“The Restoration of the Banished”

“He spares not His Son, but sends Him in quest of the exiles. He comes into the land of banishment, lies in an exile’s cradle, becomes a banished man for them, lives a banished life, endures an exile’s shame, dies an exile’s death, is buried in an exile’s tomb. He takes our place of banishment that we may take His place of honor and glory in the home of His Father and our Father. Such is the exchange between the exile and the exile’s divine substitute. Though rich, for our sakes He becomes poor. Though at home, He comes into banishment, that we may not be expelled forever.”
—Horatius Bonar, “The Restoration of the Banished”

Jesus took my exile and gave me his place in the Fathers house, I am now eternally secure I can never get kicked out of the Fathers house. Christ took my banishment and gives me his place of glory and honor. I have a seat at the Fathers table and a room in the Fathers house. I can run to the Fathers arms any time and He will always accept me. hold me, care for me, he will never get tired of me, or become disgusted with me because He sees me as he sees Jesus.

Broken in Death One Way or Another

"Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him." --Jesus, Luke 20:17

Anglican OT scholar Gabriel Hebert, 1941:

This means that, one way or another, man must be broken and die: either in salvation or in judgment. To fall on that Stone, to die in union with Jesus, for His sake and the gospel's, is salvation; it is to drink of His cup and be baptizes with His baptism. But he who refuses to lose his selfhood will have it taken away from him. If he will not have the Coming of the Son of Man for salvation, he will have it for judgment. 

Indeed, this way of salvation through the losing of life is the royal road which the Messiah Himself takes. 

--A. G. Hebert, The Throne of David: A Study of the Fulfillment of the Old testament in Jesus Christ and His Church (London: Faber & Faber, 1941), 179; language slightly updated

Dane Ortlund

Winnie the Pooh Theology

Winnie the Pooh: "You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think!"

Tim the Pastor: "You are more sinful than you could ever dare imagine, yet more loved an accepted than you could ever dare hope"

Paul the Apostle: "Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord"

"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

How the New Testament Describes Salvation

Here are the more important ones, noting which sphere of life from which they are drawn.

Justification – the lawcourt metaphor (Rom 5:1; Titus 3:7)

Sanctification – the cultus metaphor (1 Cor 1:2; 1 Thess 4:3)

Adoption – the familial metaphor (Rom 8:15; 1 John 3:1–2)

Reconciliation – the relational metaphor (Rom 5:1–11; 2 Cor 5:18–20)

Washing – the physical cleansing metaphor (1 Cor 6:11; Titus 3:7)

Redemption – the slave market metaphor (Eph 1:7; Rev 14:3–4)

Purchase – the financial transaction metaphor (1 Cor 6:20; 2 Pet 2:1)

Wedding – the marriage metaphor (Eph 5:31-32; Rev 21:2)

Liberation – the imprisonment metaphor (Gal 5:1; Rev 1:5)

New Birth – the physical generation metaphor (John 3:3–7; 1 Pet 1:3, 23)

Illumination – the light metaphor (John 12:35–36; 2 Cor 4:4–6)

New Creation – the redemptive-historical metaphor (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15)

Resurrection – the bodily metaphor (Eph 2:6; Col 3:1)

Union with Christ – the organic or spatial metaphor (Rom 6:1–14; 2 Tim 1:9)

Inexhaustible richness. Luther was right--

If a person is without warmth about matters pertaining to God and salvation, as the common man does, then the devil merely laughs. But if your words are aglow in your heart, you will put the devil to flight. (LW 22:357)

Dane Ortlund

What God Will Never Do

"If God has laid your sins upon the Son of His love, you may rest assured that He will never lay them a second time upon you; since, if Christ has borne them and atoned for them to Divine justice, they never again can be found." - Octavius Winslow

How Do You Know if You are One of the Chosen?

Question: I'm curious.. if you don't believe everyone has a chance to be saved.. what makes you believe you yourself might be one of god's "chosen" and those not chosen to get into god's nightclub.. do they just get to go to hell?
Response: We can know if we are chosen if we believe the gospel. That is a clear sign that God has done a work of grace in our heart. Salvation is all of Christ and you must obey the command to believe. But you do cannot attribute your repenting and believing to your own wisdom, prudence, sound judgment, or good sense. Give glory to God for all that you have, including those things...
Further, we must remember that all of us without exception are justly deserving of hell. So God is not obligated to save anyone. It would be just if he passed us all over. But he has mercy on many and it does not depend on man's will but on God's mercy (Rom 9:16). If God were obligated to save everyone it would no longer be mercy. Salvation is by Christ alone, who does everything we need for salvation including giving us a new heart to believe. God's love is unconditional for his people. It is not conditioned upon something he sees us do, or it would no longer be grace.
Consider this: If two parents were standing outside and their disobedient toddlers ran out into oncoming traffic, which one shows love to his child? 1) the parent who stands at the curb and calls out to the child to use his will to get out of traffic or 2) the parent to, at the risk of his life, runs out into the street, scoops up the child to make certain he was safe regardless of the toddlers will at the moment. We all know #2 represent parental love. If this is the case here then how much more with God. He is not concerned first about our will, because he knows better than us. Like these children he saves us in spite of ourselves. Praise God for his great love to us in Christ. - John H
Reformation Theology

Our Greatest Need

If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor.

But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.

— D. A. Carson,  A Call to Spiritual Reformation
Vitamin Z

No More Important Event Than the New Birth of an Immortal Soul.

Archibald Alexander (1772-1851), first professor at Princeton Seminary, on regeneration--

There is no more important event, which occurs in our world, than the new birth of an immortal soul.

Heirs to titles and estates, to kingdoms and empires, are frequently born, and such events are blazoned with imposing pomp, and celebrated by poets and orators; but what are all these honours and possessions but the gewgaws of children, when compared with the inheritance and glory to which every child of God is born an heir!

The implantation of spiritual life in a soul dead in sin, is an event, the consequences of which will never end. When you plant an acorn, and it grows, you expect not to see the maturity, much less the end of the majestic oak, which will expand its boughs and strike deeply into the earth its roots. The fierce blast of centuries of winters may beat upon it and agitate it; but it resists them all. Yet finally this majestic oak, and all its towering branches, must fall. Trees die with old age, as well as men. But the plants of grace shall ever live. They shall flourish in everlasting verdure. They will bear transplanting to another clime--to another world.

--Archibald Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1844), 35-36
Dane Ortlund

In my proper place

“It is doubtless a most joyful thought that we have redemption through the blood of our adorable Savior.  But I have no less comfort in the thought that He is exalted to give repentance and remission of sins. . . . Repentance is in every view so desirable, so necessary, so suited to honor God, that I seek that above all.  The tender heart, the broken and contrite spirit, are to me far above all the joys that I could ever hope for in this vale of tears.  I long to be in my proper place, my hand on my mouth, and my mouth in the dust. . . . I feel this to be safe ground.  Here I cannot err.”
Charles Simeon, quoted in H. C. G. Moule, Charles Simeon (London, 1956), pages 133-134.  Italics original.
Ray Ortlund

A desert by comparison

“In 1952, when I was twenty-one and still an atheist studying philosophy at Yale, I picked up a copy of Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain and began to read about the author’s pilgrimage from secular intellectualism to the Trappist Order.  As I read, my mind became enlightened by the reality of the presence of God.  It suddenly became clear that behind all the beauty and order in nature and human art there lies a divine creative wisdom, an infinite personality whose beauty is past change.  In Merton’s metaphor, it seemed as though a window in the depths of my consciousness, a window I had never seen before, had suddenly been opened, allowing a blazing glimpse of new orders of existence.  My mind was suddenly filled with streams of thinking which reordered my understanding around the central fact of God, streams which I knew were not rising from any source within my natural awareness, which now seemed a desert by comparison.  Immediately, irrevocably I was no longer an atheist.  If someone had spoken to me about a ‘leap of faith,’ I would not have known what they were talking about; for there was no gap to leap.  I felt that I was in contact with God.” Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life (Downers Grove, 1979), pages 229-230.
Ray Ortlund

Clarifying Exclusivism

Jesus is the only way to the Father (John 14:6). In saying this I am making two claims (both of which can be supported from John’s gospel): 1) The saving work of Jesus is the only way to be saved. 2) Putting faith in Jesus is the only way to appropriate that saving work.
In saying this, in espousing what is sometimes called “exclusivism,” I should be clear what I am not saying.
1. I am not saying there is nothing decent or honorable in other religions or in people from other religions. Ultimately, there is no good deed apart from faith, but Christians should recognize that Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus (and secular atheists for that matter) can be charitable, honest, and kind. Exclusivism does not demand that we reject everything about every other belief or every other religious person. What we do believe is that the most important doctrines of the Christian faith are not shared by other faiths and that even the most moral neighbor cannot be saved by good works.
2. I am not saying that Christianity is nothing more than saying the right prayer. Often in deriding exclusivism the contrast is made between the best, noblest adherent of some other religion versus the most crass, hypocritical, superficial adherent of Christianity. Raising your hand or praying the sinner’s prayer at camp does not automatically make you a Christian. If you are not changed and bear no fruit you have not been born again from above.
3. I am not saying that children who die at a young age, or those mentally incapable of expressing faith, cannot be saved. We know from Scripture that the Spirit can touch children in the womb (e.g., David, John the Baptist) and that the kingdom can belong to children (Mark 10:14). We see in Scripture that children from a believing household are in a different “position” than those outside the fold. They have Jesus as their covenant Lord (Eph. 6:1). When David’s son dies he says “I will go to him” (2 Sam. 12:23), this could mean “I too will die.” But in the next verse we read, “Then, David comforted his wife” (2 Sam. 12:24). I think it more likely that v. 23 was a comfort to David and Bathsheba because David knew he would see his child again in the next life. The juxtaposition of comfort makes less sense if David is simply assured he will join his son in the ground some day.
So I gladly affirm Canons of Dort, Article 1.17: “Since we must make judgments about God’s will from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy.” Beyond this, as a confessional Christian, I would not speak too dogmatically. Almost everything concerning salvation in the Bible assumes the presence of sentient human beings. Some of our other questions may not be answered directly.
4. I am not saying that unbelievers are punished because they did not put faith in a Jesus they never heard of. This may sound like the opposite of exclusivism, but it’s not. This is actually a crucial point that exclusivists and their opponents often miss. Those who never hear the gospel are not punished for not knowing Jesus. Not knowing Jesus results in punishment, but sin is the grounds for punishment. Those who do not put faith in Christ are punished for being sinners. They are punished in the next life for turning the truth of general revelation into a lie (Rom. 1:18-25). They have broken God’s law, and anyone guilty of even one violation is accountable for the whole law (James 2:10). Those with no knowledge of Christ will be judged less severely because they had less light, though that judgment will still be far from painless (Matt. 11:20-24). Our only hope in life and in death is that we are not our own but belong body and soul to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
Kevin DeYoung

Resisting Temptation and Responding to the Accuser

Russell Moore:

Gospel freedom is the most important aspect of resisting temptation.
Remember that Satan’s power over you is first and foremost the power of accusation and threatened death.
In Christ, though, you have already been indicted, judged, executed, and resurrected.
You are “dead to sin” and “alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11).
Regardless of whether you support or oppose the death penalty, you’d probably wince to hear about a state that executed a murderer and then had a public flogging of his corpse. Your discomfort there wouldn’t be because you’re soft on murder but because that act would be insanely beside the point. After all, an executed corpse can’t be punished anymore. It’s over.
Likewise, you’ve been to hell, in the cross of Christ.
You’ve been buried beneath the judgment of God, turned over to the Devil, and you are gone.
Now you stand in Christ, hidden in his identity, and thus free from any accusation.
Knowing that truth doesn’t lead you to yield to temptation but instead to fly from it.
You’re not hiding from God anymore.

—Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ, p. 170.
Justin Taylor

Simul iustus et peccator

B. B. Warfield (Works, 7:130):

Sin and Christ; ill desert and no condemnation; we are sinners and saints all at once! That is the paradox of evangelicalism. The Antinomian and the Perfectionist would abolish the paradox—the one drowning the saint in the sinner, the other concealing the sinner in the saint. We must…out of evangelical consciousness, ever see both members of the paradox clearly and see them whole.

HT: Zaspel, p. 488.  HT:Miscellanies

Not Plan B

Many Christians have an idea that God decided to send Jesus to earth only after his first plan had failed; his original idea (Plan A) was to give people an opportunity to become his people by obeying his law. But they failed, so he scratched his head and came up with another idea (Plan B): to save people by grace through the death of Jesus.

Nothing could be further from the truth. God had always planned to send Jesus. The whole Bible points forward to him and promises his coming in the future. In the Old Testament God points forward to him and promises his coming in the future. In the New Testament God proclaims him to be the one who fulfills all those promises.

--Vaughan Roberts, God's Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible (IVP, 2002), 17
Dane Ortlund

Another Reason I Am Confident Salvation Is Secure

"I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).

his is one of the most basic truths of Christianity: Salvation is not a work the sinner does for God; it is a work God does for the sinner. Ephesians 2:10: "We are his workmanship."

Even the good works we do as Christians are the result of God's work in us. Those good works are not accomplished by our own willpower or initiative. Ephesians 2:10 continues thussly: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

If God foreordained even the good works we do, and since He is the one who empowers us both to will and to do them (Philippians 2:13), then salvation is truly all God's work.

And He always finishes what He starts. That's the point of the verse at the top of this post.
Pyromaniacs

All Religions Except One Teach Salvation By Works

In volume 3 of his Reformed Dogmatics Herman Bavinck discusses the doctrine of salvation and the gospel's subversive announcement of grace, which is in contradistinction to every other religion. Along the way Bavinck footnotes a fascinating excerpt from a speech given over 100 years ago by professor Max Muller  before the British and Foreign Bible Society:

I may say that for 40 years, as at the university of Oxford I carried out my duties as professor of Sanskrit, I devoted as much time to the study of the holy books of the Easy as any other human being in the world. And I venture to tell this gathering what I have found to be the basic note, the one single chord, of all these holy books--be it the Veda of the Brahmans, the Purana of Siwa and Vishnu, the Qur'an of the Muslims, the Sendavesta of the Parsis, etc.--the one basic note or chord that runs through all of them is salvation by works.

They all teach that salvation must be bought and that your own works and merits must be the purchase price. Our own Bible, our sacred book from the East, is from start to finish a protest against this doctrine.

True, good works are also required in this holy book from the East, and that even more emphatically than in any other holy book from the East, but the works referred to are the outflow of a grateful heart. They are only the thank offerings, only the fruits of our faith. They are never the ransom of the true disciples of Christ.

Let us not close our eyes to whatever is noble and true and pleasing in those holy books. But let us teach Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims that there is but one book from the East that can be their comfort in that solemn hour when they must pass, entirely alone, into the invisible world. It is that holy book which contains the message--a message which is surely true and worthy of full acceptance, and concerns all humans, men, women, and children--that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

--Quoted in Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:491 n. 1
Dane Ortlund

The peace of God is already yours

“If you have been brought, self-renouncing and sin-renouncing, to the foot of the cross, the peace of God and of His Christ is already yours.
If that peace had been in any way your own procuring, then might its attainment be effected only after years of laborious effort. But being purchased, you have only to come and accept it as a free gift, a blessed gratuity; being bequeathed to you, you have only to claim joyfully the inheritance, and enter on its possession—’giving thanks unto the Father, who has made us fitt to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.’”
—John MacDuff, Clefts of the Rock  
Of First Importance

The Real Sacrifice For Sin - The Theology of B. B. Warfield

For months I’ve eagerly awaited the release of Fred G. Zaspel’s book The Theology of B. B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary (Crossway, Sept. 30, 2010). Over the past two weeks I have been reading a copy of the book and it reminds me how thankful I am for able theologians who can break down the writings of a theological giant. Zaspel is doing this for me with Warfield. Not only is the systematic approach very thoughtful and very well executed, Zaspel also scatters within his summary many rich (and often devotional) quotes from Warfield’s works. Here’s just one example (page 300; from Warfield’s works, 2:434–435):

Christianity did not come into the world to proclaim a new morality and, sweeping away all the supernatural props by which men were wont to support their trembling, guilt-stricken souls, to throw them back on their own strong right arms to conquer a standing before God for themselves. It came to proclaim the real sacrifice for sin which God had provided in order to supersede all the poor fumbling efforts which men had made and were making to provide a sacrifice for sin for themselves; and, planting men’s feet on this, to bid them go forward. It was in this sign that Christianity conquered, and it is in this sign alone that it continues to conquer. We may think what we will of such a religion. What cannot be denied is that Christianity is such a religion.

Beautiful.
Miscellanies

What salvation are you talking about?

“Biblical salvation lies not in an escape from this world but in the transformation of this world. . . . You will not find hope for the world in any of the religious systems or philosophies of humankind. . . . The Biblical vision is unique. That is why when some say there is salvation in other faiths too, I ask them — ‘What salvation are you talking about?’ No faith holds out a promise of eternal salvation for the world — the ordinary world — that the cross and resurrection of Jesus do.”
- Vinoth Ramachandra, quoted by Timothy Keller, in The Reason For God (New York, NY: Dutton, 2008), 224.
Of First Importance

Jesus Christ has finished all His work

“It is finished! (John 19:30)
Has Christ perfected and completely finished all His work for us? How sweet a relief is this to against all the defects and imperfections of all the works which are wrought by us.
There is nothing finished that we do. All our duties are imperfect duties; they come off lamely and defectively from our hands. O there is much sin and vanity in the best of our duties.
But Jesus Christ has finished all His work, though we can finish none of ours. And so, even though we are defective, poor, imperfect creatures in ourselves, yet we are complete in Christ. His complete obedience being imputed to us, makes us complete, and without fault before God.”
—John Flavel, The Fountain of Life
Of First Importance