Category: Devotional Grist

Calvin notes that the main object of Peter’s first epistle,

“is to raise us above the world, in order that we may be prepared and encouraged to sustain the spiritual contests of our warfare. For this end, the knowledge of God’s benefits avails much; for, when their value appears to us, all other things will be deemed worthless, especially when we consider what Christ and his blessings are; for everything w/o him is but dross. For this reason he highly extols the wonderful grace of God in Christ, that is that we may not deem it much to give up the world in order that we may enjoy the invaluable treasure of a future life; and also that we might not be broken down by present troubles, but patiently endure them, being satisfied w/ eternal happiness.”

In summary then Peter’s goal is to remind his readers that what is to be gained by the certain future by the faithful Christian far exceeds the hardships and struggles of the present as well as what might be considered as perceived loss of the present.

Surely, we can understand the necessity to speak words of promise and hope to a people who are suffering for the cause of Christ. Surely, we can understand the temptation that might be present to conclude that the promise of the unseen as held out by Christianity was not worth the perils of the seen as brought by the tormentors of these Christians.

Consequently Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes to these recipients encouraging them to press on doing so by means of the Character of God and the abundance of mercy.

In the midst of their trials, Peter, following his salutation, opens with

I.) A Blessing Of God For His Goodness

By doing so, Peter subtly reminds his readers that this whole life is about God. Yes, trials may be present and hardships may descend upon us but even under these constraints there is a necessity to bless God and to remind ourselves of the objective truths regarding his goodness.

A.) Note the specific God that Peter references is brought to the fore by God’s sui generis (one of a kind) relationship to Jesus Christ

1.) Pursue the idea of the exclusivity of God
God can’t be known apart from a known Christ.
There is no knowing God in his naked majesty apart from Christ

2.) Pursue the idea that God is God to us because of the relationship
that both the Father and the Church has to Jesus Christ

3.) Pursue how Peter references Christ – 1.)Lord 2.) Jesus 3.)Christ

B.) Note The Piling Up Of God’s Blessings Upon God’s People As The Reason Why Peter’s Open’s With a Blessing of God

1.) Abundant Mercy

As I stated at the outset the spotlight is cast upon God here. To a people who are grieved by various trials the Apostle becomes radically God-centered.

He immediately reminds them, in a general way, of God’s abundant mercy and from there Peter will get into specifics as to the character of that abundant mercy. The emphasis here is on the objective truth of God’s goodness. Hardship and persecutions may come but in the midst of those subjective experiences we must remain mindful that God is good to those who trust in him.

It seems what is happening here is that Peter is reminding his readers to view their circumstances through God’s character and not begin reading God’s character through their dire circumstances. Trials may come and go, but God remains always full of abundant mercy (Covenant hesed) towards his people.

The radical God-centeredness of this passage continues as the specifics of God’s abundant mercy are named. Note in all that is to be named here as instantiations of “abundant mercy” the repeated emphasis is on the fact that God has done all the doing for His people.

God has begotten us to a living hope (cmp. John 1:13). We did not beget ourselves to a living hope.

The Father is the one who raised Christ from the dead as the foundation of our living hope. We did not raise Christ from the dead so that we could have a foundation for our eventual living hope.

The Father is the one who has given us an inheritance. We did not give ourselves an inheritance.

The Father is the one who keep us. We do not keep ourselves.

All of these markers that testify of God’s goodness are received by us passively. God is the one who does all the doing. God is the one, through the work of Christ, and by the ministry of the Spirit who both makes us alive and who causes us to contend till the very end.

This is why we say … “To God be the glory.” This is why we dwell so much on the idea of “grace alone.”

It is the greatness of God that is dwelled upon here and so upon which we dwell.

But let us look at each of these blessings a little more carefully.

— Begotten — regeneration

— Living hope — This living hope is characteristic of the one who patiently waits for the salvation God has promised to his people. It is living because it is a sure and real thing. It is hope because it raises our minds beyond our trials to God’s sure and certain promises.

It stands in contrast to the dead hope of the pagans. Whether their hope is Nirvana, or the voluptuaries of Allah’s paradise, or the reincarnation to progress of the Hindu, or the pagan after life of the Jew, or the envisioned utopia of the humanist. All of these are dead hopes. Only the Christian has a living hope.

— This living hope comes through the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

In the middle of this God centered passage that is intended to give encouragement to believers Peter puts the Cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

— Inheritance

Described as — 1.) Incorruptible 2.) Undefiled 3.) Doesn’t fade
4.) Reserved

Application

1.)God is the center of every narrative and the center of that center is that God has done all the doing in Christ to rescue and redeem His people.

2.) A Christian’s plight and sorrows are never so defeating that they lose reason to bless God. Despite the greatest opposition or the greatest hardship the Christian remains the person who blesses God for His goodness to him.

3.) It is this living hope that Peter describes that keeps our dying and resisted efforts alive. We keep on contending for the crown rights of King Jesus because we have this living hope.

God’s Love As Father Is Particular

1 John 4:10Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

2 Timothy 1:8 Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; 9Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,

Colossians 1:12Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us qualified to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: 13Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: 14In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:

Of course you will note the particularity that just sings through these passages. God, revealing His Fatherly character, loved “us” — His particular people. The love of God, as Father, is unique to His people. This particular “love” is to be distinguished from The love of God, as a general benefactor, who gives generic providential gifts to the just and the unjust.

Whenever God loves in a familial sense His love his particular, and it is this love in this salvific familial sense that we agree with the Scripture when they teach that God hates the wicked.

Now before we move on to a bit of application allow us to suggest one implication that we can draw from this reality that God’s love as a Father is particular … and that is

As God’s love as a Father is particular for His children so the children’s love for God as their Father must be particular as well.

As God’s dearly beloved children we are jealous for God’s reputation and His name. Understanding the great love of our Father wherein we have been loved, we in turn return that great love by intensely hating all other false gods and false representations of the true god. In a similar vein we likewise love our Brethren in a way that is unique and distinct to the love that we have for those who are the children of other false gods … for those who have fashioned and taken for themselves false gods.

Application

As God, our heavenly Father has a particular love for His own people, so any given Father has a particular love that reveals itself in the responsibility he has to his own children first and foremost. Because this is true, a Biblical Father acts in such a way as to uniquely protect his children from harm and danger. A Biblical Father seeks to uniquely regulate his own family life in prudent and wise ways — in ways that he does not do for families that are not his own. It is not selfish for a Father to take care of his own children ahead of the children of other families, though it would be selfish for a Biblical Father to only consider his own family. The argument here isn’t that heads of covenant homes and families should have no concern for anybody else except their own. The argument here is that charity starts at home. Just as God the Father’s love begins w/ His own children and then from there extends itself more generically to others so a Father’s love begins w/ His own children and then extends itself generically to others.

Illustration — Concentric circles of love.

If a Father so loved those who were not his own more than his own it would be tantamount to a disowning of those who are his own.

On a even larger scale Nations — which by historic definition have always been considered a family of related families — do the same type of thing. Nations, for example, set immigration policy in accord with the needs of the citizens. A nation has a responsibility to its own citizen’s first and foremost and so a nation sets an immigration policy that fits the needs of the citizenry before it fits the needs of potential emigres. If a nation so loved those who were not its own more than its own it would be tantamount to a disowning of those who were its own.

God’s Love As Father Is Unconditional In A Very Specific Sense

Often times the truth of unconditional election (which is the love of the Father for His particular people) is understood inadequately. Often, the unconditional love of the Father for His children is explained in ways that forgets that God’s love for His children was conditioned upon Christ’s work for them.

So the condition of God the Father’s love is that His particular people be pure and without fault. As we know, this was not a condition that any of God’s people could meet but, nonetheless, it was a condition. And so God setting this condition for His love and determining and knowing that His people could not meet this condition God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, met this condition for His particular people.

The condition is one that God set and God met for His particular children.

So, God’s love, for us, as a Father, is unconditional in the sense that we aren’t involved in any per-formative acts that curry God’s love but God’s love for us, as a Father, is conditional in the sense that certain conditions had to be met before we could be accepted by the Father. These requirements God fulfilled in the birth, life, and work of the beloved Christ on behalf of love to the Father and love to the Father’s particular people.

All of this is communicated in Romans 3:21f

Romans 3:21 “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”

Now I spend some time stating the obvious because I fear that in some quarters the idea of God’s love as unconditional is being inappropriately twisted beyond all recognition. At least in some quarters the love of the Father as unconditional is being made to mean that as long as we invoke the magic talisman of some alien Jesus’ name, therefore, w/ God’s unconditional love in our pocket, we can autonomously create our own standards as to what the Christian life looks like. We seem to reason that “As long as I have God’s unconditional love we can go call good … evil, and evil …. good and we can go on sinning that grace may abound. We can turn
God’s standards upside down and we can make words like “compassion,” “social justice,” and “fairness,” to mean whatever we ruddy well like them to mean.

And so while God’s “unconditional love” is supposed to mean in Historic Christian theology that God Himself met all the conditions that He required so we might have a living vital covenant relationship with Him — as set by His terms — so that we might be equipped to live for His glory and be His servants, what God’s “unconditional love” has come to mean in post-modern “Christian” theology is that God Himself met all the conditions that He required so we might have a living vital covenant w/ Him — as set by our terms — so that we might be equipped to live for our glory and so that He might be our servant.

This changing of the definition of God’s “unconditional love” reminds me of Lewis Carrol’s famous “Alice in Wonderland.”

‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’

‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. ‘They’ve a temper, some of them – particularly verbs: they’re the proudest – adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs – however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!’

‘Would you tell me please,’ said Alice, ‘what that means?’

‘Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. ‘I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’

‘That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

‘When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘I always pay it extra.’

‘Oh!’ said Alice.

(Carroll 1893, 113–15)

So, on this Father’s day, I am Alice insisting that the “unconditional love” of the Father means something while much of what I am seeing and hearing going on around me passing itself off as the “unconditional love” of the Father seems to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean.

Unconditional love made to mean that God Himself met all the conditions that He required so we might have a living vital covenant w/ Him — as set by our terms — so that we might be equipped to live for our glory and so that He might be our servant is more of a revolutionary concept than any other doctrine of revolution. Unconditional love, defined this way, means the end of discrimination between god and not god, his standards and our standards, his definitions of morality and our definitions of morality, who our brethren are and who our enemies are, and all things else. Whenever anyone insists that God loves unconditionally, in the sense defined above they are telling you that they intend to make God in their own image.

Application

Now, after going a long way around I would say that as we apply this to earthly fathers I would likewise say as earthly Fathers our love for our children is likewise unconditional. This is true for adopted or biological children. No matter what might happen in a parent-child relationship a parent never quits loving their child.

Dads we need to tell our children this frequently. We need to keep reminding them that as our children they are loved unconditionally. We must be careful that we don’t place upon them, implicitly or explicitly, the idea that our love for them is based upon some kind of performative act or accomplishment on their part.

Just as we as Christians operate from the security that we can never increase God’s love for us because of God’s unconditional love for us, so our children need to realize that they operate from the security that they can never increase our love for them because of our unconditional love for them.

Many are the children who live their lives trying to meet the expectations of some demanding parent who has, implicitly or explicitly, communicated that their love was dependent upon the performance of the child. This ought not to be named among God’s people and when it is named among us it is a violation of Ephesians 6

“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Dad’s throughout the lives of your children, regardless whether your children are 5 or 65 you need to communicate consistently to your children that you love them. A Dad’s influence on a childs life is monumental, and one of the best gifts you can give to your children is the stability, certainty, and confidence that comes from knowing that you love them unconditionally.

Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier — Triune God

As we invoke your presence and common blessings upon us this morning during this Commencement ceremony we are mindful that there are none who can contend with thee, nor any who can challenge thy regal majesty and awful splendor. With that in mind we are full of gratitude that thou art mindful of all your creatures and are even now fully considering all our ways.

At this celebratory milestone grant us your undeserved favor that we might learn to number our days so that we might live w/ our appearance before you as our final end. Do this that we might live for your glory, thus discovering true joy and robust mirth through all our days.

In keeping with your common providence bless our time now and extend to all gathered the joy that comes from the satisfaction that arises when hard work meets goals achieved.

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we pray,

Amen

O Sovereign and Benevolent God of the Lord Jesus Christ we implore your blessings upon the time we have gathered here to participate in this commencement ceremony. We ask that the graduates and all of us here gathered might be mindful of your word that teaches that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

We thank you for this University which has as its core values the uniquely Western ideals of an entrepreneurial, free-enterprise society characterized by individual freedom and individual responsibility; all of which are built upon a foundation of ethics and integrity. We pray that the graduates will, for the rest of their lives realize, that these core values can only come to full flower when embraced in light of the one true faith.

In keeping with your common providence bless our time now and extend to all gathered the joy that comes from the satisfaction that arises when hard work meets goals achieved.

In the name of the blessed Redeemer…

Amen

Romans 6

Apostle has spoken so magnificently of the completeness of God’s grace for sinners that he anticipates being accused of what today we would call “anti-nomianism” (against law).

As we said last week we should especially note two things at the outset.

1.) His understanding of the Gospel is so completely Christ centered that he can be accused of antinomianism.

2.) He thoroughly rejects and refutes being antinomian.

For the Apostle Baptism is the hinge point of new realities for the believer. In Baptism we are thoroughly identified w/ Christ so that His death becomes our death and His resurrection becomes our resurrection. This reality has the inevitable implication that we, being dead to sin as the dominating control center in our lives, are free to walk in newness of life.

“Old man” — Reference to who we were in Adam

“Body of Sin” — Whole of our fallen nature or the whole self in all of its fallenness.

“Might be done away” — In the sense of being the necessarily controlling agency in our lives.

In Baptism we died to our old mode of existence.

“Reckon yourselves” — Become who you are

12 — Imperative // 13 Imperative

— Certain realities have been laid out about what God has done and these realities have need to be considered true by believers.

Illustration — Emancipation

14 — Indicative “Sin shall not have dominion” — (Indicative) Promise not (Imperative) exhortation

The Apostle throughout this chapter has often personified sin as all consuming power center. In vs. 14 Paul lays out the promise that Sin shall no longer be their Lord for they have another Lord … Jesus. The reason that sin will not have dominion is because they are

6:14 — “Not under law, but under grace” — Now in light of what is said elsewhere in Romans (3:31, 7:12, 14a, 8:4, 13:8-10) we dare not conclude that this mean that, because of grace we have no relationship to the law.

We must keep in mind the contrast here is between “under law” and “under grace.”

I would submit that what is being said here is that believers are no longer under the law as a condemning reality but are under grace as a reality of God’s undeserved favor towards them.

So, if read this way vs. 14 would teach,

For sin is not your Lord, for you are not under God’s condemnation as thundered by the law against sin but you are under God’s undeserved favor.

If they were under God’s condemnation as thundered by the Law then Sin would be their Lord but as they are now under God’s undeserved favor (grace) Sin is not their Lord.

Such an understanding honors the way that Paul speaks of the Law elsewhere while at the same time making sense of this passage.

vs. 15 —

Again the accusation is raised that the Apostle has just navigated himself into an antinomian position w/ this slight difference

In vs. 1 the false inference gathered from 5:20 that is being warded off is that we should sin to make grace abound. Here the false inference gathered from vs. 14b that is being warded off is that sinful acts to not matter anymore more as far as Christians are concerned because we are no longer under the condemnation of the law but are under grace.

This inference is warded off by an appeal to reason that includes the idea of the Antithesis.

1.) Appeal to reason — You are the slaves of which ever master you obey. Sinful acts do matter because they indicate who your master really is.

2.) Antithesis — You have only two alternatives from which to choose concerning whom you will be slaves to.

Seed of the Serpent vs. Seed of the Woman.