44. The Glory of God in the Gospel Pt 1

The Glory of God in the Gospel

1Pe 3:13-22  Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?  (14)  But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled,  (15)  but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,  (16)  having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.  (17)  For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.  (18)  For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,  (19)  in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison,  (20)  because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.  (21)  Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,  (22)  who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

This verse falls in the context of suffering. Verse 14 says but even if you should suffer for righteousness sake you will be blessed. Verse 17 For it is better should God will it so that you should suffer for doing what is right rather than doing what is wrong. 4:1 Therefore since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose. But this verse is so much more than just an example for us to follow in suffering. If we leave here this morning with no higher view than Christ is our example then we have missed the mark indeed. Yes, He is our example. We are told this explicitly in 2:21 ‘since Christ also suffered for you , leaving you an example to follow in His steps and implicitly in 4:1 ‘since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with this same purpose…’ But through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Peter pens a verse so concise as to sum up the whole of the gospel in 22 Greek words. And in those 22 words plumbs the depths of the riches of God’s glory in His salvation.

When we preach we read a lot of Scripture. Why? The reason we do this is that the Christian life is not based upon our experience but upon the Word of God. It alone is authoritative for all of faith and practice. Sunday after Sunday Jeff and I stand up here not without a little fear because the last thing we want to do is misrepresent the Lord God before His people. To use so much of the Scripture in our preaching is an assurance to Jeff and I that we are staying within the boundaries the Word of God has set and it should be an assurance to you as well.

There are 5 Points in this verse.

The Glory of God as seen in Christ

The Glory of God seen in His Justice

The Glory of God seen in the Sufficiency of Christ’s Sacrifice

The Glory of God seen in Substitutionary Atonement

The Glory of God seen in His reconciliation

The Glory of God seen in Christ

Christ literally means anointed one. One who has been set apart for special service to God to accomplish the purpose of God. The Christ reveals the glory of God.

Joh 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus Christ is the pinnacle of God’s redemptive history. He is the focal point of all the covenants that God has made. God made Covenants with us as an assurance to us that all He has said, He will do. Jesus Christ is the seed of the woman that crushes the serpent’s head. He is the seed of Abraham the brings blessings to the nations. He is the prophet that was promised to come in the Mosaic covenant, and He is the seed of David that forever sits on the throne. He is focal point of the New Covenant. He instituted it by His sacrifice. Such is the glory of God in Christ that it cannot be understood fully without Him. Verse 18 tells us four things about the Christ.

1) He also suffered for sins. This can be understood that like those suffering for righteousness sake, He too suffered for righteousness sake, but He ALSO or in addition to suffering for righteousness sake He suffered for sins. Not His sins but ours because

Isa 53:2-5 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. (3) He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (4) Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. (5) But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.

1Pe 2:24  who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.

2) He is the just, meaning that He was without blame or the blemish of sin. He is the lamb unblemished and spotless. He is holy and displays the character and nature of God.

2Co 5:21  He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Col 1:15 And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation.

How can Christ be the image of the invisible God? An image by nature is a physical representation or copy of something else that is physical. So how can it be the Christ is the image of the invisible God.

Heb 1:3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high;

This verse tells us. When the writer speaks of His nature, he is speaking of God’s character. What is the character of God? God is holy. It is from God that perfect holiness and righteousness is defined. When we think of holiness sometimes we limit it to the negatives of the 10 Commandments. Do not lie, do not murder, do not steal. But holiness and righteousness go much further that merely refraining from sin. Holiness also means to love Eph 5:1-2  Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children;  (2)  and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

Just a quick comment about this verse. Jesus did not turn from adversity with the knowledge of His certain death. With all the turmoil going on in Haiti there has been an exodus of missionaries from that island. Brethren, we as Christians run to the fire, not from it.

Compassion is used in reference to Christ 13x. Mercy 21x. Jesus the Christ is the just and righteous one. The lamb without spot or blemish.

3) Being put to death in the flesh - Joh 19:30-34 There are those who refuse to believe that Jesus died on the cross because then they have to explain away His resurrection. But He was really and truly dead. After having been scourged with whips that had pieces of metal and bone embedded in it. Each lash tore skin and there is no record of how many lashes He received but after the skin was torn it would be the muscle underneath. There are accounts of prisoners not surviving scourging. He was then nailed to the cross. Crucifixion was death by asphyxiation. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.  (31)  Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.  (32)  So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him.  (33)  But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.  (34)  But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

4) Made alive by the Spirit – Rom 8:11  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

The Glory of God seen in His Justice – suffered and died for sins

Justice is one of the characteristics of God that flows from His holiness. God is holy and He himself is the standard of holiness for He has said you shall be holy for I am holy. The Scripture testifies to the fact that as God is holy He cannot and will not abide sin in His presence. There was the command and warning given in the garden to Adam ‘ From every tree of the garden you may freely eat but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day you eat you shall surely die. As a result of Adam’s sin we are all sinners. Rom 5:12  Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— The judgment every sinner has upon his head is death. Ez 18:20 The soul that sins shall die.

Psa 34:16  The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

God’s Justice is Satisfied in Christ

Or will be satisfied in the day of judgement - Rev 20:11-15  And I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.  (12)  And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.  (13)  And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.  (14)  And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.  (15)  And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

The Glory of God seen in the Sufficiency of Christ’s Sacrifice – once for sins The sacrificial system of the OT is filled with different types of animal sacrifices in which the Isrealites had to perform multiple times. On the day of Atonement in which the High Priest brought the sacrifice into Holy of Holies once a year offered for himself as well as the people. But Christ’s sacrifice is once for all time. It is because of His perfect sacrifice that all of our sins have been atoned for. There is no further need for the OT system because Christ has ushered in that which is perfect. Heb 9:11-14  But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;  (12)  and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.  (13)  For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,  (14)  how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Rom_6:10  For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

Heb_7:27  who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.

Heb_10:10  By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe, sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow. There is nothing more, there is no additional sacrifice to offer to appease the wrath of God against sin. To hold to any doctrine that states there is a continued sacrifice of Christ or the sacrificial system of the OT is to stand against the clear teaching of the Bible.

Col 2:13-14  And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,  (14)  having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

The Glory of God seen in Substitutionary Atonement – Just for the Unjust

Gal 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—

Substitution means to stand in the place of. Substitutionary atonement means that One stands in our place to receive our just punishment for our sins. The Law requires a perfect sacrifice so someone merely standing in our place will not fulfill the requirement, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. In the OT it had to be an animal that was physically without defect. But from the verses we have read we understand that the blood of animals cannot wash clean the stain of our sin. There are two requirements 1) The Law had to be fulfilled 2) the price for breaking the Law had to be paid. Rom 8:3-4  For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,  (4)  in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

The Glory of God seen in Reconciliation – in bringing us to God we see the love of God, His mercy, His compassion. We see the righting of relationship between Creator and His creation, Of Father and children. Where Adam waited for the Lord to come in the cool of the day, we have access to boldly approach the throne of grace at any time. He is our Father, Christ our Brother and the Spirit even now is sanctifying us, setting us apart from the world and setting us apart to God. Rom 8:16-17  The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,  (17)  and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

Heb 2:11-12  For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,  (12)  saying: "I WILL DECLARE YOUR NAME TO MY BRETHREN; IN THE MIDST OF THE ASSEMBLY I WILL SING PRAISE TO YOU."

The glory of God in the Gospel is that He is satisfied in all aspects of His infinite being. His infinite justice is not infringed by the demands of His infinite love, which demands mercy. His infinite love is not infringed by the demands of His infinite justice in that there has to be punishment for sin. All are satisfied in and through Jesus Christ in the life He lived and the death that He died. This is the glory of God in the gospel. This is the glory of God seen in Jesus Christ our Lord.

What application can we make from this?

We should first of all be a thankful people. There is nothing we could have done to secure our salvation. But in the eternal council of the Triune God, He determined to save His people from their sins. When Gabriel came to Joseph he said. Mat 1:21  And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins." His people are not all people because all are not saved. His people are not the Israelites only because not all the Israelites are saved. Yet we have a possessive pronoun ‘His’ attached to people. Eph 1:4-5  just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,  (5)  having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,

We should also be those who are quick to forgive ourselves and others for sin. There is not one thing we can do to add to the forgiveness we already have in Christ Jesus. Spend the energy in repenting of your sins rather that wallowing in the guilt of sin before moving to repentance.

We should be a people who daily worship the Lord. Who is like our God? Let your hearts and souls rejoice in the God of our salvation. In your daily devotions, should you feel a song raising up, sing it. Make melodies in your heart to the Lord.