Author: Josh King

The Doctor: Our Dead Husband

On Romans 7:4

It is even worse to feel condemned by the Law.  I desire to emphasize this.  A Christian who continues to feel the condemnation of the Law is like a wife who still feels afraid of her first husband from whom she has been separated by death.  You must never go back ‘under the law’.  You must really learn to say, ‘There is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus’.  ‘But’, you say, ‘I feel that I am such a failure, I feel that I am such a sinner, I feel I am so unworthy.’  That may be well true – I often feel the same, but I will never allow myself to go back under condemnation.  I may be unworthy of my new husband, but that does not mean I am going back to be married to the old husband.  That is nonsense, that is confusion, that is impossible.  Whatever you may feel about yourself, and whatever you may know to be true about yourself, ‘there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus’.  None!  You must not think of yourself and your life in that way; you should now think of it as your lack of faithfulness to the new husband.  You must think of it in terms of Christ, and never again in terms of the Law, otherwise you are contradicting what you believe.   – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 6, p. 50

Genesis 6:9-9:29 & We Work Out because He Works In

I cannot remember who I heard say something to this effect, “Do not be impressed with the missionary of God but with the God of the missionary.”  Beware of making idols of holy men.  We should have heroes in the faith, but not evangelical superstars.  Noah is a hero, but he is not the star of this account, God is.  Noah is admirable because of how God is glorified in his life.

Noah’s task was daunting.  It was impossible.  We shouldn’t read Genesis 6:19 without Genesis 6:20.  If Noah’s work is read in isolation, with no mention of God’s work, Noah gets all the glory.  He is superhuman.  How could we ever measure up?  But what Noah did was impossible (Matthew 19:26).

Our God is a two handed God.  With His hard hand He comes to us with commands that are impossible, with His soft hand He comes to us with empowering grace.  Augustine said it this way, “Give what you command and command what you will.”  The story of Noah is a story of the fierce terrible wrath of God.  It isn’t flannel graph, nursery décor, kid’s song friendly.  But more than God’s wrath, this is a story of the amazing grace of God.  The account does not neglect that God hates sin, that sin arouses his judgment, nor that all men die, but the narrative is arrested by God’s grace on this one man.  What is astounding as we read this account is not that all humanity is blotted out, but that one man finds grace.  Noah was not favored because he was righteous, he was righteous because he was favored (Genesis 6:8-9).  We work out because He has worked in (Philippians 2:12-13).  We work because He is working (Hebrews 13:20-21).

What emerges again and again is that what he is commanding is a life that displays the worth of his person and the effect of his work.  His intention is that we not disconnect what he commands from who he is and what he has done.  …On the basis of who he was and what he accomplished, Jesus made his demands. The demands cannot be separated from his person and work. The obedience he demands is the fruit of his redeeming work and the display of his personal glory. That is why he came— to create a people who glorify his gracious reign by bearing the fruit of his kingdom (Matt. 21:43).  – John Piper in What Jesus Demands From the World

When to “Have” the Misnomer “Quiet Time”

I’m not a fan of the phrase “quiet time” though I use it from time to time.  It is not because I think there something inherently incorrect in the term, I just think it wimpy.  Designating listening to Yahweh via His Word and responding to Him in prayer as “quiet time” is akin to taking a glimpse at the Grand Canyon and commenting with a casual shrug “it’s big”.  My favorite way to think of that slice of morning I spend in God’s Word is “Communion with God”.  Communing with the Holy Creator sounds deeply more appealing than having a “quiet time”.

So when is the best time to have one… umm… “having one” – that’s “quiet time” language.  When is the best time to commune with God?  Always of course, but as far as setting aside a dedicated time, what time is best?  I recommend that you find the time when you are both most alert and most able to dedicate a good space of time to the task.  You may be most alert in biology class, but you are not able to dedicate that time.  You may be able to dedicate a lot of time after supper, but then you are not alert.  For most teens morning is not your alert time.  I often have students who feel some measure of guilt because they spend their evenings with God instead of their mornings.  I would say you are imposing a law on yourself that you should not be bound to.

Still I offer two cautions to non-morning persons.  One, are you a non-morning person because of bad evening habits?  Two, If you do commune with God at some time other than the morning, do go to bed in meditation and prayer and rise with Him as the first thought on your mind.  Spend five minutes reminding yourself of what you studied the day before.

It is no small advantage to the holy life to “begin the day with God.”  The saints are wont to leave their hearts with Him over night, that they may find them with Him in the morning.  Before earthly things break in upon us, and we receive impressions from abroad, it is good to season the heart with thoughts of God, and to consecrate the early and virgin operations of the mind before they are prostituted to baser objects.  When they world gets the start of religion in the morning, it can hardly overtake it all the day.  – Thomas Case from Living for God’s Glory by Joel R. Beeke

The Doctor: Christianity is Christ

‘Christianity is Christ.’  He is central, He is vital, He is all in all.  It does not matter how good a life may be, how moral it may appear to be, if it is not entirely dependent upon the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done, it is not Christianity.  It may be morality, it may be some other religion, but it is not Christianity.  You can have religion without Christianity; you may have morality without Christianity; but the thing that makes Christianity Christian is the centrality, is the cruciality of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Hence, any claim that is made, if it does not directly relate everything to Him, and give the glory to Him, proves at once that it is not Christian at all. … If your position is not entirely dependent upon this blessed Person it is not Christianity at all; it is a sham, it is counterfeit.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 6, p. 35

Genesis 6:1-8 & No Apologies

God repents?  If you are packing old school (KJV) that’s what verse 6 says!  And it is a legitimate translation.  It can also be translated relent, sorry, or regret.  Does God change His mind?  Did He fail to think through this human experiment all the way?  Is He now just improvising hoping to make the best of this mess?  To amplify the problem, this is common language in relation to God (I Samuel 15:11, 35; Jeremiah 18:10; Exodus 32:12, 14; 2 Samuel 24:16; Amos 7:3-6).

Yet in Numbers 23:19 and I Samuel 15:29 God states that He does not repent or change his mind like man.  Are we now in a worse position?  Have we gone from a God who makes mistakes to a God who is confused and tells lies of Himself?

Notice God never changes in and of Himself.  He eternally remains holy, good, righteous, just, and sovereign.  He is immutable.  Eternally His stance toward sin remains the same.  It is man who has changed, thus God’s stance toward man is different, it has changed.  Yet God’s “changes” only happen according to his plan.

I think Jeremiah 18:7-10 help to clarify.  There we read:

If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.  And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.

God’s acts differently in response to man’s condition.  This is illustrated in the story of Jonah and Nineveh.  After the people of Nineveh repent God relents (Jonah 3:10) of the judgment (Jonah 3:4) Jonah pronounced on them.  God said He was going to destroy them.  Did man change God’s plan?  No, it was God’s plan to change man.  From a temporal perspective God is reacting to man.  From an eternal perspective God ordains means to bring about His ends.  If you think God is simply reacting and revising you make Jonah out to be more brilliant than God, for Jonah knew this would happen (Jonah 4:1-2).  God sent Jonah to pronounce a message of judgment that would bring about repentance according to plan.

The flood was part of God’s plan.  The world was destroyed once by water, it will be a second time with fire (2 Peter 3:5-7).  It’s so symmetrical it’s as if it were preplanned?  Though this segment of history is dark, against it the glimmer of God’s grace shines all the brighter (Genesis 6:8).  This is the velvet backdrop against which God’s redeeming love shines.  Why plan such an awesome demonstration of His wrath and justice?

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all; for then the effulgence would not answer the reality. For the same reason it is not proper that one should be manifested exceedingly, and another but very little. It is highly proper that the effulgent glory of God should answer his real excellency; that the splendour should be answerable to the real and essential glory, for the same reason that it is proper and excellent for God to glorify himself at all. Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired, and the sense of it not so great, as we have elsewhere shown. We little consider how much the sense of good is heightened by the sense of evil, both moral and natural. And as it is necessary that there should be evil, because the display of the glory of God could not but be imperfect and incomplete without it, so evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect; and the happiness of the creature would be imperfect upon another account also; for, as we have said, the sense of good is comparatively dull and flat, without the knowledge of evil.  – Jonathan Edwards, Works Vol. 2

Genesis 4:17-5:32 & Common and Special

Our kindergarten teacher told all of us that we were “special”.  If we are all “special” doesn’t that mean that none of us are?

In our text we have two genealogies; one marked by common grace the other by saving grace.  John Murray defined God’s common grace as:

Every favor of whatever kind or degree, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin cursed world enjoys at the hand of God.

The reason we call it common is because it is shared among all men in general.  It is familiar, popular, ordinary.  It is upon all men in general (Matthew 5:43-45).  This is not to say it is not amazing and great.  That we are not all justly suffering in hell is owing to the benevolence of God.

Jabel, Jubal, and Tubal (parents notice that this naming phenomena begins in the line of Cain.  Homophonous child naming is of the devil) make great strides in cultural progress, but it is only owing to God’s common grace.  God disperses talent, gifts, materials, and time to such individuals.  This doctrine allows us to accept gifts from the secular world form the hand of God and make them sacred.  The issue isn’t if it has a “Christian” label, but if you receive it from the Christian God or the god of Apple.  Despite all the advancement, there is no mention of special grace anywhere in the line of Cain.  “In the history of salvation,” writes Derek Kidner, “the line of Cain is an irrelevance.”

It is in the line of Seth that we see marks of special grace.  Here men call on the name of the Lord (Genesis 4:26).  Here we are reminded of original creation before the fall (Genesis 5:1-2).  Here the death formula is broken (Genesis 5:24).  This is the lineage of Christ (Luke 3:23-38).

You may invent the self-microwaving pizza – common.  You may come up with the ultimate clean fuel solution – common.  You may replace George on the one dollar bill – common.  You may dwarf the dynasties of Google, Apple, and Microsoft – common.  But to be evidence of the reclaiming of the imago Dei, to walk with God, to break the somber rhythm of death, to be part of God’s plan in making much of the Messiah, this is special.

Busted Myth # 1: Forgive and Forget – Impossible!

The virtue of slogans is brevity. Their vice is ambiguity. So they are risky ways of communicating. They are powerful and perilous. So we should exploit the power and explain the peril.  – John Piper in Desiring God

The danger of a cliché or slogan is that they can make the unintelligent seam brilliant. This is often the route to accepting stupidity and heralding it as wisdom. I believe such to be the case with “forgive and forget.” Perhaps there is some individual who meant this simply to say that you must not bring up the incident of offence, that is, you refuse to prosecute anew. Alas if he could behold his cult. Humanly it is impossible to forget some things, especially the worst of things, the things that call for amazing forgiveness. To put such a burden upon a rape victim, or a molested child, and say that they have not truly forgiven their enemies unless they forget that wretched event is to play the Pharisee and heap heavy unbearable burdens upon such persons, a burden that they, if in the same position, surely could not, would not carry (Matthew 23:4).

“Ah, but God forgets! …Right?” This is the issue that I really want to address. God does not forget – ever! God does not forget – anything! He is omniscient; this is never compromised.  God does not forget our sins, He remembered them on Jesus. He removes our sins, washes us from our sins, forgives us of our sins, and takes away our sins, but He does not forget them. If God could simply forget sin, what need is there for an atonement where sins are paid for? We wouldn’t need an atonement; God simply need perform a lobotomy on Himself.

On this John MacArthur said:

I’ve heard people suggest that God forgets our sins when He forgives. They usually cite Hebrews 10:17: ‘Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more’ (cf. 8:12). Or Isaiah 43:25: ‘I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins.’

But those verses don’t say God forgets our sins. They say He will not remember them. What’s the difference? To forget something is to have no memory of it. Obviously God, who is omniscient, has not lost His memory of our transgressions. Rather, He refuses to call them to mind. He promises not to bring them up.

Wayne Grudem states:

Someone may object that God promises to forget our sins. For example, he says, ‘I will not remember your sins’ (Isa. 43:25). Yet passages like this can certainly be understood to mean that God will never again let the knowledge of these sins play any part in the way he relates to us: he will ‘forget’ them in his relationship to us. – in Systematic Theology

I’ll wrap this up by dealing with the two oft cited texts, Hebrews 10:17 and Psalm 103:12.  In Hebrews 10 the single offering of Christ is being contrasted with the plethora of sacrifices under the Old Covenant. Under the old system there was a reminder for sins every year (Hebrews 10:3). Every year at the Day of Atonement all Israel was reminded of their sins.  Now under Christ a decisive payment for sin has been made once for all. God will not bring our sins up against us because they have been paid for. This is not the language of memory loss, but redemption. When I pay a bill the creditor doesn’t remember it anymore, against me. This means not that they wiped every record it from their databases; but that they have marked it as paid. I don’t want to hear my creditor ever say they have lost record of previous bills, I want to hear them say they have received payment. I don’t want God to forget my sins, for all eternity I want the Son to remind Him that my sins are paid for.

Finally Psalm 103:12 says nothing about forgetting but removing. My sins are removed from me, where are they placed? Into some abyss of forgetfulness? No they are placed on Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Again, God does not forget our sins, He remembered them all on Jesus, once for all.

The Doctor: ‘But Now’

On Romans 6:22

The Christian is meant to glory in the ‘But now’.  He asserts it.  That is why I maintain, and maintain stoutly, that a man who understands this truth cannot merely lecture on it.  A man who can lecture on this does not really appreciate what it means.  If you know anything about this you are bound to preach!  A man who can say ‘By now” coldly, and merely regard them as two words, just a part of the construction of a sentence, a part of the syntax, has never seen their real meaning.  No, the Christian cannot look at these words without being moved to the depth of his being.  He worships, he praises God, he must shout ‘But now’.  This is in many ways the best test of our profession of the Christian faith.  If these words do not thrill us and move us, then I think we has better re-examine our whole position.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, p. 286

Tolle Lege: The Prodigal God

The Prodigal God

Readability :  1

Length:  133 pp

Author:  Tim Keller

This is my favorite Tim Keller work by far (He has only written three titles, so far, but this is still a huge compliment as all three are superb).  Thie book pairs well with an earlier one, The Reason for God.  Keller originally wrote The Reason for God with unbelievers in mind and The Prodigal God for believers, but he admits that this work will benefit both.  Keller has often spoke about preaching against legalism to libertines so that they will realize that the ‘Christianity’ they rejected is not Christianity.  Preaching against legalism helps libertines to see exactly what the gospel is.  This book does that masterfully.  Both elder and younger brothers are confronted with the glory of the gospel in this powerful little book.  It is now my go to book for persons who are lost.

[O]ne of the signs that you may not grasp the unique radical nature of the gospel is that you are certain you do.

The elder brother is not losing the father’s love in spite of his goodness, but because of it.  It is not his sins that create the barrier between him and his father, it’s the pride he has in his moral record; it’s not his wrongdoing but his righteousness that is keeping him from sharing the feast of his father.

The gospel is therefore not just the ABC’s of the Christian life, but the A to Z of the Christian life.  Our problems arise largely because we don’t continually return to the gospel to work it in and live it out.