R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 105

How Was the Gospel Lost Prior to its Rediscovery in the Reformation?

Four of our teaching fellows consider how the gospel was obscured prior to the Reformation and consider how we can avoid obscuring it today.

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Tracing the Story of Christmas

In order to understand the story of Christmas, we have to go back. Not back just a few thousand years to the birth of Jesus, but all the way back, back to our first parents, Adam and Eve. God placed them in the lush and perfect garden of Eden. They had everything they needed. It was perfect. Then they sinned. As a consequence, God banished them. Now Adam and Eve lived under the curse. But as God pronounced the curse, thundering from heaven, He also gave them a promise.

God gave Adam and Eve the promise of a Seed, a Seed who would be born of a woman. That Seed would make all that was wrong, right. He would make all that was broken, whole. This Seed would bring peace and harmony where strife and conflict raged like a storm-tossed sea.

In the Old Testament, the third chapter of the very first book, Genesis, speaks of conflict and enmity. Adam and Eve, who had known only the experience of tranquility, would now be locked in bitter conflict. Even the ground would be a challenge. The prick of thorns would be the constant reminder. As the poets say, nature is red in tooth and claw. Even the promised Seed would enter into this conflict, fighting with the Serpent, the great spoiler. But Genesis 3 promises that the Seed would overcome the Serpent, securing the final victory and ushering in wave after wave of peace.

The Seed, however, would be a long time coming.

Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, and neither turned out to be the Seed. When Cain slew Abel, God gave Adam and Eve Seth, a little grace in a very troubled world. But Seth was not the Seed. More sons followed. Generations came and generations went.

Then Abraham appeared on the world's stage. God called this man from ancient times to make from him and his wife, Sarah, a great new nation that would be a beacon of light to a lost and hopeless world. Again, God made a promise to this couple of a Seed, a son. They thought it was Isaac. But Isaac died.

This story was repeated from generation to generation, building anticipation of the One to come who would make all things right, who would bring peace. A widow named Naomi and her widowed daughter-in-law, Ruth, even entered into this story. They were in desperate circumstances. There were no social nets to catch the fall of such marginalized people in the ancient world.

Without husbands and sons, without rights and means, widows lived from meal to meal. They lived on a thread of hope. Then came Boaz and the classic story of boy meets girl. Boaz met Ruth and they married. Before long, just as the curtain fell on the biblical story of Ruth, a son, a seed, was born to Ruth. This son would be a restorer of life, a redeemer. But he was only a shadow of the Seed to come. He, too, died.

The son born to Ruth and Boaz was named Obed. Obed had a son named Jesse. Jesse had many sons, and one of them was a shepherd. One time this shepherd grabbed a handful of stones and felled a giant. He faced down lions. He also was quite a musician. To everyone's surprise—even his father's—this son of Jesse, the great-grandson of Ruth and Boaz, was anointed king of Israel.

While David was on the throne, God gave yet another promise directly to him. This was another promise of a son. God said David's son would be king forever and there would be no end to his kingdom. That was God's promise.

An excerpt from Peace: Classic Readings for Christmas by Stephen Nichols.

$5 Friday: Scripture, The Ten Commandments, & Christian Worldview

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as Scripture, the Ten Commandments, Christian worldview, God's will, holiness, Joshua, and more.

Sale runs through 12:01 a.m. — 11:59 p.m. Friday ET.

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$5 Friday: Scripture, The Ten Commandments, Christian Worldview

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as Scripture, the Ten Commandments, Christian worldview, God's will, holiness, Joshua, and more.

Sale runs through 12:01 a.m. — 11:59 p.m. Friday ET.

View today’s $5 Friday sale items.

God the Father

Here’s an excerpt from God the Father, Matthew Barrett's contribution to the December issue of Tabletalk:

If there is a belief that is central to Israel’s identity in the Old Testament, it is this: God is one (Deut. 6:4). In contrast to the nations surrounding Israel, nations that worshiped many gods, Israel was set apart as a people who worshiped only one God. They were to be monotheists.

But we should add that true monotheism is not merely the belief that there is one God. It means also that this God is one. Theologians call this God’s simplicity. This doesn’t mean that God lacks depth. Rather, simplicity refers to God’s oneness. He is not a God made up of parts, let alone divided by parts. It’s not as if you could add up all God’s attributes to get the sum total we call “God.” Instead, God is one. His attributes are His essence1 and His essence His attributes. All that is in God simply is God. To say, then, that God is one not only means that there is only one true God but also that this God is one in essence.

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The True God Became True Man

In this brief clip, W. Robert Godfrey examines how only God becoming one with us could pay the debt of sin.

Transcript

The great theological reflection on this is Anselm, late in his life, Archbishop of Canterbury in the Middle Ages, who wrote his great treatise Cur Deus Homo, "Why God Man?" Why did God become man? And his answer was that man owed the debt, but only God could pay it. And so, to be able both to pay the debt and to be the owner of the debt, God had to become man. That's a help. Why did God become man? Why was the Word made flesh? Because we, in our helplessness, could never help ourselves, because our debt only grew, and only the infinite God becoming one with us could pay the debt and rescue us and help us. And the difficulty of wrapping our minds around how the infinite becomes finite, how the divine becomes human, is something that the church and critics of the church have wrestled with. And it's good to wrestle with it. We'll talk a little bit about it. We'll try to see some of the depths of it, but how wonderful the Bible is in its ability to be simple. The Word, the Word that already was in the beginning, the Word that was with God, the Word that was God, the Word became flesh. That's the truth. That's the truth. The true God became true man. You've got to talk about these things carefully. The true God became true man as one person, and He had a name: Jesus.

Humiliation and Exaltation

It just hangs there. It dangles as if it were simply an afterthought attached to the second chapter of Genesis. But we know there are no afterthoughts in the mind and inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Thus, we look at this passage to give us a clue about our condition prior to the misery of sin. Chapter 2, verse 25, reads, “They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” This tells us that before sin came into the world, there was no shame. There was no embarrassment. The experience of humiliation was completely unknown and foreign to the human race. However, along with the first experience of sin came the awful burden of the weight of personal shame and embarrassment. Shame and embarrassment are feelings and experiences that occur to us in various degrees. The worst kind of shame, the most dreadful form of embarrassment, is that which results in utter and complete humiliation. Humiliation brings with it not merely the reddened face of embarrassment but also the sense of despair as we lose our dignity and our reputations are cast into ruin.

Yet it was precisely into this domain of shame and humiliation that our Savior came voluntarily in the incarnation. The popular hymn, "Ivory Palaces," depicts this descent from glory—the Son of Man’s voluntary departure from the ivory palace that is His eternal dwelling place. He chose willingly to make Himself of no reputation, to become a man and a servant, obedient even unto death. It is this humiliation that Christ willingly accepted for Himself, which stands at the beginning of the entire progress that He travels on His road to glory and to His final exaltation. The progress, as the New Testament traces it, is one that moves from humiliation in the birth of Jesus to His exaltation in His resurrection, ascension, and return.

The quality of exaltation is the exact opposite, a strong antithesis, to the quality of humiliation. In exaltation, dignity is not only restored, but it is crowned with the glory that only God can bestow. And so when we look at the biblical theme of the exaltation of Jesus, we look at the way in which the Father rewards His Son and declares His glory to the whole creation.

We are told that no one ascends into heaven except the One who descends from heaven, and we are also told that in baptism, we are given the mark and the sign of our participation with Jesus in both His humiliation and His exaltation. The promise of participating in the exaltation of Christ is given to every believer—but there is a catch. There is a warning, and that warning is clear: unless we are willing to participate in the humiliation of Jesus, we would have no reason to expect ever to participate in His exaltation. But that is the crown that is set before us, that we, who have no right to everlasting glory and honor, will nevertheless receive it because of what has been achieved in our stead by our perfect Redeemer.

In 1990, I wrote a book entitled The Glory of Christ. The writing of that book was one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve ever had in writing. My task on that occasion was to demonstrate that while there is a general progression from humiliation to exaltation in the life and ministry of Jesus, this progression does not run in an unbroken line that moves uninterrupted from humiliation to exaltation. Rather, the book explains that even in Jesus’ general progress from humiliation to exaltation, in His worst moments of humiliation, there are interjections by the grace of God, wherein the Son’s glory is also manifest.

For example, when we consider the nativity of Jesus, it is easy to focus our attention on the sheer impoverishment that went with His being born in a stable and in a place where He was unwelcome in the resident hotel or inn. There was an overwhelming sense of debasement in the lowliness of His birth. Yet, at the very moment that our Lord entered humanity in these debasing circumstances, just a short distance away the heavens broke out with the glory of God shining before the eyes of the shepherds with the announcement of His birth as the King.

Even when He goes to the cross, in the worst moments of His humiliation, there still remains a hint of His triumph over evil, where His body is not thrown into the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem; rather, following the prophetic prediction of Isaiah, chapter 53, Jesus’ body was tenderly laid to rest in the tomb of a wealthy man. His death was ignominious, but His burial was one that was a great honor in ancient terms. His body was adorned with the sweetest spices and most costly perfumes, and He was given the burial plot of honor. Therefore, God, in the midst of the suffering of His obedient servant, would not allow His holy One to see corruption.

And throughout the pages of Scripture, we see these glimpses here and there, breaking through the veil and the cloak of Jesus’ humanity, piercing the armor of the humiliation and debasement that was His lot during His earthly sojourn. These moments, or glimpses, of glory should be for the Christian a foretaste of what lies ahead, not only for the ultimate exaltation of Jesus in the consummation of His kingdom, but also a taste for us of heaven itself, as we become the heirs and joint-heirs of Jesus. Jesus’ final lot, His destiny, His legacy, promised and guaranteed by the Father, is glory, and that glory He shares with all who put their trust in Him.

In common language, the terms exaltation and humiliation stand as polar opposites. One of the most magnificent glories of God’s revealed truth and most poignant ironies is that in the cross of Christ these two polar opposites merge and are reconciled. In His humiliation, we find our exaltation. Our shame is replaced by His glory. The songwriter had it right when he wrote, “My sinful self, my only shame, my glory, all the cross.”

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

Is the Trinity Biblical?

Here’s an excerpt from Is the Trinity Biblical?, Keith A. Mathison's contribution to the December issue of Tabletalk:

Is the doctrine of the Trinity biblical? Well, that depends on what you mean when you say “biblical.” Does the Bible anywhere contain anything like the Nicene Creed? No. Does the Bible anywhere present a systematic statement of the doctrine of the Trinity using technical theological terms such as homoousios or hypostasis? No. So, if this is what is required in order for the doctrine of the Trinity to be biblical, then no, the doctrine isn’t biblical. But this is not what is required for a doctrine to be biblical.

The Westminster Confession of Faith explains, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (1.6). The doctrine of the Trinity is not expressly set down in Scripture in the technical sense described above, but it is certainly a “good and necessary consequence” of what is expressly set down in Scripture. So, what does Scripture expressly teach?

First, Scripture expressly teaches that there is only one God. There is very little controversy about this proposition among those who accept the authority of Scripture. Almost every page of Scripture testifies to the truth that there is one and only one God. Deuteronomy 4:35 is representative when it says, “To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him” (see also Deut. 4:39; 32:39; Isa. 43:10; 44:6–8). The polytheism and idolatry of the nations surrounding Israel are strongly condemned on the grounds that Yahweh is God and that there is no other (Isa. 44:6–20).

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What Characteristic of Martin Luther Made Him Effective as God's Instrument to Reform the Church?

Because Martin Luther understood his own helplessness apart from the gospel, he was willing to stand against the world in defense of the gospel. From our Reformation 500 event, R.C. Sproul, Stephen Nichols, and Derek Thomas consider what stimulated Luther’s courage in the Reformation.

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