CONTEXT: In 1 Samuel 15 the prophet Samuel gives Saul explicit commands from the LORD of hosts to bring judgment on the Amalekites as a recompense for their treatment of Israel when the nation was coming up from Egypt. Saul is told to “strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him, but put to death” everything (15:3). Stated in four different ways, the command could not be clearer, yet Saul does not carry out the command. Instead he saves some of the sheep for sacrifices and spares Agag the king of Amalek.

This is the second in a brief series of blogs on this chapter (1 Samuel 15) and on what we can learn from the negative example of Saul.

Meditation 2

“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.”

As we further consider this passage, the second thing that we notice is that Saul had a casual attitude toward obedience. What did Saul do in this encounter with the Amalekites? He made only a token effort at obeying the clear instruction of the LORD and planned to offer a sacrifice instead. He presumed that, in the face of his overt and willful disobedience, he himself could offer an acceptable sacrifice. Notice Saul’s attitude toward obedience: it was easier for Saul to presume on the LORD’s grace than to obey the LORD’s command, but it is obedience that the LORD desires from His people.

Notice that Saul had certainly heard the command of the LORD, so he could not plead ignorance. Notice also that it was completely within Saul’s power to obey and to carry out the command as issued, so he could not plead inability.

So what could Saul do? Saul could make excuses (“I have carried out the command of the LORD” 15:13; and, “I did obey the voice of the LORD” 15:20), claiming an obedience that he did not possess, and he could blame other people (15:15, 21) for his failure. Of course, Saul did both. Saul again provides us with a negative example in his casual attitude toward his flagrant disobedience and in his pathetically feeble pretending of repentance.

By contrast, Jesus lived His life striving against sin in perfect obedience to all the Law of God. Likewise we, as disciples of Jesus, are to have the same attitude toward obedience that our Lord Jesus Christ displayed, striving with all our might against sin in radical obedience.

Yes, we loudly proclaim that there is surely an acceptable sacrifice that has been offered to cover all our sin. “For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast” (1 Cor. 5:7-8). Absolutely! We celebrate God’s grace in the sacrifice of His Son on the cross to atone for our sin. Hallelujah! We know that if we do sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:2). So of course we do not presume on our own sacrifices, but we totally depend on the grace of God displayed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to deliver us from our sins.

And THEREFORE we obey the LORD. BECAUSE Christ has paid for our sins and BECAUSE we have been wrapped in His robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10) and BECAUSE we have had His perfect righteousness imputed to us (2 Cor. 5:21), we now walk as He Himself walked (1 John 2:6). Our obedience is the mark of genuineness on our salvation.

Therefore, we search the Scriptures and pore over the word of God to know what radical obedience looks like, so that we will never be ignorant of the Lord’s commands.

We also pray for the Holy Spirit to fill us with His power so that we will never complain of our inability to obey the Lord’s commands (1 John 5:3; Phil. 4:13).

We live lives of radical obedience, not seeking the minimum to hopefully get us by, but living holy lives which intentionally draw attention to the Holy One who has called us into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9; Matthew 5:14-16).

Saul was casual about obedience. Let us be radical in our obedience so that we can point people to our Lord Jesus Christ.   SDG   rmb   8/22/2016

CONTEXT: In 1 Samuel 15 the prophet Samuel gives Saul explicit commands from the LORD of hosts to bring judgment on the Amalekites as a recompense for their treatment of Israel when the nation was coming up from Egypt. Saul is told to “strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him, but put to death” everything (15:3). The command could not be clearer, yet Saul does not carry out the command. Instead he saves some of the sheep for sacrifices and spares Agag the king of Amalek.

This will be a brief series of blogs on this chapter and on what we can learn from the negative example of Saul.

“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.”

The first thing that we notice is how Saul viewed the word of the LORD. When the LORD of hosts speaks through His Word, He demands that His Word be obeyed completely. Thus when Samuel speaks to Saul the word of the LORD of hosts, Saul should pay close attention and orient his life to obey what he hears. But Saul did not carefully heed the word of the LORD. Instead he explicitly and knowingly disobeyed. The main reason was that Saul was casual about the word of the LORD. He believed that, as long as he came close to what the LORD had commanded, he was okay. Surely the LORD would be satisfied with a token effort at obedience. But notice that his approximate obedience is declared to be “evil in the sight of the LORD (15:19)” and Saul is seen as having “rejected the word of the LORD (15:26).” It is rebellion and insubordination (15:23) to not listen to the voice of the LORD and to not then orient your life to obey His commands. The word of the LORD is to be obeyed precisely and fully and intentionally. Unlike Saul, the disciple of Jesus is deadly serious about the word of God and seeks to obey it fully. Caleb is a good model for us, because Caleb “followed the LORD God fully (Joshua 14:8,9,14).” Jesus is the perfect example, who always did what was pleasing to the Father (John 8:29) and who fulfilled the whole Law (Matthew 5:17).

Let’s make it our aim to know the Word and then to heed the Word fully and precisely.

SDG  rmb 8/20/2016

Here begins a series of meditations on Hebrews 12:2 and a series of thoughts on how this verse can benefit the believer in his struggle against sin.

The first meditation will be on the phrase, “fixing our eyes on Jesus . . .” The idea here is fixing my eyes on Jesus in such a way that all ‘wind’ (Matthew 14:30) and all distractions (1 Cor. 7:35; 2 Cor. 10:5; 11:3; etc.) are eliminated and overwhelmed as I meditate on Jesus and His glory (His death and resurrection and His soon-coming return) and as I concentrate on my mission as His witness in the world.

“Fixing my eyes on Jesus . . .” means having Jesus so dominate my experience that only two clearly distinguished categories of thought occur to me: in one category are my thoughts of Christ and His glory and power and thoughts of my obedience to Him in everything, and in the other category are those thoughts controlled by the world, the flesh and the devil, which seek to enfeeble, to frighten and to distract me from my worship and my witness of Christ. Simply put, there is Christ and there are distractions from Christ. In simplest terms, all thoughts and actions are either for Christ or they are distractions from Christ (Matthew 12:30).

Therefore I must A) discipline my mind to distinguish between these two categories of thinking and then, having discerned the difference, B) I must focus my mind on Christ and His glory and His greatness and force out of my mind all other “flaming arrows” (Ephesians 6:16), which are designed to neutralize me and to blunt my witness.

Satan hates me and has structured the world such that the distractions and lies of this world are intended to silence me and to cause me to turn inward in self-pity and fear. Therefore, in anticipation of his attacks, I will unflinchingly fix my eyes on Jesus and when Satan’s attacks come, I will respond with skillful defense (Eph. 6:10-18) and damaging counter-attack (Acts 19:10).

In Christ, my weapons are stronger (1 Samuel 17:45; 2 Cor. 10:3-5; Ephesians 6:10-18).

With Christ, my Champion is more powerful and He cannot be defeated (1 Sam. 17:46-47; John 19:30; Revelation 19:11-16). My Champion holds the keys to death itself (Rev, 1:18) and He has conquered death and the devil.

Praise the LORD, for He is the Champion and the Conqueror!

So I will discipline myself to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and His glory, while resolving to reject all distractions to my mission in life.   SDG   rmb   8/15/2016

Only our God, the LORD, the one true and living God, speaks. The idols and the false gods of the pagans and of the nations cannot speak. Psalm 115 lists a lot of things that idols cannot do, but the ‘cannot’ that heads the list is the ‘cannot’ of speech. “They (the idols) have mouths, but they cannot speak.”

The idols of the nations do not speak because they cannot speak. Not only do they have nothing to say, but they are unable to say anything.

They cannot issue commandments. They cannot say, “Thou shalt not . . .” They cannot declare to their people, “Thou shalt . . .”

They cannot tell their people what they are like. Are they holy? Are they vile? Are they evil? Are they capricious? Are they powerful? No one can ever know because they cannot speak and therefore cannot reveal who they are or what they are like.

They cannot threaten their adversaries and tell those who oppose them of their might.

They cannot warn men and women to repent or to flee from the coming wrath and judgment.

They cannot make any promises to those who worship them nor can they make prophecies of what they are going to do (Isaiah 41:21-24).

They cannot enter into covenants with their people (Genesis 12:1-3; 2 Samuel 7; Matthew 26:28).

They cannot call the stars by name (Isaiah 40:26).

They cannot declare their love to their people.

They cannot speak blessings.

They cannot call men and women to come to them (Matthew 11:28; Isaiah 55:1-3).

They cannot call the world and the universe into existence.

They cannot speak to any person.

They cannot communicate any ideas.

They cannot express comfort for their people.

This is powerfully important. The Bible opens with God speaking and the voice of the LORD commands the universe into existence (Genesis 1). The gospel of John opens with “in the beginning was the Word . . .” (John 1:1) John describes Jesus Christ as the Word, the “logos,” because Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. Jesus is the eternally existent Word, the Person who manifests the speech of the living God. By contrast, their idols cannot speak, and it is obvious that words have no meaning for idols who cannot use words.

One of the common traits of all mankind is the ability to speak. It is the ability to speak that makes man human. What then are we to make of idols who cannot speak? How are they going to communicate to mankind? The LORD declares that He made man’s mouth and He teaches us what to say (Exodus 4:11-12). God the Holy Spirit gives us the words to say when we are to witness before kings (Matthew 10:20) and the Holy Spirit speaks to God the Father with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26), but their idols cannot speak to anyone at all.

“They have mouths, but they cannot speak.” It is the ultimate mockery. What good is a mute idol to anyone? Their idols cannot promise or threaten. They cannot command or encourage. They cannot warn. They cannot foretell the future and declare what is to come. They cannot claim credit for the great acts of the past. They cannot express love or compassion, wrath or mercy, forgiveness or joy. They simply stand there mute, expressing nothing, saying nothing. Stupid and soundless, they are “like a scarecrow in a cucumber field (Jeremiah 10:5). They can do no harm, nor can they do any good.”

But our God raised His voice and the earth melted (Psalm 46:6). He speaks and the dead come out of the tomb (John 11:43). And one day, an hour will come when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and will come forth (John 5:28-29). With His voice the LORD spoke the universe into existence and one day with His voice He will speak the universe out of existence, but forever and ever there will be the sound of ten thousands of ten thousands lifting their voices and crying out to the LORD and to the Lamb, “Holy, holy, holy!” Voices, voices, voices of the redeemed are crying out to the infinitely worthy One.

Meanwhile, their idols stand by: “They have mouths, but they cannot speak.”

Let us join our voices with all the redeemed.  SDG   rmb    8/10/2016

Psalm 114 is a psalm about God’s deliverance of Israel from the house of slavery in Egypt. The psalm speaks of the time when Israel went forth from Egypt and became God’s sanctuary. Then the psalmist declares that “the sea looked and fled and the Jordan turned back (114:3).” He then asks the sea what caused it to flee and what caused the Jordan to turn back. These are, of course, two of the great miracles that the LORD performed for Israel when He split the Red Sea and allowed Israel to walk through on dry land and then when He stopped the Jordan and had it pile up as a heap as the people walked through into the Promised Land. These two biblical events are emblazoned in our minds and etched on the pages of Scripture, identifiable and unforgettable.

But then we have to consider the other events which are described next. After speaking of the two water miracles, the psalmist says, “The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs (114:4).” Later he asks, “(What ails you,) O mountains, that you skip like rams, O hills, like lambs? (114:6)” Evidently the mountains and the hills moved so much that they appeared to be skipping about like sheep in the midst of the flock. Now this is a mystery, for when in the pages of Scripture have the mountains ever skipped like rams or the hills played like lambs? We search back into the pages of the Bible, into the history of Israel or even into the sayings and the visions of the prophets and we scan the pages in vain for any event like that. There is no historical time when the mountains and the hills “skipped like rams.”

And so, since there is no event like that looking backward, then we must need to look forward. This, in fact, is exactly what is going on here. First the psalmist is remembering the times in Israel’s history when the LORD performed miracles to rescue His people and he is also seeing into the distant future when the Lord Jesus Christ will return for His people. In that day, when the Lord returns, the mountains will skip like rams and the hills like lambs. The following are some verses that describe the events of Jesus’ return which suggest the mountains and the hills skipping as the earth writhes in anguish over the coming of the King.

Psalm 97:5 “The mountains melted like wax at the presence of the LORD.” It is not difficult to imagine that if mountains are melting like wax, the hills will also skipping like rams.

Isaiah 55:12 “The mountains and the hills will break forth with shouts of joy.” If they are shouting, could they not also be skipping?

Revelation 6:14-17 “Every mountain and island were moved out of their places.” In the cataclysmic chaos marking the end of the age before the return of the Lord, every mountain will rock as a drunken man. This is the terrifying time when the mountains will appear to skip.

Ezekiel 38:20 “The earth will shake at the presence of the LORD and the mountains will be thrown down.” This is the time at the end when the LORD’s zeal and blazing wrath will manifest themselves in earthly upheavals. Again, this could be described as the hills skipping like lambs.

Isaiah 42:15 “I will lay waste the mountains and the hills.”

Habakkuk 3:6 “The perpetual mountains were shattered, the ancient hills collapsed.”

Nahum 1:5 “Mountains quake because of Him and the hills dissolve; Indeed the earth is upheaved by His presence.” In this picture of the day of the Lord’s wrath and vengeance, we can imagine the hills skipping like lambs.

Micah 1:4 “The mountains will melt under Him and the valleys will be split.”

Zechariah 14:4 “The Mount of Olives will be split in the middle.”

My contention is that this psalm not only describes the miracles of the LORD moving the waters in Israel’s past at the Red Sea and the Jordan, but it also describes the way the mountains will move and shake and “skip like rams” on the terrifying last day when the Lord Jesus comes to judge the world. That will be an awesome day – “Tremble, O earth, before the LORD, before the God of Jacob (Psalm 114:7).”   SDG   rmb   8/9/2016

The disciple of Jesus Christ needs to quickly learn to pray. Following conversion, the training in prayer needs to be intense and brief with a steep learning curve. The reason that this is the case is that the burdens of life can quickly become towering tidal waves and can escalate to the overwhelming quite suddenly. Thus the believer must be well-trained in prayer and must be practiced in using the weapons of spiritual warfare. Storms rise suddenly and attacks are usually both unexpected and vicious.

I urge every disciple of Christ to quickly learn to pray and to receive the comfort, protection and defense that the Lord can provide. You do not want to be untrained and unprepared when the enemy suddenly attacks or when the fears and difficulties of life suddenly overwhelm you.

The danger for the disciple in America is that we can easily be lulled to lethargy by the appearance of peacefulness and prosperity. In the past, America has been a land where even true Christians have become soft and dull because there has been no persistent persecution of believers here and everything seemed safe. In this environment of relative peace, the believer can forget that: a) we have been given a mission by our King to make disciples (Matt. 28:19-20) and to be His witnesses in the whole world (Acts 1:8); b) there is a war raging against Christ and against His church; and c) we have an enemy, Satan, who hates us and who seeks to destroy us (John 10:10). This forgetfulness leaves us wide open to attack and makes us vulnerable to collapse and to surrender in the heat of the battle. We become a casualty of being casual about prayer. One minute the believer is drifting along in his safe bubble and the next moment the serenity of his world is shattered by daunting conflict and overwhelming adversity. Therefore the believer must learn to pray early in the walk of faith and must learn to use the weapons of our warfare (2 Cor. 10:4) and wield them skillfully.

The disciple of Jesus Christ is (usually) given the blessing of seasons of relative calm and peace. These seasons must not be wasted, but should be used as times of training and strengthening. It is in the green tree (Luke 23:31) that the disciple must gain strength. Instead of being lulled to sleep by the appearance of peacefulness and prosperity, the disciple must make the most of those times (Ephesians 5:15-16) to become mighty in prayer.

Several Scripture passages can be applied to this lesson:

Luke 23:31 – “If you do these things in the green tree, what will you do in the dry?” My paraphrase would be, “If you are frightened and anxious when things are basically calm and prosperous, what will you do when Satan launches his vicious attack against you?” When the tree is green (in the good times), you should use that time to prepare for the day of battle (in the dry tree).

Psalm 32:6 – “Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to You at a time when You may be found. Surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach him.” Learn to pray before there is a flood of great waters (danger and threat and adversity). Learning to pray means that you learn how to call upon the Lord so that He will protect you when the floods pour down.

Isaiah 55:6 – “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near.” There is an urgency for learning to pray. We must seek the LORD while He may be found, not when we feel like seeking Him. The LORD will not always be available, so we must seek Him while He is open to being found. Praying is seeking the LORD and is also calling upon Him.

Matthew 7:25, 27 – The winds and the rain and the floods are certainly going to come. The question is, “Will you be ready when they come so that you are ready to pray with power?” Do you know the Lord well enough to pray to Him during the flood and the storms?

Jeremiah 12:5 – “If you have run with the footmen and grown tired, how will you compete with the horses?” You thought that you could handle all the difficulties, because you thought they were all pretty limited in their threats. Now you realize that there are many threats and challenges that are much too difficult for you to handle. For the threats of life, you need to know how to pray to the Lord.

It is sad to see a believer who has trusted in his own abilities to handle life’s problems come face to face with overwhelming problems much too big to handle on his own. The person thought that life would never give them crushing problems too big for human solution, but would always give them the under-handed softball pitches, so they never learned to call upon the Lord with desperate cries for help. The person believed that somehow going through the motions would be good enough for avoiding the major catastrophes of life. If they stayed in the middle of the road and were decent people, God would smooth out their way. Since they believed everything was okay and always would be, they never learned to enter the fiery furnace or the lion’s den and so they never learned to pray like they needed the Lord to deliver or all would be lost. For that is the case. If the Lord does not deliver, then all is lost. We are all defenseless in the face of many of life’s threats and difficulties and we must learn to pray and call upon the Lord to give us His power and might.

Brothers and sisters, take the time to learn to pray as a weapon and learn to wield that weapon skillfully. Let the halls of heaven be very familiar with your voice.

SDG    rmb    7/30/2016

Our God is a God of the “little by little.” God usually does not remove our troubles suddenly and in one fell swoop. He can do that, of course, and there may be times in our own lives where He has done that, when He has miraculously wiped away our troubles or removed what was threatening us in a moment. But while He can do that, and He may have done that for you or for me, that is not how He usually works. Normally God takes away our troubles and our threats and our enemies little by little (Deuteronomy 7:22; Exodus 23:29f). And this process, which leaves us dependent on Him for His ongoing grace and help, is consistent with the idea of what can be called a discipline of suffering. As we look to the Lord over an extended period of time, the persistent low level suffering both allows us to fellowship with the Lord Jesus (Philippians 3:9) and to have our faith strengthened.

It is almost that our world would be a blander and more tasteless place if there was not the stress of long-term suffering and extended troubles which drive us to our knees and cause us to cry out to the Lord for His help and His presence. Like many aspects of the Christian life, this idea is counter to natural thinking, but a moment’s reflection will remind us that those times when we wrestle with difficulty; when we bear the burden of conflict and we are doubtful about the outcomes and when we have occasional feelings of helplessness are times when we feel the sweetest fellowship with the Lord and know what it is to have a “very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1).” “O grant Your strength to Your servant (Psalm 86:16).” “. . . “I will yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God (Psalm 42:12).” In my suffering and my anguish, in the midst of my troubles, my patience and my perseverance are nurtured. Spiritual strength is purified in the furnace of adversity. Since that is the case, the disciple of Jesus should not shrink back from difficulty, but should rather lean into the pain of suffering and should face whatever threats the Lord allows knowing that our Dread Champion (Jeremiah 20:11) is leading us on into the fight.

So the Lord raises up adversaries so that He can prove His faithfulness when we cry out to Him and so that He can give us the context that is most conducive to our spiritual growth. The threat comes into our life and we fall on our knees and suffer the affliction of adversity, while savoring the opportunity to be immersed in the fray with the Lord at our side. Our human flesh groans under the effort and the pain of the conflict and our human frailty causes whispers of doubt to enter our mind, as we wonder if the Lord will indeed again be faithful to us and if He will again deliver us from the cords of death. Yet at the same time the Spirit inside of us encourages us to press forward into the battle and insists that we trust the Lord and that we act in spite of our fears and doubts. And so we persevere and continue on and we trust, and each time we do that, we increase our faith and grow stronger in the Lord.

The Lord clears away our adversaries little by little and in the midst of that extended time of effort and dependence and conflict, our spirit grows stronger. This is the discipline of suffering or the discipline of perseverance, and even in the midst of bearing up under the strain of this discipline, there is the savor of a godly effort and the sense that the flesh is groaning and weakening its grip on our heart. For those who persevere and who spend time in the practice of this discipline, it really does yield the peaceful, sweet fruit of righteousness.

SDG     rmb     7/27/2016

This expression in this verse (1 Peter 2:24), “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness,” certainly provides for justification (namely, that Christ’s death provided the atonement for our sins that satisfied the Law’s demands and that His death allowed God to justly forgive those who trust in Jesus for salvation (Romans 3:26)), but I think that the context emphasizes the sanctification that begins at the moment of our justification and continues until our death and our eventual glorification. For while we have died to sin (Romans 6:7, etc.), we are also dying to sin every day as we put sin to death in our daily lives and as we seek moment by moment to live in righteousness and holiness. In this context, and I believe in all of 1 Peter, the emphasis is on living an obedient life as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Peter assumes that the disciple has experienced the new birth and so instructs and exhorts the disciple to live out that new birth in righteous living. Thus dying to sin is clearly defined in the radical and sanctified living to which Peter calls the disciple. Therefore, the main responsibility for “dying to sin” rests on the disciple. Through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the disciple is to vanquish remaining sin in his flesh (Colossians 3:5, etc.) and is to strive toward righteousness (Romans 6:17ff). While there may be setbacks along the way, the disciple is to persevere on the journey and should see continual progress in sanctification through obedience.

SDG     rmb     7/24/2016

In this verse (1 Peter 2:18), the apostle Peter under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit exhorts servants to be submissive to their masters with all respect, even those who are unreasonable. Now to be submissive to our “masters,” like bosses and supervisors at work, is hard enough for anyone to do, but Peter calls the disciple of Christ to submit to our masters categorically and unconditionally. And this submission applies to those who are reasonable and to those who are unreasonable.

It feels like there must be a line somewhere that allows the disciple to say, “Enough is enough. This is not fair and I do not deserve this.” But actually there is no such line. Scripture calls the disciple of Jesus to submit and to bear up under sorrows when suffering unjustly. Why would Peter command disciples of Jesus to submit to unreasonable masters?

First, the disciple willingly and graciously submits to unreasonable masters because we follow Christ’s example, and Christ our King submitted to unreasonable men to the point of death and gave us this example to follow (2:21ff). So we submit to follow Christ’s example.

Second, the disciple submits to his unreasonable master because this provides a bolder and a clearer testimony to the watching world of what it means to follow Jesus. If we do what is completely unexpected and submit to unreasonable masters, the world will notice and will eventually demand an explanation. There is a strong testimony given (and isn’t that the whole point, to give a testimony to Jesus?) if a servant submits to unreasonable masters out of his love for Christ and out of his desire for obedience. From that place there are often opportunities to tell others about Christ.

Third, submitting to unreasonable treatment more quickly and more purely subdues the disciple’s fleshly pride and arrogance. The flesh hates discipline and pain and suffering, so the flesh resists all sanctification. To subdue the flesh the disciple subjects the flesh to suffering and to training. The more rigorous the training, the more quickly and effectively the disciple is trained. Thus sanctification is the reward and the gift of obedience and submission.

Many would still rebel against the suggestion that a person is to submit to unreasonable treatment by a master. You may say to me, “That is unnatural. That’s just radical. God would not want me to just take that sort of abuse. I have rights!” But actually through the apostle Peter, God explicitly commands the disciple to submit to unreasonable masters. This is exactly what God intends. Of course this is radical behavior! The disciple has been called by a radical King to live a radical life, a life that is radically distinct from the life of the uncalled. And so we submit to unreasonable masters in the hope that, in so doing, the world would make much of Christ and we would become more like Christ in all our words, thoughts and deeds.

SDG     rmb     7/24/2016

Once again my meditations have brought me to the book of Romans and for this study we will be looking at Romans 4:25:

“(Jesus) who was delivered over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification.”

In Romans up to this point, Paul has prosecuted all mankind, Jew and Gentile, and found them all to be condemned by their sin and in need of a Savior to rescue them (1:18-3:20). He has presented the gospel in its essential form (3:21-26) and illustrated justification by faith (Chapter 4 and the example of Abraham’s faith and his being credited with righteousness). Now at the conclusion of chapter 4 Paul introduces us to the Hero of our story, the Author of the gospel Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection.

The Location of the verse:

This verse is located at the end of the section which tells how a man or woman can receive the benefits of the gospel (believe in Jesus unto righteousness) and forms the segue to the section that tells what God has accomplished in Christ for the salvation of His people and how He accomplished it and how this affects the life of the believer (Chapters 5-8).

The Structure of the verse:

It is obvious that the verse is made up of two parts that are almost identical in how they are worded. In its rendering of the verse, the NAS retains the structure in the Greek, which is certainly a rhetorical device employed by the apostle Paul. Each part of the verse contains an immense theological concept which is stated in the most efficient way possible.

So the structure of each part of the verse goes like this:

“Christ” + [aorist passive verb, past tense] + “because of” + “our” “transgressions” (the instruments of our condemnation) and “Christ” + [aorist passive verb, past tense] + “because of” + “our” “justification” (acquittal/deliverance from condemnation).

The reason I point out the structure of the verse is to appreciate the beauty of expression of the inspired Word. The masterful use of rhetoric, the balance of the sentence, the efficiency of expression and the profound nature of the ideas communicated all confirm the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Commentary/Meditation on the verse:

Since it is obvious that the verse has two parts which are rhetorically very similar, we will examine each part of the verse separately. First, the Apostle states that “(Christ) was delivered over because of our transgressions.” The Bible teaches that our transgressions necessitated a sacrifice that would satisfy the wrath of God kindled by our sins. Thus the first phrase speaks of our great need, that our sin had condemned us before our holy God. Our transgressions earned the wrath of God and merited our just condemnation and if we were to escape God’s wrath there had to be some sacrifice that could turn away God’s wrath from us. Therefore, “because of our transgressions,” . . . Because we were helpless (5:6) and condemned and because Christ was the only one whose death could propitiate the wrath of God; “because of our transgressions,” Christ was delivered over. He was delivered over to death so that He could give His life as a substitutionary sacrifice for our sins. Because Christ was the only one whose death would satisfy and because we were helpless and dead in our transgressions and sins (Eph. 2:1), Christ had to be delivered over to death on our behalf. It is important to realize that Jesus Christ could not merely be punished and released (Luke 23:16, 22). Because God desired to save His elect from their deserved condemnation, and because the wages of our sin is death (6:23a; Ezekiel 18:4), Christ was delivered over to death. Thus our transgressions made it necessary for Christ to be delivered over to death. “who was delivered over because of our transgressions.”

As we have already stated, the second part of the verse is rhetorically similar to the first. “. . . and (He) was raised because of our justification.” What is Paul now saying in this second part of the verse? We have seen that Christ was delivered over because of our great need, but now He is raised because of His great accomplishment. Having accomplished our justification, Christ is now raised victorious. Thus Christ’s resurrection followed after our justification. What Paul is saying is that when Christ died on the cross, His work of atonement and propitiation was done. He had been “delivered over” and had died and thus Christ had atoned for the sins of His people and He had propitiated the wrath of God against them. His work had been perfectly completed and the goal had been reached. “It is finished!” He had cried from the cross (John 19:30). By His death on the cross, His people had been justified. Now with our justification accomplished by His death, it was no longer necessary for Him to remain in the grave. Therefore, since our justification was accomplished, He could be raised in glorious resurrection. Because Christ’s work of justification had been finished, He could be raised from the dead.

So “[He] was delivered over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification.” Christ was delivered over to death to atone for our transgressions and He was raised because He had perfectly accomplished His work of justification.

SDG    rmb    7/16/2016