Daily Devotionals: (Jan. 31st) From John Stott, The Heart of the Cross: The Self-Substitution of God

Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ 

John Robert Walmsley Stott was an evangelical Anglican minister, scholar, and author. He was born in 1921 into the home of a leading London physician, Sir Arnold Stott. Young John was sent to Rugby School, an independent boarding school founded in 1567, where he heard the gospel and came to Christ. He later said that this experience “changed the entire direction, course and quality of [his] life.” Stott had an unfortunate encounter with Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in 1966 when he publically rebuked Lloyd-Jones for Lloyd-Jones’s view that evangelicals should separate from denominations with liberal components. The event created long-lasting controversy. But in spite of his weak position on separation, Stott wrote some excellent books and in them he left a valuable legacy. Among them are Basic Christianity, Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today, and, the work regarded as a classic on the subject of Christ’s death, The Cross of Christ.  Stott died in July 2011 at the age of 90. 

Reading “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:2

We began by showing that God must ‘satisfy himself’, responding to the realities of human rebellion in a way that is perfectly consonant with his character. The internal necessity is our fixed starting-point. In consequence, it would be impossible for us sinners to remain eternally the sole objects of his holy love, since he cannot both punish and pardon us at the same time. Hence the second necessity, namely substitution. The only way for God’s holy love to be satisfied is for his holiness to be directed in judgment upon his appointed substitute, in order that his love may be directed towards us in forgiveness.

The substitute bears the penalty, that we sinners may receive the pardon. Who, then, is the substitute? Certainly not Christ, if he is seen as a third party. Any notion of penal substitution in which three independent actors play a role—the guilty party, the punitive judge and the innocent victim—is to be repudiated with utmost vehemence. It would not only be unjust in itself but would also reflect a defective Christology. For Christ is not an independent third person, but the eternal Son of the Father, who is one with the Father in his essential being.

What we see, then, in the drama of the cross is not three actors but two, ourselves on the one hand and God on the other. Not God as he is in himself (the Father), but God nevertheless, God-made-man-in-Christ (the Son). Hence the importance of those New Testament passages which speak of the death of Christ as the death of God’s Son: for example, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son’…. For in giving his Son he was giving himself…. As Dale put it, ‘the mysterious unity of the Father and the Son rendered it possible for God at once to endure and to inflict penal suffering’. There is neither harsh injustice nor unprincipled love nor Christological heresy in that; there is only unfathomable mercy.

John Stott, The Cross of Christ

Edited by Charles Barrett for this blog. ©thinkgospel.com

Daily Devotionals: (Jan. 30th) From Leon Morris: Behold the Lamb of God

Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ 

Leon Morris was born in 1914 in New South Wales, Australia. He was ordained as an Episcopalian minister in 1938. After studying at Cambridge University, where he earned a doctoral degree, he returned to Australia and later became principle of Ridley College Melbourne. Morris wrote commentaries on the books of Ruth, Matthew, John, and Revelation, as well as many other titles. The focus of his writing was on the atonement—the cross-work of Christ. His doctoral dissertation was published in 1955: The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross. He died in 2006.

Reading “And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!” John 1:36

Twice John the Baptist is recorded as having spoken of Jesus as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29, 36), and on the first occasion he added, “which taketh away the sin of the world!” “The Lamb of God” is a way of referring to Jesus which has made a powerful appeal to Christian devotion through the centuries. The petition, “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us,” occurs in many liturgies, while those who prefer extempore prayer often find the words “Lamb of God” come easily to their lips…. Perhaps the commonest suggestion is that the Passover is in mind….

The Passover imagery is highly appropriate as an illustration of the work of Christ. It reminds us of the lambs and the kids that were slain in Egypt those centuries before, and which were the means of diverting destruction from the households where the sacrifice was made and the blood placed on the doorposts. The great deliverance lingered in the minds of the people, and throughout the Old Testament there are references to it. In some sense it was the Exodus and the events associated with it which transformed the slave rabble into the very people of God. All these things are important for an understanding of Christ’s work for us. His sacrifice of Himself delivers men from being slaves to sin to being the people of God. The figure has force.

Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross

Edited by Charles Barrett for this blog. ©thinkgospel.com

Daily Devotionals: (Jan. 29th) From Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Offence of the Cross

Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ 

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, known as the last of the Puritans, is undoubtedly the most influential pastor/preacher of the twentieth century in reformed and puritan theology and literature—and this with no formal theological training. Lloyd-Jones was born in 1899 in Wales. After finishing grammar school he studied medicine at Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. In 1921 he took the position of assistant to the royal physician, Sir Thomas Horder, and was destined for great things in the medical world. But he forsook it all for Christ. After his brother died in 1918 and his father four years later, he began to see “what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue.” He was overwhelmed by the fact of sin. He saw it both in the poor in London and among the elite with whom he was personally acquainted. And he saw it in himself. Lloyd-Jones put no date on his conversion, but by 1924 it was evident that all things had become new. Lloyd-Jones began to preach in a small mission in his native Wales but was later called to Westminster Chapel in London (1939), where he had a very influential ministry. The published works of Lloyd-Jones were not prepared for the press; they were edited from his sermons and include commentaries on Ephesians, Romans, 1 John, and the Sermon on the Mount, and a work on spiritual depression based on things he learned after suffering depression himself for a period. Dr. Lloyd-Jones died in 1981. 

Reading “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” 1 Corinthians 1:23

Most people prefer to listen to preaching on the subject of Resurrection rather than on the Cross; and such preaching is popular today. There is virtually no offence in preaching which emphasizes the Resurrection, and a living Christ who is offered as a friend, or as a healer of the body, or as one who can guide us and solve our problems for us in various ways. But none of that is possible if you do not start with the Cross of Christ, His death, and His “blood.” But there, immediately, “the offence of the Cross” comes in. The “stumbling block” to the natural man is always the crucified Saviour; this Saviour whose “blood” is essential. But whether we like it or dislike it, it is what always comes first in the Scriptures. And it is essential and vital that it should so do….

God is eternally just and righteous and holy, and He cannot contradict Himself. There was only one way whereby God could forgive sin. “There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.” It is only “by the blood of Christ” that forgiveness becomes possible.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Through His Blood” in God’s Ultimate Purpose: Exposition on Ephesians 1

Edited by Charles Barrett for this blog. ©thinkgospel.com

Daily Devotionals: (Jan. 28th) From G. Campbell Morgan, The Great Mystery of the Cross

Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ 

George Campbell Morgan was a British preacher and Bible scholar. He was born in December 1863 into the home of a Baptist pastor where he received private tutoring at home because of ill health as a child. When D. L. Moody came to Britain in the early 1870s, Morgan was just a child of ten but was sufficiently impressed by Moody’s ministry that he began to study seriously for the ministry. At 13 he preached his first sermon and by 15 was preaching regularly in Baptist chapels. Morgan received no formal theological training but was so dedicated to the study of Scripture that he distinguished himself as one of Britain’s leading Bible teachers, traveling to America often to teach and preach in places like Moody Bible Institute. In 1902 Chicago Theological Seminary conferred on him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. Morgan pastored the famous Westminster Chapel in London from 1904 to 1919, and again from 1933 to 1943 when he was instrumental in bringing in Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones as his successor. In 1903 Morgan published The Crises of the Christ which outlined the work of Christ in the purpose of God and its relation to man. Other books he published are still in print and many of his sermons were published in The Westminster Pulpit. He died on May 16, 1945, at the age of 81.

Reading “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” Acts 2:23

In that statement we find the whole mystery of the Cross. In it the apostle recognized the Divine side, and the human side of that Cross. We are nineteen centuries away from it. The men who listened to him were not more than seven or eight weeks away from it. They remembered it; that rough, cruel, bloody, Roman gibbet [upright post used for execution by hanging]. They knew what the crucifixion meant. When he referred to it he did not begin with the brutality of it; he did not begin with the dastardliness of it; he began from the heights and from the infinite distances: “Him being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.”

That is the aspect of the Cross to which man clings in the hour he knows himself a sinner. We are not saved by the murder of a Man. We are saved by the death of the One Who was delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. It was a murder, a vile murder; but it was more—infinitely more. It was something that took place “by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” The Greek word translated “determinate” here is the word from which we derive our word “horizon.” The phrase “determinate counsel” suggests the plan of God, that which was within the boundaries of His purpose.

The death of Jesus, said Peter in effect, upon the day of Pentecost, was not an accident, not something brought about by men. It was the working out, in human history, and into visibility, of an eternal purpose and plan and power.

G. Campbell Morgan on Acts 2:23 in Acts of the Apostles

Edited by Charles Barrett for this blog. ©thinkgospel.com

The Universal Law of the Harvest (Pt. 4: We Reap More than We Sow)

In a previous blog I considered the time of reaping. But let me draw your attention to the extent of reaping. No aspect of the law of harvest is more sobering than this: we reap more than we sow! The harvest is always greater than the seed planted. If this were not the case, no farmer would ever plant a thing. An acorn is a tiny thing, but it contains within itself a mighty, towering oak tree. A pumpkin seed is small compared with the massive pumpkin it produces. The size of the seed does not determine the size of the harvest. That’s why the text warns on the negative side: “Do not be deceived.”

Reaping more than we sow is fundamental to the laws of the harvest and this is not just true for the agricultural world, it is true for nearly every aspect of life: for the physical and the spiritual, for believers and unbelievers alike. Of course, there are some exceptions due to the fact we live in a sin-cursed world with natural and economic disasters—but the law still applies in general. While the world accepts this premise in the physical world, they somehow neglect its application in the spiritual realm.

We think of Adam. What a “small” seed was planted in one act of disobedience. What a harvest of misery! Remember David also. We know the story of David and his sin with Bathsheba, but it is Nathan’s indictments and judgments against David that tell the story of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.

• The indictment: You killed Uriah (2 Samuel 12:9). The judgment: The sword will never depart from your house (12:10).
• The indictment: You took his wife (12:9). The judgment: Your wives will be taken before your eyes (12:11).
• The indictment: You did this secretly (12:12). The judgment: Your wives will be defiled openly before all Israel (12:11–12).
• The indictment: You gave occasion to the enemies to blaspheme the Lord (12:14). The judgment: Your child also born to you shall surely die (12:14).

We see this concerning the apostasy of His people Israel—God pronounced His judgment saying, “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). The phrase “they have sown the wind” alludes to the futility of Israel’s human solutions and strategies by which they were seeking to handle life and their problems, foreign policy, and the like according to their own wishes. This they were doing in place of knowing and trusting in the Word and the true and living God. “Wind” represents that which lacks substance and is, like all efforts of the flesh, futile, worthless, and of no assistance. “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” This is the same in kind, but it is more. “Whirlwind” is in the Hebrew intensive form and highlights the violence of the whirlwind. God’s warning here is that you do not just reap in kind, but you may reap much more. All their efforts directed toward self-preservation would end up being self-destructive. The idea then is if you sow wind (your solutions), you will reap a tornado (your consequences).

Daily Devotionals: (Jan. 27th) From Geerhardus Vos: The Messianic Significance of Christ’s Death

Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ 

Geerhardus Vos was born in the Netherlands in 1861. He father accepted a call to pastor in Grand Rapids and the family moved to the United States when he was 19. Vos began his theological education at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids and then moved to Princeton. He earned his doctorate in Arabic studies from the Strasburg University in 1888. In 1893 Geerhardus Vos was invited to teach Biblical Theology in Princeton where he had studied. There he taught alongside B. B. Warfield and later Gresham Machen. Vos retired in 1932. He published his classic Pauline Eschatology in 1930 and in 1948 Biblical Theology, another classic. He died in 1949.  

Reading “And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.” Luke 24:46

The predictions of passion and death (sometimes including, sometimes omitting mention of the resurrection) are three in number, and they reveal an increasing tempo of emphasis and clearness. They are found, substantially alike, in all three of the Synoptics [Matthew, Mark, and Luke], as follows: (a) Matt. 16:21-28; Mark 8:31-9:1; Luke 9:22-27. (b) Matt. 17:22, 23; Mark 9:30-32; Luke 9:43-45. (c) Matt. 20:17-19; Mark 10:32-34; Luke 18:31-34.

From these predictions several important points may be gathered. Jesus here expressly declares His approaching death to be an integral part of His messianic task. This was done, not merely by attaching the prediction of it directly to Peter’s confession of the Messiahship, but even more clearly by coupling the announcement with the subject “Son of Man.” It is not in any private or even any merely prophetic capacity that He will undergo this experience, but as the Fulfiller of the Messianic vision seen by Daniel (Daniel 7:13ff). This already implies the absolute necessity of what is to happen, since the Messianic program is from the nature of the case unalterably fixed.

Geerhardus Vos, The Self-Disclosure of Jesus

Edited by Charles Barrett for this blog. ©thinkgospel.com

Daily Devotionals: (Jan. 26th) From J. Gresham Machen: Christ’s Death Our Only Hope

Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ 

J. Gresham Machen was born in 1881 in Baltimore. Maryland. His father was a Methodist and a lawyer, his mother a Presbyterian. After studying at Princeton Seminary he traveled to Europe to study. It was in Europe that he met with Liberal theology which began to unsettle his mind, but after struggling for a time, he came out a stronger evangelical Christian than before. Machen returned to teach at Princeton in 1906 and was ordained to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in the USA. During the Fundamentalism/Modernist controversy in the 1920s Machen butted heads with both Princeton Seminary and his denomination. He left the seminary in 1929 and helped form Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1930, and in 1935 he was expelled from the Presbyterian Church in the USA and consequently formed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Machen was an outstanding scholar and fearless contender for the faith, but his writings are addressed to ordinary fellow Christians. They include What is Faith, The Christian View of Man, and Notes on Galatians. He died on January 1, 1937, while on a preaching trip in North Dakota. 

Reading “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” Ephesians 1:6

If our being right with God depends upon anything that is in us, we are without hope. But another way into God’s presence has been opened, and the opening of that way is set forth in the gospel. We deserve eternal death; we deserve exclusion from God’s righteous presence; but the Lord Jesus took upon Himself all the guilt of our sins and died instead of us on the cross. Henceforth the law’s demands have been satisfied for us by Christ, its terror for us is gone, and clothed no longer in our righteousness but in the righteousness of Christ we stand without fear as Christ would stand without fear before the judgment seat of God. Men say that that is an intricate theory of the atonement; but surely the adjective is misplaced. It is mysterious, but it is not intricate; it is wonderful, but is so simple that a child can understand.

No doubt the application of this redeeming work of Christ to the individual soul is mysterious enough. It is far beyond the wisdom and power of man. It is not a thing that can be effected by human reasoning or human effort; the beginning of the Christian life is not an achievement but an experience.

J. Gresham Machen, “Justified by Faith” in God Transcendent

Edited by Charles Barrett for this blog. ©thinkgospel.com

Daily Devotionals: (Jan. 25th) From B. B. Warfield: Imitating the Incarnation

Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ 

Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield was born in 1851 near Lexington, Kentucky. His home life was one characterized by a “vital piety” and he was known throughout his life as a man with a tenderness for men and missions. His father descended from English Puritans and his mother from Ulster-Scots. His maternal grandfather was Rev. Dr. Robert Jefferson Breckenridge, a distinguished preacher and the founder and president of the Theological Seminary in Danville, Kentucky. Warfield was particularly interested in mathematics and physics, but his father did not want him to settle too quickly on a particular course of study and wanted him to travel in Europe first. He sailed in February 1872 and in the summer time wrote from Heidelberg with the announcement that he intended to study for the ministry. He entered Princeton Theological Seminary in September 1873, graduated in May 1876, and was ordained in June of that year in Dayton, Ohio. After teaching New Testament languages and literature at Western Theological Seminary he was called to replace A. A. Hodge in the Chair of Theology at Princeton in 1887. He died in February 1921 of angina. 

Reading “For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps.” 1 Peter 2:21

After “Christ our Redeemer,” no words can more deeply stir the Christian heart than “Christ our Example.” Every Christian joyfully recognizes the example of Christ, as, in the admirable words of a great Scotch commentator, a body “of living legislation,” as “law, embodied and pictured in a perfect humanity.” In Him, in a word, we find the moral ideal historically realized, and we bow before it as sublime and yearn after it with all the assembled desires of our renewed souls.

How lovingly we follow in thought every footstep of the Son of Man and long to walk in spirit by His side. He came to save every age, says Irenæus, and therefore He came as an infant, a child, a boy, a youth, and a man. And there is no age that cannot find its example in Him. We see Him, the most proper child that ever was given to a mother’s arms, through all the years of childhood at Nazareth “subjecting Himself to His parents.” We see Him a youth, laboring day by day contentedly at His father’s bench, in this lower sphere, too, with no other thought than to be “about His father’s business.” We see Him in His holy manhood, going, “as His custom was,” Sabbath by Sabbath, to the synagogue.

And then the horizon broadens. We see Him at the banks of Jordan, because it became Him to fulfill every righteousness, meekly receiving the baptism of repentance for us. We see Him in the wilderness, calmly rejecting the subtlest trials of the evil one: declining to seek His Father’s ends by any other than His Father’s means.

We see Him among the thousands of Galilee going about doing good: with no pride of birth, though He was a king; with no pride of intellect, though omniscience dwelt within Him; with no pride of power, though all power in heaven and earth was in His hands and in lowliness of mind esteeming every one better than Himself. We see Him everywhere offering to men His life for the salvation of their souls: and when, at last, the forces of evil gathered thick around Him, walking, alike without display and without dismay, the path of suffering appointed for Him, and giving His life at Calvary that through His death the world might live.

B. B. Warfield, Sermon on Philippians 2:5–8

Edited by Charles Barrett for this blog. ©thinkgospel.com

Daily Devotionals: (Jan. 24th) From John Charles Ryle: Two Great Truths—Christ’s Death and Resurrection

Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ 

J. C. Ryle (1816–1900) was an evangelical churchman in an age when many of the established Church of England were turning back to Roman Catholicism, particularly the ritualism known as the Tractarian Movement. Ryle was born into a well-to-do home and was destined for great things after studying at Oxford. But Ryle was called to the ministry and was ordained in the Anglican Church in 1842. He was a vicar for 38 years before being recommended for the Bishopric of Liverpool and became the first Protestant Bishop of Liverpool. Ryle’s writings are still available today: Knots Untied, Old Paths, Practical Christianity, and a number of other articles and polemic pamphlets. His greatest work is a devotional commentary on the four Gospels, which is enjoyed by many for their personal devotions or family worship. Ryle died just after his retirement in 1900 at the age of 83.   

Reading “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” 1 Corinthians 15:3–4

The other great fact about Christ which St. Paul placed in the front part of his teaching was His resurrection from the dead. He boldly told the Corinthians that the same Jesus who died, and was buried, came forth alive from the grave on the third day after His death, and was seen, touched, handled, and talked to, in the body, by many competent witnesses. By this amazing miracle He proved, as He had frequently said He would, that He was the promised and long-expected Saviour foretold in prophecy, that the satisfaction for sin He had made by His death was accepted by God the Father, that the work of our redemption was completed, and that death, as well as sin, was a conquered enemy. In short, the Apostle taught that the greatest of miracles had been wrought, and that with such a Founder of the new faith that he came to proclaim, first dying for our sins, and then rising again for our justification, nothing was impossible, and nothing wanting for the salvation of man’s soul.

Such were the two great truths to which St. Paul assigned the first place, when he began his campaign as a Christian teacher at Corinth,—Christ’s vicarious death for our sins,—Christ’s rising again from the grave. Nothing seems to have preceded them:—nothing to have been placed on a level with them. No doubt it was a sore trial of faith and courage to a learned and highly educated man like St. Paul to take up such a line. Flesh and blood might well shrink from it. He says himself, “I was with you in weakness and fear, and in much trembling” (1 Cor. 2:2–3). But by the grace of God he did not flinch. He says, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

James Charles Ryle, “Sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:3–4” from Foundation Truths.

Edited by Charles Barrett for this blog. ©thinkgospel.com

Daily Devotionals: (Jan. 23rd) From Charles Hodge: The Perfect Satisfaction of Christ’s Sufferings

Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ 

Charles Hodge, born December 27, 1797, was an American Presbyterian minister and theologian. After studying at Princeton he went on to study in Europe at Paris, Halle, and Basle. He returned to Princeton to teach first New Testament exegesis and then theology. Three of his sons became ministers and two of them followed him on the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary. Apart from his work at Princeton, where he was president from 1851–1878, Hodge was a prolific writer. He contributed to a number of periodicals and produced commentaries on Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Ephesians. His magnum opus is probably his three-volume work on systematic theology. His last book, What is Darwinism?, appeared in 1878 just before his death on June 19, 1878. 

Reading “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Romans 8:1

The first point is that Christ’s work was of the nature of a satisfaction, because it met and answered all the demands of God’s law and justice against the sinner. The law no longer condemns the sinner who believes in Christ. Those, however, whom the infinitely holy and strict law of God does not condemn are entitled to the divine fellowship and favor. To them there can be no condemnation. The work of Christ was not, therefore, a mere substitute for the execution of the law, which God in his sovereign mercy saw fit to accept in lieu of what the sinner was bound to render. It had an inherent worth that rendered it a perfect satisfaction, so that justice has no further demands.

It is here as in the case of state criminals—if such an offender suffers the penalty that the law prescribes as the punishment of his offence he is no longer liable to condemnation. No further punishment can justly be demanded for that offence. This is what is called the perfection of Christ’s satisfaction. It perfectly, from its own intrinsic worth, satisfies the demands of justice. This is the point meant to be illustrated when the work of Christ is compared in Scripture and in the writings of theologians to the payment of a debt. The creditor has no further claims when the debt due to him is fully paid.

This perfection of the satisfaction of Christ, as already remarked, is not due to his having suffered either in kind or in degree what the sinner would have been required to endure; but principally to the infinite dignity of his person. He was not a mere man, but God and man in one person. His obedience and sufferings were therefore the obedience and sufferings of a divine person.

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology

Edited by Charles Barrett for this blog. ©thinkgospel.com