Problem Solved!

In 1 Samuel 2, Eli the High Priest is talking to his two sons, of whom it is said they “were worthless men [who] did not know the LORD” (a ringing endorsement, indeed!).  In rebuking his wicked sons, Eli asks a question that seems to encapsulate the dilemma of the Old Covenant.  Here is what he says (1 Sam. 2:25): “If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?”  The answer that is clearly implied is, “There is no one who can intercede between God and man!  If you continue to sin against Yahweh, my sons, you are dead!”

Of course this is not the whole of Old Testament theology.  There are many OT references to God being gracious, merciful, and longsuffering.  Yet the question remains unanswered, “Who can stand between God and Man as a mediator and interceder on behalf of Man?”  Since every man stands guilty before God for his own sins, there is no one who can act as a third-party mediator.  If I myself am at odds with God, I can’t intercede for you with God.  I need a mediator myself!  As God says in Isaiah 43:27, “Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me.”  This is a big problem!  The situation is completely hopeless as it stands in the Old Covenant.

Except for one thing: God’s promise of one to come who would be able to intercede for sinners.  “He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12).  Here we find someone who can successfully mediate between God and Man.  Someone who doesn’t have to answer for his own sin, and is thus able to answer for mine.  This man is Jesus Christ: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5-6a).

Glory be to God for his amazingly wise, shockingly unpredictable, unfathomably gracious solution to our seemingly insurmountable sin problem!

The Defeat of Satan

Satan stood there glowering,
His eyes aflame with hate,
As he watched the humans crucify the Christ
And seal their fate.

His lip curled up in mockery
As he saw them kill the Son,
And he raised his fist in victory,
For his reign had now begun.

But as the sky turned dark he saw a flash
Of lightning from the clouds,
As an angel out of heaven came,
And Jesus cried aloud,

“It is finished!” as the angel nailed a scroll
Upon the cross.
And Satan’s brow grew furrowed
As he wondered what it was.

The angel turned to Satan,
And raised a finger of fire,
“You’ve had it now, you dirty snake,
You murderer, you liar!”

“Upon that scroll is written all the sins
Of God’s elect,
In helping kill the Son of God,
You helped pay off their debt!”

At first the Devil chuckled
And his smirk remained undimmed,
The Christ was dead, and that was that,
He was sure that he would win.

But as night turned to dawn,
The Devil’s eyes were worried,
And he set himself to watch,
At the place the Christ was buried.

The third day dawned, and Satan thought,
“I’ve called that angel’s bluff.
I’m leaving now. There’s nothing here,
I’ve wasted time enough.”

When suddenly, from in the tomb,
He heard a mighty shout,
The stone rolled back, a light streamed forth,
The Son of God burst out!

Satan groveled on his knees
Before the risen Lord,
Christ’s face shone brighter than the sun,
His eyes pierced like a sword.

“Listen, Satan,” Jesus said,
“You’ve served your purpose well,
And you’ll keep serving it until
You make your bed in Hell!”

“Did you think God, the Sovereign Lord,
Didn’t know what was going on?
You’re no worthy opponent,
You’re just a pathetic pawn.”

“And now my resurrection
Is the sign of God’s approval.
I’ve conquered you, you dragon,
The time is short till your removal.”

And so the Devil wanders
To and fro upon the earth,
He tries to thwart God’s sovereign plan,
He fights for all he’s worth.

But in the end, he knows
He has already been defeated,
And how? Well, that’s the story
That you’ve just heard repeated.

 

Philip Bramblet

Call on Jesus

Call on Jesus, dying soul,
Seek the pardon that he won,
When you see your guilt of sin,
Know your seeking’s almost done.

Call on Jesus, seeking soul,
Seek the peace that he can give,
When you love him more than life,
That is when you’ll start to live.

Call on Jesus, happy soul,
Seek his glory to make known,
When you are enjoying God,
See that it is not alone.

Call on Jesus, weary soul,
Seek his mercy and his grace,
When you fall and cannot rise,
Crawl until you find his face.

Call on Jesus, risen soul,
Seek his praises to proclaim,
When in heaven you reside,
In his presence praise his name.

Philip Bramblet

Scriptural Support for the Previous Post

I said I would give biblical support for Owen’s statement about the distinct way in which each Person of the Godhead communicates grace to the believer:

It remains only to intimate, in a word, in what this distinction lies, and what is the ground of it.  Now, this is, that the Father does it by the way of original authority; the Son by the way of communicating from a purchased treasury; the Holy Spirit by the way of immediate efficacy.

The Father does it by way of original authority.  The Father is the ultimate giver; the divine Initiator.  John 3:16 affirms this by telling us it was the Father’s love that led to the sending of the Son.  Every blessing we have in Christ is therefore due to the Father’s initiative.  Jesus said he didn’t do anything on his own authority, but only what his Father told him (John 8:28).  Owen points to James 1:18 (and I would add verse 17) which says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.  Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth.”  God was the great initiator in the work of Christ.  It is ultimately through the Father’s love, the Father’s will, and the Father’s authority that we receive grace.

The Son communicates grace from a purchased treasury.  Ephesians 1 says that we receive every spiritual blessing from the Father (another support for the previous point about the Father).  But if you scan the chapter you will find over and over again that we receive the Father’s spiritual gifts only and completely “in Christ.”  By the sacrificial shedding of his blood in death, Christ removed the wrath of God from us (Rom. 3:25), redeemed us (Eph. 1:7), brought us near to God (Eph. 2:13), conquered the Devil on our behalf (Heb. 2:14), purified our conscience so we can serve God (Heb. 9:14), gave us confident access to God’s presence (Heb. 10:19), sanctified us (Heb. 13:12), ransomed us from the futility of unbelief (1 Pet. 1:18-19; Rev. 5:9), freed us from our sins (Rev. 1:5), and keeps cleansing us from all sin (1 John 1:7).  That should be enough to show that Jesus purchased every bit of grace we receive from the Father.

The Spirit communicates grace by way of immediate efficacy.  He is the one acting directly in us to manifest God’s grace in our lives.  Owen points to Romans 8:11 which states that the Father raises us to life spiritually “through his Spirit who dwells in you.”  So regeneration comes from the Father, through the Son, by means of the Spirit.  I think this is true of all grace.  If you go a little further in Romans 8, verse 13 says, “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”  This shows that, while we could legitimately say we are sanctified by the Father or by the Son, it is actually the Spirit who is working directly in us to enable us to kill sin in our life.  While we’re in Romans 8, we could note verse 26, which says, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”  Again, it is the Spirit who is the immediate worker in our spiritual lives.

So I think it is very biblical to have this perspective: Justification comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.  Adoption comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.  Sanctification comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.  “Fill in the blank with any spiritual blessing” comes from the Father, purchased by the Son, by the immediate work of the Spirit.

Distinct Communication of Grace

In John Owen’s Communion with God, he establishes that Christians can have communion with each Person of the Godhead distinctly; with the Father, with the Son, and with the Spirit.  He says in regard to God’s communication of grace to the believer,

It remains only to intimate, in a word, in what this distinction lies, and what is the ground of it.  Now, this is, that the Father does it by the way of original authority; the Son by the way of communicating from a purchased treasury; the Holy Spirit by the way of immediate efficacy.

In other words, when it comes to receiving any aspect of God’s grace, the Father is the ultimate giver.  He is the originator of it all.  From him the plan and the power springs.  He is the divine Initiator.  The Son then communicates the grace of his Father to us by purchasing it for us on the cross.  Without the wrath-satisfying sacrifice of the Son, we would deserve only damnation and punishment from the Father.  The grace we receive from the Father is due only and completely to the cross-work of Jesus: his death, resurrection, and exaltation.  The Holy Spirit, then, is the immediate actor in our lives.  He works directly in us to bring the blood-bought grace of the Father to us.  There is, of course, overlap in any full description of the work of Father, Son, and Spirit, since there is but one God; yet I think Owen is basically correct in his analysis.

I don’t have time right now, so maybe next time I’ll provide Scriptural support for the above description of the distinct work of Father, Son, and Spirit.  After all, Owen’s words are worthless if they’re not from the Word of God.

What is Communion in General?

I’m reading John Owen’s book Communion with God.  One of the questions I had at the outset was, “What does ‘communion’ mean?”  The things that come to my mind when I think of “communion” are things like relationship, a sense of warm closeness, fellowship, or the Lord’s Supper.  Owen has a brief section entitled “What is Communion?” and here is what he says: communion is “a joint participation in anything whatever, good or evil, duty or enjoyment, nature or actions.”  So communion is, most basically, a joint participation.  Sharing something in common, whether nature, duty, enjoyment, actions.

More specifically, Owen says “communion is the mutual communication of such good things as wherein the persons holding that communion are delighted, bottomed upon some union between them.”  At first, this made me think of shared enjoyments.  If we share our common delight together, we are communing.  It made me think of John Piper’s book, The Pleasures of God, in which he discusses some things that God enjoys.  Communion with God would be sharing in his pleasures.  Loving what he loves.  Enjoying something in common and conversing about that enjoyment.

Then I noticed the odd word “bottomed.”  What it means is “grounded in.”  This communion is grounded in some union between the persons.  Of course, as Christians we have union with God through Jesus Christ.  We have been put in an unbreakable relationship with God through our union with Christ.  Built on the bedrock of that relationship, we can share with God “the mutual communication of” what delights us.

Then a couple paragraphs later I realized my initial understanding wasn’t quite what Owen was saying.  He writes, “Our communion, then, with God consists in his communication of himself to us, with our return to him of that which he requires and accepts, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him.”  So what Owen had in mind was not necessarily the mutual enjoyment of the same thing, although I don’t think that’s wrong.  What he describes here, though, is God’s self-communication to us of what delights us about him, followed by our giving back to him what he delights in from us.

To generalize, then, communion is two people who have a relationship giving and receiving what brings joy to the other.  Owen then applies this to us and each Person of the Godhead in the rest of the book.  It occurred to me, however, that this description of communion could be applied to any relationship.  If communion were only the shared enjoyment of the same thing, it would be hard to commune with people with whom we don’t have much in common.  But if communion is giving and receiving what gives joy to the other, then we can commune with anyone, if we love them and are willing to work at it.  At a “less spiritual” level, a rabid football fan and I could have communion if I make an effort to communicate to him what he loves, namely football, and he makes an effort to communicate to me what I love, namely biblical studies.  Not that we have to talk football and theology in every conversation, me saying, “How ’bout that awesome touchdown?” and he replying, “Yes, it reminds me of the perseverance of the saints.”  Rather, in the dynamic of the relationship (that which we are “bottomed” upon, as Owen put it), we try to take an interest in what delights the other.  This requires love and should produce increasing closeness.

These thoughts made me think of the book about the “love languages,” (which I’ve never read) that basically describes how different people feel loved through different means, and we should learn how to express love in the particular ways that are meaningful to each person.  This observation has proven true in my marriage.  What makes me feel loved doesn’t work for my wife, and what makes her feel loved doesn’t work for me.  We speak different love languages.  Yet I constantly try to love her in the way that makes me feel loved.  I babble at her in my foreign love language and get annoyed when she doesn’t understand.  According to Owen, if I want to have communion with my wife, then I need to give her what brings her joy, and she needs to return to me what gives me joy.  I shouldn’t selfishly insist that she be the same as me, but in love give to her what brings her joy.  We must have “the mutual communication of such good things as wherein . . . [we] are delighted, bottomed upon some union between” us.

NOTE: It’s either David Powlison or Ed Welch (both biblical counselors) who has a critique of the love languages book, in which he notes positives and negatives, specifically that if our goal is to make a person feel loved we must be careful that we are not merely pandering to the idols of their heart.  I’ve read the critique of the book, but not the book itself, so I’m not qualified to weigh in at this point.