4/16/2023
Transcription
Jesus accomplished our redemption through his work on the cross and resurrection. He was elected and justified by the Spirit, and his status as the Son of God was declared in the resurrection. We, as believers, are united with Christ and share in his vindication and adoption as sons of God. Our salvation is secure because it is in Christ. OK, well, let's get started. We'll begin with prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this morning, and we thank you for your grace and your kindness to us in Christ, and we praise you that we have this chance to study your word together and to gather together as your people. I pray that you would please enrich us from your word and grow us in our knowledge of Christ and our love for him, and I pray these things in his precious name. Amen. OK, well, I had all these amazing PowerPoints for you, and I actually really don't like PowerPoints, so this is not even that big of a deal for me, but it might be for you. We're taking a slight pause. It's related to what we've been doing in this class, but this week we're going to look at what's termed by theologians as the historia salutis, so if you want to sound really impressive, you should always say things in Latin, and then everyone will think you're really smart. Historia salutis, because we've been looking at what's called the ordo salutis, and to put that not in Latin, ordo salutis just means order of salvation. Historia salutis, you can probably guess, history of salvation. Now ordo salutis, order of salvation, order, that can mean a lot of different things, perhaps. Order could mean sequence, like things go one after another, one, two, three, four, five, six, that's order. But order could also be something like the structure of a building, right, is the order of the building, and that's more what we have been looking at in this class is order in that sense, the order of salvation. What are the different aspects of the salvation that we have in Christ? Ordo salutis, then, history of salvation, that could mean a couple of things as well. If we're talking about the history of salvation, we could mean going all the way back to Genesis 315, and you could say God made that first promise of salvation in the garden after Adam and Eve had sinned, that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, and so anything that happens after that, the entire history of salvation in the Bible, all the way to the cross, to the resurrection of Christ, to the new creation even, that would be history of salvation. But we're going to look at history of salvation, historia salutis, in a much more narrow sense this morning. History of salvation in the sense of Jesus Christ having come to accomplish our salvation, and since he has accomplished our salvation, what does that mean for us? What are the different aspects of salvation that we have in Christ? So that's what I mean by historia salutis, or the history of salvation. Redemption accomplished by Christ, redemption accomplished in Christ, that's really the focus this morning, because throughout the rest of the class, we've been looking at how that redemption is applied to us by the Holy Spirit. So we're going to just pause, and we're going to look at how that redemption is accomplished for us in Christ. That's what we mean by historia salutis. And I'm going to go through all of these different aspects of salvation. Some of those that we've touched on in this class, I'm not going to even try to say everything about those, because we've already been looking at those in much more detail in the class. But if it's justification, that's an aspect of our salvation. Paul's already taught a whole class on that, so I'm not going to try to say everything about justification. I'm going to really focus on two things with each of the topics that we look at. First of all, it is how is there something that is true of Jesus, either in who he is as the divine Son of God, or something that's true of Jesus in what he did, what he accomplished, by taking on flesh and going all the way to the point of the cross, and then being raised from the dead. So what did Jesus do? What has he accomplished? That's going to be the first thing that we look at with each aspect of salvation. And then secondly, how does that become ours? I think there's maybe a tendency sometimes to think about salvation as if Jesus, he secured something for us. Maybe he accomplished salvation and he has this righteousness, and he takes these coins almost and he sort of puts them in a piggy bank for us. He did something, and then he gives it to us, and we've got this thing, we've got righteousness now, and then Jesus is still over there. Maybe sometimes it's necessary, you might have to explain salvation in a certain way like that, but that abstracts salvation and the work of Christ from Christ himself. And so what we want to look at is how all of the benefits that are ours are ours only in Christ. So the way to talk about that is union with Jesus Christ. Everything comes to us because we are found in him. Jesus is not over there, he did something for us in the past, and then he's done. We are found to be in Jesus Christ himself, and nothing of salvation comes to us except being in him, united to him. Now if I had the PowerPoints, you'd be able to see this really clearly because I've got it marked out in all these Bible verses. I'm going to have to read them instead of showing you them on the screen. But I'm going to work through these different dimensions of salvation. I'm going to start with, maybe even surprisingly, election. So remember, two things that we're going to look at. First of all, we're going to look at redemption accomplished by Christ, and then secondly, redemption applied to us in Christ with each aspect. So election. How could it be said of election that election applies to Jesus? How could that be said of him, first of all? Because when we think about election, we think of God choosing sinners for salvation, and Jesus isn't a sinner, so would we say that Jesus is elect? Well, the Scriptures actually do speak of Jesus that way. It's Peter 2.6. For it stands in Scripture, Behold, I am laying in Zion a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. And that's Isaiah 28.16 that's being quoted by Peter there. A cornerstone chosen, that is the word that we take election from in the New Testament. So Jesus Christ, as prophesied by Isaiah, is the chosen cornerstone, the elect cornerstone. Now of course that's speaking of Christ in his future human nature, when Isaiah prophesied of that, that Jesus Christ would become man, the second person of the Trinity, would become man and he would live a perfect life and then he would die for us. He was chosen for that. That's in the eternal plan of God that Jesus would do that, that he would take on flesh and that he would come and he would die for us. That same language of chosenness then is applied to us in the New Testament as believers. Paul says this in Ephesians 1, this is verses 3 and 4, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. That verb, even as he chose us, that's the verbal form of that noun that was applied to Jesus in 1 Peter. God chose us, and there's a very important phrase here, he chose us in him. You'll start to see this if you look at the New Testament, trying to seek out this language of union with Christ. You'll see it everywhere once you start looking for it. It's phrases like we are chosen in him or something happens to us with him, with Jesus Christ, or we are saved through him, through Jesus Christ, or we're saved by him. It's everywhere, everywhere you look in the New Testament, there's that language that shows us that our salvation only comes to us because we are in Christ. We're found to be in him. It's not that Jesus did something once in the past and he gives that thing to us. He gives himself to us, and he clothes us in his perfect righteousness. We're found to be in him. That language was here about believers. God chose us in him before the foundation of the world. There's a certain sense in which the elect, the believers to be, are eternally in Christ, which is a really amazing thing to think about because normally the language in the New Testament of being in Christ is something that happens to us when we are savingly united to him by faith. And yet to say that we are in Christ from eternity past, I think that's Paul's way of trying to grasp the amazing reality that God always had our salvation in his plan. This is an eternal thing. This is not something that happened in time. He didn't one day decide, okay, I'm going to save this person, I'm going to save this person. No, this was always God's plan for us, and it's a staggering thing to think that the Savior was already yours in a very important sense in eternity past, even before he had taken on flesh and come to die for us. Another way to say that is your salvation couldn't be any more secure than it is because you are in Christ from all eternity. So Christ is the chosen one. Now, being careful here, Christ is the chosen one as man. There's no sense in which as the second person of the Trinity that we would say that Jesus is chosen. That wouldn't even really make sense. But to take on flesh and to come to save us, Jesus is the elect one. So Jesus is elect, and because he's the chosen one, he was set apart for this very thing, we are elect in him. Now, we did talk about effectual calling and regeneration earlier in the class, but that's an aspect where this doesn't work. We can't say of Jesus Christ that he was first called effectually or that he was regenerated. If you said that, that would be indicating that Jesus had a fallen nature and that he had to have that fallen nature replaced with a regenerate nature, and so that can't be said of Jesus Christ. So we have to skip over that specific aspect. What about justification? Now, this might seem weird to say, Jesus was justified, and because Jesus was justified, we are justified, because we know that the normal way that Paul talks about or anyone in the New Testament talks about justification is that it's a declaration that someone who was formerly a sinner is righteous in God's sight. So obviously, you can't say that of Jesus Christ, that he was a sinner, he was fallen, and then he has this declaration that he's righteous, and that wouldn't make any sense for Jesus Christ. Very interestingly, though, Paul in 1 Timothy 3.16, he says this, Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. Now, you didn't hear the word justification there, but it is actually there. Jesus Christ was vindicated by the Spirit. It's the same verb that Paul always uses to talk about justification. Dikaiō in Greek is the same verb that he uses to talk about our justification in Jesus Christ. He says Jesus Christ was vindicated by the Spirit. He was justified by the Spirit. And what Paul's referring to there is the resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that at the resurrection, Jesus was justified. Now, what would that mean for Jesus Christ, to say that he was justified? The ESV translates it as vindicated, and I think that's a good translation. That's a legitimate way to translate that verb, to say that Jesus was vindicated. As long as Jesus was in the grave, he died with the seeming sentence of condemnation upon himself on the cross. From outward appearances, Jesus Christ was defeated. He was killed as a criminal, as far as everyone else could see. And then he was in the grave, defeated, as far as the world could see. And then the Spirit raised him from the dead on the third day. That is Christ's justification. That's his vindication. It shows you that Jesus Christ did actually accomplish what he set out to accomplish. He did actually come into the world, live a perfect life, die an atoning death on the cross for sinners, and he is triumphantly seen to have accomplished all of that in the resurrection. He's vindicated. His work is vindicated in the resurrection. If he had remained in the grave, then his death would have been of no significance to us. But because he was raised from the dead, because he was vindicated, that is his justification. That is his vindication. Because Jesus Christ has been vindicated, if we have faith in him and we are found to be in him, we participate in that vindication. His vindication is ours. So it's really the two sides of this that we're going to look at with everything this morning. Jesus was vindicated, so we're vindicated. So you see the language then moving to us in the New Testament of union with Christ with regard to justification. Paul says this in Romans 3, 23 and 24. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. There's that language of union with Christ, the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Put it this way, because Jesus was vindicated on the cross and because you are in him by faith, you are justified. You are vindicated before God. We participate in Christ's own vindication. His status as vindicated is ours. You have this perfect righteousness before the Father now because you are in him. It's not that Jesus accomplished redemption. He has these righteousness tokens and he gives them to you. It's that you are united to him. You are brought into him and you participate in his vindication. Which means that your status is not in any way dependent on you. It's not in any way dependent on your own works. It's solely on the basis of his status as vindicated. Now I want to move on to, I'll pause in a second and see if there are questions. I want to move on to adoption and to look at these two different aspects with regard to adoption. Could we say of Jesus Christ that he was adopted? That might sound particularly weird and in fact that's one of the chief heresies in the early church is what's called adoptionism. The idea that Jesus Christ was a man, maybe he was the most exalted man who has ever lived, but he was a man and because of his righteousness God adopted him and exalted him. It takes different forms in the early church, but it's this basic idea that Jesus Christ is not inherently divine. He's not divine eternally. He's not the fully divine son of God, but in fact he sort of begins to participate in divinity because of what he did. Something along those lines. So to say that Jesus was adopted in that way would be heresy and it would be one of the main heresies of the early church. So can we talk in any way about adoption when we talk about Jesus Christ? Well we can as long as we're careful. Paul says this, and you'll notice I'm talking about Paul a lot. Partly that's because the Gospels really, I mean they tell us what Jesus did, they show us what he did, and then you get to the New Testament letters and the New Testament letters really unpack the significance of what Jesus did for our salvation. That's why the verses that I'm using here primarily come from the New Testament letters and they end up coming mostly from Paul. Okay, so Christ, can we say anything about Christ and adoption? This is Romans 1, 1-4. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. In particular is that phrase that Jesus was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness. He was declared to be the son of God in power. So why would we say that about Jesus, that at some point he was declared to be the son of God? When would Jesus have been declared to be the son of God? There were several points in his life where we might say that, where at his baptism, this is my son, and at the transfiguration the same language shows up, the voice from God, this is my son, this is my beloved son. Those are declarations, but most likely Paul here has in mind the resurrection again. That Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh, so he's talking about Christ's incarnation, and then he was declared to be the son of God in power, and that's the key phrase there, in power, according to the spirit of holiness. Just like 1 Timothy 3.16, vindicated by the spirit. When was Jesus vindicated by the spirit? In the resurrection. When was Jesus declared to be the son of God in power? In the resurrection, ultimately. So it's not saying that Jesus became the son at any point in time, he didn't become the son at the resurrection, he's the eternal son of God, but he was revealed in a very powerful way, declared even, to be the son of God in the resurrection. And so we can't say that Jesus is adopted, but we can say that as man, his status was powerfully and clearly revealed in the resurrection. That's really important when we talk about our own adoption. Romans 8.15-17, so now we're switching over to union with Christ. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. So there's that language of union, with Christ. We are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. So if we're a fellow heir with Christ, that means Christ has an inheritance. How does Christ have an inheritance? Well, Jesus was the faithful son of God, and in his work, in his faithful keeping of the law, in his death on the cross, in his resurrection, he secured an inheritance for us, and that inheritance is our salvation. So Jesus in his faithfulness, he is the heir of salvation, in the sense that he's the heir, he's inherited us, he's inherited our salvation, and he then gives that to us in him. So with Christ, we are the adopted sons of God. Now, he is not adopted. He is not at one point in time becoming the son of God, but because he is the truly faithful son, has secured this inheritance, we receive that in and with Christ. Now Paul puts this more simply in Galatians 3.26, he says, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. So really the thing I want to emphasize is that adoption comes to us in Christ because he is the faithful son of God. Now that's who he is by his very nature. Jesus is the faithful son of God, but yet he also truly took on flesh, and he secured this inheritance, our salvation, and that comes to us in Christ Jesus, and because it comes to us in Christ Jesus, it is our secure and safe possession. Simple way to think about all this again is redemption accomplished, redemption applied. Redemption is accomplished by Christ. That's what we mean by historia salutis, the history of salvation. Jesus did it all. He accomplished salvation for us, and it comes to be ours in union with Jesus Christ. Okay, let me just pause for a second because we have some more aspects of this, but are there questions? Are there comments? Yep? The term surety has been used for kind of the same courtroom type of scene where a vindication can only be found through the justice of that court, and a surety can be applied for a replacement of one or another. It almost seems like that's what Jesus is doing. He's coming in, ushering in security in our place. And because he has lost that which is his blood, that's something that then he can root through him where we have that education, because it could not find him because he didn't need it. He did rise from the dead. Now, you have double jeopardy. He can't take place. He can't be re-brought into the courtroom for that same sin. It's now been vindicated, and that's only because he stepped in that place as a surety for that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's that language in Ephesians 1. I forget the way the ESV translates it, but it's the security. What is the word? Down payment. Yeah, it's a similar kind of language there. Yeah, you know, as God's elect children, if we could be condemned, that means that Christ, his work was not sufficient. Yeah, I think that's another way to put that. Yeah, so Christ failed if we could be condemned. Yeah. Yeah, Brian. I'm thinking about Christ as the second Adam. Yeah. And then I'm just thinking about, like, what ways those who are not in Christ are in Adam. I don't know if you have any thoughts about that, because you went with it. Yeah. You went with Adam. Right. Yeah, because they're represented. The whole world is represented by Adam in his actions in the garden, and those who are not in Christ are still in Adam. He's still their representative, so they still stand condemned before God in him. And those who are in Christ, then, are no longer subject to that condemnation. I mean, is that kind of? Yeah, I don't know. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that seems right. Yeah. Well, that's a great question. I mean, because I've thought about that before, too, and maybe you can get your thoughts on this. Are you in Christ? We know, today, you're in Christ. Are you in Christ? We know, today, you're in Christ. Are you in Christ? We know, today, you're in Christ. Are you in Christ? We know, today, you're in Christ. Are you in Christ? We know, today, you're in Christ. Are you in Christ? We know, today, you're in Christ. Are you in Christ? We know, today, you're in Christ. Are you in Christ? We know, today, you're in Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. It's, as long as we're careful to recognize the difference in Christ's growing. Yeah. No. Yeah. No. But that's a powerful motivation for holiness, even. Yeah. Yeah. Other thoughts before I close us? All right. Well, I know this is probably drinking from a fire hose a little bit, but that was an attempt to see the whole forest for the trees, because we've been zooming in on the trees in this class. So I'll pray and close us. Our Heavenly Father, we praise you, and we give you all glory and honor. We rejoice to consider the salvation that you've worked for us in Christ, and it's really beyond our ability to grasp the fullness of the gift that you've given us in Him. I pray that you would fill us with joy as we contemplate our Savior, as we consider what we have in Him. I pray that this would motivate us and spur us on to hold fast to Him by faith and to follow Him to pursue holiness, that you would strengthen us, even in our holiness, that we would find the strength that comes in Christ by your Spirit. And I pray that you would do all of this for us so that He would be glorified. And I pray it in His name. Amen.
