Good Friday 2024 — The Cross & Reconciliation

I Cor. 5:17.) if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here 18.) All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

Note 1st that verticality of this passage

“All this is from God”

The Spirit inspired Paul has been writing about the new creation… the full salvation in Christ and He plainly says that “All this is from God.”

This reminds us that that the all Paul speaks of includes the provision of Christ to go to the Cross to bear our sins. Christ going to the Cross was part of the “All this is from God.” The triune God is the alpha and the omega of our Christian faith.

This needs to be said repeatedly in our current climate. It needs to be said again to those who grew up with evangelism that began with “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” That statement might be true but it misses the God-centeredness of the Cross and misses that “All this is from God.”

The point here is that “All of this” that St. Paul speaks of teaches us that the all this is all about God before it is at all about us. The “All of this from God” not man centered. The “All of this from God,” is God centered.

Our Christianity is theocentric — God centered and not man-centered.

Even when Christ is hanging on the Cross as the center of Paul’s “All of this is from God,” we understand that it is not primarily about us. The cross wherein reconciliation is effected is ultimately about God.

The main thrust of this point is that the Cross, where reconciliation takes place, is not ultimately about us. In point of fact the Cross of Jesus Christ is only proximately about us. Before we can say anything true about the Cross in relation to us, we must first speak about the Cross and its meaning in relation to God.

At this point we are seeking to talk about what Theologian C. E. B. Cranfield in his commentary on Romans talked about as “the innermost meaning of the cross” (The Epistle to the Romans, 213).

And frankly, in all my reading and study one doesn’t stumble across very often this God-centered understanding of the Cross. In all the sermons I’ve listened to it is only been occasional the the case that the sermon was dealing with the God-centered understanding of the Cross.

I want to be clear I’m not denying that the Cross has effects, consequences, and glorious implications for man. However, I am convinced that before we talk about the secondary meaning of the Cross we should talk about the primary meaning of the Cross.

Steve Camp captured something of what I am going to be driving at this morning when we talk about what it means to think theocentrically about the cross.

Camp wrote these lyrics,

Christ died for God and God was satisfied with Christ
Pure, unblemished sacrifice
Oh, Son of Grace

Christ died for God and God has made Him Lord of all
For He drank the bitter gall
The cup of wrath

Christ Died For God
Steve Camp

There it is. The theocentric meaning of the Cross.

Christ died for God.

The deep inside meaning. The Ultimate meaning. The theology from above. The primary meaning. The theocentric meaning.

How many times have you heard this from pulpits? From your own reading? I was in the ministry for almost a decade before I stumbled across it in Jonathan Edwards and before him for John Owen.

Hear Owen for example in a catechism he used to teach.

Q. In what does the exercise of his priestly office for us chiefly consist?

A. In offering up himself an acceptable sacrifice on the cross, so satisfying the justice of God for our sins, removing his curse from our persons, and bringing us unto him. — Chapter 13.

John Owen

Note that before Owen speaks about the curse being removed from our persons he notes that Christ satisfied the justice of God for our sins. There it is. Christ died for God. Theocentric thinking on the Cross.

Well, where did they get this idea that Christ died for God? They saw it in Scripture.

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a 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.

There it is. “The Father sets forth the Son as a propitiation by His Blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness.”

Christ died for God.

The Old Testament anticipates Romans when in Isaiah we read,

“But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.”

Isaiah 53:10

There it is. The theocentrism of the Cross. The Lord is pleased to crush the Son.

There is a vertical dimension of the Cross that must be spoken of before we speak of the horizontal dimension. Christ dies for God before Christ dies for man.

Note secondly the reconciliation

When we look at the idea of reconciliation we first notice that the text reinforces what we just noted … it is God who reconciled us to Himself. God did all the doing.

This kind of language from the Apostle explains why the Reformed have always been so put out with Arminianism (such as you find targeted in the Canons of Dordt) and with Roman Catholicism which the Reformation defined itself against.

It is God who reconciled us to Himself. No contributions on or part. Dead men can’t contribute anything to coming back to life.

This is a significant reason why we are Reformed. We believe in God’s sovereignty in all things w/o exception and that includes salvation. We affirm with tenacity and without equivocation that God alone reconciled us to Himself.

When we consider reconciliation we understand that the premise here is that there are two parties who are at enmity with one another. Reconciliation is the work by which that alienation between the two parties is put to an end.

Of course the two parties at war w/ one another are God and fallen man. And the passage teaches that it was only as through Christ the reconciliation was effected. And this reconciliation was effected by Christ on the Cross. Indeed this is why we call this day Good Friday. Good Friday is good because a reconciliation has been accomplished that otherwise could have never been accomplished.

Christ dying on the Cross is our reconciliation and the reason that we have an interest in gathering to worship on Good Friday. If not for Christ being our reconciliation on the cross the last place we would be on a Friday evening is a Church.

So, God is the author of our reconciliation but He elected to provide that reconciliation only through Christ. This explains why Biblical Christians insist on the absolute necessity of a known Christ in order to have peace with God. There is no concourse with God apart from the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ is the one who extinguished the necessary and just opposition of God towards fallen man that was an immovable force set against us, while at the same time removing our opposition to God. That opposition and hatred of God is sin that is paid for, for God’s people, in Christ’s death on the Cross.

You see then the reconciliation provided by Christ on the Cross was not only a reconciling of the elect’s sinful hatred against God but it is also a reconciling of God’s just wrath against man. So on the Cross there is a two-fold movement of Reconciliation that is occurring in Christ.

The plain meaning, thus, is that through Jesus Christ on the Cross, God established the basis of agreement between men and God as estranged, removed the barrier to the sinner’s approach to Himself, and accepted the work of propitiation in Christ.

Note thirdly here that the reconciliation was costly

God did not let bygones be bygones. The sin of man required restitution to God’s Holiness. God could not remain just and holy and merely be reconciled. No, reconciliation had to be on the basis of the satisfaction of man’s debt against God.

So, yes reconciliation was accomplished in and through Christ but that reconciliation was a work of restitution satisfying the father’s just claim against sinful man.

This reminds us of the necessary connection between reconciliation and restitution.

And all of this is from God

Out of love the Father sends the Son forth to take upon Himself the Father’s just penalty for sin so that reconciliation can be accomplished. Out of eternal love the Son defends the honor of the Father’s promise to give sin it’s full recompense. Christ died for God. Died for His glory. Died to give Him all honor. Died that the Father might be just and justifier of those who have faith in Jesus. Died that reconciliation would have its proper foundation found in a restitution that satisfied the loving Father.

God Himself — whose justice required the price of propitiation in order to be reconciled. God Himself who rendered up the price of the just penalty required by God. We see thus that it is God who justly required the penalty, and God who paid the penalty. God who required Justice and God whose Justice when it fell, fell as mercy for us.

Christ died for God.

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.”

May God grant us His grace on this Good Friday to once again be lost in wonder love and praise for the great gift of the Christ on the Cross providing a reconciliation that can never be revoked.

 

Poking Holes In Andrew Klavan’s “Argument”

“The Holocaust was the crucifixion compulsively reenacted on a grand scale: an attempt to kill God’s people in order to extinguish the Light of the World that shows us where we are(1). Sigmund Freud called this the ‘return of the repressed,’ a concept he discusses, not so oddly enough, in his essay, ‘The Uncanny(2).’ According to this idea, we bury the trauma and guilt of our past — in this case the murder of God — and then we keep reenacting that trauma helplessly, in this case through the murder of God’s people (3). The things we face come back and back to us, shaping our actions, getting bigger and bigger, until finally we either face the cause of them or they destroy us.(4)”

Andrew Klavan
In leaked book extracts arguing that the Holocaust was a reenactment of the Crucifixion and that it justifies Talmudist claims to be a chosen race. 

Errant categories

(1.) We, as Christians, have exactly zero reasons to believe that Talmudists are the light of the world. Indeed, Christians are required to believe that is not the  case. Scripture clearly has Jesus Christ saying “I am the light of the world.”

(3.) Who is Klavan’s “we” who are burying the guilt of our past? St. Peter, in Scripture says that the “we” that Klavan references are the one’s “who by the hands of wicked men put Him (Jesus) to death by nailing Him to the cross..” So, in order for Klavan to be accurate in his “we” above in sentence 3, he would have to think that it is the Talmudists who killed themselves in the Holocaust in order to bury their guilt for killing their Messiah. That is the only way the sentence could make sense. Of course Klavan doesn’t mean that but instead by using the “we” in the way he does he obfuscates historical reality.

(3.) We must ask Mr. Klavan, who was it, per scripture, that “murdered God.” I’ll give some hints… 1 Thessalonians 2:15, Acts 2:23, Acts 7:52.We should note here that God being God He can not be murdered. Teasing that out would take us far afield from critiquing this statement by Klavan.

(3.) The Talmudists are not God’s people any more or any less than Inuits, Peruvians, Japanese, or Mongolians are God’s people. The only people that God has had since Pentecost is the Church as it exists in nation by nation. The idea that Talmudists remain God’s people even though they “crucified the Lord of glory,” is a Dispensational idea birthed at the end of the 19th century and then popularized in the 20th century by C. I. Scofield’s bible notes. It is not a position that was ever advanced in Church history until that time. Of course Talmudists may become God’s people if they repent and trust Jesus Christ alone as their Messiah, and so cease being Talmudists.

(3.) If we want to see the murder of God’s people in History we’d have to look at the Holodomor by the Jewish Bolsheviks against the Christian Ukrainians, or the slaughter of the Christian Armenians by the Turks at the beginning of the 20th century or perhaps even the slaughter of the Christians at Vendee during the French Revolution or the slaughter of the Huguenots in the 16th century. Here we see genuine examples of the attempt to murder God’s people, and that because they belong to God’s Church.

The Salvific Malfeasance of Egalitarianism

“Scripture presumes and defends the natural order of things. If we twist nature we’ll twist Scripture too. It’s also Satan’s major point of attack against the church today. That alone should make it (Egalitarianism) a major focus.”

Rev. Michael Spangler

Is the combat against Egalitarianism a matter of battling against a doctrine that affects salvation? Is the battle against Egalitarianism a battle waged in favor of a doctrine of the first order?

Egalitarianism is Christological heresy since if there is no distinctions among peoples as peoples the necessity for Christ to be born of the line of David, of the tribe of Judah is implicitly denied. Egalitarianism would have to say it didn’t matter what people Jesus belonged.

Egalitarianism is theological heresy because in the claim that all men are the same is the eventual inescapable outcome that man and God are likewise the same.

Egalitarianism is anthropological heresy since it denies the distinctions that God Himself makes between men and women and as between the nations.

Egalitarianism is soteriological heresy since implicit in the claim that all men are equal is the parallel claim that all men can be equally saved by other gods equal to Christ. Show me a consistent egalitarian and I’ll show you a universalist.

Allow me to posit that an Egalitarian who refuses to repent of his Egalitarianism can no more be saved than an Arian who refuses to repent of his Arianism, or can no more be saved than someone who refuse to repent of his insistence that we are not saved by Christ alone. Opposition to Egalitarianism is opposition to a teaching that, if allowed in the Church, would abominate the Church.

The Problems Of R2K — Part I

Premise of Radical Two Kingdom “theology.”

1.) The idea of God’s Kingdom is exactly synonymous with the Church so that when once says “Kingdom” one must hear “church” and when one hears “Church” one must hear “Kingdom.”

What then of the rest of the creational reality? Well, all that is not Kingdom/Church  is a separate and distinct non-redemptive common Kingdom that is isolated from the the redemptive realm where the Kingdom/Church is located and where one finds the happenings of redemption.

From this premise a dualism follows in the Christian’s approach to reality. R2K advocate D. G. Hart has labeled this “the Hyphenated life,” which is a gussied up version of “a life lived as dualism.”  Our epistemological foundation in the redemptive realm is scripture while our epistemological foundation along with all other men, regardless of their claiming or not claiming Christ, in the common realm is Natural law. The two Kingdoms have two different laws and never the twain shall meet. Those in the hyphenated (Dualistic) life are split personalities being governed differently in each distinct realm.

R2K seeks to argue for R2K by harmonizing the the pre-fall cultural mandate given by God to Adam to govern creation and subdue it with a innovative read of the post-fall Noahic covenant where the assertion is maintained that after the flood the same cultural mandate was given again to Noah as a representative of the whole human race. Post-fall Noah, unlike pre-fall Adam is a covenant head of the whole fallen human race who together work to operate jointly in this  common grace Noahic covenant that is absent of any redemptive particulars. Those redemptive particulars are to be found only in the Abrahamic covenant which is markedly and dualistically distinct from the Noahic covenant.

The covenant of grace, distinct as it is from the common grace Noahic covenant, is the Kingdom/Church redemptive covenant and finds its ultimate fulfillment (unlike the Noahic covenant) in Jesus Christ. Note here that we have two covenants (common and particular) that are operating on parallel and never intersecting tracks with one another. This accounts for the dualism that is characteristic of R2K.

Whereas all mankind (including believers) belong to the Noahic covenant, only Christians belong to the redemptive covenant that is characterized by R2K as “Church/Kingdom.” There in the redemptive covenant God’s plans are worked out for His  new creation. In the R2K common realm God’s has no plans except for destruction at the end of the age.

So, in the R2K paradigm Christ is both the mediator of the new covenant (redemptive realm) and He is the Mediator of the creational realm (common realm). However, these two realms never touch in the Christian’s life. When the Christian operates in the redemptive realm then he must operate as a Christian. When the Christians operates in the common realm he must operate on the same eschatological and teleological basis as all other men regardless of their religion. This explains why in the R2K world there can be no such thing as Christian culture, Christian education, Christian Law, Christian families, or Christian Nations. For R2K all of these realities (culture, education, law, family, nations, etc.) belong to the common Kingdom and by definition therefore can not be Christian since that realm is not religiously conditioned but is conditioned by the common realm natural law accessible to the conscience of all men.

R2K is so consistent on this matter that they note that the common realm Kingdom will completely be consumed by fire (II Pt. 3:1-13). This means that, contrary to what we read in Revelation 21

24 And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.

that per R2K it is only individuals who are redeemed and nothing of what they cultural built to the glory of God.

So, what we see here, and what I am at pains to point out, is the Radical Two Kingdom’s radical dualism, or what D. G. Hart likes to style as “the hyphenated life.” With this radical dualism we are back to the Platonic upper realm and lower realm. For R2K the Upper realm is grace and the lower realm is nature, and never the two shall meet.  All men alike, believer and unbeliever, together function in the common realm, ruled as they all are in that realm by Thomistic Natural law theory. All of this realm is going to burn and so as Christians while we are to be nice Christians we realize that nothing that we do in building up this common realm for Christ’s glory will last because it can only always be common.

Because the common realm is common special revelation found in Scripture need not apply in this realm. One implication of this is that God’s Law-Word is not to be applied in the common realm. R2K advocates have even gone on record as saying that Magistrates have no responsibility to enforce the first table of God’s law. More and more the second table seems negotiable for the R2K advocates. The appeal magistrates are to make in the common realm is to Natural law and not to special revelation. In the R2K paradigm Christ only rules through His word and spirit in the redemptive realm. Of course, all this dualism can not help but create a schizophrenic Christian that is only resolved on the last day when our existence in the common realm is deleted because the common realm has been torched.

Dr. Robert Letham has been helpful here;

“The two-kingdoms idea has the merit of pointing to two radically different eternal destinies. It also highlights the reality that, until Christ returns, the church and its members are pilgrims and strangers in a world that has been deeply affected by sin and rebellion against God. However, it is in contrast to Herman Bavinck, who held that Christians of all people are, in another sense, at home in the world, since it was created and is directed by the triune God, with Christ its Mediator. Moreover, as Beach remarks, the two-kingdoms view splits the Christian believer into a dualism: under Christ’s authority in the kingdom of God but neutral in the common kingdom. It appears to undermine the Bible as the supreme authority in all matters of faith and practice.”

The unbiblical and non-Christian dualism that R2K posits is inconsistent with God’s record. God’s Word teaches us that Christ is Head over all things for the Church (Eph. 1:20-23). R2K mutes the explicit mediatorial kingship of Jesus Christ over all creation and in its place places an explicit mediatorial kingship of a natural law that is only as good as the beginning presuppositional lenses through which that natural law is read as by fallen men.  What is surrendered in order to embrace R2K is the cosmic kingship of Jesus Christ over all Kings (Psalm 2, 110) and all authorities, reducing the offices of Jesus Christ to His Great High Priestly office and our great Prophet. R2K strips the totalistic Kingship of Jesus Christ preferring a Gnostic King Jesus. R2K takes from our theology munus triplex and gives us munus duplex instead.

So, we see that R2K has a anthropological problem inasmuch as it ascribes to fallen man, who suffers from original sin and total depravity, the ability apart from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, to read aright general revelation via the usage of Natural law. This is a denial that the carnal mind is at enmity with God (Romans 8:7) and a denial of basic Reformed anthropology. However, R2K also has a Christological problem as we have seen. Christ has effectively been stripped of His Kingly office except as existing in a very Gnostic fashion. This is not all though. The Christology of R2K is also defective in as much as Christ is divided. We could and should salute the idea that Christ is the one King, ruling by one law, over distinguished jurisdictions (family, church, civil-social, etc.) but we can never salute the idea that R2K gives us offering a Christ as the one King ruling over dualistic and divorced jurisdictions that have no relation to one another. Dualism is not Biblical and has long been the bugbear of the non-orthodox. Let the reader consider that Scripture teaches a continually expanding subjugation of Christ’s enemies (Mt. 13:31-38) so that the very last enemy that is abolished is abolished at His coming (I Cor. 15:20-26).

Next, we have to face the fact that R2K breaks down on its claims that the common realm is common. Do the Mullah’s of Iran agree that the R2K common realm is common? Does the Talmudist read natural law the same way as J. V. Fesko, or T. David Gordon and other R2K-philes. Do the trannies of Drag Queen story hour read natural law in the common realm the way that R. Scott Clark insists that it has to be read? In brief are the shock-troops of Lucifer in agreement that the common realm is common? This doctrine of a common realm seems to give up the idea that the church is to be about the business of destroying arguments, leading to every thought being taken captive to Christ (II Cor. 10:106). For R2K the church should be about the business of finding common ground in the common realm with those who share the common ground of hating Christ and His legislative word. Where is the “all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth,” in all this? Where is “the gates of hell shall not prevail” in R2K theology? Why this theology of dualism as opposed to a theology of the one and the many where Christ is the one ruler over many distinct realms?

Greg Bahnsen Answers J. Ligon Duncan From the Grave

“If you sincerely try to stand against the slide into the cesspool of wickedness in our state and our culture by looking for a consistent biblical position from which you might witness against the disgrace all around us as many of us have found you’ll lose your job within the seminary community, you’ll lose your standing in the church establishment you’ll virtually become unemployable even if you’re orthodox you’ll become ostracized you’ll be called dangerous. What’s  wrong with us  that theonomists are called dangerous when we have to lock our windows at night? It’s crazy isn’t it? How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn’t see?

Of all the wicked heresies and threatening movements facing the church in our day when Westminster Seminary finally organized their faculty to write something in unison, they gave their determined political efforts not to fight socialism, not to fight homosexuality, not abortion, not crime and mayhem in our society, not subjectivism in theology, not dispensationalism, not cultural relativism, not licentiousness, not defection from the New Testament, not defection from the Westminster Confession of Faith all of which are out there and they could give their legitimate efforts to. Boy, the thing they had to write about was Theonomy. How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn’t see? We are living in the cesspool of relativism and the church doesn’t have an answer. So I praise God, not for my work, I think it’s the grace of god that allows me to have this ministry, but I praise God that the truth that the early church knew and that is found in the Bible is available to us and there are people like you who are willing to say we’ll pay the price, it’s worth it.”

The Bahnsen Institute
Taken from “Law and Disgrace”

Fewer and fewer Christians are willing to pay the price.

Will you?