Category: Uncategorized

5.) “All the elect of God were justified in Christ, their Head and Representative, when he rose from the dead, and therefore they believe: Christ engaged as a Surety for all his people from eternity, had their sins imputed to him, and for which he made himself responsible; in the fulness of time he made satisfaction for them by his sufferings and death, and at his resurrection was acquitted and discharged: now as he suffered and died, not as a private, but as a public person, so he rose again, and was justified as such, even as the representative of his people; hence when he rose, they rose with him; and when he was justified, they were justified in him; for he was “delivered for their offences, and was raised again for their justification”,#Ro 4:25 1Ti 3:16 and this is the sense and judgment of many sound and learned divines; as, besides our Sandfords {8} and Dr. Goodwins {9}, the learned Amesius {10}, Hoornbeck {11}, Witsius {12}, and others.”

Dr. John Gill
18th century Baptist Theologian

That which was eternal and imminent to the mind of God found its full instantiation in time and space with the completed cross work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ who was and is the surety of the elect from all eternity did in the fullness of time work out what was all decreed to happen in God’s eternal counsel. Note that Gill observes that the sins of the elect were imputed to Christ eternally and immanently in the mind of the Triune God. In the fullness of time the counsel and plan of God was incarnated so that what was set apart as accomplished in eternity was accomplished in time. The vindication of Jesus Christ as the righteous one as seen in the resurrection was the justification instantiation of God’s eternally justified people.

Note Gill’s appeal here to Romans 4:25 in this conversation about eternal Justification

Most bibles translate that passage

who (Christ) was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. (ESV)

But the NASB & the NKJV gives the literal translation and so offers

who (Christ) was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.

The debate is over the little Greek word dia which is a primary preposition denoting the channel of an act. Therefore it can be translated “for,” “by” “through,” “because of,” “on account of,” etc. Context will determine the meaning. Obviously there is debate in Romans 4:25 about how to exactly handle that preposition.

In what I am proposing, following Gill and others is that in Romans 4:25 “because of” is entirely accurate as a translation for the Greek “dia.” Christ was delivered up because of our offenses is clear enough. However, the idea that Christ was raised because of our Justification begins to point towards Justification from eternity. Christ was raised in the resurrection because the elect were justified from eternity in Christ. From eternity He was set apart to come accomplish the work for those justified from eternity. Jesus Christ was raised up because of their (already) Justification

So, reading the Peter (I Peter 1:18-19) and Paul as a whole we piece together the truth of Justification from eternity in the mind of God with the work of Jesus Christ where the truth of what the Father had determined for the elect from eternity was instantiatively  accomplished in the work of Jesus Christ.

Then we keep in mind that all reality as determined in the mind of God was as certainly true as when it was instantiated in time and space and we can begin to understand how it is that Scripture can speak of “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).

Slain from the foundation of the world? How So? Because in the mind of God it was ordained and as ordained it can be spoken of as a past event that lies yet in the future. The same is true of Justification. In the mind of God, we were Justified and because we were justified from eternity Christ was raised because of our objective Justification, and in space and time the Spirit then applies that ordained and accomplished justification to the consciousness of the Believer.

Hebrews 2:14 when read in light of this understanding underscores all this;

Hebrews 2:14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

In Christ, God’s elect one, Christ’s elect brothers and sisters were saved from the foundations of the earth.

Note here that the elect were considered children BEFORE they partook of flesh and blood. Being the God of all grace to His pre-incarnate elect children the elect Christ is incarnated that His elect own might be released from the devil and that way by a ordained and objectively accomplished Justification being applied to their consciousness.

It really is as simple as saying that upon the eternal decree to Justify the people of God (I Peter 1:2) it was as good as if all the mechanisms to that end had already happened. We were justified from eternity. Yes, the majestic and benevolent Lord Christ had to come to be raised because of that Justification (Romans 4:25) and the blessed and thrice honored Holy Spirit had to take from the Father’s ordination and the son’s accomplishment of Justification with His Cross work and apply it to the consciousness of the believer in space and time but all of that was a certitude upon the triune God deigning it to be so from eternity past. We were justified from all eternity, though in life we had to wait until the Spirit applied subjectively all that had been forever true in the mind of God.

Because we are time bound creatures we speak of being justified at a certain point in time in our own lives and there is a place for speaking of what we are calling “subjective justification,” but we need to lift our vision up and see the grandiose and magnificent character of the triune God who provided so great a justification. There it is … all before Him. So true that the Spirit can speak of the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. So true that even before we shared in Flesh and blood the Lord Christ had determined to share in flesh and blood to justify his children. So true that while we were still enemies in our dispositions Christ died for us.

What? Certainly it could never be the case that we might actually think that justification only happens upon our decision as if by our decision we make it all come to pass?

Abraham Kuyper put it this way,

“The sinner’s justification need not wait until he is converted, nor until he has become conscious, nor even until he is born. This could not be so if justification depended upon something within him. Then he could not be justified before he existed and had done something. But if justification is not bound to anything in him, then this whole limitation must disappear, and the Lord our God be sovereignly free to render this justification at any moment that He pleases. Hence the Sacred Scripture reveals justification as an eternal act of God, i.e., an act which is not limited by any moment in the human existence. It is for this reason that the child of God, seeking to penetrate into that glorious and delightful reality of his justification, does not feel himself limited to the moment of his conversion but feels that this blessedness flows to him from the eternal depths of the hidden life of God.

It should therefore openly be confessed, and without any abbreviation, that justification does not occur when we become conscious of it, but that, on the contrary, our justification was decided from eternity in the holy judgment-seat of our God.”

Habbakuk 2:4 literally teaches eternal Justification when it says “the just (status/esse) shall live by his faith (knowledge of status/esse).”

I am starting another series with this post. Much of this series will be drawn from previous posts I’ve made on Radical Two Kingdom theology (R2Kt). However, some of the posts will be new. The goal here is to cobble together a book for the purpose of critiquing R2K theology and the R2K movement as drawn from my work on R2K over the years. This needs to be done because R2K is not going to go away. Because of the disintegration of the West and a muscular Christian World and Life view R2K will remain a competing theology as to what constitutes Christianity. As it is, I would say that if R2K or some derivative thereof if not already the majority report in most “Reformed” pulpits across the nation it is a close second.

In this entry we will begin with a definition of R2Kt.

R2Kt is that expression of Christianity that replaces the totalistic expression of Reformed Christianity as being God’s explicit Word for all of life with an expression of Reformed Christianity wherein God’s explicit Word governs only the Church realm (realm of grace). The common realm (or natural realm) is to be ruled derivatively by God’s “left hand.” What this means is that for the common realm (the realm wherein all of life is lived save for our Church lives and our personal and individual ethics) the Christian man as well as the non-Christian man is dependent upon Natural Law to answer the question, “How shall we then live.”

Jesuit trained David Van Drunen defines Natural Law as;

“The moral order inscribed in the world and especially in human nature, an order that is known to all people through their natural faculties (especially reason and/or conscience) even apart from supernatural divine revelation that binds morally the whole human race.”

This Natural law that all men are to be governed by in the common realm is thus accessible to all men and is necessary and sufficient unto ordering the common realm.

The problem here is several-fold and immediately obvious. First, R2K’s problem is that it does not take into account the noetic affects of the fall upon the children of Adam who have refused Christ. R2K treats fallen man as if he is not fallen in the common realm and so still retains the ability to interpret aright, as acting autonomously, with respect to living in God’s common realm. R2K does not take into account the Scripture’s teaching that fallen man is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18) of what he knows that he knows from Natural law. Man outside of Christ will never be able to live in harmony in any social order with Man in Christ as men outside of Christ become increasingly consistent with their God-hating presuppositions.

At the point of their reliance on fallen man reading natural law so as to govern the common realm R2K advocates actually act in contradiction to their own confession (Canon’s of Dort) when it teaches of ;

that he (fallen man) is incapable of using it (God’s natural light) aright even in things natural and civil. Nay, further, this light, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted and holds it in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God (Canon’s of Dort III & IV Head, Article 4).

At this point R2K becomes quite non-Reformed and even Arminian in its low estimation of the noetic effects of sin on man dead in his sin and trespasses. This observation alone goes a long way towards dismissing R2K as a serious project to be embraced by Reformed Christians.

Understand here the problem is not that natural law does not exist as God making Himself known in all creation. All Reformed admit the reality of natural law. The problem is that natural man is doing everything in his power to escape God’s testimony to and of Himself in natural law. The Belgic Confession of faith, Article 14 puts it this way;

(Fallen man has) “become wicked, perverse, and corrupt in all his ways, (and) he hath lost all his excellent gifts which he had received from God (Rom. 3:10) and only retained a few remains thereof, (Acts 14:16-17; 17:27) which, however, are sufficient to leave man without excuse; (Romans 1:20,21; Acts 17:27) for all the light which is in us is changed into darkness,12 as the Scriptures teach us, saying: The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth13 it not; where St. John calleth men darkness.”

Belgic Confession of Faith 
Article XIV

Ontologically fallen man created in the image of God remains the fingerprint of God but by usage of his epistemological apparatus fallen man does everything he can to escape what he can’t help knowing due to his ontological status as God’s image bearer. This explains why natural law can never be used to form a consensus between regenerated man and fallen man as a consensus builder for social order. This is especially the case as fallen man becomes increasingly consistent with his Christ hating presuppositions as combined with the diminishing of the effects of a Christian shaped and influenced culture pressed upon fallen man.

The second problem with leaning on Natural Law as the norm that norms all norms in the common realm for fallen and regenerated men alike in the “knowing” endeavor is that R2K does not take into account at this point that Natural Law is never read by fallen and autonomous man apart from his presuppositions. This is really an odd fault for the R2K boys since many of them claim to be presupposititionalists and the inheritors of all things Van Til. R2K insists that autonomous man, starting from himself, can, quite apart from any presuppositions read aright and implement aright God’s natural law. Again, we butt into the reality that fallen man has an axe to grind against knowing and admitting what he can’t help but knowing.

Unregenerate man is not reading natural law apart from a Christ-hating bias. As such unregenerate man, especially as he becomes increasingly consistent with his Christ-hating epistemological project, will never be able to form a successful social order with Christ-submitting men by virtue of them both sharing a rational epistemological basis for that shared social order. This is the death knell for the R2K project which believes that in the common realm the Hindu, the Jew, the Muslim, the Baptist, the Confucian, the Satanist can all come together and live in social order harmony because they all have access to natural law and will all use natural law to live in harmony and understanding. The absurdity of it makes one wonder how this project could ever get off the ground.

Just to be clear let us say this directly as possible. The unregenerate reads natural law presupposing his own centrality and own authority with himself as the center of all reality. The unregenerate man does so with ever increasing consistency over the course of time. The regenerate man, on the other hand, reads natural law presupposing the centrality of God and God’s authority as the center of all reality. When the unregenerate man reads natural law aright he is always inconsistent with his self-avowed beginning point. When the regenerate man reads natural law wrongly he is always inconsistent with his self-avowed beginning point. When fallen man reads natural law he reads it as creative. When regenerate man reads natural law he reads it as given.

At this point the R2K boys will protest that there have been many social orders that have appealed to natural law as their epistemic base. I do not deny this. However, what the R2K lads miss here is that the natural law that was being appealed to in Geneva, or in Wittenberg, or even in Rome in its better days was a natural law set in the context of cultures that were largely already Christian. That is to say that where natural law has succeeded apart from a tyrant’s force it has succeeded where the social order was suffused already with Biblical Christianity. Europeans through the centuries could appeal to natural law as social order glue precisely because they together believed in a natural law as read through the lenses of Christianity. As social orders become populated with fallen peoples with those who do not presuppose the God of the Bible there is no way that natural law can or will work.

The third problem of natural law is that there is no such thing as brute facts. All facts are interpreted facts. Natural law posits that all men receive the same brute facts and interprets those facts as they naturally are. However, there is no way that, for example, that a polygynist, a monogamist, and an advocate for sodomite marriage are going to agree on what natural law teaches on marriage. If natural law should find a consensus on anything one would think that the consensus that it could find would be on the alleged brute fact of marriage. However, we see that natural law can not even provide consensus here. All facts are interpreted facts. All facts come to us in terms of some macro philosophy of fact. R2K can write all the tomes they like but the current disintegration of the West along the lines of various interpretations of natural law on something as simple as marriage provides the proof that R2K can at best only provide a lowest common denominator  social order cohesion.

The fourth problem with R2K’s natural law insistence that it alone can provide a social order glue is the multitudinous readings of natural law. Which natural law gives the best explanation of natural law? This is just to observe that for every philosophical system extant there will be a corresponding competing natural law. Do the R2K boys really believe that the natural law of Deism, Pantheism, Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Darwinism, Marxism, Nihilism, Existentialism, Calvinism, are each and all going to coincide for each and all? Do the R2K boys really believe that a social order populated by the adherents of those competing worldviews are all going to read a shared natural law in the same manner?

So, we see with this entry that R2K has a serious epistemological problem. It has not taken seriously either the impact of the fall in its totality on unregenerate man  nor specifically has it taken seriously how the fall has twisted the epistemology of fallen man so badly that there is no way that fallen man, as he becomes increasingly consistent with his epistemological rebellion, will be able to sustain a shared social order regularity with the regenerate.

These last few weeks we have considered the various strands running through the biblical doctrine of the Atonement. In the course we have considered in just a wee bit of detail

1.) Reconciliation
2.) Redemption
3.) Ransom
4.) Propitiation
5.) Expiation
6.) Justification
7.) Sacrifice
8.) Blood
9.) Substitution
10.) Satisfaction

So we understand when we speak about the Atonement we are talking about a grand and glorious doctrine that encompasses many mighty themes.

The Ohio, Missouri, and Colorado rivers flow into the Mississippi River. As do the Crow Wing River, Gull Lake River, Rum River, St. Croix River, Blue Earth River, Root River, Minnesota River, Red Cedar River, Chippewa River, Black River, Kickapoo River, Wisconsin River, Turkey River, Upper Iowa River, Maquoketa River, Wapsipinicon River, Cedar River, Iowa River, Skunk River.

And that is only in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.

The Atonement similarly has all the doctrines that we mentioned emptying into it to make it the mighty doctrinal river that it is.

We have looked at the various tributaries. This morning we spend some time considering the whole glorious river.

Inevitably this means that some of this will sound familiar because when one speaks about the whole having considered the parts there is going to be repetition.

It is interesting that the English word “atonement” does not correspond etymologically with any particular Hebrew or Greek word. Therefore no mere word study can determine the biblical teaching of the atonement. This is just to say that by looking at one word in the Hebrew or Greek is not going to give you the total idea of the Atonement. Even the Greek and the Hebrew words here do not correspond to one another exactly.

As we look at the total testimony of Scripture we can get some beginning definitions

“Atonement means ‘a making at one’ and points to a process of bringing those who are estranged into a unity… its use in theology is to denote the work of Christ in dealing with the problem posed by the sin of man, and in bringing sinners into right relation w/ God.” (Leon Morris)

“Atonement refers to the event of the saving death of Christ in its whole range of results.” (Grounds)

We see the genesis of the doctrine as early as Genesis 3 where God covers the sinful Adam and Eve with coverings made of skin

One aspect of Atonement that we see immediately in Genesis is that of covering.

Gen. 3:21 Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.

The Hebrew words Kaphar and Kipper are not used here but the idea of covering which meaning those words give us for atonement are clearly present in the idea of the phrase “clothed them.”

Here we see our first parents must have immediately upon the fall been taught that w/o the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. We see here also the beginning of the idea that God will accept sacrifice wherein one creature stands in for another.

Matthew Henry has to say here;

The beasts, from whose skins they were clothed, it is supposed were slain, not for man’s food, but for sacrifice, to typify Christ, the great Sacrifice. Adam and Eve made for themselves aprons of fig-leaves, a covering too narrow for them to wrap themselves in, Isa 28:20. Such are all the rags of our own righteousness. But God made them coats of skin, large, strong, durable, and fit for them: such is the righteousness of Christ; therefore put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.

This idea of covering found in the Hebrew words Kaphar and Kipper are used to describe the effect of the sacrifices at the consecration of the high priest and the altar and the annual sacrifices especially on the day of Atonement.

What we see in the garden in seed form we later learn in revelation becomes explicit with the sacrificial system.

Exodus 30:10 And Aaron shall make atonement (kipper) upon its horns once a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonement; once a year he shall make atonement upon it throughout your generations. It is most holy to the Lord.”

Lev. 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.’

Here we find in this sacrificial system more than just a covering but also propitiation (turning away of wrath), reconciliation, to atone for.”

And it was the sacrificial system that reminded the Hebrews that one was coming who could take away the sins that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away. One was coming who would provide a once for all atonement.

As we come to the NT we find this idea of atonement covering the pages. These passages that were read this morning are but two examples.

Romans 3:24 being justified [b]freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a [c]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.

Many of your translations offer “sacrifice of atonement” where we find the word “propitiation.”

We see in this passage the heart of the meaning of atonement. There is a restoring of a broken relationship that up until the atonement is characterized by hostility of each party towards the other.

In this Romans passage we see many of the ideas that we have looked in the mighty word “atonement.” We see here propitiation, substitution, penalty, blood, reconciliation, redemption, etc.

Note in the Romans passage that God is both Just and Justifier. God is just because the penalty that sin always required is finally met in Christ. God is justifier because with the penalty being met nothing can bar the way from God visiting the publication of His justification upon the elect. This bespeaks of the necessity of Christ being set forth as an offering for sins.

Sit back now and be washed with just some of the other passages that contain this great theme of atonement. Listen for the themes we have covered these past few weeks and remember that they all are contained in the idea of atonement;

I Peter 1:18 knowing that you were not redeemed with [g]corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

Rev. 1:5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who [b]loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,

As we consider the Atonement we are reminded again that it is God who provided the Atonement. God is the original and efficacious cause of the Atonement.It was God who gave the animal skins as covering to Adam and Eve. It was God who gave the sacrificial system to picture Christ. It was God who provided the animals used on the day of atonement. It was God who sent His only begotten son out of eternal love for His people.

We must keep before us that atonement finds its ultimate explanation in an unfathomable urge in God towards elect sinners wandering out in the far country. God, in the atonement, was eternally pleased for reasons known only to Himself, to set His love upon those who had heretofore had only violated His great love.

Because God is gracious he provides atonement and because God is just He requires atonement.

In the atonement we see the truth that God’s love and justice kiss. Out of Love for Himself and for His people God provides Christ so that His eternal justice can have its due. No love, no justice. No justice, no love.

Away then with your sloppy luv gods who have no justice. Away with your statements that “my loving god wouldn’t do that.” Away with your refusal of hell and damnation because God is a God of luv. You refusal of the reality of Hell is a refusal of the atonement. It is a statement that God didn’t really need to demonstrate His love in the cross work of Jesus Christ because your lousy god wouldn’t do that. The love of that god is the love of a harlot.

Give me the God of the Bible. Give me the God who provides an atonement wherein both His love and His Justice are put on grand display in the pivotal point of all human history. Give me the God of the Bible who quenches His own justice in his own love and who does not compromise His own justice by surrendering His deity to squishy and ugly notions of love.

Not only did God provide the Atonement but we also note of the atonement that it is objective

We have noted this through this series but since we live in a church age that is awash in the subjective we note it again. The atonement makes its primary impression on the person to whom it is made. It is made to the Father… the atonement serves to propitiate and reconcile the Father.

Romans 3 teaches that also. Note in that passage that it is God who displayed Jesus publicly as a propitiation in His blood. In that we see a definite god-ward reference in the atonement.

This objective character of the Atonement distinguishes the biblical concept of the Atonement from all other theories. We have not gone into competing theories of the Atonement that have walked in the Church over the centuries but if we were to do that we would see that all other theories explain an atonement that is primarily subjective … that is primarly manward in its effect. To own such an atonement moves us in the direction of humanism, where man is the center of our theology. God’s problem is not an angry man. Man’s problem is an angry God. Only an Atonement that is primarily objective can deal with that problem.

This is one reason why the Reformed Church needs to continue to exist. We are one of the very few who have a doctrine where the atonement is objective and if you do not have an objective atonement you are without God and without hope. Unless atonement is God-ward in its primary effect you remain lost in your sins. Historically, the Reformed Church has been perhaps not the only but certainly one of the few places where you can find that. The world thus needs the Reformed church because it needs the biblical doctrine of the atonement.

Yet, as we have said once we talk about that God the effect of the atonement is that God is propitiated and reconciled to the sinner we can then gladly speak of the sinner being reconciled to God.

“For if while we were still enemies, we were reconciled to God, through the death of His Son.” (Romans 5:10)

II Cor. 5:19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not [a]imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.

So we see that there is both an objective and subjective movement of the Atonement.

Well, there is more to be said here but we will end with a quote from one of the greatest minds ever produced by America

“This issue is cardinal. As the Churches of all ages has understood the Scriptures, the whole plan of gospel redemption rests upon this substitution of Christ as its corner-stone. He who overthrows the corner-stone overthrows the building. The system which he rears without this foundation may be named Christianity by him, but it will be another building, his own handiwork, not that of God — another gospel.”

R. L. Dabney