Overwhelming Truth

The preacher asks, “Why am I here?” He then answers that the desire and purpose of God is that we should reflect the image in whom we were created, yet more than that, reflect the image of the One in whom we were re-created.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. . . . and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 2:10 & 4:24)

This morning I read again in Charnock a description of what that means. It takes my breath away and calls me to worship. His writing is restated here, with some changes since he wrote in 1853 and even though his thoughts are eternal, they need a bit of editing. Charnock says…

The effects of redemption proclaim God's great goodness. We are delivered from the corruption of our nature, the ruin of our happiness, the deformity of our sins, and the punishment of our transgressions. He frees us from the ignorance that darkened our minds and the slavery to sin that enchained us. 

When He came to make Adam after his crime, instead of pronouncing the sentence of death he merited, God utters a promise no man could have expected. God's kindness rises above His provoked justice, and while He put Adam and Eve out of paradise, He gives hope of regaining even a better eternal home. God is more ready to pour out the blessings of His goodness than charge them with the horror of their crime.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15)

God's goodness pardons us from more transgressions than there are moments in our lives. His goodness overlooks as many follies as there are thoughts in our hearts. He not only relieves our wants, but restores our dignity. What a great testimony of His goodness to instate sinners with the highest honors rather than merely supply our present necessity. In an admirable pity He is inclined to redeem us, and in incomparable affection He resolved to exalt us. 

What can be desired more from Him than His goodness has granted? He sought us when we were lost and ransomed us when we were captives. He pardoned us when we were condemned and raised us when we were dead. In creation He reared us from nothing yet in redemption He delivers our understanding from ignorance and vanity, our wills from impotence and obstinacy, and our whole person from a death worse than that nothing He drew us from by creation.

God's liberality in the gospel infinitely surpasses what we admire in the works of nature. His goodness in redemption is more astonishing to our belief than His goodness in creation is visible to our eye. There is more of his bounty expressed in this verse, “So God loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16), than there is in the whole volume of the created world! In creation, heaven spoke and the earth was formed. In redemption heaven Himself sank to earth and was clothed with dust to reduce man’s muck to its original state.

For this, God parts with his dearest treasure. His Son eclipses His choicest glory. For this, God must be made man, eternity must suffer death, the Lord of angels must weep in a cradle, and the Creator of the world must hang like a slave. He must be in a manger in Bethlehem, and die upon a cross on Calvary. Unspotted righteousness must be made sin, and unblemished blessedness be made a curse. 

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2:11–14)

PRAY: What else can I say but “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” (Psalm 51:15) The reality of redemption described by this writer, Steven Charnock, has a greater impact on my heart than the magnificence of the Rockies, the color and beauty of flora and fauna, and even the wonder of babes and children and people created in Your image. May I praise You night and day, in sickness and well-being, and with all of my heart. 

Two marvels in one action...

 

Multitasker's really are not. We switch from one to the other but humanly only do one thing at a time. Not God. In redemption’s great climax at Calvary, He not only made clear two contrary affections at the same time and in one act, but dealt with both. Charnock writes of this and fills my heart with worship.

At the Cross, God manifests great hatred of sin, and the great love to the sinner by punishing the sin without ruining the sinner, and repairing the ruins of the sinner without indulging the sin. God shows His eternal love and eternal hatred by condemning sin to what it deserved, and advancing sinners to what we could not expect.

He showed His hatred of sin in other ways: in punishing the devil without remedy; sentencing humanity to an expulsion from paradise, yet ultimately pouring out His wrath on His Son. In condemning Jesus to a horrible death, He was a spectator who was “satisfied” by that horrible scene.

God put on His Son the pain we deserved that we might be restored to the place we had forfeited. He hates the sin so as to condemn it forever, and loves the sinner who believes and repents granting us joy and eternal life. He is at eternal defiance with sin, yet nearer in alliance with the sinner than he was before sin happened, almost as if our rebellion endeared us to Him. These verses sum it up:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:7–12)

God, in great wisdom, twisted together the happy restoration of our broken relationship with an everlasting curse upon sin which caused the breach. Satan who seduced the sin fell also in this great plan of redemption. Hatred and love manifested together — hate for sin in the death of Christ, and love to sinners. This is the wisdom of God: Redemption that defeats sin and recovers the sinner.

 Christmas has become a gift-giving and gift-receiving event, eating too much and, for many, not a very happy time. The plan of God is sometimes celebrated in token, sometimes in deep reverence, but mostly not at all. Even so, we sense the wonder even if we do not understand what it is or why.

PRAY: Lord Jesus, I’ve sung “little Lord Jesus” but You are anything but little in my mind and heart. You agreed to the Father’s wisdom and in the power of the Spirit and the reality of Your love to do His will, You arrived, lived, died, and then rose again to redeem and deliver us from sin. What a wonder You are, and the best gift that could be given — and received.

The Plan Revealed

Does anyone noticing the wonder of Christmas know where this sense of wonder comes from? Do we understand the power of the Holy Spirit who puts hearts at rest, fills us with generosity, gives us this unusual joy that begins a few weeks earlier than the day? Do we know why our hearts are more deeply grieved at the losses of loved ones now more than ever? What is it about Christmas that brings out emotions, makes us smile at excited children, or even produces a ‘bah, humbug’ in attempts to avoid the delight of it?

I know Christmas is challenging for some. Those with limited budget, or no faith, or another faith, or the loss of dear ones, yet there is this thing in the air. Some call it the spirit of the season, or related to the delights of giving and receiving, but could it be that this is the Spirit of God reminding us that love came down? That He did not want heaven without us? That we, sinful and proud of our own goodness really know nothing about goodness until that Baby was born?

The reality of Christmas is that God loves us, yet He cannot welcome us to Himself because of our sin. Sin separates. It separates relationships, married people, fathers from their children, but most seriously, us from our Creator. What is He to do about that? Christmas is the beginning of a plan created long before humanity appeared:

He (Jesus) was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you (1 Peter 1:20)

While the Jews who knew the promise did not expect a baby, nevertheless that was how the plan unfolded, “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” (Ephesians 1:4)

Redemption’s blueprint was drafted in love: “This is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) His plan to deal with sin removed the barrier for all who respond to this Babe who grew to manhood, and who calls as the Father sends: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37)

And for those who are called and who come, their lives are changed forever, and this is part of the wonder. The power of God, even is hinted to those at Christmas who know nothing or very little about the child born in a manger. For those who do, the Bible says:

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:30–31)

And because of this, I see and feel the wonder this day, and most all other days...

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Romans 11:33)

PRAY: Lord, for many this season is only about gifts and glitter, a mad rush to measure up to the expectations of others — real or imagined. It can bring headaches too, and sad memories, pressures and no joy at all. For those who hurt or even hate this time of year, I pray that they will discover the plan of God that started before the world began, and was made known beginning with a baby in a wooden straw-filled manger who eventually cried “It is finished” from a blood-stained wooden cross.