Message of Christ’s Saving Life

We begin looking now at what we’re calling the Gospel Events, beginning with Jesus’ birth. This is the theological doctrine of the incarnation.

His Birth

When describing Jesus’ birth, people often say, “God became a man.” There's a sense in which that's true. But you need to understand that in the incarnation, the Triune God didn't become a man. Instead it was the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God who took on humanity, meaning a human soul and body. The eternal Son of God humbled himself and assumed the fullness of humanity but without sin.

His Life

One of the reasons the eternal Son of God took on the fullness of humanity is so that he might live a sinless life in our place. At Jesus’ baptism, when John the Baptist was hesitant to baptize Jesus, Jesus said to him, “Let it be so now to fulfill all righteousness.”

John the Baptist is looking at him in astonishment and saying, ”Me, baptize you?” It’s important to realize that Jesus came to do what Adam, and we who are in the lineage of Adam because of the imputation of Adam's sin, failed to do. Jesus came to live a sinless life in our place.

Notice what Paul writes in Romans 5: “Through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made (or declared) righteous.” The concept here that is often missing in the contemporary gospel is that Jesus saves you just as much by his sacrificial life as by his sacrificial death.

Jonathan Edwards put it this way: “Every act of Christ's obedience was propitious.” To propitiate is to satiate something. In his death Jesus satiated the wrath of God we deserved. And God did this to manifest the fullness of His holy justness.

To understand the gospel means to understand not only the good news of Christ's death for you, but also understand the good news of his life for you. He saved you just as much by his life as by his death.

Hear this good news: in every way that we have faced the reality of God's moral commands, been tempted to sin and failed, he has come to that same place, was tempted and suffered horribly resisting that same temptation, but he won, in other words he was severely tempted but without sin, Hebrews 2 and 4 tells us.

And therefore, through a process of many years of suffering against sin, he earned a perfect record resisting temptation and obeying God in our place.

This is why, in a strict sense, God cannot ever love unconditionally or he would be unjust. Let me try to clarify. The Christian understanding of God is not that God can do anything. There are several things the Bible teaches that God cannot do. God cannot lie. God cannot be tempted. God cannot change. And it’s also not possible for God to love unconditionally or He would no longer be just.

As a seminary professor, I would often tell the students that if I preach in their future churches they should know ahead of time what my sermon title will be. It will be

“God's Conditional Love” with a subtitle “How we can only be saved by good works.”

Throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, God has always and only saved people by good works. That’s because God can only save people by good works.

But the good news is that it's not your good works. We can only be saved by the good works of Jesus Christ.

In other words, God cannot grant, what we call today, amnesty. And a lot of people misunderstand that the good news of the gospel is that God somehow winks at sin, or like a political leader, just grants amnesty.

Never forget, there are certain things God can't do. He can't change. He can't lie. He can't be God and not be God. He can't be tempted. And he can't grant amnesty. You know what unconditional love normally communicates to people? Amnesty.

And people wrongly say things like, “You know what grace is?” We've been legalistic and moralistic, and now we're discovering grace. Basically, “Do you not know the depth of God's amnesty for you?”

Why do you think this kind of statement makes me angry?

Message of Christ’s Saving Death

One of my theological mentors, and my primary advisor for my doctoral dissertation was a Systematic Theologian named Roger Nicole. I’ll never forget him saying to me and many others, “Dear brother, hold dear the biblical concept of Jesus Christ’s substitutionary atonement because it is at the very heart of the nature of the Gospel.”

So far, we’ve looked at Jesus’ active obedience for us. Now we're looking at what's traditionally, historically, and theologically called his passive obedience for us, his laying down his life under God’s just wrath in our place.

Isaiah writes, “He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds, we are healed.”

When John Stott was asked, “What is the most succinct summary of the Gospel? He said it's the good news of “God's self-satisfaction, through God’s self-substitution.”

The dilemma, the profoundest of problems, was solved. You know how it was solved? God satisfied his own justice by substituting himself. That is the mystery of the gospel.

And Stott says that is the heart of the gospel.

In the gospel we not only see the volitional intent of the eternal Son willingly taking on humanity and laying down his life to take on himself the just punishment we deserve.

We also see the volitional intent of the father. Hear the good news: In Romans 8:32 we read “He (the Father) who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

Understand Paul’s reasoning here. He’s asking the question, “How will the God who satisfied himself by substituting his one and only Son, for whom he had the deepest, incomprehensible, eternal love, and on whom he poured out the fullness of his wrath, how would he do that for you and somehow not give you something else you greatly need, like enough money, or somehow leave you hanging, or somehow not be coming through for you?”

Do you see the power of that? That good news has power and will change your whole life. That's the transforming power of the gospel.

Notice the Father did not spare him, but even more than that, he actively, intentionally gave him up for us. This is the good news of the Father in the gospel. Jesus didn't just give himself up. The Father didn't just allow him to die for us. The Father intentionally gave him up so that the curse that fell on him would then be literally and actually impossible to ever fall on you. That’s astonishing grace. That’s radical love.

This is why, for you to think that when you're in Christ, that you're also under God’s curse, is an affront to the very work of Christ for you.

It's in this context where we need to understand the absolute fury of God's just wrath. In the garden, Jesus knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.”

Throughout the Old Testament, the cup was the imagery of the fullness of the wrath of God. And to drink from this cup was an existential picture of willingly, intentionally taking this hot coal to your chest.

To drink the cup to the dregs would be to have the fullness and the fury of the wrath poured out on you. Notice that even the thought of it, just the thought of it, caused Jesus’ dramatic reaction in the garden that included him sweating drops of blood.

Try to imagine the actual reality. You can't. It's beyond comprehension.

This is why I have serious problems with Mel Gibson's movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” The movie was trying to show us the depth of God's love by how much Jesus was willing to suffer under the wrath of the Roman government of his day, not under the infinitely far greater wrath of the Father.

People were weeping in the theaters as they saw the character of Jesus whipped and as nails go through his hands and feet, and as he's spit on and tortured. The message of the movie is “Behold, this is the love of God for you in Jesus!”

Do you realize that what you see in the most grotesque of all the movie scenes of Jesus suffering under the wrath of the Romans means almost nothing in comparison to the wrath of God? This is only the wrath of man on Jesus. It’s what took place in the darkness, following the wrath of man, that should make us weep.

After incurring the wrath of man, Jesus experienced the unparalleled fury that makes physical torture look like absolutely nothing. He experienced the outpouring of a level of unparalleled fury we cannot comprehend. This is what should make people weep.

And the Father did this intentionally, on purpose. The Father didn't just let sinful people do this to Jesus. The Father offered him up and poured out the fullness of his wrath on Jesus that you and I deserve so it would actually be impossible for him to ever pour out his fury on you.

Never forget that God cannot change. God cannot lie. God cannot be tempted. God cannot be God and not be God at the same time. And the good news is that God cannot punish you if you are in Christ. He cannot. He does not have the ability to punish you because he has already poured out the fullness of all the wrath you deserve on Jesus in your place. If he punished you now, that would be double jeopardy.

When the depth of that amazing grace begins to sink in, the response will be “Why would I ever disobey the one who loves me this much? I want to give him everything I am and do, not out of fear of punishment, promise of reward, or due diligence, I want to love him and love others out of the love he has showered on me in Christ.”

Then you've got the gospel.

Message of Christ’s Saving Resurrection

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is evidence that the wrath of God has been satisfied (propitiated), the bondage of Satan and death has been broken. The resurrection is the Father's amen that the work of the Son is fully acceptable to him. And so, the good news is that he is risen. It's time to celebrate, Satan and death have been conquered. Jesus has been raised from the dead.

And that's all true, but like so many things we've seen in this course, the gospel is actually more than that. The resurrection has a much more full meaning than simply, the Father's amen or the validation of the work of the Son.

The resurrection of Jesus is also meant to shape your understanding of God’s kingdom in history as the introduction of the new age to come. This was not just an event regarding our personal salvation. It was that, but it’s even more. It was also a redemptive historical event in light of the gospel of the kingdom.

In Romans 8, the Apostle Paul teaches that when Jesus Christ was raised from the dead he was “the first born from the dead.” Understanding what Paul means is critically important in understanding the good news of the resurrection.

Why is it good news that Jesus is the first born of many to soon follow?

The Scriptures teach that when Jesus returns all things are going to be made new, including our bodies and souls. When those who are in Christ die today, their souls go to heaven and their bodies remain on earth.

But there is coming a day when Jesus will return and bring heaven back down to earth like it was at creation. He will then unite our souls with our bodies and he will give us new bodies on a new earth. As we rule on this new earth, we will not just worship but we will work without toil and with great joy for all eternity.

The good news is that the resurrected embodied and now ascended Christ is the first born of many of us to follow. He is what theologians call the “theanthropos,” the God-man, the foretaste of what is to come when Jesus returns to make all things new.

The good news is that in Jesus’ resurrection, the kingdom has finally come to earth in a way it never has before. The God-man has become the first born of what is to come. So the good news of the resurrection is not simply that death has been conquered. The good news of the resurrection is also that the new age has dawned and the first born of many is now reigning at the right hand of God. And the kingdom has already come, even though it has not yet come in all of its fullness.

Jesus said things like, “The kingdom of God is in your midst.” And “The kingdom of God is coming.” Understand that in his resurrection Jesus has given evidence of the new age, the new day has dawned.

We must be careful not to leave Jesus’ ascension out of the gospel. You hear a lot of gospel presentations today, that don’t say a thing about Jesus’ sinless life, the resurrection or ascension. The only focus is on his death. The message is, “Jesus died for you. He will change you. You need to ask him to come into your life.” It's a resurrection-less message. 

The promise of the Messiah throughout the ages was that one greater than King David was going to come and sit on the throne and rule over all things. That was the hope of the Jews, that the promised Messiah would come and he would rule from his throne over all the earth on behalf of his people. The Jews had a very limited understanding of the coming promised Messiah. His reign was not to be political but spiritual.

The good news in the early chapters of Acts is that when Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, that was the promised enthronement of the long awaited Messiah, the Son of David.  And what was the evidence that King Jesus, the Messiah, was now seated in authority over all things for carrying out God’s purposes for the world?

It was the pouring out of the Spirit of God at Pentecost. The good news is not that one day in the future he's going to come back and rule and reign. No, one day in the future the veil is going to be torn back and his present rule and reign will be manifested in all of its majesty. Jesus, the Christ, is now ruling and reigning over all things for the sake of his church.

In understanding the gospel, you must first enter into the fullness of Jesus’ humiliation all the way down to his temptations and the cross. And then, you can enter fully into his exaltation through his resurrection and ascension.

But don't stop at the cross. And don't even stop at the resurrection. Go all the way to the ascension of Jesus as Lord and King. Only then can you appreciate why Paul, in Romans 10, summarized the good news that was brought to the world by those who had beautiful feet, as “Our God reigns,” a quotation from Isaiah.

That's how the Apostle Paul understood the essence of the gospel: Our God reigns!

Most evangelicals today wouldn’t say that. They’d probably say the essence of the gospel is “God will forgive you!” which is only one of the benefits of our God reigning in Christ over all his and our enemies.

The good news is that the eternal son of God took on humanity, lived a sinless life, died a sinner’s death in my place, and he was raised from the dead showing victory over death, victory over the devil.  And in his resurrection, he inaugurated a new kingdom on earth for the first time. He was the first born among all of us. Then he was lifted up and he ascended to the right hand of God, ruling and reigning over all of his enemies and ours for the sake of the church.

The early Christians used to greet each other, “Jesus is Lord.” What it meant is, Jesus is King. He has come. He has done battle with our enemies. He had defeated them. He has conquered them. Now he rules over them. “Our God reigns!”