So in the death of Christ we encounter an absolute abnormality. In all other cases men and women deserve to die. He did not deserve to die. Yet he died. What is the reason?
But there is something, perhaps more astounding. This arises from who he was. He was the eternal and only-begotten Son of God and for that reason equal with God the Father in respect of Godhood, of divine identity. He, the Word, eternally pre-existing, eternally with God, and eternally God, became flesh. He was the eternal life with the Father and in him was life. So death was not only the contradiction of what he was as human. It was the contradiction of all that he was as God. This is the astounding feature of Christ’s death. He died. But death in his case was the contradiction of all that he was as divine and human, as God-man. This, therefore, points up the absolute uniqueness, the unprecedented unparalleled character of his death. And it points up the urgency of the question: why? —John Murray, The Death of Christ
Category: Heroes
The Exegetical Systematician: The New Validated the Old
The events of New Testament realization, as noted, afford validity and meaning to the Old Testament. They not only validate and explain; they are the ground and warrant for the revelatory and redemptive events of the Old Testament period. This can be seen in the first redemptive promise (Gen. 3:15). We have a particularly striking illus(ration in Matt. 2:15: ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’. In Hosea 11:1 (cf. Numb. 24:8) this refers to the emancipation of Israel from Egypt. But in Matthew 2:15 it is applied to Christ and it is easy to allege that this is an exaniple of unwarranted application of Old Testament passages to New Testament events particularly characteristic of Matthew. But it is Matthew, as other New Testament writers, who has the perspective of organic relationship and dependence. The deliverance of Israel from Egypt found its validation, basis, and reason in what was fulfilled in Christ. So the calling of Christ out of Egypt has the primacy as archetype, though not historical priority. In other words, the type is derived from the archetype or antitype. Hence not only the propriety but necessity of finding in Hosea 11:1 the archetype that gave warrant to the redemption of Israel from Egypt.
In this perspective, therefore, we must view both Testaments. The unity is one of organic interdependence and derivation. The Old Testament has no meaning except as it is related to the realities that give character to and create the New Testament era as the fulness of time, the consummation of the ages. —John Murray, The Unity of the Old and New Testaments
The Exegetical Systematician: The Great Mystery of History
“The great miracle of history is the coming of the Son of God. He came by becoming man, by taking human nature into union with his divine person. The result was that he was both God and man. God in uncurtailed Godhood, in the fulness of divine being and attributes, and man in the integrity of human nature with all its sinless infirmities and limitations, uniting in one person infinitude and finitude, the uncreated and the created. This is the great mystery of history. And since Christianity is the central and commanding fact of history, it is the mystery of Christianity, ‘the mystery of godliness’ (1 Tim. 3:16). So unique is this fact that we might well think that disclosure would have to wait for the fulfillment. But astounding is the fact that the Old Testament furnishes the elements, and we read: ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given etc (Isa. 9:6). Again: ‘There shall come a shoot out of the stock of Jesse’ (Isa. 11:1).” —John Murray, The Unity of the Old and New Testaments
The Exegetical Systematician: It’s Been the Last Days for a While Now
There are certain texts that are familiar or at least ought to be. They teach us the place in history occupied by the New Testament or, more precisely, the new covenant economy (Gal. 4:4; Heb. 9:26; 1 Cor. 10:11). The New Testament era is ‘the fulness of the time’, ‘the consummation of the ages’, ‘the end of the ages’, the consummating era of this world’s history. Correlative with this characterization is ‘the last days’ (Acts 2:17; Heb. 1:2; 1 John 2:18). These began with the coming of Christ: So the world period is the last days.
This implies ages of this world’s history that were not the last days; they were prior, preparatory, anticipatory. The last days are characterized by two comings, notable, unprecedented, indeed astounding—the coming into the world of the Son of God and the Spirit of God. In order to accentuate the marvel of these comings we must say that God came into the world, first in the person of the Son and then in the person of the Holy Spirit. They came by radically different modes and for different functions. But both are spoken of as comings and they are both epochal events. These comings not only introduce and characterize the last days; they create or constitute it. —John Murray, The Unity of the Old and New Testaments
The Exegetical Systematician: John Murray
I don’t believe the Bible is a book of heroes. The Bible does have heroes in it, but that is not what it is about. It is a book about the Hero. Nonetheless, I do believe in having heroes, and I believe it is Biblical to have them.
Heroes are not perfect, and thus they point us to Christ in three ways. Their faults (weaknesses and sins) point us to the Savior that they, and we, all need. With this foundation we learn two further truths concerning their strengths. First, they are a result of God’s gifting and working in them such that He gets all the glory. Second, their strengths also point us to Jesus by whom they are graded – Jesus is the ultimate curve breaker. All heroes are judged in relation to Him.
Every year I single out one hero to study in particular. This year I will study the life and works of John Murray.
John Murray was a Scottish theologian. Before ministry he fought in World War I serving with the Black Watch Regiment and lost an eye to shrapnel. After studying at the University of Glasgow he attended Princeton and then began teaching there, but soon left following J. Gresham Machen to teach systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in 1930. He remained there until 1966. He then married Valerie Knowlton and retired to Scotland; ultimately retiring from this world on May 8, 1975.
He is best known for his work Redemption Accomplished and Applied and his commentary on the book of Romans. Of that commentary John Piper has said, “Murray was a systematic theologian at Westminster but like Charles Hodge, he wrote an absolutely amazing commentary on Romans. In one sense, I don’t think any commentary has surpassed Murray in theological depth and precision on the book of Romans. The sentences are complex and carefully crafted and they are penetrating in the depth and scope of their theological richness.” At a lecture at Westminster, Piper added, “So in my early days, Romans was the key, watershed document to turn my world upside down. And you know who it was who guided me through Romans? John Murray. That is the most beautifully written commentary on the planet. People who write commentaries are not generally good writers. They patch things together… I read a sentence, and I just want to go back and memorize it because his eloquence is phenomenal. The work that must have gone in to the way he says what he says about the glories of Romans 5 or Romans 8 are amazing, so I thank God for John Murray.”
The Apologist: Filter the Filtered
TV manipulates views just by its normal way of operating. Many viewers seem to assume that when they have seen something on TV, they have seen it with their own eyes. It makes the viewer think he has actually been on the scene. He knows, because his own eyes have seen. He has the impression of greater direct objective knowledge than ever before. For many, what they see on television becomes more true than what they see with their eyes in the external world.
But this is not so, for one must never forget that every television minute has been edited. The viewer does not see the event. He sees an edited symbol or an edited image of the event. An aura and illusion of objectivity and truth is built up, which could not be totally the case even if the people shooting the film were completely neutral. The physical limitations of the camera dictate that only one aspect of the total situation is given. If the camera were aimed ten feet to the left or ten feet to the right, an entirely different ‘objective story’ might come across.
And, on top of that, the people taking the film and those editing it often do have a subjective viewpoint that enter in. When we see a political figure on TV, we are not seeing the person as he necessarily is; we are seeing, rather, the image someone has decided we should see. …
With an elite providing the arbitrary absolutes, not just TV but the general apparatus of the mass media can be a vehicle for manipulation. There is no need for collusion or a plot. All that is needed is that the worldview of the elite and the world-view of the central news media coincide. —Francis, Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live
The Apologist: Absolutely!
Here is a simple but profound rule: If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is absolute. Society is left with one man or an elite filling the vacuum left by the loss of the Christian consensus which originally gave us form and freedom in northern Europe and in the West. —Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?
The Apologist: The Real Chasm
A second problem of those who left the Presbyterian Church was a confusion over where to place the chasm that marks off our identity. Is the chasm placed between Bible-believing churches and those that are not? Or is it between those who are part of our own denomination and those who are not? When we go into a town to start a church, do we go there primarily motivated to build a church that is loyal to Presbyterianism and the Reformed faith, or to the Baptistic position on baptism, or to the Lutheran view of the sacraments, etc., etc.? Or do we go to build a church that will preach the gospel that historic, Bible-believing churches of all denominations hold, and then, on this side of that chasm, teach what we believe is true to the Bible with respect to our own denominational distinctives? The answers to these questions make a great deal of difference. There is a difference of motivation, of breadth and outreach. One view is catholic and biblical and gives promise of success—on two levels: first, in church growth and then a healthy outlook among those we reach; second, in providing leadership to the whole church of Christ. The other view is inverted and self-limiting—and sectarian.
As Bible-believing Christians we come from a variety of backgrounds. But in our moment of history we need each other. Let us keep our doctrinal distinctives. Let us talk to each other about them. But let us recognize the proper hierarchy of things. The real chasm is not between Presbyterians and everyone else, or Anglicans and everyone else, or Baptists and everyone else. The real chasm is between those who have bowed to the living God and thus also to the verbal, propositional communication of God’s inerrant Word, the Scriptures, and those who have not. —Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster
The Apologist: A Big Evangel Is Better than a Big Evangelicalism
What is the use of evangelicalism seeming to get larger and larger if sufficient numbers of those under the name evangelical no longer hold to that which makes evangelicalism evangelical? —Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster
The Apologist: Materialistic Christians
Christianity is not just a mental assent that certain doctrines are true—not even that the right doctrines are true. This is only the beginning. This would be rather like a starving man sitting in front of great heaps of food and saying, “I believe the food exists; I believe it is real,” and yet never eating it. It is not enough merely to say, “I am a Christian,” and then in practice to live as if present contact with the supernatural were something far-off and strange. Many Christians I know seem to act as though they come in contact with the supernatural just twice—once when they arejustified and become a Christian and once when they die. The rest of the time they act as though they were sitting in the materialist’s chair. —Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City
No Other Boast 