What Easter Brings

Happy Blessed Easter. “ON THE EVENING OF THAT DAY, THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK, THE DOORS BEING LOCKED WHERE THE DISCIPLES WERE FOR FEAR OF THE JEWS, JESUS CAME AND STOOD AMONG THEM AND SAID TO THEM, “PEACE BE WITH YOU.” 20 WHEN HE HAD SAID THIS, HE SHOWED THEM HIS HANDS AND HIS SIDE. THEN THE DISCIPLES WERE GLAD WHEN THEY SAW THE LORD. 21 JESUS SAID TO THEM AGAIN, “PEACE BE WITH YOU. AS THE FATHER HAS SENT ME, EVEN SO I AM SENDING YOU.”
This same Jesus stands before us today in all the power of His resurrection life and speaks peace to us. We can’t mistake Him because His scars are self-evident and we cannot escape Him because we need our guilt canceled and our fears calmed and our doubts cleared. Thank God we can know the reality of this transforming experience because of the scars of the Savior. We can have “peace with God” — the peace of salvation, justification. We can have “the peace of God” — the peace of sanctification, the peace that comes to yielded lives, following Jesus.

Good Friday - "It is Finished!"

After Jesus drink the sour wine, and right before he gives up his spirit, He cries out “It is finished.” St. Augustine says,
The Maker of man was made man
That the Ruler of Stars might suck at the breast
That the Bread of Life might be hungered
The Fountain, thirst The Light, sleep
The Way be wearied by the journey
The Truth be accused by false witnesses
The Judge of the Living and the Dead be judged by a mortal judge
The Chastener, be chastised with whips,
The Vine be crowned with thorns,
The Foundation be hung upon a tree
Strength be made weak,
Health be wounded, Life die.
To suffer these and such undeserved things,
That He might free the undeserving,
For neither did He deserve any evil,
Who for our sakes endured so many evils,
Nor were we deserving of anything good,
We, who through Him, received such good.
"Lifted up was he to die, It is finished was his cry; Now in Heaven exalted high; Hallelujah what a Savior" (P.P. Bliss)

He Is Risen

Christ the Lord is Risen Today! Happy Easter

"Be not affrighted. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him." Mark 16:6

Christ, the Lord, is risen today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply, Alleluia!

Love's redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Lo! the Sun's eclipse is over, Alleluia!
Lo! He sets in blood no more, Alleluia!

Vain the stone, the watch, the seal, Alleluia!
Christ hath burst the gates of hell, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids His rise, Alleluia!
Christ hath opened paradise, Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once He died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!

Soar we now where Christ hath led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

The wonderful tune which brings back every Easter in one's life, and a few tears, too. Composer? Unknown. Words by Charles Wesley, 1739. The verses were written for the opening of the Wesleyan Chapel in London, in an old foundry. Hence the term Foundry Collection of hymns.

The end has begun

“This has led us to designate Jesus’ resurrection as an eschatological event.  It is an anticipation of the end.  To speak crudely, it is a piece of eschatology split off from the end and planted in history.  The end has begun; the future is present.”
George Eldon Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection (Grand Rapids, 1975), page 152.
Ray Ortlund

Death Isn’t Natural by Russell Moore

On a Saturday long ago, our Lord Jesus was a corpse. This isn’t natural.
Problem is, death seems normal to us. Darwinian naturalism, along with most contemporary philosophies, assumes that death is the natural ending point to life. The Christian gospel insists otherwise, seeing death as an alien invader of the cosmic order, a curse from the Edenic fall, and a strategy of an enemy spirit to crush God’s image-bearing humanity (Heb. 2:14-15).
In Scripture, death is personified as itself an enemy, indeed the final enemy to be placed under the feet of a triumphant King Jesus (1 Cor. 15:24-26).
Death in all its forms, from animal predation to “natural” disasters to “old age” expiration, all point to the cold truth that God is not ruling the cosmos through his human mediators in the way he intended at the start.
In the present age, all people still grow old, get sick, and die. There is a sundering of the body from the soul, a violent act that tears at God’s original creational purpose of breathing his life into the man of the dust (Gen. 2:7). When a man dies, his flesh reverts back to the dust of the earth, a seeming contradiction of God’s creation.
There is one Man, however, who does not owe death as the wages of sin. He cannot be accused by the ruler of this age, because He alone has an untroubled conscience before the tribunal of God. He’s not a corpse anymore.
The resurrection of Jesus is the first wave of a counter-revolution that will turn back death’s tyranny and satanic rule forever.
Death isn’t natural at all.
Kevin DeYoung

In This is Love

If we try to rescue the love of God by diminishing the wrath of God we will end up diminishing the very love we were trying to rescue. The cross demonstrates the love of God not because it speaks to our great worth, but because, in electing grace, it turns away God’s just wrath.
If God simply kept us from being estranged and delivered us from possible peril, then we would surely feel something of God’s mercy. But the Bible demands that we imagine a different scenario, leading a richer experience of God’s love Calvin explains:

Suppose [a man] learns, as Scripture teaches, that he was estranged from God through sin, is an heir of wrath, subject to the curse of eternal death, excluded from all hope of salvation, beyond every blessing of God, the slave of Satan, captive under the yoke of sin, destined finally for a dreadful destruction and already involved in it; and that at this point Christ interceded as his advocate, took upon himself and suffered the punishment that, from God’s righteous judgment, threatened all sinners; that he purged with his blood those evils which had rendered sinners hateful to God; that by this expiation he made satisfaction and sacrifice duly to God the Father; that as intercessor he has appeased God’s wrath; that on this foundation rests the peace of God with men; that by this bond his benevolence is maintained toward them. Will the man not then be even more moved by all these things which so vividly portray the greatness of the calamity from which he has been rescued? (Inst. II.xvi.2)

Divine mercy without divine wrath is meaningless. We have been rescued from much, forgiven for everything, and saved unto infinitely more than we deserve. “In 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).
Kevin DeYoung

The Mystery Unfolding: A Maundy Thursday Reflection

On Maundy Thursday in 1521, the Pope issued a Papal Bull listing Martin Luther and his followers for the first time as heretics. They had already been excommunicated, but now they were singled out as beyond redemption even in the afterlife. No indulgence could spring them. No, in fact, their only hope for escape from torment was a word from the Pope himself.

Fairly convenient, wouldn't you say?

In his inimitable way, Luther scoffed, reprinted the bull with his own retorts written in the margins, and charged the Pope with being a drunk. Tres awesome.

At the heart of the theological scrum was this: who damns and who saves? The Pope sets up himself as the arbiter, or, at least, Christ through himself. Luther says it is Christ alone.

It can be a fuzzy thing, this eternal life business. Who is in? Who is out? How do we know? What compels one in? What propels one out? We are veiled from what eternity looks like despite living in it right now. That second that just past is a pixel in eternity. The moment you pull the covers up to your chest in bed tonight is another. The moment still to come when you stop breathing is yet another.

What holds all this together? What connects all dots, accounts for all willed actions, foresees and forestalls? Jesus the exalted Christ, who upholds the world by the mere word of his power. When life appears frayed at the edges, when all of life feels as though spread too thin like butter on bread (HT: Bilbo Baggins), Christ brings into stark clarity all necessities for all of life. He is the necessity for all of life. He encompasses all the complexities in the simplicity of incarnate humanity and the wonder of exalted deity.

Have I lost you?

All I mean to say is, Jesus Christ is the apex of human existence, having been raised up on a cross and raised up out of the grave at the fulcrum of all of history. So when popes issue bulls to keep certain people out, citing all manner of disagreements and offenses, we may claim allegiance with Jesus Christ, who makes the matter quite simple, because he alone is the matter.

Paul gets much better at what I'm trying to get at here when he talks about "mystery." For Paul, mystery is not something unsolved. It is something that was once unsolved but is now available and visible. But it's still a mystery. It doesn't cease being a mystery. This is because we cannot grasp Christ; Christ grasps us. When Paul speaks of mystery (as in Romans 16), he is talking about something we've been enlightened about but which is perhaps still too big for the container of our enlightenment. It is a light we can see and which fills us up, but is not limited to our filling.

Here is a good example from his words in 1 Timothy 3:16:

Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great:
He appeared in a body,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world,
was taken up in glory.

"Beyond all question" just refers to the fact that this hymn (if that's what it is) is a confessional piece. It is theological and something to believe, to stake our life on. (The ESV in fact uses the word "confess" here, but I confess I like the NIV's "beyond all question" better.) And then this: "the mystery of godliness."

What is the mystery of godliness? What is the mystery of how God's glory is manifested and spread? It is not a mystery in the sense that Jon Benet Ramsey's murder is a mystery or Amelia Earhart's disappearance is a mystery.

This mystery is grasp-able because it itself comes near and grasps. A body that serves and heals and teaches and dies and is brought back to life by the Spirit and returns to the angelic abode. A body that is proclaimed far and wide. A body that is believed upon. A body that ascended to the God-dimension, where it sits presently at the Father's right hand.

The mystery is that the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell in the fullness of humanity.

This Maundy Thursday, press further into the mystery unfolding before you every second: That no Pope or other papal personality (be it devil or man) holds your soul in his hand. Christ alone does, and since he has gone before you, the way is secure. It is secure because "he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." I don't want you to be ignorant of this mystery! (HT: Romans 11:25)

And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
-- Ephesians 1:9-10
The Gospel Driven Church