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Law vs. Gospel

8/21/2017

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2 Cor. 3 gives a most glorious comparison, by way of contrast, between the law and the Gospel. The law is the Old Testament, a covenant of works. It makes all blessings conditioned on man (Ex. 24:7-8; Deut. 6:25; Rom. 8:3-4; 10:4; Gal. 3:10-12; 2 Cor. 5:21). But the Gospel is the New Testament, a covenant of grace (Heb. 13:20; Matt. 26:28). The Gospel makes all conditions dependent on one Man. That Man is the Head of the covenant. He is our great God and Mediator, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the God-Man (Heb. 9:14-15; Rom. 10:6-7; John 3:13-15; 1 Tim. 2:5; 1 Tim. 3:16).

The giving of the law was glorious. Moses’ face shone when he came down the mountain. But the glory of the Gospel so far excels the glory of the law that it is as if the law had no glory at all by comparison (2 Cor. 3:9-10). If the law was glorious, and yet it was a ministration of death (i.e., the law serves us with death (2 Cor. 3:7)), how much more glorious is the Gospel, which is a ministration of life (i.e., the Gospel serves us with life (2 Cor. 3:6))?! The law was written with letters on stone. The Gospel is written by the Spirit of God on the hearts of men (2 Cor. 3:2-3; Heb. 10-12; 1 John 2:20-21, 27). The law is a ministration of condemnation to guilty sinners (2 Cor. 3:9). The Gospel is a ministration of the gift of righteousness to guilty sinners, the obedience of Christ that fulfilled the law (2 Cor. 3:9; 5:21; Php. 2:6-8). The law was abolished (2 Cor. 3:7, 11; Heb. 8:13). The Gospel remains. The law had to do with physical, earthly, temporal things. The Gospel has to do with spiritual, heavenly, eternal things. The law was to be done away, as foreshadowed by the fading shine on Moses' face. But the Gospel is everlasting, as is evident in the glory of God seen in the face of Jesus Christ (Rev. 14:6; 2 Cor. 3:18).

Law-preachers need things to commend themselves, for their own gratification and to gain the praise of others. But Gospel-preachers need no commendation from men. The work of the Spirit of Christ in the hearts of believing sinners is Christ’s commendation of the preaching of His Gospel to sinners. That commendation gives Him all glory. The Gospel is Christ’s Gospel (2 Cor. 2:12). It is the Gospel of the Grace of our great God and Savior (Acts 20:24; Titus 1:3-4; 2:10, 13; 3:4, 6). It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes (Rom. 1:16).

Moses went up the mountain to receive from God the covenant of works on tables of stone. He brought that writing of the covenant to Israel. Israel agreed to keep the conditions of that covenant. The covenant stipulated blessings for obedience, and cursings for disobedience. But in the covenant of grace, the New Testament, Christ did not ascend up to heaven (John 3:13). He came from heaven (Rom. 10:6-7). He did not take the writing of the covenant from God for men to keep to obtain the blessings and avoid the cursings in that covenant. He Himself had God's law in His heart (Ps. 40:6-8). And He Himself came to do the will of God for His people, all those for whom, as the covenant Head, He acted alone (Rom. 5:19; Heb. 10:5-7). He did the will of His Father (John 4:34; 6:38; 17:1-4; 19:30). He finished the work. He fulfilled the law (Rom. 10:4). His obedience unto death is everlasting righteousness. But He acted for His people, in their place. He did not need righteousness for Himself (Luke 1:35; Heb. 7:26). But He established everlasting righteousness for His people (Dan. 9:24; Jer. 23:5-6), a righteousness that honored and magnified God's law (Deut. 6:25; Isa. 42:21). Christ, our Mediator, descended from heaven to fulfill the everlasting covenant of grace to obtain and give to His people the blessings promised in that covenant before the world was created (2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:1-2). Christ obtained every gift promised in that covenant: everlasting righteousness, eternal justification, remission of sins, reconciliation, cleansing from sins, sanctification (made holy to God), perfected forever and eternal inheritance. There is no blessing in the covenant of grace that Christ, by His shed blood in obedience to His Father (Heb. 10:5-18) did not obtain. It is therefore a covenant of grace. And it is a Testament (Heb. 9:14-16), which required Christ, the One who made that Testament, to die to put its blessings into force (Heb. 13:20; Matt. 26:28).


The law obscures God (2 Cor. 3:13-16). Who can know God through the law (Matt. 11:25-27; John 1:17-18)? How can we know God through that covenant which requires our personal obedience as the condition of all blessings, and threatens us with eternal death for the smallest, incidental failure?! The law stirs up hatred in our sinful hearts towards God (Rom. 5:20; 8:7). It requires continual, complete, perfect obedience for life, and pronounces curses for the smallest failure (Gal. 3:10, 12). But the Gospel makes God known (John 1:16-17). In the Gospel we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:18; 4:6). We see Christ’s loving humility in His will and work to save guilty sinners, by taking their sins from them, by paying God for them, and by removing those sins from before God’s face forever. Such loving humility, such holy selflessness, such all-providing, all-sufficient grace, makes Christ gloriously attractive to guilty, condemned, sin-plagued sinners.

Moses was the only preacher of the law in the wilderness of Sinai. But the Gospel is preached by a great company. “The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it” (Ps. 68:11). The glorious Gospel of Christ is preached throughout the world in the lives and by the mouths of the redeemed (Ps. 107:2). They who preach it, preach it with the plainest of speech (1 Tim. 1:15).

In baptism and the Lord's Table, every believer declares the Gospel of Christ crucified. When we are baptized, we confess Christ crucified as our Surety, who in the covenant of God’s grace, stood up as our covenant Head, substituted Himself for us, carried us throughout His life, took us to death with Him when He went to the cross (Rom. 6:6, 11), took us into His grave with Him and raised us from the dead, delivered us from sin and death and every consequence of our sin. When we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and take and eat and drink from the Lord’s Table, we declare Christ crucified as all of our salvation and life (1 Cor. 11:26).

They who received the law could not look to the end of that glory. Moses hid his face behind a veil. But, we preach Christ, who is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes (Rom. 10:4). Gospel preaching, applied by the Spirit of God, makes Christ known, and so makes God known (Gal. 3:1; John 14:9). He is the Wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24). He is the salvation of God (Isa. 49:6). He is our salvation (Ps. 35:3; 27:1; Isa. 12:2; Lk. 2:30; Acts 4:12). The Gospel proclaims His unsearchable riches (Eph. 3:8). It reveals Christ in His glory, the glory of God, who makes known His glory in Christ’s cross (2 Cor. 4:6; Jer. 17:12). As one preacher put it, “Calvary, and the broken body of Jesus, is the most God-like thing that God ever did.”

I am thankful there are many Gospel preachers in our day. But their number seems, at least to me, to be very few by comparison to the number of false preachers. David said he had never seen the Lord’s people forsaken or begging bread (Ps. 37:25). We know that our great Shepherd will feed His sheep (Ps. 23). How glorious is this great Gospel of His grace, that He would publish His word clearly through many voices, and not obscurely through only one (Ex. 18:14; John 8:6)!

Rick Warta
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For whom did Christ die?

8/5/2017

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(See John 6:37-40, 44-45; 10:11, 15-18, 26-29; 17:1-2, 9; Isa. 53:12)
​
Make no mistake, scripture answers this question without ambiguity, so that if any deny this truth, they must deny scripture. “For the transgression of
my people was He stricken” (Isa. 53:8; Matt. 1:21; Rom. 11:26-27). “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: 2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him” (John 17:1-2). Who are those called “my people”? They are those the Father gave to Christ (John 10:29). But who were given to Christ? Those the Father chose in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him in love (Eph. 1:4; 5:25; 2 Thess. 2:13-14). The Father commanded His Son to lay down His life “for the sheep” (John 10:11, 15, 17). They were called His sheep before He died for them and before He called them (John 10:27). He knew them before He called them (John 10:27). Those for whom Christ died are the same as those that He must bring (John 10:15-16). He calls them. They hear His voice; they follow Him (John 10:26-27). To all of these, and to these alone, Christ gives eternal life (John 10:28). These are those who never perish (John 10:28). No man can take any of these out of His hand (John 10:28). All those that belong to Christ were given to Him by His Father (John 10:29). The Father gave all of His people to His Son, so that all who belong to the Father by eternal election were given to the Son. Furthermore, the Son has none but those given to Him by His Father (John 17:10; Eph. 1:4). The Father has no people but those He gave to His Son, nor does the Son have one sheep whom the Father did not eternally adopt and give to Him as their Surety (Heb. 7:22; 1 Pet. 1:20; Heb. 13:20). There are many people in this world who were not made sheep by God’s eternal choice, many who were not adopted (“to chose”) as sons by the Father, and who were not given to Christ. The Father did not command our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to lay down His life for them, to call them, to give them eternal life, to save, to keep and to never let perish those who were not His sheep (John 10:26). Those not chosen by God, not redeemed by Christ, were left to answer God in their own person (Matt. 25:34, 41-46). All who were not given by the Father to Christ, for whom Christ did not die, do not believe Him (John 10:26). Having been left to themselves, they remain in their willful unbelief (Rom. 11:32). But those that belong to Christ believe Him because they were ordained to eternal life (Acts 13:48). If Christ’s chosen sheep do not yet believe Him, they will when they hear His voice (John 10:16, 27; Ps. 110:3). None can take from Christ one sheep that belongs to Him (John 10:28; Rom. 8:35-39). The Father and the Son are one. All who belong to the Father and the Son are kept by the power of our sovereign, saving God (John 10:29-30; 1 Pet. 1:5). Sheep have always been sheep; goats will always be goats. Goats do not become sheep, nor do sheep become goats. But God reveals those who are His sheep when they hear the Shepherd’s voice (John 10:27; Gal. 1:15).


John 6, John 10 and John 17 give an undeniable answer to the question, “For whom did Christ die?” He died for His people (Matt. 1:21). He did not die for all people in the world. On this scripture is clear throughout. To deny this is to not only deny scripture, but to deny the deity of Christ. If "Jehovah is salvation," the meaning of His name, JESUS, then if He does not save those for whom He is made salvation, He is not Jehovah God (Ps. 27:1; Isa. 12:2; Ps. 35:3; Matt. 1:21). If Jesus Christ is eternal, almighty God the Son (Isa. 9:6; Rev. 1:8, 11, 18; Matt. 1:23; John 20:28), and if He died for His sheep, then all for whom He died were saved by His death and can never be condemned (Heb. 1:3; 10:14-18; Rom. 8:34). God has eternally been the refuge and defense and salvation for His elect (Rom. 8:31; Heb. 8:10). He is for them now, and will be for them to everlasting. Therefore, none can separate them from Him. None can lay one charge to any of them (Num. 23:21; Jer. 50:20; Rom. 8:31, 33). Furthermore, if God did not spare His Son from His just wrath on account of the sins of His elect people that were laid upon Him, but “delivered Him up [to judgment] for us all”, and if He shall give “us” all things with Him, then there is an inseparable link between those chosen by God the Father from eternity, those for whom Christ was delivered up to judicial death, those given everlasting righteousness in Him (Rom. 5:17; 1 Cor. 1:30; Isa. 45:24-25), those who are called the sons of God (Gal. 4:4-6; 1 John 3:1-2), who are given the Spirit of His Son in their hearts (John 3:8-15; Rom. 8:9-11, 14-16; Gal. 3:8, 13-14; 4:4-6), given faith (2 Pet. 1:1; Acts 13:48), given eternal life (Rom. 6:23; John 10:28), who are given no less than all things with Christ (Rom. 8:32)! God gave all things by covenant promise to the elect in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:3-4; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:2; Eph. 1:11; Heb. 13:20; Matt. 25:34). Our Lord Jesus Christ met every condition for all covenant blessings to flow to His people when He gave Himself in life and death, when He shed His own precious blood (Mat. 26:28; Heb. 13:20).

We hold fast to these truths concerning our great God and Savior with the utmost love and thanksgiving. All who are saved are saved because God did it, from first to last. They were chosen by God the Father, redeemed by Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior, given life by the Spirit of God, are kept by the power of God and will be presented faultless in the presence of His glory with exceeding joy (John 6:63; Eph. 2:4; 1 Pet. 1:5; Jude 24). And all who are not saved were not chosen, were not redeemed, do not have the Spirit of God, and willfully continue in their unbelief (Rom. 8:9; 2 Thess. 1:8; 2:10-12; 13-14).

Nothing assures me of my salvation but God-given faith in God’s word that tells me Christ accomplished and obtained eternal salvation for every sinner for whom He died (Heb. 9:12; 10:10-14; Isa. 45:17). My only assurance is that Christ died, rose, reigns and intercedes for His own (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 10:19-23). My assurance is that Christ was, now is, and forever shall be my Answer to God the Judge of all (1 John 2:1; Gen. 43:8-9; 44:18-34; Phm. 1:12, 17-18)! Therefore, if you deny me this truth, that Christ died only for His people and actually saved them; if you deny that in so doing, He cleansed them from all their sins, clothed them in His righteousness and eternally redeemed them from all sin and death to eternal life (Lev. 16:30; Rom. 5:21; Heb. 1:3; 9:12; 10:10, 14, 17-18), then you take away all my hope. You take from me the God I love and the Savior I worship (John 4:22-24). I make no apology. Such a denial constitutes an assault and persecution. It is the lie of this religious world. It came from the devil. My only defense is Christ who shed His blood for sinners in victorious triumph over all my enemies to the glory of God (Col. 2:14-15; Rev. 12:11; Eph. 6:10-18; Luke 1:68-75). “I need no other argument, I need no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died, and that He died for me!”

I believe Christ. Why? According to scripture, it is because I was ordained to eternal life (Acts 13:48). Why do I believe the Son of God
as all my salvation (Isa. 12:2), who came in the flesh, was crucified, has risen, is now reigning and interceding? According to scripture, it is because I have been born of the Spirit of God (John 3:14-15). Why is Christ precious to me? According to scripture, it is because I have been given precious faith (1 Pet. 1:7; 2:4)? It is because, according to scripture, Christ died for me (Gal. 3:13-14; 4:4-6; Acts 3:16; 26:17-18)! I am a great sinner. (Even you can see that.) My great sin gives me confidence that God will be greatly glorified if He saves me (Ps. 25:11; Isa. 43:25). Christ came to save sinners for His name’s sake, and He actually accomplished what He came to do (1 Tim. 1:15; Ps. 79:9; 65:3; Heb. 1:3; 10:12). My confidence is that Christ shed His blood for sinners. I have nothing to claim in coming to God but His word that tells sinners to look to Him (Isa. 45:22; 55:1-3; John 1:29; 3:14-15), to come to God by Him (John 14:6; Heb. 10:19). God’s grace alone has given His sheep these words and has given them His Spirit to convince them that in themselves they are nothing at all (John 16:8-11; Rom. 3:10-12), but that Jesus Christ is their all in all (Col. 2:9-10; 3:11). Thank God! Oh, thank God!! We have an almighty, gracious Savior who finished the will of God and obtained the eternal salvation of all of His people! “Turn your eyes upon Jesus” (John 1:29; Heb. 12:2; Isa. 45:22)! Let every dissenting voice be silenced in submission to our great conquering King!
Rick Warta
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