Category: Uncategorized

The Cross of Christ can’t be understood apart from the ideas of Christ’s active and passive obedience. On the Cross, Christ obeyed the righteous demands of God’s law against the penalty of sin. On the Cross Christ passively endured the Father’s wrath thus fulfilling all righteousness.

Galatians 3:13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

I Peter 2:24He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree,

Theologians refer to this as Christ’s passive obedience. In Christ’s passive obedience the sins of the Church are imputed to Christ as he pays for them there on the Cross as our substitute. His obedience to the demands of the law stands in the place for what we were obligated to pay ourselves. This is one of the three great imputations recorded in Scripture (the Elect’s sin to Christ).

However, theologians also speak of Christ’s active obedience thus drawing the life of Christ into the orbit of our redemption. In Christ’s active obedience Christ obeys all that His people were required to obey at the laws righteous demands. We failed in rendering up the just obedience that God’s law required and without that necessary obedience we could not have concourse with God. As such, the Father takes the Son’s obedience and receives it as our obedience. The Son’s obedience is counted as our obedience. This is the 2nd of the three great imputations to Scripture … Christ’s obedience is imputed (reckoned to our account) to the Church. This is Christ’s active obedience.

There have been some throughout history (including recently with some advocating the Federal Vision heresy) that denied the active obedience of Christ. John Wesley and the Wesleyans denied Christ’s active obedience. The problem with this position is that while our sins are indeed forgiven we are left without the righteousness required to stand in God’s presence.

Commonly, those who have denied Christ’s active obedience have also then said that we have to, upon our forgiveness, build up a righteousness that can be received by God as the righteousness required. Often in history, this became a kind of neonomianism where the righteous demands of the law are reduced so that the saved can meet the law’s demands thus being able to build up salvation capital with God. Of course, there is no good news in denying Christ’s active obedience. Any Gospel that requires me to build up righteousness capital in order to have an audience with the Father is no Gospel at all.

History tells us that the last words of the great theologian J. Gresham Machen were,

“Thank God for the active obedience of Christ… no hope without it.”

How Good is your Good Friday?

Mark 15:33, KJV: “And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.”

The sixth hour is noon; the ninth hour is 3:00 p.m. Jesus has been on the cross since the third hour: 9:00 a.m. (Mark 15:25). At 3:00 p.m., Jesus will die. Some scholars believe at the same time Jesus dies on the Cross on the other side of the city, the priests will slaughter the lambs for the Passover meals of the people who live in Judea. Other Scholars believe that the very moment Jesus is being nailed to the Cross the Passover Lambs are being killed.

Scripture often marries Darkness as a Judgment prelude to a new creation. Before the earth is fashioned we read that “darkness covered the deep.” Soon following we see God’s new creation coming to pass.

Darkness was the ninth Judgment plague God put on the Egyptians (Exodus 10:21–29). The darkness enveloped Egypt for three days; in the death of the Lord Christ, it lasts three hours. Soon Israel would be released as God’s new creation people.

As God took the firstborns of the Egyptians to secure the rescue of His people the Israelites, God now accepts the death of His own Firstborn as a “ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). In each case, however, judgment typified by darkness is the prelude to deliverance.

In Isaiah 60:2 we read, “For behold, darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples; but the LORD will rise upon you, and His glory will appear over you.”

With the death of Christ, the darkness covering the earth serves as a metaphor for the judgment darkness covering the nations. However, three days hence the LORD will rise and His glory will appear and with His glory, the new creation is established.

On Good Friday it is good to keep in mind that before Christ dies for the Elect, Christ died for God.

Romans 3:25f

25 whom God set forth as a [h]propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Donald Macleod gets at all this in his “Christ Crucified: Understanding the Atonement — p 71”

“It was no part of the work of Christ to make God love us, The very fact of his being on earth at all was proof of the divine love. The business of the atonement, therefore, was to propitiate the God who already loves us: to lay the foundation for an advocacy directed towards him specifically as Father (1 John 2: 1). God unequivocally requires such propitiation, but in the last analysis God also provides the propitiation and God even becomes the propitiation. The whole cost of our redemption is borne by the triune God. In that sense, the atonement is a transaction entirely internal to the trinity. But by virtue of the incarnation, it is also external. It takes place not in heaven, but on Calvary; not in eternity, but on Good Friday.”

This is the theocentric view of the Cross. This is the God-intoxicated understanding of the Cross. Before we speak about our reconciliation, our redemption, the sacrifice for us, before we speak of ransom, expiation, propitiation for us, we have needs to speak of this theocentric idea that Christ died for God. Christ satisfies and exalts the Father’s justice before it satisfies our sin problem.

Now let us take this one step further. Why is it that we are redeemed, reconciled, and propitiated for? Is it simply in order that we might be delivered from our peril? No … a thousand times no. Our rescue isn’t about us. Our rescue is so that we can make God’s name as famous as it never ceases to be.

This was all limned out even in the Old Testament,

The Redemption of Israel from Egypt accomplished by God is God-centered. For, as Ezra will later say to the Lord, in saving Israel, “you made a name for yourself (Ezra 9:10)”

Thomas Schreiner
The Beauty of the King — p. 217

Why would we think it any different when that typological Redemption of Israel is fulfilled in Jesus Christ Redeeming His Church? That Redemption as accomplished by God was and remains God-centered. God’s intent in saving His Church is not primarily about our rescue, or our being delivered from sin, Satan, self, and hell. No, those are only proximate purposes of God’s redeeming His people. Ultimately God’s redeeming His Church, in the sweep of Redemption centering in Christ, remains to make a name for Himself. God Redeemed His people so that His name may become as famous as it never ceases to be.

Our Redemption is not primarily about us. Our Redemption did not find its teleological purpose and end on and in the Elect. God did not Redeem us primarily because He loves us, though indeed He does. God Redeemed us because He primarily loves Himself and His glory. God Redeemed us so that He might make a name for Himself through His Redeemed people.

We were not the center of God’s purposes in saving us. The center was and is the making known of the majesty and glory of God. The center was and is that the goodness and beauty of God might become legendary among those with eyes to see. The center was and remains that in our Redemption the Cosmos would be awe-struck that such a great God could take such a lowly rabble as the Redeemed and use them to conquer all opposition while making the glory of His name known.

Let’s be honest. The only ones breathing who can call Good Friday, “Good Friday” are the covenantal Reformed. Roman Catholics can’t say that. Wesleyans, Nazarenes, and the Arminians can’t say that. Pentecostals can’t say that. Reformed Baptist can’t say that. Even Lutherans can’t consistently talk about “Good Friday.”

And why is that?

Because Good Friday is only “Good” because “Jesus paid it all.” For all other expressions except the covenantal Reformed Jesus didn’t pay it all or if He did pay it all, it all depends at which point in their systematic theology they are teaching from. This is just a way of saying that their theology is contradictory. At one point some will teach that “Jesus paid it all” while at other points man likewise has to pay along with Jesus.

The semi-Pelagians and the Arminians can’t consistently talk about “Good Friday,” because they insist — even if not explicitly so — that they must add their good works in order for Good Friday to be really “Good.” I know this is true because once upon a time I studied their theology closely. I read their theologians. The grace found in Arminianism is the taking advantage by dead men of a grace proffered. Dead men don’t respond to offered grace. Dead men are dead. There is very little “Good Friday,” in Wesleyan schemes of “Good Friday.”

The Reformed Baptist can’t talk about “Good Friday,” because whatever it is that an adult can bring to be considered saved and so worthy of Baptism that an infant can’t bring to be Baptized is a work that makes Good Friday not really good.

Lutherans can’t talk about “Good Friday,” because in their insistence that Jesus died for every one we find the distinguishing difference between those who are saved and those who are not saved is a something that the saved did that the unsaved didn’t do whereby they are saved. You see in these schemes fallen man is the one who really makes his “Good Friday,” “Good.” Anyone who believes that Jesus died to pay the sins of every man and woman who has ever lived does not believe that “Good Friday” is really “Good.” Anyone who believes what Lutherans believe can’t say “Good Friday” with all the gusto that the covenantal Reformed can say when the covenantal Reformed say “Good Friday.”

Roman Catholics don’t believe that “Good Friday,” is really “Good.” Their system especially empties the goodness out of “Good Friday.” For Rome Jesus doesn’t really pay for sins. Rome calls that idea “a legal fiction.” Rome is a soul-eating machine that forever casts man back upon the search for his own goodness. In Rome, Jesus paid it all as long as the penitent continues to eat and drink Jesus in the Mass, as long as the penitent continues to go to confession, as long as the penitent does some time in purgatory, as long as the penitent prays to dead people and as long as the penitent brings adds their own performance to Jesus’ work. Roman Catholicism is Arminianism formalized. Roman Catholicism is the high octane version of Arminianism. No “Good Friday” allowed.

Good Friday is “Good” because I, who could never add anything contributory to my salvation, don’t need to worry about that because Jesus is all my goodness. Jesus Christ because of His work on the Cross did all the saving and all that there is left for me is to relish in the goodness of that first Good Friday.

None of this is to say that Wesleyans, or Reformed Baptists, or Lutherans are not saved. Praise God that God can save us despite our theology that is amiss from His express Word. However, we can and do say that such expressions of Christianity are really sub-Christianities not worthy of the name Christianity.

So… how Good is your Good Friday today?