1:2, NASB). The scope of the word "us" in 1Cor 15 seems to include a lot of people -- so when Paul writes "Christ die for (us)", it seems like a pretty good deal -- that there are all kinds of people for whom Christ died and it's a pretty wide circle.

But in this very same letter, we find Paul writing this:

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (ESV,1Cor 1:17-24)

So it is in fact all kinds of people who are "us" -- but they are a specific people called out from among both the Jews and the Greeks. They are a people who "belong to Christ" (1Cor 3:23), who are "bought with a price" (1Cor 6:20), who are "known by Him" (1Cor 8:3). And in each of these instances, Paul compares these who are "us" to another kind of person who cannot, by implication, be "us". Those who "belong to Christ" are contrasted to those whom "God will destroy" (1Cor 3:17); those bought for a price are contrasted to those who are immoral, defiling their own bodies (1Cor 6:18); those who are known by Him are contrasted with those who defile their own consciences (1Cor 8:7). Paul draws a clear line in this letter between who "us" is and who is not "us".

But why? Why divide people up? Why come to the place where, if we take Paul at his meaning, we should see the body of human kind as two camps -- pretty literally "us" and "them"? It is because of the intention that the Gospel -- this Gospel which Paul says is the first thing you should know -- actually does something. There is a result of this matter that Christ died for us – an outcome which is the intentional result of God’s plan in Christ’s death.

Let me be clear about what I am saying. If I put the keys under the doormat of my house, it is possible for anyone to come into my house when I am not there. If I leave the front door open, it is possible that anyone might, in fact, come in and look around. And even if I stand on my porch and call out to passers by, "Hey! Free Lemonade and really great finger food right now! C'mon in!" it is possible (and perhaps more likely) that someone will come in. And if my intent is only that some might come in, (that is, to offer an invitation only and not to actively bring people into my house) that's fine.

But what if I stand on the porch and watch the people who come by and walk up to some with a glass in one hand and a plate in the other? What if I intend that some definite work happens to these people -- what if I have, as we have discussed already, a definite purpose in doing what I am doing and not merely a general hope or a friendly optimism?

It seems to me that Paul, in saying "Christ died for (us)", is talking about Christ doing definite work for a specific people that He intends to see come to completion.

But is that all we can know? Hey -- Christ died for us. In a very real way, the men and women we honored at Memorial Day "died for us", so why should we think any more of Christ than we think of them?

The answer is in the next word in Paul's statement, which we will get to in the near future.

Other entries in this series: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

[!] ... by which you are being saved [1a]

1Cor 15: 1Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. 3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ[1] died for our[2a] sins[2b] in accordance with the Scriptures[3], 4that he was buried[4], that he was raised on the third day[5] in accordance with the Scriptures[6](ESV, emph. Added)

Turns out, as I have been trying to get back to this passage and complete my train of thought here, that there is actually a [1a] component to the thesis I am advancing, and that is that Christ – we discussed Him briefly last time under this heading – died.

Jesus Himself says this about His death:

No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. (John 10:18, ESV)

That is to say, Jesus died because he chose to die. The death He experienced – which Paul attests to – was a death which Jesus chose. And consider it: Jesus says this in the context of calling Himself the Good Shepherd, the one who is not a “hired hand” but the one who does what He does for a purpose greater than merely having a job to do.

Now what has Paul compacted into this simple statement – that Christ “died” - his fellow apostle Peter expressed this way:

Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know-- this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.(Acts 2:22-23, ESV)

So in what way did Jesus “die”? Peter here says that Christ died “according to the definite plan of God”. So Christ didn’t fall off a cliff (as most people know, I am sure), or catch a bad case of leprosy, or eat a bad piece of fish. Christ died because God intended for Him to die.

If you think about that for about 4 seconds you realize that this defines the purpose of Jesus’ death in a way which places it above all other deaths in human history. It defines Jesus’ death in terms of something God Himself was working out, and something in which Jesus was a willing player.

What is even more interesting in Peter’s testimony, I think, is the fact of the matter – the reality of this act. Christ didn’t just die as they heard reported on the Caesarian News Network, or read about in the Judea Tribune: Jesus died at the hands of the men to whom he was speaking, and because of their intentional action. Peter makes it clear that Jesus experienced a shameful death, an unjust death, and that the men who listened to him preach where responsible for His death – but also witnesses to His death. They knew Jesus died – there was no question that they had first-hand knowledge of the fact.

Christ died. As Paul defines the most important thing about the Gospel, he begins with the fact that Christ died – a fact which the other NT writers expand to note that He died willingly, and in gruesome reality, and for a plan which God has definitely set out.

But so what? And why did it take me 7 days to write this blog entry? Come back and visit, and at least one of these questions will be answered.

Other entries in this series: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

[!] ... by which you are being saved [1]

With the basic summary outlined, I’d like to progress and examine each aspect of the summary Paul delivers in 1Cor 15 piece by piece. The text is here:

1Cor 15: 1Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. 3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ[1] died for our[2a] sins[2b] in accordance with the Scriptures[3], 4that he was buried[4], that he was raised on the third day[5] in accordance with the Scriptures[6](ESV, emph. Added)

As we noted last time, Paul says that this is the Gospel which saves, and that what he is about to reiterate is the part “of first importance”, or “of the highest importance”.’ And he begins with a critical matter in that teaching of highest importance: Christ.

In his Concise Theology, J.I. Packer says this:

Jesus is God’s Messiah, the Spirit-anointed Son of David promised in the Old Testament (e.g., Isa 11:1-5; Christos, “Christ” is Greek for Messiah). {The synoptic Gospel writers} all present Him in a three-fold roll as teacher, sin-bearer and ruler (105)

Packer underscores the early church belief in who this “Christ” was in terms of incarnation – which is to say, both human and divine – but goes to detailed efforts to flesh out the matter of John’s Gospel and the claims Christ makes about himself. Particularly, he covers the “ego eimi” statements in John, saying “a claim to deity is implicit” (106).

Paul was here talking about a real person who is described in detail in the complete documents of the New Testament. This Christ is the subject of the rest of Paul’s summary, and as such ought to require us to narrow the scope of the discussion. This primary teaching is that one man has already done something notable, and we either do know who he is or can know who he is. The Gospel Paul preached was about Christ. That may seem super-obvious to a lot of you, but it is the basis for the rest of Paul’s message.

The Gospel by which you are being saved is about Christ. But it is not just about a life story: it is about the fact that Christ died for our sins.

That is itself a message that does not get preached clearly enough or often enough, and I am going to take the next 2 blogs in this series to try and show you what it is and why most people – even at the pulpit – fear this mesaage and try to avoid speaking it plainly.

Other entries in this series: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

[!] ... by which you are being saved

I find myself in a very problematic position: I find myself agreeing with, in broad terms, the sentiments of P. Andrew Sandlin found here. It’s uncomfortable because I am certain that if we dig down into all the nuances, the agreement is superficial at best.

Before I get to my problem, I had a chuckle over this bit:

In making this point I am not suggesting that evangelicalism is cultic, though it has elements of this approach within some of its more conservative circles. (I have witnessed cultic elements in a number of small charismatic and Reformed churches, and reforming movements, that are strongly leader-based. These are generally defined by anti-modern mindsets, and the rigid use of confessions or particular human traditions, that require followers to surrender to the authority of the “elite” who properly understand the tradition!) Furthermore, I am not suggesting that the more militant and separatistic forms of the older fundamentalism dominate most of what is now called evangelicalism.

The punch line (for those of you who didn’t get it) was that the camp over at communio sanctorum are themselves practitioners of “the rigid use of confessions or particular human traditions, that require followers to surrender to the authority of the ‘elite’ who properly understand the tradition!” If we go back to their old blog at reformed Catholicism, we can find them and their allies calling all kinds of people who practice inside traditions they reject “Gnostics”, “heretics”, and (while nicely dancing around the particular word) “idiots”.

Now here’s my problem: I’ve been writing this blog now for 3 months (maybe a little longer), and I’ve been working to talk around a problem that seems so evident to me that I think about it all the time – and that problem is “the Gospel”. I was about to type “let me give you an example”, but this blog is loaded with examples – people on the left (theologically, not politically, though these often go hand in hand) who have completely forgotten this fellow called Jesus who I know as Christ, God the Son, Lamb of God. They have made him into first-century social worker or political activist, and frankly they make me sick.

But the other examples – which I have not been so careful to inspect – are the ones on the right who call every difference of doctrine a heresy that must be resolved right now. For example, there’s a fellow at CARM (and if you read the forums at CARM, my condolences) who has been for the last week calling Presbyterian infant baptisms heretical, and any person who doesn’t advocate strictly for the baptism of adult believers a closet Catholic.

Very rational, as you can see.

It all goes back to that matter of orthodoxy which I had been blathering on about for a while, but I’m going to return to it now in a concrete way. And I’m going to do it from the perspective of a particular summary of the Gospel offered by Paul:

1Cor 15: 1Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. 3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ[1] died for our[2a] sins[2b] in accordance with the Scriptures[3], 4that he was buried[4], that he was raised on the third day[5] in accordance with the Scriptures[6](ESV, emph. Added)

Now you might quibble over my choice of summaries, OK? You might be very testy over the fact that I chose 1Cor 15 rather than John 3:16 or Acts 2 or whatever, but I chose this passage for a specific reason: Paul here says (underlined text) that this is specifically the Gospel – that this is the teaching “of first importance” (green text), a translation which is rendered “as most important” in the HCSB, and “first of all” in the KJV. So whatever else Paul taught them, this was the thing he holds out as most important.

That “thing” was the simple news: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. Now think on this: there is no sacramentology in that “most important” teaching, no church government, no complex prayers or social manifesto. There are certainly things we could call “other teachings” which are implied by the statement that this is “most important”, but there is no doubt that this is the one which has to be the centerpiece.

The other reason I picked this summary is that it has all the parts explicitly listed, which I have numbered in [brackets]. So if we unpack the 5 major aspects of this “most important” teaching ([3] and [6] are the same thing, applied to different other components), we have something that is critical to the matter of orthodoxy: we have the central teaching of the Gospel as explicitly stated by Paul.

That may seem like chicken feed to some people, and I suggest that those people go ahead and feed the chickens. In a world where an argument can break out between two people where the matter of baptism – which both agree is necessary for the believer – can be used to make one person call the other a “heretic”, this specific definition of the Gospel offers us the ground on which to stand and actually point to the solution as to whether any ceremony or ritual ought to stand in the way of calling one another brothers in Christ.

The next few blog entries are going to unpack this statement of the Gospel for the explicit purpose of determining the limits orthodoxy. And let me be clear about something as I type these words: anyone who rejects the teaching contained in Paul’s summary is a person who is rejecting orthodoxy. The question which shall remain after the definition is fleshed out is this: what can exist without denying orthodoxy which does not separate one from orthodoxy?

Orthodoxy matters. The question is: in what way does orthodoxy matter? I hope I can shed some light on that over the next few days.

Other entries in this series: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |