CHRIST AND HIS WORK

-I want to use this year as a time to encourage a stronger faith in God and a stronger faithfulness toward God. Our mission as a church is to Grow and Live for Christ together. We grow when our faith in God is strong, as we trust Him in spite of all that is going on around us. But then we not only grow in our faith, but that leads us to a more faithful way of living out that faith in this world.

-The church of Jesus Christ and the world at large needs a people who have trust in God and His Word, and then reflect that trust in the Word into the wider world. Unfortunately, we are living in a time of great apostasy—a falling away from the faith that was once for all delivered and entrusted to the saints. We mean this in the sense that a vast majority of people in our nation are claiming that they do not believe in God or they have committed themselves to a false God. But we also mean it in the sense that a vast majority of people who claim to believe in Christ have fallen away from what the Bible teaches in its context—instead opting to conform what the Bible says to their own worldly desires.

-We do not want that to happen on our watch. So, we study doctrine and theology and the Bible so we have a foundation on which to stand and to live lives pleasing to God. We want to have faith and remain faithful. Part of this is studying how faithful followers of old have summarized the faith in creeds and confessions. Last year I started looking at the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith to use as a springboard to look at important beliefs, and want to continue that tonight as we see how it summarizes the work of Christ. So, chapter 8 paragraph 3...

8.3

The Lord Jesus, in His human nature united in this way to the divine in the person of the Son, was sanctified and anointed with the Holy Spirit beyond measure. He had in Himself all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The Father was pleased to make all fullness dwell in Him so that—being holy, harmless, undefiled, and full of grace and truth—He was thoroughly qualified to carry out the office of mediator and guarantor. He did not take this office upon Himself but was called to it by His Father, who put all power and judgment in His hand and commanded Him to carry them out.

-This section of the confession has been talking about Jesus Christ being the mediator between God and man, and had previously discussed the necessity and the truth of Jesus having two natures, one divine and the other human, in order for Him to fulfill that role. He had to be God and Man to be the intermediary between God and Man. We may not necessarily fully understand how the two natures co-mingled, but we believe that they do in the person of Christ—fully possessing the essence and nature of both without them losing anything, and without them blending into some weird third hybrid. So, Christ had the natures needed to do the work of the mediator.

-In this paragraph, the Puritans of old summarized the fact that Jesus was equipped with everything that He needed to fulfill the role for which He was sent. The paragraph says that Jesus was sanctified and anointed with the Holy Spirit in order to carry out the office of mediator. The Gospels testify that when Jesus was baptized the Holy Spirit came upon Him. For example,

Matthew 3:16 ESV

16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him;

-So, just as Paul calls us to be filled with the Spirit in Ephesians 5:18, we see that Jesus Himself was filled with the Spirit. Again, Jesus being the second person of the Trinity was also fully human, and in His humanity He was able to receive the Spirit and live in the Spirit just like we are able. And the paragraph summarizes that there was a two-fold purpose for this.

-First, it says that the Holy Spirit sanctified Him. To be sanctified is to be set apart in both a moral and a practical sense. It is to be set apart for a unique purpose—here the work and office of being the mediator between God and man. But it is also to be set apart in a moral sense in the sense of holiness, otherness—not part of the defiled world. The paragraph further defines this aspect in that He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and full of grace and truth. Jesus was not stained by sin in any way. This is attested in Scripture, for example: Hebrews 7:26

Hebrews 7:26 ESV

26 For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.

-In the paragraphs prior to what I’ve read tonight the Puritans were pointing out that Jesus had the nature or essence or ontology to be the mediator. What the paragraph I read tonight states is that Jesus had the moral qualities necessary to fulfill the role of mediator between God and man—He was the pure, holy, undefiled Lamb of God, and in His humanity He relied on the Holy Spirit to continue to live in that purity and holiness. No matter what the world threw at Him, He would not give in to its temptations.

-But then the next purpose of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christ was to equip Him with the tools that were necessary for Him to live out His office and role as mediator. The paragraph says that the Holy Spirit gave Him the treasures of wisdom and knowledge to make Him qualified to carry out the office of mediator. Again, Scripture testifies:

Colossians 2:3 ESV

3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

-Whatever qualities were needed to fulfill all that the Father wanted fulfilled were found in Christ, not only based on His own divine nature, but also His reliance and empowerment upon the Holy Spirit. Now, what Christ was provided is provided for us as well—we have the Holy Spirit to sanctify and anoint us. We have the divine power that was given to Christ. The apostle Peter tells us:

2 Peter 1:3–4 ESV

3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

-We have the Holy Spirit, the problem is that in our unbelief we don’t rely on the Holy Spirit, and in our sin we grieve and quench the Holy Spirit. But we have this provision. Now, I think it needs to be said that our filling and empowerment by the Holy Spirit is different from that of Christ. There are several Charismatic / Pentecostal teachers and preachers that say that our infilling of the Spirit is the same as Christ’s and therefore we are able to do the same things that Christ could do—meaning, we can heal sick people and raise people from the dead and things like that. But that’s not true. As we have said, Christ was anointed for His specific office, role, work. We are not called to be the mediators—only He is mediator. But the Holy Spirit will anoint and empower us for our work, whatever it is that God has called us to do.

-Now, what was it Christ was to accomplish in His role as He was empowered by the Holy Spirit? That is described in the next two paragraphs where it says:

8:4

The Lord Jesus most willingly undertook this office. To discharge it, He was born under the law and perfectly fulfilled it. He also experienced the punishment that we deserved and that we should have endured and suffered. He was made sin and a curse for us. He endured extremely heavy sorrows in His soul and extremely painful sufferings in His body. He was crucified and died and remained in a state of death, yet His body did not decay. On the third day He arose from the dead with the same body in which He suffered. In this body He also ascended into heaven, where He sits at the right hand of His Father, interceding. He will return to judge men and angels at the end of the age.

8:5

The Lord Jesus has fully satisfied the justice of God, obtained reconciliation, and purchased an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those given to Him by the Father. He has accomplished these things by His perfect obedience and sacrifice of Himself, which He once for all offered up to God through the eternal Spirit.

-Jesus willingly took on humanity, willingly died in their place, willingly bore their sin, rose again and ascended into heaven to willingly be the eternal Mediator. Paragraph 4 sounds like many of the creeds in its summary of the work of Christ, just as Paul gives to us in 1 Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 15:3–8 ESV

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

-This is the gospel—Christ took our sins as died, as Peter says:

1 Peter 2:24 ESV

24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

-But Jesus rose again, ascended, and sits in the place of authority in heaven, and He will bodily and visibly return some day. This is where we place all of our faith—we trust in the Christ who gave Himself for us, and in our thankfulness we live faithfully to Him.

-And according to paragraph 5, Jesus fully fulfilled the role by the power of the Holy Spirit. It says by His perfect obedience He satisfied God’s justice, brought reconciliation between God and man, and purchased for Himself an everlasting inheritance. Jesus had perfect obedience—He had perfect active obedience in that He fully lived out God’s law (which we could not do), but then He had perfect passive obedience by sacrificing Himself on our behalf according to the plan of God. Paul says:

Romans 3:25–26 ESV

25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

-And the writer of Hebrews tells us:

Hebrews 9:15 ESV

15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

-Knowing the one who is our Mediator with God, may we live in confidence and faithfulness. May we not allow world circumstances to cause us to back down, and may we take seriously a call to a life of holiness in gratitude for all the Mediator has done and will do on our behalf.