Calvin on the God-Man, and Matthew 28:18

In the person of Jesus we are often confronted with the two great mysteries of the Christian Faith, both the Trinity and the Incarnation. How do we have three persons in the one God, what are the distinctions, and what is the same for each person? And how can one person be both truly God and truly man, what are the distinctions, and what is the same within this one person?

Recently I was in a situation where a question was raised about the words in Matthew 28:18, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me". The question was along the lines of this: "If Jesus is God, didn't he always have all authority? How can it then be given to him?" Or to put it more technically: "Since Jesus is one of the persons of the Trinity, and equally God, didn't he always have all authority, and so how can it be given to him? Or is he somehow inferior to the Father?" But perhaps sometimes our trouble is that we jump to one mystery--the Trinity--while forgetting the other one--the Incarnation. In Jesus both these mysteries intersect, and we have to be very careful about jumping to conclusions as we try to navigate doubly difficult terrain. There is a danger sometimes of downplaying the actual text of Scripture (and perhaps we can add in another mystery, that of Divine Inspiration), and instead resorting to our doctrinal assumptions of what the sacred text may be speaking about. And sometimes the answers may be found in remembering all the mysteries of the faith.

In the case of Matthew 28:18, I think John Calvin helpfully upholds the plain meaning of the text by rightly resorting to the mystery of the Incarnation rather than being overwhelmed by the Trinity. Listen to his comments, where he interprets Jesus' words as speaking about his authority in the Incarnation rather than his authority as God:

Yet let us remember that what Christ possessed in his own right was given to him by the Father in our flesh, or—to express it more clearly—in the person of the Mediator; for he does not lay claim to the eternal power with which he was endued before the creation of the world, but to that which he has now received, by being appointed to be Judge of the world. Nay, more, it ought to be remarked, that this authority was not fully known until he rose from the dead; for then only did he come forth adorned with the emblems of supreme King.

It was night (John 13:30)

In John 13:30, we have this little statement, seemingly a little bit of trivia, "It was night". Jesus had just announced his betrayal, and Judas had "immediately went out". Prior to that Jesus had washed the disciples' feet, a pointer to the way he would love "them to the end" (13:1), after saying he will be "lifted up from the earth" (12:32) and that he came "to save the world" (12:47). As with many details John gives us, I think his choice of words are very intentional and meaningful. He makes use of facts and details to craft a story of divine realities.

The phrase, "It was night", seems to introduce us to the darkest--and actually also brightest--parts of John's Gospel. These are the last days and hours up to and including Jesus' crucifixion. One disciple betrays Jesus, and another disowns him. The Jews and the Gentiles join together to crush Jesus. And they seem to succeed. Arresting him. Falsely accusing him. Unjustly condemning him. Beating him. Mocking him. Killing him. These are the darkest of times.

Interestingly when Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, John describes it as "while it was still dark". He could have used the language of "dawn" (Matthew 28:1, Luke 24:1; although actually two different Greek words) or "when the sun had risen" (Mark 16:2), emphasising the beginning of light of a new day, like the writers of the other Gospels. But instead he chooses to speak of darkness. John also doesn't tell us about the supernatural darkness that came during the crucifixion (cf Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33 and Luke 23:44). Perhaps John wants us to think of that whole period from "It was night" until "while it was still dark" as a time of great darkness, and not be distracted by the peculiar darkness just at the crucifixion (although one might expect him to highlight that).

Yet at the same time, I think John wants to see this time as the time when Jesus shone the brightest, because the "light shines in the darkness" (1:5). After John told us "It was night", he also records Jesus as saying, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him" (13:31). Ultimately in Jesus' death, as God-become-flesh dies, to demonstrate the greatest love and "lay down his life for his friends" (15:13), it is then that we most brightly see "his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (1:14), and it is at that moment, more than any other in all of time, that "grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (1:17).

Jesus is "the light of the world" (8:12), and "the darkness has not overcome" (1:5) his light, not ever. And our amazing privilege is that anyone who trusts in Jesus "may not remain in darkness" (12:46), and in following him we "will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (8:12). And as the Father sent Jesus into the world, so now Jesus sends us. (17:18, 20:21).

J C Ryle on what Jesus says about the Bible

What did Jesus think about the Bible? In John 10:35 Jesus says, "Scripture cannot be broken".

I like these comments by J C Ryle (1816-1900) about this verse...

We should observe.. in these verses, the high honor that Jesus Christ puts on the Holy Scriptures. We find Him using a text out of the Psalms as an argument against His enemies, in which the whole point lies in the single word "gods." And then having quoted the text, He lays down the great principle, "the Scripture cannot be broken." It is as though He said, "Wherever the Scripture speaks plainly on any subject, there can be no more question about it. The cause is settled and decided. Every jot and tittle of Scripture is true, and must be received as conclusive."

The principle here laid down by our Lord is one of vast importance. Let us grasp it firmly, and never let it go. Let us maintain boldly the complete inspiration of every word of the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Let us believe that not only every book of the Bible, but every chapter--and not only every chapter, but every verse, and not only every verse, but every word, was originally given by inspiration of God. Inspiration, we must never shrink from asserting, extends not only to the thoughts and ideas of Scripture, but to the least words.

The principle before us, no doubt, is rudely assaulted in the present day. Let no Christian's heart fail because of these assaults. Let us stand our ground manfully, and defend the principle of plenary inspiration as we would the pupil of our eye. There are difficulties in Scripture, we need not shrink from conceding, things hard to explain, hard to reconcile, and hard to understand. But in almost all these difficulties, the fault, we may justly suspect, is not so much in Scripture as in our own weak minds. In all cases we may well be content to wait for more light, and to believe that all shall be made clear at last. One thing we may rest assured is very certain--if the difficulties of plenary inspiration are to be numbered by thousands, the difficulties of any other view of inspiration are to be numbered by tens of thousands. The wisest course is to walk in the old path--the path of faith and humility; and say, "I cannot give up a single word of my Bible. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. The Scripture cannot be broken.""

John Stott on Missions and Authentic Christianity

Some challenging and helpful words, from the late John Stott (1921-2011)...

"...missions lies at the very heart of our generous God. The church without mission is a church no longer. Since an essential part of its identity is missing.

So, now listen, some of us need to repent. If we have allowed the missionary dimension of the church to drop out of our thinking, we need to repent. A church without mission is a church no longer. And if we have resisted or neglected the missionary dimension of the church, we must repent.

Now, tell me. Do you claim to believe in God? He is a missionary God! You tell me you are committed to Christ? He is a missionary Christ! You claim to be filled with the Spirit? He is a missionary Spirit! You tell me you belong to the church? It’s a missionary society! And you hope to go to heaven when you die? It’s a heaven into which the fruits of world mission have been gathered! So, we must get involved. We cannot stand aloof from the mission of God. The authentic Christianity of the Bible is not a safe, smug, selfish, comfortable, escapist, little religion. No, it is an explosive, centrifugal force. It pulls us out from our self absorption and it flings us into God’s world to witness and to serve."

[Source: https://us.langham.org/…/au…/our_god_is_a_missionary_god.mp3]

M'Cheyne on Following Jesus Fully

May God empower us to follow the Lord fully, as M'Cheyne preached in 1842:

"Although he had no sin of his own to make him humble, yet he was humble in his own nature. He did not vaunt himself--did not seek the flattery of men. Some do not follow Christ in this. Some who seem really saved persons, yet have this unlikeness to Christ. They are proud--proud of being saved--proud of grace--proud of being different from others. Some do not follow Christ in his self-denial. He was rich, yet for our sakes become poor, that we through his poverty might be rich. While we were sinners, Christ died for us. He had not where to lay his head. Yet many who seem to be Christians seek their own comfort and ease before everything else. They do not drink into Christ's Spirit in this. Some do not follow Christ in his love. Christ was love. He descended out of love--lay in the manger out of love--lived a life of sinless obedience out of love--died out of love. Yet some who are Christians do not follow him in this--do not love as he loved. Some have little compassion upon sinners--can sit at ease in their own houses, and see a world perish for lack of knowledge. How few will do anything out of love!"

Calvin on Knowing God's Love for Us

How do we know if God really loves us? How can we be sure? Where do we look? 

"It was then from God’s goodness alone, as from a fountain, that Christ with all his blessings has come to us. And as it is necessary to know, that we have salvation in Christ, because our heavenly Father has freely loved us; so when a real and full certainty of divine love towards us is sought for, we must look nowhere else but to Christ."

Thanks, John Calvin, for reminding us that Jesus is always the answer :)

[Quote from Commentary on 1 John 4:10)

J I Packer on the "Christmas Spirit"

The shops are telling us Christmas is getting closer, and I just read these helpful and challenging words by one of my favourite Christian writers, J I Packer... talking about the "Christmas Spirit"...

"... the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas. And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year round.

"It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians--I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians--go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians--alas, they are many--whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the sub-middle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves. 

"The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor--spending and being spent--to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others--and not just their own friends--in whatever way there seems need. 

"There are not as many who show this spirit as there should be."

May God enable us to be what we should be...

[Source: Knowing God]

The Truth shall set you free!

My attention was drawn to these words of Pilate, in speaking to Jesus:

"Don't you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?" (John 19:11; NIV)

This is the same man who had said a little earlier to Jesus, "What is truth?" (John 18:38; NIV).

It struck me because of Jesus' own words some time before, in speaking to the Jews:

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free... So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:32,36; NIV).

Jesus also said, "I am the way and the truth and the life." (John 14:6; NIV)

Pilate had no idea who he was talking to, or what he was talking about. Too many people speak too freely about freedom, ignoring--or worse, rejecting--the truth. May we find true freedom in Jesus.

Jesus as Message, Model and Motive (Titus 2-3)

For the last ten years or so, I have had the privilege of reading through the Bible each week with people whose first language isn't English, many of them not Christians and little exposed to the Scriptures. Through their questions, with fresh views of the texts, perhaps over the years I have learnt more than they did!

Most of the time we read through the four Gospels. And I am very glad to have "forced" myself into fresh exposure to Jesus. One of the things that has struck me again and again in Jesus' teaching, is that when it looks like he is telling others what they should do, at the same time, perhaps even more so, he is telling others what he does and will do. Whether it is in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, or the in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, etc.

In preparing for a recent sermon on Titus, this idea struck me freshly. That Jesus is not only the message to us, not only the motivation for us to do what he said, but he is also the model.

As I was trying to read through the text in Greek, one thing that stood out was the correspondence between what Paul said God did, and what he calls us to do and desires for us. Specifically how God was abundantly good to all people ("to all men", Titus 2:11; "the love of God our Saviour toward man", Titus 3:4), and he calls us to do good for the benefit of all people ("showing all humility to all men", Titus 3:2; "good and profitable unto men", Titus 3:8). Here, what God did was not only the message of the gospel which motivates us to do what he asks of us in subsequent commands, at the same time, the message is also the model of what he wants us to do.

Jesus is the message, because what who is is and what he did is the content of our trust and belief as Christians. Jesus is the model, because he also sets the example and shows us what it looks like to live out that belief. Jesus is the motive, because at the same time he is the reason, when we understand his love to us, we want to live that different way, and in what he did we discover the power to enable us to put sin to death and live the resurrection life.

We can sometimes argue in principle about whether it is necessary for a leader to lead by example, or the led just need to do what is said because the leader has that authority. But there can be no doubt that God sets a powerful precedent, by putting forth the gospel of Jesus Christ, as message, model and motive, all in one.

Tim Keller via Dan Stevers Video on how Jesus is the True and Better

Saw this video at church last Sunday.. great summary video of how the Old Testament looks ahead to Jesus (I think the words are based on a talk by Tim Keller). 

Why the green grass when Jesus feeds the 5000 (Mark 6:30-56)?

Recently I was preparing to lead a Bible study on Mark 6:30-56, including the miracle of feeding the five thousand and also Jesus walking on water. Especially because we are told that "they did not understand about the loaves", I thought that there must be something more to the significance of the feeding of the five thousand than simple a display of power, another kind of miracle to add to Jesus' repertoire. There must be some common theme or thread that runs through the whole text, linking the accounts together.

With the help of some commentators, I saw that Jesus' compassion toward the people because "they were like sheep without a shepherd" (Mark 6:34) was not coincidental to the following miracle that was performed. This same expression (more or less) is used a number of times in the Old Testament, eg in these passages: Numbers 27:12-23; 1 Kings 22:17, Ezekiel 34:1-31; Zechariah 10:1-12. There is the emphasis that the people needed a shepherd, sometimes that shepherd is a human leader (eg Moses or Joshua or Davidic king), and other times the LORD himself is their shepherd.

And what is one of the significant tasks of the shepherd, if not to feed his sheep (cf Ezekiel 34:2, 34:3, 34:8, 34:13, 34:14, 34:23, etc, also John 21:15-17)? And here the green grass comes in. In the midst of a miracle of Jesus feeding the people, Mark records for us that Jesus "commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass" (Mark 6:39). Although the commentators I read didn't mention it, I couldn't help but be reminded of Psalm 23, where the LORD my shepherd "makes me to lie down in green pastures" (Psalm 23:2; cf also Ezekiel 34:14-15). While the mention of green grass could just be a detail of fact, that is what it was and where they were, within a whole context of Jesus as shepherd feeding the people, how could there not be a connection?

So what then should we "understand about the loaves"? Mark shows us Jesus the shepherd who feeds his sheep (first through teaching, Mark 6:34, since "Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God", Matthew 4:4/Deuteronomy 8:3), and that Jesus is the Christ, in one person the successor to Moses, the Davidic King, and the LORD God himself. This is what we need to understand by the miracle of the loaves.

Throughout the passage there seems to be a question of identity. Who is this Jesus, really? In the walking on water, again the closest Old Testament referent must be the crossing of the sea in Exodus, with the waters parted, a signature miracle of the LORD. So when Jesus says, "Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid" (Mark 6:50), whether directly or indirectly, he is saying that he is the "I AM", he is the LORD their shepherd. (Cf also the connection between shepherding and walking through the waters in Zechariah 10:1-12 and Psalm 77:7-20.)

So that is why the grass is green!

D Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the state of the Christian Church (Ephesians 5:2)

Quote from D Martyn Lloyd-Jones from her sermon on Ephesians 5:2 (preached sometime between 1954 and 1962):

I can tell you why the Christian Church is as she is. She has been evacuating the biblical doctrine of the cross from the death of the cross, and has been describing it as some vague manifestation of love. Then she has been weeping in sorrow and in sympathy for Him. But he said to the women of Jerusalem, "Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves"; do not be sorry for Me, he said, I have come to do this. "I am the good Shepherd. The good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." All the Scriptures, from beginning to end, emphasise the same thing, that it is in Christ's sacrificial work that we see the love of God; that God sent, and gave Him up even to the death of the cross, and laid upon Him, His only begotten Son, the sins of men. "God so loved the world that he gave" - to the shame, the agony, the suffering, the separation between His Son and Himself when He was made sin - "He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life". That is the measure of the love!
["Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17", The Banner of Truth Trust (1982), pp309-310]

Paul's formula, of Christ's love and giving of himself

There is a phrase Paul uses three times in the New Testament, almost like a formula, and I can't help but think it is a favourite phrase or expression of his, something he loved to dwell-on, and a "game-changer" for his life. It is simple but profound, and occurs these three times:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me [Galatians 2:20]

And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. [Ephesians 5:2]

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her [Ephesians 5:25]

Often the Scriptures speak of God giving his one and only Son, and also of the those evil men who gave Jesus over to be crucified. But in Paul's expression he makes clear that Jesus gave himself, and that was a measure of his great love for sinful, undeserving people. The LXX uses some similar wording in Isaiah 53:12, and perhaps Paul's phrase arose out of a meditation upon that verse, as well as a consideration of Jesus' own words in John 10:18 etc. Whatever the origin may have been in Paul's thinking, it is a truth that God has recorded in the Scriptures to change our lives. How much are we willing to give to him who loved us so?