Seeing and Saviouring Jesus

CROSSWAY BOOK S

A D I V I S I O N O F

G O O D N E W S P U B L I S H E R S

W H E A T O N , I L L I N O I S

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, Revised Edition

Published by Crossway Books

A division of Good News Publishers

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

All Bible quotations are taken from Holy Bible: English Standard Version,

Note: Key words and phrases in Scripture quotations have been

distinguished by italics (roman type in all-italics block quotations).

First printing, 2004

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John, 1946-

Seeing and savoring Jesus Christ / John Piper.—Rev. ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-58134-623-9 (tpb : alk. paper)

1. Jesus Christ—Person and offices. I. Title.

BT205.P58 2004

232'.8—dc22 2004008483

CH 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04

15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

TO THE MEMORY OF

C. S. Lewis

and Clyde Kilby

who taught me there is always

more to see in what I see

CONTENTS

A WORD TO THE READER 9

1 SEEING AND SAVORING THE GLORY OF GOD 13

The Ultimate Aim of Jesus Christ

2 JESUS IS THE GLORY OF GOD 21

The Deity of Jesus Christ

3 THE LION AND THE LAMB 29

The Excellence of Jesus Christ

4 THE INDESTRUCTIBLE JOY 35

The Gladness of Jesus Christ

5 THE WAVES AND WINDS STILL KNOW HIS VOICE 43

The Power of Jesus Christ

6 SOMETHING GREATER THAN SOLOMON IS HERE 51

The Wisdom of Jesus Christ

7 THE GLORIOUS POVERTY OF A BAD REPUTATION 59

The Desecration of Jesus Christ

8 THE INCOMPARABLE SUFFERINGS 67

The Anguish of Jesus Christ

9 THE GLORY OF RESCUING SINNERS, 75

NOT REMOVING SATAN

The Saving Sacrifice of Jesus Christ

10 THE INCARNATE WEALTH OF THE 83

COMPASSION OF GOD

The Mercies of Jesus Christ

11 THE TOUGH SIDE 93

The Severity of Jesus Christ

12 INVINCIBLE LIFE 103

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

13 THE APPEARING OF THE GLORY OF 111

OUR GREAT GOD AND SAVIOR

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ

AFTERWORD 117

How Can We Be Sure About Jesus?

RESOURCES FROM DESIRING GOD MINISTRIES 125

A WORD TO THE READER

Who was Jesus Christ? That’s the question I will try

to answer. But my aim is not for you to be neutral

about him. That would be cruel. Seeing and savoring Jesus

Christ is the most important seeing and savoring you will

ever do. Eternity hangs on it. So my aim is that you see him

as solid truth and savor him with great joy.

When I speak of seeing Jesus Christ, I don’t mean seeing

with the eyes of your head, but the eyes of your heart.

When he was about to leave this world and return to God

the Father, Jesus said, “You will not see me” until you “see

the Son of Man . . . coming with the clouds of heaven”

(John 16:17; Mark 14:62). At that time people could see

him with their physical eyes. But now, the Bible says, we

walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). He is

not here to see physically. He is in heaven until he comes

again to be seen by everyone.

But the Bible does say that we may see Jesus in another

sense. It speaks of “the eyes of your hearts” (Ephesians

1:18). It speaks of “seeing the light of the gospel of the

9

glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians

4:4). Jesus himself spoke of two kinds of seeing. He said of

the uncomprehending crowds, “Seeing they do not see”

(Matthew 13:13). One kind is seeing with physical eyes,

and the other is with spiritual eyes. When we see with our

spiritual eyes, we see the truth and beauty and value of

Jesus Christ for what they really are. Thus a blind person

today may see Christ more clearly than many who have

eyes.

Everyone can read the stories of Jesus and “see” the

portraits painted by the words of those who knew him.

But not everyone sees truth and beauty and infinite

value. Some see only myth. Some see foolishness. Some

see offense. “Seeing they do not see.” It is as though a

child should look at a Michelangelo and prefer a comic

strip.

Savoring Jesus Christ is the response to this second

kind of seeing. When you see something as true and beautiful

and valuable, you savor it. That is, you treasure it.

You cherish and admire and prize it. Spiritual seeing and

spiritual savoring are so closely connected that it would be

fair to say: If you don’t savor Christ, you haven’t seen

Christ for who he is. If you don’t prize him above all

things, you haven’t apprehended his true worth.

The aim of this book is to help you see and savor

Christ. The only way for this to happen is to use your physical

eyes and ears to see or hear the testimonies to Jesus

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

10

Christ told by those who knew him when he was here.

That is why these chapters are permeated with Bible quotations.

It is not my word that counts, but God’s. He has

borne witness to his Son. His witness is compelling. May

he give you eyes to see and hearts to savor.

A Word to the Reader

11

The heavens declare

the glory of God.

PSALM 1 9 : 1

God, who said, “Light shall

shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts

to give the light of the knowledge

of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

2 CORINTHIANS 4 : 6

1

SEEING AND SAVORING

THE GLORY OF GOD

The Ultimate Aim of Jesus Christ

The created universe is all about glory. The deepest longing

of the human heart and the deepest meaning of

heaven and earth are summed up in this: the glory of God.

The universe was made to show it, and we were made to see

it and savor it. Nothing less will do. Which is why the world

is as disordered and as dysfunctional as it is. We have

exchanged the glory of God for other things (Romans 1:23).

“The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

That is why all the universe exists. It’s all about glory. The

Hubble Space Telescope sends back infrared images of faint

galaxies perhaps twelve billion light-years away (twelve billion

times six trillion miles). Even within our Milky Way

there are stars so great as to defy description, like Eta

Carinae, which is five million times brighter than our sun.

Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation

13

to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make

us infinitesimally small. But the meaning of this magnitude

is not mainly about us. It’s about God. “The heavens declare

the glory of God,” says the Scripture. The reason for “wasting”

so much space on a universe to house a speck of

humanity is to make a point about our Maker, not us. “Lift

up your eyes on high and see: who created these [stars]? He

who brings out their host by number, calling them all by

name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong

in power not one is missing” (Isaiah 40:26).

The deepest longing of the human heart is to know and

enjoy the glory of God. We were made for this. “Bring my

sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth

. . . whom I created for my glory,” says the Lord (Isaiah

43:6-7). To see it, to savor it, and to show it—that is why

we exist. The untracked, unimaginable stretches of the created

universe are a parable about the inexhaustible “riches

of his glory” (Romans 9:23). The physical eye is meant to

say to the spiritual eye, “Not this, but the Maker of this, is

the Desire of your soul.” Saint Paul said, “We rejoice in

hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). Or, even more precisely,

he said that we were “prepared beforehand for glory”

(Romans 9:23). This is why we were created—that he might

“make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy”

(Romans 9:23).

The ache in every human heart is an ache for this. But

we suppress it and do not see fit to have God in our knowledge

(Romans 1:28). Therefore the entire creation has fallen

into disorder. The most prominent example of this in the

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

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Bible is the disordering of our sexual lives. Paul says that the

exchange of the glory of God for other things is the root

cause for the homosexual (and heterosexual) disordering of

our relationships. “Their women exchanged natural relations

for those that are contrary to nature . . . the men likewise

gave up natural relations with women and were

consumed with passion for one another” (Romans 1:26-

27). If we exchange God’s glory for lesser things, he gives us

up to lived-out parables of depravity—the other exchanges

that mirror, in our misery, the ultimate sellout.

The point is this: We were made to know and treasure

the glory of God above all things; and when we trade that

treasure for images, everything is disordered. The sun of

God’s glory was made to shine at the center of the solar system

of our soul. And when it does, all the planets of our life

are held in their proper orbit. But when the sun is displaced,

everything flies apart. The healing of the soul begins by

restoring the glory of God to its flaming, all-attracting place

at the center.

We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one

goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do

we go? Because there is greater healing for the soul in

beholding splendor than there is in beholding self. Indeed,

what could be more ludicrous in a vast and glorious universe

like this than a human being, on the speck called earth,

standing in front of a mirror trying to find significance in his

own self-image? It is a great sadness that this is the gospel

of the modern world.

But it is not the Christian Gospel. Into the darkness of

Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God

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petty self-preoccupation has shone “the light of the gospel

of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2

Corinthians 4:4). The Christian Gospel is about “the glory

of Christ,” not about me. And when it is—in some measure—

about me, it is not about my being made much of by

God, but about God mercifully enabling me to enjoy making

much of him forever.

What was the most loving thing Jesus could do for us?

What was the endpoint, the highest good, of the Gospel?

Redemption? Forgiveness? Justification? Reconciliation?

Sanctification? Adoption? Are not all of these great wonders

simply means to something greater? Something final?

Something that Jesus asked his Father to give us? “Father, I

desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with

me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me”

(John 17:24).

The Christian Gospel is “the gospel of the glory of

Christ” because its final aim is that we would see and savor

and show the glory of Christ. For this is none other than the

glory of God. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and

the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). “He is the

image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). When the

light of the Gospel shines in our hearts, it is “the light of the

knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”

(2 Corinthians 4:6). And when we “rejoice in hope of the

glory of God” (Romans 5:2), that hope is “our blessed hope,

the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus

Christ” (Titus 2:13). The glory of Christ is the glory of God.

(See Chapter Two.)

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

16

In one sense, Christ laid the glory of God aside when he

came: “And now, Father, glorify me together in your own

presence with the glory that I had with you before the world

existed” (John 17:5). But in another sense, Christ manifested

the glory of God in his coming: “The Word became

flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory

as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”

(John 1:14). Therefore, in the Gospel we see and savor “the

glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

And this kind of “seeing” is the healing of our disordered

lives. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the

Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one

degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

A P R A Y E R

O Father of glory, this is the cry of our hearts—to be

changed from one degree of glory to another, until, in

the resurrection, at the last trumpet, we are completely

conformed to the image of your Son, Jesus Christ, our

Lord. Until then, we long to grow in grace and in the

knowledge of our Lord, especially the knowledge of his

glory. We want to see it as clearly as we see the sun, and

to savor it as deeply as our most desired pleasure. O

merciful God, incline our hearts to your Word and the

wonders of your glory. Wean us from our obsession

with trivial things. Open the eyes of our hearts to see

each day what the created universe is telling about your

glory. Enlighten our minds to see the glory of your Son

Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God

17

in the Gospel. We believe that you are the All-glorious

One, and that there is none like you. Help our unbelief.

Forgive the wandering of our affections and the

undue attention we give to lesser things. Have mercy

on us for Christ’s sake, and fulfill in us your great

design to display the glory of your grace. In Jesus’

name we pray, amen.

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

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“Truly, truly, I say to you,

before Abraham was, I am.”

JOHN 8 : 5 8

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

JOHN 1 : 1

For in [Christ] the whole fullness

of deity dwells bodily.

CO L O S S I A N S 2 : 9

2

JESUS IS THE GLORY

OF GOD

The Deity of Jesus Christ

Christ does not exist in order to make much of us. We

exist in order to enjoy making much of him. The

assumption of this book is that to know the glories of Christ

is an end, not a means. Christ is not glorious so that we get

wealthy or healthy. Christ is glorious so that rich or poor,

sick or sound, we might be satisfied in him.

The first particular glory that upholds all the rest is the

mere eternal existence of Christ. If we will simply ponder

this as we ought, a great ballast will come into the tipping

ship of our soul. Sheer existence is, perhaps, the greatest

mystery of all. Ponder the absoluteness of reality. There had

to be something that never came into being. Back, back,

back we peer into endless ages, yet there never was nothing.

Someone has the honor of being there first and always. He

never became or developed. He simply was. To whom

belongs this singular, absolute glory?

21

The answer is Christ, the person whom the world knows

as Jesus of Nazareth.

The apostle John, who wrote the last book of the Bible,

received the decisive revelation. He quotes God: “‘I am the

Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who

was and who is to come, the Almighty’” (Revelation 1:8).

This is not Christ talking. This is the Almighty God. He calls

himself “Alpha and Omega”—the first and last letters of the

Greek alphabet. In the alphabet, one cannot speak of anything

(or nothing) before alpha. There is no “before” alpha

in the alphabet. Nor can one speak of anything (or nothing)

after omega. There is no “after” omega in the alphabet.

So it is with God and reality. There is no “before” God

and no “after” God. He is absolutely there, no matter how

far back or how far forward you go. He is the absolute

Reality. He has the honor of being there first and always. To

him belongs this singular glory.

This is the essential meaning of his Old Testament name

Yahweh (or Jehovah). It is built on the verb “to be.” When

Moses asked God his name, “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO

I AM. . . . Say this to the people of Israel, “I AM has sent me to

you”’” (Exodus 3:14). This “I am” is unfolded by God in

Isaiah as implying absolute, eternal Reality—past and future.

“‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the LORD . . . ‘that you may

know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me

no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me’” (Isaiah

43:10). To be “I am” is to be absolutely the first and the last.

No “before” and no “after.” Simply “I am.”

God makes this explicit in Isaiah 44:6, “Thus says the

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

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LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of

hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no

God.’” And again in Isaiah 48:12, “Listen to me, O Jacob,

and Israel, whom I called! I am he, I am the first, and I am

the last.” This is his name: Yahweh—the one who absolutely,

eternally, and invincibly is. He has the unique honor

and singular glory of always having been, when nothing else

was. Nor will he be outlasted by anything. This is what it

means to be God.

What, then, does this have to do with Christ, whom we

know as Jesus of Nazareth?

Everything. The apostle John quoted Christ near the end

of his Revelation: “Behold, I am coming soon. . . . I am the

Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning

and the end. . . . I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you

about these things for the churches” (Revelation 22:12-13,

16). This is Christ talking, not God the Father. Now, two

cannot be “Alpha and Omega” unless they are one. Two

cannot be absolutely “first and last” unless they are one. Yet

Christ (who calls himself Jesus) claims for himself the same

honor and glory belonging to God the Almighty (see also

Revelation 1:17-18; 2:8).

Christ even took to himself the uniquely glorious name

of God, “I am.” “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to

you, before Abraham was, I am’” (John 8:58). “I am

telling you this now,” Jesus says to his disciples near the

end of his life, “before it takes place, that when it does take

place you may believe that I am” (John 13:19, author’s

translation; see John 8:24). Nothing greater can any man

Jesus Is the Glory of God

23

say of himself. It is true, or it is blasphemy. Christ was God

or godless.

John knew which. “In the beginning was the Word, and

the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And

the Word became flesh . . . the only Son [some translations,

“begotten”] from the Father” (John 1:1, 14). Jesus Christ,

the “Word,” was “begotten,” not made—and not at any

point in time, but eternally. Two Persons standing forth as

one God, not two Gods—the “Son” begotten from the

“Father,” one essential deity. This is a great mystery, as we

would expect it to be. But it is what God has revealed about

himself.

The apostle Paul also knew the unique glory that

belonged to Christ. He is “according to the flesh . . . the

Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen”

(Romans 9:5). Nevertheless, “though he was in the form of

God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be

grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant”

(Philippians 2:6-7). Therefore, “in him the whole fullness

of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9; see 1:19). And

we Christians are now waiting not for a mere man, but for

“the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior

Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13; see also 2 Peter 1:1).

This is why the writer to the Hebrews is so bold as to

say all the angels worship Christ. He is not the chief among

angels who worship God. He is worshiped by all angels as

God. “And again, when [God] brings the firstborn into the

world, he says, ‘Let all God’s angels worship him’”

(Hebrews 1:6). For he is the Creator of all that is, and

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

24

is himself God: “Of the Son [God] says, ‘Your throne,

O God, is forever and ever. . . . You, Lord, laid the foundation

of the earth in the beginning’” (Hebrews 1:8, 10).

Thus the Father bears witness to the deity of the Son. He

“is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint

of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of

his power” (Hebrews 1:3).

Jesus Christ is the Creator of the universe. Jesus Christ

is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. Jesus Christ,

the Person, never had a beginning. He is absolute Reality.

He has the unparalleled honor and unique glory of being

there first and always. He never came into being. He was

eternally begotten. The Father has eternally enjoyed “the

radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his

nature” (Hebrews 1:3) in the Person of his Son.

Seeing and savoring this glory is the goal of our salvation.

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given

me, be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have

given me” (John 17:24). To feast on this forever is the aim

of our being created and our being redeemed.

A P R A Y E R

Eternal Father, you never had a beginning. You will

never have an ending. You are the Alpha and the

Omega. This we believe, because you have revealed it

to us. Our hearts leap up with gratitude that you have

opened our eyes to see and know that Jesus Christ is

your eternal, divine Son, begotten, not made, and that

Jesus Is the Glory of God

25

you, O Father, and he, your Son, are one God. We

tremble even to take such glorious truths on our lips

for fear of dishonoring you with withering and inadequate

words. But we must speak, because we must

praise you. Silence would shame us, and the rocks

themselves would cry out. You must be praised for who

you are in the world you have made. And we must

thank you because you have made us taste and see the

glory of Jesus Christ, your Son. Oh, to know him!

Father, we long to know him. Banish from our minds

low thoughts of Christ. Saturate our souls with the

Spirit of Christ and all his greatness. Enlarge our

capacities to be satisfied in all that you are for us in

him. Where flesh and blood are impotent, reveal to us

the Christ, and rivet our attention and our affections

on the truth and beauty of your all-glorious Son. And

grant that whether rich or poor, sick or sound, we

might be transformed by him and become an echo of

his excellence in the world. In Jesus’ name we pray,

amen.

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

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I saw a Lamb standing,

as though it had been slain,

with seven horns

and with seven eyes.

REVELATION 5 : 6

3

THE LION AND THE LAMB

The Excellence of Jesus Christ

Alion is admirable for its ferocious strength and imperial

appearance. A lamb is admirable for its meekness

and servant-like provision of wool for our clothing. But

even more admirable is a lion-like lamb and a lamb-like

lion. What makes Christ glorious, as Jonathan Edwards

observed over 250 years ago, is “an admirable conjunction

of diverse excellencies.”

For example, we admire Christ for his transcendence,

but even more because the transcendence of his greatness is

mixed with submission to God. We marvel at him because

his uncompromising justice is tempered with mercy. His

majesty is sweetened by meekness. In his equality with God

he has a deep reverence for God. Though he is worthy of all

good, he was patient to suffer evil. His sovereign dominion

over the world was clothed with a spirit of obedience and

submission. He baffled the proud scribes with his wisdom,

but was simple enough to be loved by children. He could

29

still the storm with a word, but would not strike the

Samaritans with lightning or take himself down from the

cross.

The glory of Christ is not a simple thing. It is a coming

together in one person of extremely diverse qualities. We see

it in the New Testament book of Revelation: “The Lion of the

tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he

can open the scroll and its seven seals” (5:5). Here is the triumphant

lion-like Christ ready to unroll the scroll of history.

But what do we see in the next verse? “And between the

throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I

saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with

seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits

of God sent out into all the earth” (verse 6). So the Lion is

a Lamb—an animal that is weak and harmless and lowly

and easily preyed upon, and sheared naked for clothes, and

killed for our food. So Christ is a lamb-like Lion.

The Lion of Judah conquered because he was willing to

act the part of a lamb. He came into Jerusalem on Palm

Sunday like a king on the way to a throne, and he went out

of Jerusalem on Good Friday like a lamb on the way to the

slaughter. He drove out the robbers from the Temple like a

lion devouring its prey. And then at the end of the week he

gave his majestic neck to the knife, and they slaughtered the

Lion of Judah like a sacrificial lamb.

But what sort of lamb? Revelation 5:6 says, the “Lamb

[was] standing, as though it had been slain, with seven

horns.” Notice two things. First, the Lamb is “standing.” It

is not slumped in a bloody heap on the ground as it once

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

30

was. Yes, it had been slain. But now it is standing—standing

in the innermost circle next to the throne.

Second, the Lamb has seven horns. A horn is a symbol

of strength and power throughout the book of Revelation

(12:3; 13:1; 17:3, 12), as well as in the Old Testament

(Deuteronomy 33:17; Psalm 18:2; 112:9). And the number

seven signifies fullness and completeness. So this is no ordinary

lamb. He is alive from the dead, and he is completely

mighty in his sevenfold strength. He is, in fact, a lion-like

Lamb.

We see this with trembling in Revelation 6:16, where

men call to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide

us from . . . the wrath of the Lamb.” And we see it in

Revelation 17:14, “They will make war on the Lamb, and

the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and

King of kings.”

So Christ is a lamb-like Lion and a lion-like Lamb. That

is his glory—“an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.”

This glorious conjunction shines all the brighter because

it corresponds perfectly with our personal weariness and

our longing for greatness. Jesus said, “Come to me, all who

are labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take

my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and

lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:28-29). The lamb-like gentleness

and humility of this Lion woos us in our weariness.

And we love him for it. If he only recruited like the Marines,

who want strength, we would despair of coming.

But this quality of meekness alone would not be glori-

The Lion and the Lamb

31

ous. The gentleness and humility of the lamb-like Lion

become brilliant alongside the limitless and everlasting

authority of the lion-like Lamb. Only this fits our longing

for greatness. Yes, we are weak and weary and heavy-laden.

But there burns in every heart, at least from time to time, a

dream that our lives will count for something great. To this

dream Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has

been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all

nations. . . . And behold, I am with you always, even to the

end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

The lion-like Lamb calls us to take heart from his absolute

authority over all reality. And he reminds us that, in all

that authority, he will be with us to the end of the age. This

is what we long for—a champion, an invincible leader. We

mere mortals are not simple either. We are pitiful, yet we

have mighty passions. We are weak, yet we dream of doing

wonders. We are transient, but eternity is written on our

hearts. The glory of Christ shines all the brighter because the

conjunction of his diverse excellencies corresponds perfectly

to our complexity.

Once, this lamb-like Lion was oppressed and afflicted.

He was led to the slaughter. Like a sheep that is silent before

its shearers, he did not open his mouth (Isaiah 53:7). But at

the last day it will not be so. The lamb-like Lion will become

a lion-like Lamb, and with imperial aplomb he will take his

stand on the shore of the lake of fire, where his impenitent

enemies will “be tormented . . . in the presence of the holy

angels and in the presence of the Lamb . . . forever and ever”

(Revelation 14:10-11).

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

32

A P R A Y E R

Almighty and merciful God, we exult in the reflection

of your might and mercy in your Son, our Lord, Jesus

Christ. We rejoice in the strength of his lion-like power

and in the tenderness of his lamb-like meekness. We

take heart from his incomparable combination of

excellencies. It reassures us that there is none like him,

and that he is not a mere man like others. O grant us,

in our brash indifference, to tremble before the Lion of

Judah and to humble ourselves under his fierce holiness.

And grant us, in our brokenness and fear, to

gather courage from the lion-like Lamb. Oh, how we

need the whole Christ! Open our eyes to see the fullness

of his excellence. Remove the lopsided and distorted

images of your Son that weaken our worship

and lame our obedience. May the power of the Lion

and the love of the Lamb make our faith in Christ

unshakable. So deliver us from small dreams and timid

ventures and halting plans. Embolden us. Strengthen

us. Make us love with fierce and humble love. Let us

share the confidence of the Lion of Judah that gave him

the will to die like a Lamb and rise in everlasting joy.

And in it all, grant that all might see the glory of Christ

and that you might be honored through him. In Jesus’

name we pray, amen.

The Lion and the Lamb

33

“God, your God,

has anointed you with

the oil of gladness

beyond your companions.”

HEBREWS 1 : 9

“Well done, good and faithful servant. . . .

Enter into the joy of your master.”

MATTHEW 2 5 : 2 1

4

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE JOY

The Gladness of Jesus Christ

If a lifeguard saves you from the undertow of the Atlantic

Ocean, you don’t care if he is gloomy. It doesn’t matter

what his mental state is when you are hugging your family

on the beach. But with the salvation of Jesus, things are very

different. Jesus does not save us for our family, but for himself.

If he is gloomy, our salvation will be sad. And that is

no great salvation.

Jesus himself—and all that God is for us in him—is our

great reward, nothing less. “I am the bread of life. . . . If anyone

thirsts, let him come to me” (John 6:35; 7:37). Salvation

is not mainly the forgiveness of sins, but mainly the fellowship

of Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:9). Forgiveness gets everything

out of the way so this can happen. If this fellowship is

not all-satisfying, there is no great salvation. If Christ is

gloomy, or even calmly stoical, eternity will be a long, long

sigh.

But the glory and grace of Jesus is that he is, and always

35

will be, indestructibly happy. I say it is his glory, because

gloom is not glorious. And I say it is his grace, because the

best thing he has to give us is his joy. “These things I have

spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy

may be full” (John 15:11; see also 17:13). It would not be

fully gracious of Jesus simply to increase my joy to its final

limit and then leave me short of his. My capacities for joy

are very confined. So Christ not only offers himself as the

divine object of my joy, but pours his capacity for joy into

me, so that I can enjoy him with the very joy of God. This

is glory, and this is grace.

It is not glorious to be gloomy. Therefore Christ has never

been gloomy. From eternity he has been the mirror of God’s

infinite mirth. The Wisdom of God spoke these words in

Proverbs 8:30, “Then I was beside him, like a master workman,

and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him

always.” The eternal Christ, God’s happy and equal agent in

creation, was ever rejoicing before God and ever God’s

delight. Twice more we see this in the New Testament.

In Hebrews 1:8-9 God speaks to the Son, not to the

angels, with these astonishing words: “Your throne, O God,

is forever and ever. . . . You have loved righteousness and

hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed

you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

Jesus Christ is the happiest being in the universe. His gladness

is greater than all the angelic gladness of heaven. He

mirrors perfectly the infinite, holy, indomitable mirth of his

Father.

Again, in Acts 2:25-31 Peter interprets Psalm 16 to refer

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

36

to Christ: “‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my

right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was

glad, and my tongue rejoiced. . . . For you will not abandon

my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption . . .

you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’” The

risen Christ will shake off the shades of death and be glad

with the very gladness of God. The glory of Christ is his infinite,

eternal, indestructible gladness in the presence of God.

But if it is not glorious to be gloomy, neither is it glorious

to be glib. The carefree merriment of a ballroom gala

and the irrepressible joy in a Russian gulag are not the same.

One is trite, the other triumphant. One is glib, the other glorious.

There is a pasted smile that has never known pain.

And it does not make for a good pastor or a great Savior.

But Christ is a great Savior.

Therefore, this man of indestructible joy was “a man of

sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). “My

soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and

watch with me” (Matthew 26:38). This “great high priest”

is not unable to sympathize with us in our weaknesses,

because he was tested in every way as a man like us

(Hebrews 4:14-15). He wept with those who wept

(John 11:35) and rejoiced with those who rejoiced (Luke

10:17, 21). He was hungry (Matthew 4:2), he was weary

(John 4:6), he was forsaken (Matthew 26:56), betrayed

(Matthew 26:45), whipped (Matthew 27:26), mocked

(Matthew 27:31), and crucified (Matthew 27:35).

Indomitable joy does not mean that there is only joy.

Was he then divided, torn between joy and sorrow? Can an

The Indestructible Joy

37

infinitely glorious soul be troubled? Yes, troubled, but not

torn and disunited. Christ was complex, but he was not confused.

There were divergent notes in the music of his soul,

but the result was a symphony. A general’s complex battle

strategy may suffer the enemy to have temporary and apparent

tactical triumphs, only to gain a greater victory in the

end. This is not a mark of confusion in the mind of the general.

It may appear so to those who see only part of the field.

But it is his glory. The Pacific Ocean may have a thousand

squalls, but from a hundred miles in the air it is one great,

deep, calm, and glorious mass of replenishing water.

Through the agonies of Gethsemane and Golgotha,

Jesus was sustained by indestructible joy. “For the joy that

was set before him [he] endured the cross, despising the

shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God”

(Hebrews 12:2). And what was that all-sustaining gladness?

It was the gladness of receiving worship from those he died

to make glad in God. The Good Shepherd rejoices over one

lost sheep (Matthew 18:13). How much more over countless

armies of the ransomed!

Is there a lesson here for how we should suffer? Have

you ever noticed that we are not only to imitate the Lord’s

suffering, but the Lord’s joy in it? Paul said to the

Thessalonians, “You became imitators . . . of the Lord, for

you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of

the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 1:6). It was the joy of the

Lord in affliction that filled this young church.

This is a call to us now in our day. Will we embrace suffering

for the cause of Christ? Not joylessness, but suffer-

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

38

ing. Will we heed the call in Hebrews 13:13, “Let us go to

him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured”?

The answer is going to hang on whether the city of God is

more desirable to us than the city of man. Will we answer,

“Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to

come” (Hebrews 13:14)? Or will we cling to the fleeting

pleasures of Egypt (Hebrews 11:25-26)?

For those who have tasted the joy of Jesus, surely nothing

is more compelling than the all-surpassing hope of hearing

his final word, “Well done, good and faithful

servant. . . . Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew

25:21). The city of God is a city of joy. And that joy is the

indestructible joy of Christ.

A P R A Y E R

Father, it is a great comfort to us that you and your Son

are never glib and never gloomy. We delight in the truth

that you can be infinitely happy without being callous

to our pain. We stand in wonder that the light of Jesus’

joy makes a rainbow in the tears on his face. We long

to be like this. We want to be strong and unshakable

in the joy of our faith. But we don’t want to be oblivious

to the grievousness of our own sin or the pain of

other people’s distress. O God, fulfill in us the purpose

of your Son in promising that his joy would be in us

and that our joy would be full. Make the fruit of the

Spirit—joy—flourish in our lives. Satisfy us in the

morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice

The Indestructible Joy

39

and be glad in you. Waken our slumbering souls from

the sleep of listlessness. Take away the lukewarmness

of our hearts. Fan the flame of zeal for the glory of

your name. May Christ so dwell in our hearts with his

indestructible joy that day by day we are conformed

more and more to his glad image. And so may we be a

place of refuge and eternal refreshment for a hopeless,

joy-seeking world of people who do not know they are

starved for the glory of the gladness of God in Jesus

Christ. In his name we pray, amen.

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

40

There’s not a plant or flower below,

But makes Thy glories known;

And clouds arise, and tempests blow,

By order from Thy throne.

I S A A C WA T T S

“I Sing the Mighty Power of God”

“Who then is this,

that even wind

and sea obey him?”

MARK 4 : 4 1

5

THE WAVES AND WINDS

STILL KNOW HIS VOICE

The Power of Jesus Christ

In July 1995, my wife, Noël, two of our children, and I

huddled on the floor, away from all windows, under the

direct path of Hurricane Erin in Pensacola, Florida. One

magnificent old pine tree sheared off the corner of our bedroom

as it fell. During the eye of the storm we walked outside

in a perfect calm to see the devastation. Then, about

twenty minutes later, we hid again against the backside of

the storm as it brought down chimneys and crushed cars

under snapped-off oak limbs as thick as hundred-year-old

trees.

God strolled the beach—

Our legs and faces could not bear the piercing, blasting sand.

God stepped ashore—

Palms waved, scattering branches in his path.

43

God strode inland—

Magnolias, pines, and oaks,

Who’d stretched one hundred years toward God,

Fell to the ground before him.

God stood and breathed—

While we—in dark, closed closet—

Feared to face his glory.

It was a heart-wrenching, worship-filled moment in the

face of raw, unstoppable power. The losses were painful,

though nothing like the destruction of Hurricane Mitch in

Honduras in 1998, which took 10,000 lives—and which in

turn was small compared to the cyclone that killed 131,000

in Bangladesh on April 30, 1991, and left nine million

homeless. Beneath the wreckage of such wind you have two

choices: worship or curse.

It was wind that killed Job’s ten children. “A great wind

came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of

the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are

dead” (Job 1:19). When boils were added to that, Job’s wife

said, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). But Job’s response to

the death of his children was different: “Job arose and tore

his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and

worshiped. And he said . . . ‘The LORD gave, and the LORD

has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD’” (Job

1:20-21). And when the boils were added to his grief, he

said to his wife: “Shall we indeed receive good from God

and not receive adversity?” (Job 2:10, author’s translation).

Both, not just the one, are the work of God and the

ground of worship. Later in Job, Elihu says it clearly: “From

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

44

its chamber comes the whirlwind . . . the clouds scatter

[God’s] lightning. They turn around and around by his guidance,

to accomplish all that he commands them on the face

of the habitable world. Whether for correction . . . or for

love, he causes it to happen . . . stop and consider the wondrous

works of God” (Job 37:9-14).

Psalm 29 considers and celebrates this one wonder: the

thunderstorm. “The God of glory thunders . . . the voice of

the LORD is full of majesty. The voice of the LORD breaks

the cedars. . . . The voice of the LORD . . . strips the forests

bare, and in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’” (Psalm 29:3-5, 9).

It is the glory of God to bare his mighty arm in wind and

thunder. “The LORD is great. . . . Whatever the Lord pleases,

he does, in heaven and on earth. . . . [He] makes lightnings

for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses”

(Psalm 135:5-7). “Praise the LORD from the earth, you

great sea creatures and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and

mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word” (Psalm 148:7-8).

Isaac Watts had his feet on the earth and his head in heaven

when he wrote, “Clouds arise, and tempests blow, by order

from Thy throne.”

Therefore it is not surprising that when Christ came into

the world, all nature bowed to his authority. He commanded

the wind and it obeyed. And when the disciples saw

it they wondered. And then worshiped. “And a great windstorm

arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat. . . .

And [Jesus] awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the

sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a

great calm. . . . [The disciples] were filled with great fear and

The Waves and Winds Still Know His Voice

45

said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even wind and

sea obey him?’” (Mark 4:37-41).

Water obeyed Jesus in more ways than one. When he

commanded, it became “solid” under his feet, and he

walked on it. When the disciples saw this they “worshiped

him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God’”

(Matthew 14:33). Another time, he commanded water,

and it became wine at the wedding of Cana. In response,

John says, he “manifested his glory. And his disciples

believed in him” (John 2:11). Wind and water do whatever

the Lord Jesus tells them to do. Be still. Bear weight.

Become wine. Natural laws were made by Christ and

alter at his bidding.

The composition of all things was not only created by

Christ (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2), but is also

held in being moment by moment throughout the whole

universe by his will. “He . . . upholds the universe by the

word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). “In him all things hold

together” (Colossians 1:17). Jesus Christ defines reality in

the beginning and gives it form every second.

Fatalities, fevers, fish, food, fig trees. Anywhere you

turn, Christ is the absolute master over all material substance.

With a word he commands the dead to live again.

“Lazarus, come out” (John 11:43). “Young man, I say to

you, arise” (Luke 7:14). “‘Talitha cumi,’ which means,

‘Little girl . . . arise’” (Mark 5:41). He rebuked a fever and

it left Peter’s mother-in-law (Luke 4:39). He planned for a

fish to swallow a coin and then get caught with Peter’s hook

(Matthew 17:27). He took five loaves and fed five thousand

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

46

men (Matthew 14:19-21). And he made a fig tree wither

with his curse (Mark 11:21).

Now we have a choice. Worship or curse. There was a

group at Lazarus’ grave whose facts were right and hearts

were wrong. They said, “Could not he who opened the eyes

of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” (John

11:37). The answer to that question is, Yes. Jesus timed his

coming to Lazarus’ home so as to let his friend die. He waited

two days, then said, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I

am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe” (John

11:14-15). Yes, he could have saved him. Just as he could

have saved Job’s children, and ten thousand more in

Honduras and Guatemala by commanding Hurricane Mitch

to turn out to sea, the way he did in Galilee.

Will we worship or will we curse the One who rules the

world? Shall sinners dictate who should live and who should

die? Or shall we say with Hannah, “The LORD kills and

brings to life; he brings down to Sheol [the grave] and raises

up” (1 Samuel 2:6)? And shall we, with ashes on our heads,

worship with Job, “Blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job

1:21)? Will we learn from James that there is good purpose

in it all: “You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and

you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate

and merciful” (James 5:11)? Should we not then

face the wind and stand on the waves of affliction and sing

with Katharina von Schlegel,

Be still, my soul! Your God will undertake

To guide the future as He has the past;

Your hope, your confidence let nothing shake;

The Waves and Winds Still Know His Voice

47

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still, my soul! The waves and winds still know

His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

“ B E S T I L L MY SOUL”

A P R A Y E R

O Lord, the suffering in the world is so widespread and

the pain is so great! Have mercy, and waken the souls

of suffering millions to the hope of some relief now and

unsurpassed joy in the age to come. Send your church,

O God, with relief and with the word of the Gospel

that there is forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ

and that no suffering here is worth comparing to the

glory that will be revealed to the children of God.

Protect your church, Father, from callous thoughts

about calamities that leave millions destitute, and protect

her also from cowing to critics, like Job’s wife, who

cannot trust the wisdom and power and goodness of

Christ in the midst of inexplicable misery. Oh, help our

unbelief. Incline our hearts to your Word and to its

assurances that you “work all things according to the

counsel of your will” and that “no purpose of yours

can be thwarted” and that you are doing good and acting

wisely in ways that we cannot now even dream.

Keep us in peace, O Lord, and forbid that we murmur

and complain. Grant us humble and submissive hearts

under your mighty hand. Teach us to wait and watch

for your final and holy purposes in all things. Grant

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

48

that we would “rejoice in hope” even when present circumstances

bring us to tears. Open the eyes of our

hearts to see the greatness of our inheritance in Christ,

and send us with tender hands to touch with mercy the

miseries of the world. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

The Waves and Winds Still Know His Voice

49

“Lord, you know everything.”

JOHN 2 1 : 1 7

“I am telling you this now,

before it takes place,

that when it does take place

you may believe that I am he.”

JOHN 1 3 : 1 9

6

SOMETHING GREATER THAN

SOLOMON IS HERE

The Wisdom of Jesus Christ

Many who have set out to silence Jesus have said in the

end, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46).

One reason is the incomparable wisdom and knowledge of

Jesus.

The Queen of Sheba was so stunned at the wisdom and

knowledge of Solomon that when she had seen all his house

and heard his answers to her questions, “there was no more

breath in her” (1 Kings 10:5). It took her breath away. What

then does it mean when Jesus says, “The queen of the South

will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn

it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the

wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than

Solomon is here” (Matthew 12:42)?

Not even the wisest of all kings spoke like this man.

Someone had come onto the scene of history unparalleled

51

in knowledge and wisdom. Up to a point Jesus was willing

to dialogue with the wise men of his day. But when the hour

came, and he was ready, he spoke the decisive sentence that

ended the conversation (“If David then calls him Lord, how

is he his son?” [Matthew 22:45]). “And no one was able to

answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to

ask him any more questions” (Matthew 22:46). His knowledge

and wisdom made him master of every situation. One

reason to admire and trust Jesus above all other persons is

that his knowledge and wisdom are unsurpassed.

He knows all people thoroughly, our hearts and our

thoughts. John paid tribute to this vast knowledge when he

said that Jesus did not entrust himself to men because “He

knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about

man, for he himself knew what was in man” (John 2:24-25).

He knows all our thoughts before we express them. He sees

where no one else can see. Nothing is hidden from his eyes.

“But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, ‘Why do you think

evil in your hearts?’” (Matthew 9:4). Thus it was the confession

of the early church: “You, Lord . . . know the hearts

of all” (Acts 1:24).

There is no one who perplexes Jesus. No thought or action

is unintelligible to him. He knows its origin and end. The most

convoluted psychotic and the most abstruse genius are open

and laid bare to his understanding. He understands every

motion of every mind.

Jesus not only knows all of us as we are today, he also

knows what we will think and do tomorrow. He knows all

things that will come to pass. John’s Gospel stresses this,

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

52

because John sees it as part of Jesus’ divine majesty. “Jesus

[knew] all that would happen to him” (John 18:4). On the

basis of this knowledge he foretold numerous things that his

friends and enemies would do. “Jesus knew from the beginning

who those were who did not believe, and who it was

who would betray him” (John 6:64). “From now on,” he

said, “I am telling this you now, before it takes place, that

when it does take place you may believe that I am” (John

13:19, author’s translation).

In other words, the reason he foretold these things is so

that we might believe that “he is.” Is what? That he is the

divine Son of God. “I AM” is the name for God in Exodus 3:14

and the designation of deity in Isaiah 43:10. This, very likely,

is the way Jesus understood it when he used the words absolutely:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am”

(John 8:58). Jesus wants us to believe that he is God. That is

why he says, “See, I have told you beforehand” (Matthew

24:25). His foreknowledge is essential to his divinity.

The extent of Jesus’ knowledge is a compelling warrant

for faith in his divine origin. Thus his disciples said, “Now

we know that you know all things and do not need anyone

to question you; this is why we believe that you came from

God” (John 16:30). At the end of his time on earth, Jesus

queried Peter three times, “‘Simon, son of John, do you love

me?’ Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time,

‘Do you love me?’ and he said to him, ‘Lord, you know

everything; you know that I love you’” (John 21:17). Peter

did not conclude from Jesus’ knowledge of his heart that he

knew all things; rather he concluded from the omniscience

Something Greater Than Solomon Is Here

53

of Jesus that he knew his heart. “You know everything” is

a general and unqualified statement of John’s Gospel—

Jesus knows all that is and all that shall come to pass.

The closest thing to a contradiction of this claim is

Matthew 24:36 where Jesus says, concerning the Second

Coming, “Concerning that day and hour no one knows, not

even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”

I take this to mean that in his human nature, but not his divine

nature, Jesus did not know the time of his Second Coming.

How the two natures of Christ cohere as human and divine

in one Person is one of the greatest mysteries of the universe.

The greatest thing that can be said of Jesus’ knowledge

is that he knows God perfectly. He knows God perfectly,

because he is God. We know God partially and imperfectly.

Jesus knows him like no other being knows him. He knows

him the way an omniscient person knows himself. “All

things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no

one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the

Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses

to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). No one but Jesus knows

the Father immediately, completely, and perfectly. Our

knowledge of the Father depends wholly on Jesus’ gracious

revelation; our knowledge is derivative and partial and,

because of our sin, imperfect.

Nothing greater can be said about the knowledge of

Jesus than that he knows God perfectly. All reality outside

God is parochial compared to the infinite reality that God

is. What God has made is like a toy compared to the complexity

and depth of who God is. All the sciences that

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

54

scratch the surface of the created universe are mere ABCs

compared to Christ’s exhaustive knowledge of the created

universe. And even this knowledge of the created universe

is a dewdrop on a blade of grass compared to the ocean of

knowledge that Jesus has of the being of God himself. While

the universe is finite, God is infinite. Complete knowledge

of the infinite is infinite. Therefore to know God as Jesus

knows God is to have infinite knowledge.

Therefore, let us bow down and worship Jesus Christ.

Even if we are impressed with the scholarship of man and

the achievements of scientific knowledge, let us not play the

fool by trumpeting the wonder of these tiny chirps while

ignoring the thunderclap of Christ’s omniscience. Jesus

alone is worthy of our highest admiration. Jesus alone is

worthy of our trust. He can show us the Father (Matthew

11:27). He can give us irresistible wisdom (Luke 21:15). He

can see how to make all things work together for our good

(Romans 8:28). Not one of his judgments about anything is

ever mistaken (John 8:16). He teaches the way of God with

infallible truthfulness (Matthew 22:16). Trust him. Admire

him. Follow him. For “in [him] are hidden all the treasures

of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).

A P R A Y E R

Father, we say with the psalmist, such knowledge is too

wonderful for us, it is too high, we cannot attain it. We

stand in awe of your infinite knowledge and wisdom.

We are filled with questions. But you are filled with

Something Greater Than Solomon Is Here

55

answers. There are no mysteries for you. There are no

facts you do not know, no problems you cannot solve,

no events you cannot explain, no hypocrisy through

which you do not see. Oh, grant us to see and feel that

your all-knowing mind, together with your power and

grace, makes you utterly trustworthy. Your counsel

takes everything into account, including the past and

the future. Your good plan will never be altered owing

to unforeseen events. We can count on you. And as we

do, Father, share with us, we pray, enough of your

great wisdom and enough of your great knowledge that

we may live and love and, finally, die in a way that

brings life to others, satisfies our soul, and honors you.

The lips of the wise are a fountain of life, and oh, how

we long to bring life to the perishing. Grant us your

wisdom in the measure we can bear. In Jesus’ name,

amen.

SEEING AND SAVORING JESUS CHRIST

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A good name is to be chosen

rather than great riches.

PROVERBS 2 2 : 1

“‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard,

a friend of tax collectors

and sinners!’”

MATTHEW 1 1 : 1 9

7

THE GLORIOUS POVERTY OF A

BAD REPUTATION

The Desecration of Jesus Christ

If “a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches”

(Proverbs 22:1), Jesus was doubly poor. Not only has he

“made himself nothing,” giving up the glorious riches of

heaven (Philippians 2:7-8) in order to live among us as one

who had “nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58), but

through it all, his reputation was stained again and again.

The slander was unrelenting. The rumors were incorrigible.

The half-truths were too devious to answer. And in the end,

the “good name” of the greatest man was ruined in

Jerusalem. The crowds that had hailed him as king crucified

him as criminal.

But oh, what splendor lies hidden behind every one of

those scandals! Consider the honors of our King in all the

calumny he endured.

It began with his birth. The scandal was inevitable, and

59

God knew it. Jesus’ mother was pregnant before she was

married. Joseph was not the father. So Matthew says,

“Being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame,

[Joseph] resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matthew 1:19).

That was not God’s plan. Eliminating disgrace was not his

agenda.

We do not know what Mary suffered. But we get a

glimpse of what Jesus endured. His enemies always had this

trump card they could throw on the table when the force of

truth turned against them. In John 8, Jesus was uncovering

their deep duplicity and slavery to sin, even implying that the

devil was their father. When Jesus said, “You are doing what

your father did,” they reached for the card and said, “We

were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—

even God” (verse 41). The indictment was not veiled: they

were calling Jesus a bastard. Even into the third century,

Origen was still answering this slander in the writings of

Celsus.

But what an honor lay hidden behind this insult! Yes,

Mary was pregnant before she was married. Yes, Joseph was

not the father. But no, Jesus was not illegitimate. There is

another reality: “The angel . . . answered [Mary], ‘The Holy

Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High

will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be

called holy—the Son of God’” (Luke 1:35). There was no

other birth like this one. For there is only one Son of God.

One spotless human. One God-Man. One perfect Lamb to

take away the sin of the world. Oh, what beautiful truths

lay hidden beneath the lies of Jesus’ foes.

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When someone hates your cause, all strategies of love

will be slandered, even opposite ones. Jesus was astonished

at this in his generation: “To what shall I compare this generation?

It is like children sitting in the marketplaces”

(Matthew 11:16). They won’t dance with the flute and they

won’t weep with the dirge. For them the music of truth is

never right. John the Baptist was the dirge. Jesus was the

flute. And his generation would hear neither. How shall

these two be silenced? Slander.

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they

say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of man came eating and

drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a

drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (Matthew

11:18-19). Truth came dressed in camel skins and eating

locusts and living in the wilderness and calling kings adulterers

and doing no miracles and dying for a dancing girl.

And this was not acceptable. So truth came sociably and

went to feasts and made fine wine and let a harlot wash its

feet. But this too was not acceptable.

What this meant was that form was not the stumbling

block. Truth itself was the stumbling block. And so the only

escape for the enemies of truth was caricature and halftruth.

Jesus is a glutton and drunkard. That is why he eats

with tax collectors and sinners. But beneath the ugliness of

calumny is the glory of compassion. Why did he eat with tax

collectors and sinners? He gave the answer himself: “Those

who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are

sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to

repentance” (Luke 5:31-32). Behind the slander of gluttony

The Glorious Poverty of a Bad Reputation

61

is the splendor of mercy. Jesus sacrificed his good name to

sit with sinners and save them.

And then there was the glory of his power to deliver people

from demons. How shall this great goodness be

destroyed? The fact that people were being freed by Jesus

from demonic oppression was undeniable. It was a fact. But

hatred for the truth is not easily defeated by facts. Facts simply

give shape to the form of deceit. “He casts out demons

by the prince of demons” (Matthew 9:34). “You are a

Samaritan and have a demon” (John 8:48). “He has a

demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” (John 10:20). That

was the best that they could do: Satan casting out Satan.

But what a truth the Lord released in response to this

slander! “No city or house divided against itself will stand”

(Matthew 12:25). So even the slander is good news. But the

truth is better: “The kingdom of God has come upon you

. . . how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder

his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then

indeed he may plunder his house” (Matthew 12:28-29).

Behind the vilification of Christ is the manifestation of the

kingdom of God. The “strong man” has been bound by one

infinitely stronger. The goods are being plundered and the

captives set free.

In this case, the devils know better than the Pharisees:

“A man with an unclean spirit . . . cried out, ‘What have you

to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? . . . I know who you are—

the Holy One of God’” (Mark 1:23-24). Jesus does not cast

out demons by the prince of demons. He rules the demons

as the Holy One of God.

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On and on the slanders go. “This man is not from God,

for he does not keep the Sabbath” (John 9:16). “This man

is a sinner” (John 9:24). “He is out of his mind” (Mark

3:21). “He saved others; he cannot save himself” (Matthew

27:42). “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that

is made with hands, and in three days I will build another,

not made with hands’” (Mark 14:58). But in every case,

“wisdom is justified by her deeds” (Matthew 11:19). “If this

man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John 9:33).

“No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my

own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have

authority to take it up again” (John 10:18).

In the end, the only “good name” that matters is not

how men feel about us, but how God feels about us. The

ultimate slander came on the cross. “Let God deliver him

now, if he desires him” (Matthew 27:43). If? There is no

question. “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well

pleased” (Matthew 3:17). This is the only good name that

matters in the end. This is true riches. This is the glory of

Christ.

A P R A Y E R

Father in heaven, you are the only one whose judgment

matters in the end. What men think of us can burden

or brighten our days. But it is of little account in the

end. A good name among people may be better than

great riches now, but neither name nor riches will

survive the fire of your crucible. Truth is all that will

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63

matter. Not money or man’s opinion. This we have

learned from your Son, Jesus. Oh, how we love his

unswerving indifference to the approval of men. We

praise you that he was fixed on you as the polestar of

his life. What men said did not sway him to the right

or the left. His compass was fixed on you. We are

grieved that men with our own sinful nature spoke so

ill of him. We have seen our own corruption in their

slander. Forgive us for all our participation in speaking

evil of the Son of God, or speaking nothing. Fill our

minds and our mouths, O Lord, with the truth of

Christ that we may speak well of him. Forbid that we

would add to the avalanche of error spoken about

Christ in the world. Let our mouths be signals on a hill

that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Flesh and

blood do not teach this to us; it is revealed from you,

O Father, in heaven. Speak, O God, through your

written Word with stone-cleaving power, and grant us

to see the truth of Jesus everywhere. Bend our affections

toward him. Blow away the bad reputation of the

Lord wherever we speak. May your Son be glorified in

everything we say! In his name we pray, amen.

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When he was reviled,

he did not revile in return;

when he suffered,

he did not threaten.

1 P E T E R 2 : 2 3

It was the will of the LORD

to crush him;

he has put him to grief.

I S A I A H 5 3 : 1 0

8

THE INCOMPARABLE

SUFFERINGS

The Anguish of Jesus Christ

The agonies of God’s Son were incomparable. No one

ever suffered like this man. Through all eternity, we

will contemplate the killing of the Son of God and sing,

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 5:12).

Count Zinzendorf (1700-1760) and the Moravians

developed a theology based on the wounds and blood of

Jesus that some believe became lopsided in its focus on the

“five wounds” of Christ. But we are not in danger today

of any such excess preoccupation with the anguish of

Jesus. So come and worship with me at the splendor of

Christ’s sufferings.

No one ever deserved suffering less, yet received so

much. The stamp of God on this perfect life is found in two

words: “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). The only person in

history who did not deserve to suffer, suffered most. He

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“committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth”

(1 Peter 2:22). None of Jesus’ pain was a penalty for his sin.

He had no sin.

Therefore, no one has ever had a greater right to retaliate,

but used it less. He had at his disposal infinite power to

take revenge at any moment in his agony. “Do you think

that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send

me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53).

But he did not do it. When every judicial sentiment in the

universe cried out “Unjust!” Jesus was silent. “He gave

[Pilate] no answer, not even to a single charge” (Matthew

27:14). Nor did he refute false ridicule: “When he was

reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did

not threaten” (1 Peter 2:23). Nor did he defend himself in

response to Herod’s interrogation: “He made no answer”

(Luke 23:9). No one has ever borne so much injustice with

so little vengeance.

This was not because the torment was tolerable. If we

had been forced to watch, we probably would have passed

out. In the garden, “His sweat became like great drops of

blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). In the middle

of the night, before the high priest, “they spit in his face

and struck him. And some slapped him” (Matthew 26:67).

Before the governor they “scourged” him (Matthew 27:26).

Eusebius (about A.D. 300) described Roman scourging of

Christians like this: “At one time they were torn by scourges

down to deep-seated veins and arteries, so that the hidden

contents of the recesses of their bodies, their entrails and

organs, were exposed to sight.”

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In his agony the soldiers toyed with him. They dressed

him in mock robes of royalty. They began to “cover his face

and to strike him, saying to him, ‘Prophesy!’ And the guards

received him with blows” (Mark 14:65). A crown of thorns

was pressed down on his head—made worse by being

driven into his skull with blows. “They were striking his

head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in

homage to him” (Mark 15:19). In this condition he was

unable to carry his own cross (Matthew 27:32).

The torture and shame continued. He was stripped. His

hands and feet were nailed to the cross (Acts 2:23; Psalm

22:16). The mockery was unrelenting through the terrible

morning. “Hail, King of the Jews!” “You who would

destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself!

If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross”

(Matthew 27:29, 40). Even one of the criminals “railed at

him” (Luke 23:39).

It was a hideous death. The International Standard Bible

Encyclopedia tells us, “The wounds swelled about the

rough nails, and the torn and lacerated tendons and nerves

caused excruciating agony. The arteries of the head and

stomach were surcharged with blood and a terrific throbbing

headache ensued. . . . The victim of crucifixion literally

died a thousand deaths. . . . The suffering was so frightful

that ‘even among the raging passions of war pity was sometimes

excited.’”

All of this came upon the “friend of sinners,” not with

brothers at his side, but utterly abandoned. Judas had

betrayed him with a kiss (Luke 22:48). Peter had denied

The Incomparable Sufferings

69

him three times (Matthew 26:75). “All the disciples left him

and fled” (Matthew 26:56). And in the darkest hour of the

history of the world, God the Father struck his own Son

with our punishment. “We esteemed him stricken, smitten

by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4). The only person in the

world who truly knew God (Matthew 11:27) cried out,

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

(Matthew 27:46).

Never before or since has there been such suffering,

because, in all its dreadful severity, it was a suffering by

design. It was planned by God the Father and embraced by

God the Son. “It was the will of the LORD to crush him; he

has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10). Jesus was “delivered up

according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God”

(Acts 2:23). Herod, Pilate, the soldiers, and the Jews did to

Jesus “whatever [God’s] hand and . . . plan had predestined

to take place” (Acts 4:28). Down to the details, the sufferings

of the Son were written in the Scriptures. “Jesus, knowing

that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture),

‘I thirst’” (John 19:28).

Not only was it suffering by design, but also by obedience.

Jesus embraced the pain. He chose it—“obedient

to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians

2:8). And his obedience was sustained by faith in his

Father. “When he suffered, he did not threaten, but

continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly”

(1 Peter 2:23). “Father, into your hands I commit my

spirit!” (Luke 23:46).

In that faith “he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke

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9:51). Why? “For it cannot be that a prophet should perish

away from Jerusalem” (Luke 13:33). He had set his face to

die. “And what shall I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’?

But for this purpose I have come to this hour” (John 12:27).

He lived in order to die.

Therefore, the suffering and weakness of Jesus were a

work of his sovereign power. “No one takes [my life] from

me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). He

freely chose to join the Father’s design for his own suffering

and death.

And what was that design? To be a substitute for us, so

that we might live. “The Son of Man came . . . to give his

life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). “He himself bore

our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). “The LORD

has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).

And the goal of it all? “Greater love has no man than

this, that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John

15:13). Yes, but to what end? What does love pursue? Two

great purposes were accomplished in the suffering of Christ,

which are really one purpose. First, “Christ . . . suffered

once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he

might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). The suffering of Jesus

brought us to God who is fullness of joy and pleasure

forevermore. Second, in the very hour of death the Father

and the Son were glorified. “Now is the Son of Man glorified,

and God is glorified in him” (John 13:31). Our joy in

savoring God and his glory in saving us are one. That is the

glory of Christ’s incomparable sufferings.

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A P R A Y E R

Father, what can we say? We feel utterly unworthy in

the face of Christ’s unspeakable sufferings. We are

sorry. It was our sin that brought this to pass. It was

we who struck him and spit on him and mocked him.

O Father, we are so sorry. We bow ourselves to the dirt

and shut the mouths of our small, dark, petty, sinful

souls. O Father, touch us with fresh faith that we might

believe the incredible. The very pain of Christ that

makes us despair is our salvation. Open our fearful

hearts to receive the Gospel. Waken dead parts of our

hearts that cannot feel what must be felt—that we are

loved with the deepest, strongest, purest love in the

universe. Oh, grant us to have the power to comprehend

with all the saints the height and depth and length

and breadth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,

and may we be filled with all the fullness of God.

Fight for us, O God, that we not drift numb and blind

and foolish into vain and empty excitements. Life is

too short, too precious, too painful to waste on

worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven is too great, hell is

too horrible, eternity is too long that we should putter

around on the porch of eternity. O God, open our eyes

to the vastness of the sufferings of Christ and what they

mean for sin and holiness and hope and heaven. We

fear our bent to trifling. Make us awake to the weight

of glory—the glory of Christ’s incomparable sufferings.

In his great and wonderful name, amen.

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“[Christ] commands even

the unclean spirits,

and they obey him.”

MARK 1 : 2 7

He himself likewise

partook of [flesh and blood],

that through death he might destroy the one

who has the power of death,

that is, the devil.

HEBREWS 2 : 1 4

9

THE GLORY OF

RESCUING SINNERS,

NOT REMOVING SATAN

The Saving Sacrifice of Jesus Christ

The glory of Christ is seen in his absolute right and

power to annihilate or incapacitate Satan and all

demons. But the reason he refrains from destroying and

disabling them altogether is to manifest more clearly his

superior beauty and worth. If Christ obliterated all devils

and demons now (which he could do), his sheer power

would be seen as glorious, but his superior beauty and

worth would not shine as brightly as when humans

renounce the promises of Satan and take pleasure in the

greater glory of Christ.

The devil and his angels are irredeemable. Jesus implies

this when he says that “eternal fire [has been] prepared for

the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). And Jude confirms

it when he says that the fallen angels are being “kept

75

in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment

of the great day” (verse 6). Therefore, the reason Christ

withholds his judgment from them now is not to give them

a chance to repent and be saved.

Then why not obliterate them altogether, or at least paralyze

their harmful influence? Is it because they have free

will (in the sense of ultimate self-determination) and Christ

cannot stop them? No. Too many texts illustrate the right

and power of Christ to restrain and remove Satan and his

demons. For example, 1) “[Christ] commands even the

unclean spirits, and they obey him” (Mark 1:27). 2) When

Satan does act in freedom, it is only by divine permission.

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that

he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that

your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31-32). 3) Even though

Paul’s “thorn . . . in the flesh” is a “messenger of Satan,”

nevertheless Christ makes it serve Paul’s humility and the

display of Christ’s own power (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

4) In the end, God will bind Satan for a thousand years,

then, finally, throw him into the lake of fire (Revelation

20:2, 10). Therefore, the decision to leave Satan in the

world is not because Christ does not have the right and

power to remove him. What, then, is the reason?

Christ must have a very high stake in the ongoing existence

of Satan, because, even though he has the right and

power to annihilate him now, he defeats him in stages at the

cost of his own life. “The reason the Son of God appeared

was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). But how

did he do this? Hebrews 2:14 gives one answer: “He him-

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self likewise partook of the same things [human nature],

that through death he might destroy the one who has the

power of death, that is, the devil.” In other words, Christ

became human so that he could die, and by dying “destroy”

the devil.

This means that Christ’s aim in defeating the devil must

be something different from the mere removal of Satan’s

deadly influence. He could have accomplished that with one

command: “Go to hell!” And the devil would have

obeyed—as one day he will! What then is the kind of defeat

Christ achieved over Satan? And why is it superior to the

simple removal of Satan out of history?

The key is that Satan is defeated by the death of Jesus.

Paul puts it this way, referring to the death of Christ: “He

disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open

shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:15).

In what sense did he disarm Satan’s “rulers and authorities”?

Satan still blinds (2 Corinthians 4:4) and tempts

(1 Thessalonians 3:5) and deceives (Revelation 20:3) and

casts into prison (Revelation 2:10) and takes captive (2

Timothy 2:26) and destroys flesh (1 Corinthians 5:5). He

does not look disarmed or destroyed. How then is he disarmed

by the death of Jesus?

One answer is that the death of Jesus nullified the damning

effect of sin for all who trust in Christ. The weapon of

soul-destroying sin and guilt is taken out of Satan’s hand. He

is disarmed of the single weapon that can condemn us—

unforgiven sin. We see this in 1 Corinthians 15:55-57:

“‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your

The Glory of Rescuing Sinners, Not Removing Satan

77

sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the

law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through

our Lord Jesus Christ.” Why is sin the sting of death?

Because only unforgiven sin can condemn the soul and

make death a door to hell, not heaven. Therefore, the way

that Satan can destroy the soul is not by seances or apparitions

or sickness or persecution, but only by securing the

guilt of our sin. “But thanks be to God,” Paul says, “who

gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the

unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

If our sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, Satan has no damning

weapon against us. He can hurt us, and even kill us, but

he cannot condemn us. This is what Hebrews 2:14 meant

when it said that by death Christ “destroy[ed] the one who

has the power of death.” Satan had “the power of death”

in the sense that he wielded the lethal sting of death. But

now by the blood of Christ our sins are forgiven, and

Satan’s soul-destroying power is nullified for all who are in

Christ. There is no condemnation—from Satan or anyone.

You can see it again in the words “The sting of death is

sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56).

If sin is the lethal sting of death, it is so because the law fixes

an eternal penalty for sin. “The wages of sin is [eternal]

death” (Romans 6:23). But when Christ died as our perfect

substitute, Paul says that God “cancel[ed] the record of debt

that stood against us with its legal demands . . . he set [it]

aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). So the

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weapon of the law was taken out of Satan’s hand. He cannot

use it to condemn the people of God.

Now without sin and law to condemn and accuse and

oppress us, Satan is a defeated foe. He is disarmed. Christ

has triumphed over him, not by putting him out of existence,

but by letting him live and watch while millions of

saints find forgiveness for their sins and turn their back on

Satan because of the greater glory of the grace of Christ.

It was a costly triumph. But God’s values are not so easily

reckoned. If God had simply terminated Satan, then it

would not have been so clear that God is both stronger and

infinitely more to be desired than Satan. God wills for his

glory to shine forth not only through acts of physical power,

but also through acts of moral and spiritual power that display

the beauty of his grace with lavish colors. To take sinners

out of Satan’s hands by virtue of Christ’s sin-bearing

sacrifice and his law-fulfilling obedience to the Father was

a more glorious victory than mere annihilation of the enemy.

A P R A Y E R

Heavenly Father, we are sobered that you would regard

the glory of your Son so highly that it would be worth

the ongoing existence of Satan to make it fully known.

We are ashamed that we have murmured about the battles

of life when we should have made every effort to

magnify your Christ-exalting reasons for giving the

enemy so much leash. Forgive us for failing to see your

holy purposes. And now, O God, by the blood of your

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Son, our Savior, give us victory over Satan. Grant us to

see and savor the superior worth of Christ. Let us

shame Satan by making much of Jesus. Grant us to

glory in the work of the cross. Help us to cherish the

finished work of Christ that disarmed Satan and took

the sting out of death. Teach us how to fight by faith

against the power of sin, in the confidence that Christ

has purchased our forgiveness and secured the triumph

of all who trust in him. Turn every evil design of the

devil into sanctifying schemes of love. Deliver us from

his deceptions. Keep the beauty of Christ clear in the

eyes of our heart. Make us instruments of Satan’s

defeat until you come and slay him by the breath of

your mouth. Make us valiant in delivering others by

the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, your great

Gospel. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

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But God, being rich in mercy,

because of the great love with which he loved us,

even when we were dead in our trespasses,

made us alive together with Christ.

E P H E S I A N S 2 : 4 - 5

Let us then with confidence draw near

to the throne of grace,

that we may receive mercy

and find grace to help in time of need.

HEBREWS 4 : 1 6

10

THE INCARNATE WEALTH OF

THE COMPASSION OF GOD

The Mercies of Jesus Christ

God is the wealthiest person in the universe. He not only

owns more than anyone else. He owns everyone else

and everything everyone else owns. When you create something,

it belongs to you. And God created everything—

including us. “It is he who made us, and not we ourselves

[marginal reading]; we are his people, and the sheep of his

pasture” (Psalm 100:3). There is one ultimate owner in the

universe, God. All others are trustees. Neither we nor what

we have is finally our own. It is all a trust to be used for the

aims of the owner. In a sense, therefore, all sin is embezzling.

But, strikingly, the New Testament describes the wealth

of God not mainly in terms of what he created and owns, but

mainly in terms of the glory he has from all eternity.

Repeatedly we read of “the riches of his glory” or “his riches

in glory” (for example, Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 4:19;

83

Colossians 1:27). If God were only rich because he made and

owns all things, he would have been poor before creation.

But that means he would have created out of need and would

be dependent on his creation. But that is not the picture of

God we find in the Bible. God did not create to get wealth;

he created to display wealth—the wealth of his glory for the

enjoyment of his people (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14).

But even more specifically, the focus of the New

Testament is that the wealth of God’s glory is, at its apex,

the wealth of his mercy. This is something the world takes

very lightly: “the riches of [God’s] kindness and forbearance

and patience” (Romans 2:4). God created and redeemed the

world so that he might “make known the riches of his glory

for vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for

glory” (Romans 9:23). Or, to put it another way, he creates

and saves his people “so that in the coming ages he might

show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness

toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). The universe

exists primarily to display the wealth of the glory of the

mercy of God for the enjoyment of his redeemed people

from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Justice is essential among the perfections of God’s glory.

But mercy is paramount. “He who justifies the wicked and

he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination

to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15). Yes. Therefore justice

is essential. But something else is also true: “It is [a man’s]

glory to overlook an offense” (Proverbs 19:11). Therefore,

if justice can be preserved, it is the apex of glory to show

mercy.

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For this reason Jesus Christ came into the world. Jesus

is the mercy of God incarnate and visible. He is also the

justice of God incarnate; but justice was subordinate: “God

did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,

but in order that the world might be saved through him”

(John 3:17). God the Father offered up his Son in death “so

that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has

faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). The substitutionary death of

Jesus Christ created the backdrop of justice where justifying

mercy would shine with unparalleled glory. Therefore, the

glory of God’s mercy is the aim of Christ’s coming. This is

explicit in Romans 15:8-9: Christ came into the world “to

confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order

that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” The aim

of the incarnation was to magnify the mercy of God for the

enjoyment of the nations.

In Mary’s Magnificat, and in Zechariah’s prophetic song

at the birth of John the Baptist, the reason given for the coming

of Jesus was “in remembrance of [God’s] mercy” (Luke

1:54), and “because of the tender mercy of our God” (Luke

1:78). Or as the apostle Paul put it, the work of Christ is due

to God’s being “rich in mercy” (Ephesians 2:4). It is all

“according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7). He

bestows “his riches on all who call on him” (Romans

10:12).

This mercy that Jesus embodies and brings is utterly

free. Not that there was no cost. Jesus paid the price at the

cost of his own life. “In him we have redemption through

his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to

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the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7). But now, to broken

and needy sinners, it is absolutely free. Thus God says,

“‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have

compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it

depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who

has mercy. . . . So then he has mercy on whomever he wills,

and he hardens whomever he wills” (Romans 9:14-16,

18). We do not earn mercy. We receive it as a free gift by

faith, not by works. “He saved us, not because of works

done by us in righteousness, but according to his own

mercy” (Titus 3:5).

Even the faith to receive this mercy is itself a gift of

mercy. “To you it has been freely given for Christ’s sake to

believe” (Philippians 1:29, author’s translation). And what

about others? Let us correct “our opponents with gentleness.

God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a

knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:25; see also

Ephesians 2:8; John 6:44; Acts 13:48). From start to finish,

God saves us “not because of our works but because of his

own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus

before the ages began” (2 Timothy 1:9). His triumphant

mercy is utterly free.

Since Christ is the incarnate display of the wealth of the

mercies of God, it is not surprising that his life on earth was

a lavish exhibit of mercies to all kinds of people. Every kind

of need and pain was touched by the mercies of Jesus in his

few years on earth.

When the blind beggar cried out, “Jesus, Son of David,

have mercy on me!” many were embarrassed and indignant.

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But “Jesus said to him, ‘Recover your sight; your faith has

made you well’” (Luke 18:38, 42).

When the revolting and feared lepers raised their voices

and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us,” he stopped

and took pity on them and said, “‘Go and show yourselves

to the priests.’ And as they went they were cleansed” (Luke

17:13-14). Even more remarkably, Mark recalls the time

another dreaded leper fell on his knees pleading with Jesus

to make him clean, and Jesus not only spoke to him, but

also touched him: “Moved with pity, he stretched out his

hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean’”

(Mark 1:41).

When Jesus saw a widow who had not only lost her husband

but now her only son as well, Luke tells us, “[Jesus]

had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep’”

(Luke 7:13). Then he raised her son from the dead. And in

this case, not a word was said about her faith. It was a free

and lavish overflow of divine mercy, even before faith.

Mercy also drew Jesus to those who were made miserable

by demons. One man brought his demon-possessed son

to Jesus after years of sorrow. The boy was unable to speak,

and the evil spirit often threw the boy into the fire. The

father pleaded with Jesus, “Have compassion on us and help

us” (Mark 9:22). And even though the grieving father could

only manage a mustard seed of faith—“I believe; help my

unbelief” (Mark 9:24)—Jesus responded to the cry for pity

and rebuked the spirit and cast it out.

Even when a demon-possessed man had no one to be his

advocate and could not believe or submit to Jesus—as in the

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case of the Gerasene demoniac—the Lord delivered him and

then explained that it was sheer mercy: “Go home to your

friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you,

and how he has had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19). And don’t

miss the added mercy that this man was not a Jew, but a foreigner

just like the “Canaanite woman” who cried out,

“Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is

severely oppressed by a demon” (Matthew 15:22). Neither

the demons nor the Gentile distance from Israel stopped the

mercy of Jesus.

Not only was the mercy of Jesus kindled by suffering,

but also by sin. When Jesus ate with “tax collectors and sinners,”

the Pharisees and scribes criticized him. But Jesus told

three parables to explain what he was doing. One was the

parable of the prodigal son. The climax of this parable pictures

God, filled with compassion for his sin-soaked, homecoming

son: “While [the son] was still a long way off, his

father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced

him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). In other words, Jesus ate

with tax collectors and sinners because he was the incarnate

display of the Father’s tender compassion for sinners.

Jesus showed this compassion not only for individuals

who sin and suffer, but also for whole multitudes. He did

not look on masses with contempt or with impersonal indifference.

Once when great crowds had followed him and had

not planned well for their food, Jesus looked on them and

said, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have

been with me now three days and have nothing to eat”

(Mark 8:2). On another occasion, it was not their hunger

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but their spiritual need for truth that filled him with compassion

for the crowds: “He saw a great crowd, and he felt

compassion on them, because they were like sheep without

a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things”

(Mark 6:34).

One of the most sweeping statements about God’s mercy

that Jesus ever made came from Hosea 6:6. It was Jesus’

way of putting the whole Old Testament ceremonial law

under the banner of mercy instead of meticulous rules.

When he was criticized for going to dinner at Matthew’s

house with unclean tax collectors, he turned the criticism

around and said, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire

mercy, and not sacrifice’ [Hosea 6:6]. For I came not to call

the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:13). And when his

disciples were rebuked by the Pharisees for picking grain

and eating it on the Sabbath, Jesus said, “If you had known

what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you

would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matthew 12:7).

In other words, Jesus’ entire ministry was shaped by the

insight that mercy is the ultimate meaning of God’s law. And

since Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfill that law

(Matthew 5:17), he was the incarnation and manifestation

of the wealth of the mercy of God.

The same is true of Jesus today. In this regard “Jesus

Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”

(Hebrews 13:8). This is why God, who is called “the Father

of mercies” (2 Corinthians 1:3), beckons us to come boldly

to his throne through Jesus Christ who can “sympathize

with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus is our sinless,

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all-sufficient High Priest. He has offered himself as our substitute

in perfect obedience and perfect sacrifice. All the

Father’s mercies belong to those who come to God through

faith in Jesus. “Let us with confidence draw near to the

throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace

to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

The place where mercies are kept is at the throne of

God. Here is infinite wealth and infinite power and infinite

wisdom. And all this stands ready in the service of mercy,

because of Jesus Christ, the mercy of God incarnate.

Whether you learn this through pleasure, or learn it through

pain, like Job, whatever you do, learn it: “The Lord is compassionate

and merciful” (James 5:11).

A P R A Y E R

O Father, how we need mercy. We sin every day. We

fall short of your command to love you with all our

heart and soul and mind and strength. We are lukewarm

in our affections. All our motives, even at their

best, are mixed. We murmur. We are anxious about

tomorrow. We get angry too quickly. We desire what

ought not be desired. We get irritated at the very attitudes

in others that we ourselves displayed five minutes

before. If you do not show mercy to us, we are undone.

O God, let us see the mercy of Christ and savor it for

what it is. Grant us power to comprehend his love.

Incline us to read and ponder the stories of the mercy

of Jesus in the Gospels. Let us so admire what he did

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that we imitate him. But let it be much more than

external imitation. Let it come from the heart where

we have been broken for our sin and where we have

come to cherish mercy and live by mercy and hope in

mercy and long for mercy. Make the mercy of Jesus the

greatest beauty of the Savior in our eyes. Let us behold,

and beholding, become like him. And bend this taste

for mercy outward so that we show it. Make us full of

his mercy that we might show mercy. Fulfill in us the

command to do justice and love mercy. Let us love

showing mercy. Make it so much a part of us that it is

who we are. So unite us to Christ that his mercy is our

mercy, and our mercy is a presenting of Christ. He is

all we have to give in the end. Glorify his mercy, Father,

in our faith and in our patience. Thank you, oh, thank

you, for Christ and your mercy to us in him. In his

name we pray, amen.

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“Teacher, we know that you . . .

show no partiality, but truly teach

the way of God.”

LUKE 2 0 : 2 1

“I thank you, Father,

Lord of heaven and earth,

that you have hidden these things

from the wise and understanding

and revealed them to little children.”

LUKE 1 0 : 2 1

11

THE TOUGH SIDE

The Severity of Jesus Christ

The glory of Jesus Christ is that he is always out of sync

with the world and therefore always relevant for the

world. If he fit nicely, he would be of little use. The effort to

remake the Jesus of the Bible so that he fits the spirit of one

generation makes him feeble in another. Better to let him be

what he is, because it is often the offensive side of Jesus that

we need most.

Especially offensive to the modern, western sentiment is

the tough, blunt, fierce form of Jesus’ love. People with thin

skin would often have felt hurt by Jesus’ piercing tongue.

People who identify love only with soft and tender words

and ways would have been repeatedly outraged by the stinging,

almost violent, language of the Lord.

Not that this was the only way he spoke. We have seen

the sweetness of his mercies and how patient and kind and

forgiving he was (Chapter 10). That is why his severe speech

cannot be written off as peevishness or as flares of temper

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or callous hostility. What we meet in the biting language of

Christ is a form of love that corresponds with the real world

of corruption and the dullness of our hearts and the magnitude

of what is at stake in our choices. If there were no great

evils and no deaf hearts and no eternal consequences, perhaps

the only fitting forms of love would be a soft touch and

tender words. But such a world does not kill the Son of God

and hate his disciples. There is no such world.

We need to listen to the stunning severity of Jesus’

mercy. It caused people to marvel in his own day. Even his

enemies admitted that he was amazingly indifferent to the

approval of others. We tend to be overly concerned that

others approve of how we speak. Jesus was not. “Teacher,

we know that you . . . show no partiality, but truly teach

the way of God” (Luke 20:21). When the hostile Pharisees

sent officers to seize Jesus, they came back empty-handed

with this explanation: “No one ever spoke like this man!”

(John 7:46).

That has been the testimony of every generation. No man

ever spoke like this man. It began when he was a boy in the

temple: “All who heard him were amazed at . . . his answers”

(Luke 2:47). When he entered his public ministry in the synagogue

in Nazareth, at first “all spoke well of him and marveled

at the gracious words that were coming from his

mouth” (Luke 4:22); but when he bluntly cut across the grain

of their self-centered expectations (verses 24-27), the same

people “were filled with wrath” (verse 28) and tried to throw

him off a cliff (verse 29). Then, at the end of his ministry in

the last week of his life, his piercing answers finally stopped

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the mouths of his adversaries, except for the cry of condemnation.

“No one was able to answer him a word, nor from

that day did anyone dare ask him any more questions”

(Matthew 22:46).

The condition of the world that made the coming of

Christ necessary was so bad that Jesus reached for shocking

language to capture it. When people came asking for a sign

he responded, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for

a sign” (Matthew 16:4). When his own disciples could not

cast out a demon he said, “O faithless generation, how long

am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?”

(Mark 9:19). When he taught them to pray, he said, “If you

then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,

how much more will your Father who is in heaven give

good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). He

started with the assumption that they were evil, and he told

them so.

Not only did Jesus indict the world as evil and adulterous

and unbelieving, he said that all were spiritually dead.

When a disciple asked Jesus if he could go bury his father,

Jesus shocked him with the words, “Follow me, and leave

the dead to bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22). A terrible

condition of living death called for tough words. It was

the same with the Pharisees: “Woe to you! For you are like

unmarked graves” (Luke 11:44). “You are like whitewashed

tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are

full of dead people’s bones” (Matthew 23:27).

The deadness was satanic because Satan has been a spiritual

murderer of man from the beginning. Jesus outraged

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pious unbelievers with this incrimination: “You are of your

father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to

do with the truth” (John 8:44). And when his own devoted

disciple Peter spoke heroically about not letting Jesus be

killed, Jesus turned to him and said, “Get behind me, Satan!

You are a hindrance to me” (Matthew 16:23). There was

one solution to spiritual death: Jesus’ substitutionary death.

Any hindrance to that was demonic. No words were too

strong to repel it.

The condition of the human heart will lead to eternal

punishment for those who do not receive the remedy Christ

brought. Therefore Jesus spared no delicate feelings in

warning against hell. No one in the Bible spoke more often,

or more frightfully, about hell: “The angels will come out

and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them

into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping

and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:49-50). When his disciples

tried to pin Jesus down about the place of judgment,

he simply answered, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures

will gather” (Luke 17:37). Some realities are so fearful,

they don’t call for specific precision but scandalous

portrayal.

Hell, Jesus said, is a place “where their worm does not

die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48). It is a place

of “outer darkness” (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:30). It is

“eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”

(Matthew 25:41). The fire is “unquenchable” (Mark 9:43).

It is “eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46).

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Therefore, Jesus explains with heart-stopping reasonableness

that mere earthly dangers—like being killed!—are as

nothing compared to the danger of hell: “I tell you, my friends,

do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing

more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear:

fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell.

Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:4-5). In other words, “Fear

not, my disciples, you can only be killed!”

It follows, starkly, that horrific calamities in this world,

no matter how painful, are not the greatest tragedy. Far

greater is the failure to escape hell through repentance and

faith. Jesus had a very unsentimental way of speaking this

utterly crucial truth to people who put their worst horrors

in the wrong place. For example, one group was horrified

at Pilate’s mingling the blood of some Galilean worshipers

with their sacrifices. They reported this suffering to Jesus,

who must have astonished them when he said, “Do you

think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the

other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I

tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish”

(Luke 13:2-3). In other words, instead of being

amazed that sinful humans perish, be amazed that you

haven’t.

Jesus will show us the way to heaven whether we can

stomach it or not. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear

it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one

of your members than that your whole body be thrown into

hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and

throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your

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members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matthew

5:29-30). Better self-mutilation than damnation. So it is

with our own damnation, and how much more with the

damnation of others: “Whoever causes one of these little

ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to

have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be

drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). Better to

perish in the sea than to push another into hell.

So it is not surprising that Jesus would describe entering

the kingdom as an act of violence: “From the days of John

the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered

violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12).

And it is not surprising that he would say, “The gate is narrow

and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who

find it are few” (Matthew 7:14). There are not many who

will trust Christ so deeply and cherish heaven so dearly that

they count their eyes and hands and lives less precious than

fellowship with Jesus in Paradise. So the way is narrow, and

few follow. Rather, many listen to Jesus and say, “This is a

hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60).

But he doesn’t let up. He presses for a narrow way not

only in regard to our hands and eyes being pure, and our

love for babes being radical; he also takes aim at our undue

allegiance to family and self and possessions. “If anyone

comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother

and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and

even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

“Whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal

life” (John 12:25). “Any one of you who does not

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renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke

14:33). Even love for godly parents will often look like hate

to the world when we seek the kingdom first. And if our

parents are not godly, the very faith that makes us seek their

salvation will turn them against us: “I have come to set a

man against his father, and a daughter against her mother,

and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law”

(Matthew 10:35). Do we then lose our family when we follow

Christ? Jesus’ answer comes out of the blue: “Whoever

does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister

and mother” (Matthew 12:50).

If this does not sound like the ministry of the Prince of

Peace, realize that his aim is not peace with unbelief and disobedience.

Those are the enemies that must be destroyed,

lest they destroy. When the amnesty of Jesus is despised,

division is inevitable—and he knew it: “Do you think that

I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather

division” (Luke 12:51). “You will be delivered up even by

parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of

you they will put to death” (Luke 21:16). “I came to cast

fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!”

(Luke 12:49).

Who can hear these things? Who can rejoice in these

words and penetrate to the truth of Jesus’ words when he

says, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be

in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11)? Jesus’

answer is as surprising as the language that raised the question.

And he gives it with joy: “He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit

and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that

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you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding

and revealed them to little children” (Luke 10:21).

The humble, the teachable, the broken, the submissive—

the babes—these will hear the voice of strength and

truth and righteousness and love. They will hear, and their

hearts will burn within them when he speaks (Luke 24:32).

They will not be offended. They will take heart that at last

someone sees the severity of our human condition, knows

the enemy, will not compromise, and speaks like a conquering

King and a great Savior.

A P R A Y E R

Lord, thicken our skin. Not that we be less tender, but

that we be less easily offended. Take away our bent to

self-pity. Give us a passion for the truth that is stronger

than our inborn passion for being praised. Forgive us,

Father, for calling words unloving just because they

were tough. Forgive us for attributing malicious

motives to people when we don’t know their motives.

Help us to learn from Jesus when to be tough and when

to be tender. Guard us from justifying merely human

anger with the hard sayings of Jesus. But don’t let us

become so mushy that we can’t speak a firm word in

season. We marvel at the words of our Lord Jesus.

How unpredictable he was! No one ever spoke like he

did. He is in a class by himself. We bow before him and

shut our mouths. We are eager for him to speak—and

to speak any way he pleases. We are the silent learners.

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He is the sinless teacher. We put our hands upon our

mouths and take our place at his feet. Do with us as

you please, Father. We are not your judge, nor the

judge of how your Son speaks. Have mercy on us—

tough or tender—and lead us to your everlasting joy. In

the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus, amen.

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We know that Christ being raised from the dead

will never die again;

death no longer has dominion over him.

ROMANS 6 : 9

God . . . raised him from the dead

and gave him glory.

1 P E T E R 1 : 2 1

12

INVINCIBLE LIFE

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

God raised Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Corinthians

15:4; 1 Peter 1:21). Everybody knew he was dead,

from the governor to the executing soldiers to the women

who buried him to the adversaries who feared a conspiracy

of resurrection rumor. They all knew he was dead. That is

why the fabrication concocted to explain the empty tomb

was not that he wasn’t really dead, but that the disciples stole

the body (Matthew 28:13). But it didn’t work, because people

don’t risk their lives for a self-made falsehood. The body

was not in the tomb, otherwise the enemies would have put

a stop to Christianity with Jesus’ remains. The disciples were

ablaze with boldness, risking their lives by preaching that

Jesus was alive (Acts 2:24, 32; 3:15). The evangelist Stephen

and the apostle James lost their lives (Acts 7:60; 12:2). And

for forty days Jesus was appearing to individuals and groups,

some as large as five hundred (Acts 1:3; 1 Corinthians 15:6).

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Most of these were not gullible, but hard to convince (Luke

24:11, 38; John 20:25, 27).

As the possibility dawned on the skeptical disciples that

the resurrection might be true, the first speculation was that

the Jesus they saw was a ghost or apparition of some kind.

But Jesus was ruthless to abolish this speculation immediately.

To doubting Thomas he said, “Put your finger here,

and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in

my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:27). And

before the stunned disciples on another occasion, Jesus

insisted on eating fish to show them that he was not a ghost.

“‘See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me,

and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you

see that I have.’ . . . And while they still disbelieved for joy

and were marveling, he said to them, ‘Have you anything

here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish; and he

took it and ate before them” (Luke 24:39-43).

But Jesus’ resurrection body was more than a merely

resuscitated mortal body. It was the same and yet not the

same. He could be recognized as the one he always was.

His body was a physical body. But it was also a transformed

body. When the apostle Paul described the future

resurrection body of Christians, he was describing the resurrection

body of Jesus too, because Christ was raised as

“the firstfruits” of the rest of the dead who belong to him

(1 Corinthians 15:20). In other words, the body of the risen

Christ is part of the same harvest of all the other bodies that

he will raise in glory at the last day. Christ, Paul says, “will

transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body”

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(Philippians 3:21). Therefore this description of our future

resurrection bodies applies to Jesus’ body too: “What is

sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown

in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is

raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual

body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). It is the same and yet

gloriously superior.

Tremendous divine power preceded, accompanied, and

followed the resurrection of Jesus. Leading up to his resurrection,

Jesus was utterly in charge of his living and dying.

“I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one

takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have

authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up

again” (John 10:17-18). Jesus scoffed at threats that he

could be brought to death before his hour, much less that

he could be held in the tomb beyond his own will. When

warned that Herod wanted to kill him, Jesus said, “Go and

tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures

today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course’”

(Luke 13:32). He predicted the details of his death and resurrection

as one who was following his own unstoppable

plan: “Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is about to be

delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and

he will be raised on the third day’” (Matthew 17:22-23).

In the very act of resurrection, divine power held complete

sway. Paul referred to “the working of [God’s] great

might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the

dead” (Ephesians 1:19-20). And Peter said, “It was not possible

for him to be held by [death’s power]” (Acts 2:24).

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Coming through death with sovereign power, Christ

entered into an imperishable, never-ending life. Jesus has

become an ever-living High Priest according to “the power

of an indestructible life” (Hebrews 7:16). “Christ being

raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer

has dominion over him” (Romans 6:9). “God has highly

exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above

every name” (Philippians 2:9). “God . . . raised him from the

dead and gave him glory” (1 Peter 1:21). Before, during, and

afterwards, the resurrection of Jesus was a glorious manifestation

of divine power.

Therefore the resurrection of Jesus assures all his future

work on behalf of his people: his authority and rule over

everything in the universe (Matthew 28:18); his priestly intercession

on our behalf (Romans 8:34); his advocacy with God

the Father (1 John 2:1); his protecting, comforting presence

with us to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20); and his final

coming to earth in glory to give rest to us and retribution to

all who “do not know God and on those do not obey the

gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8).

And the resurrection of Jesus therefore secures all the

blessings he obtained for us in his death. The resurrection

vindicates the sufficiency of the cross and seals the certainty

and finality of our justification by faith. “[Jesus] was delivered

up for our trespasses and raised for our justification”

(Romans 4:25). All the promises of God, purchased by the

blood of Christ, become ours in everlasting perpetuity

because of the resurrection of Jesus. Forgiveness, for example:

“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and

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you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). But he has

been raised, and so forgiveness is real and permanent. “He

always lives to make intercession for [us]” (Hebrews 7:25).

In the end, the risen Christ will raise us up with him. “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” (Romans 8:11). “If we have been united with him in

a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a

resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5). Just as Jesus took back

his own life from the fangs of death, so he will raise from

the dead those who are his. He makes this promise for all

who believe: “I will raise him up on the last day” (John

6:40). Thus his resurrection guarantees theirs. They are

secure in glory as he is. “They cannot die anymore . . . being

sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36). “Over such the second

death has no power” (Revelation 20:6).

The glory of Christ in the power of his resurrection into

invincible life and omnipotent authority will be reflected

back to him in the joyful worship of his risen and perfected

saints. Who shall enjoy this eternal gift of life? Jesus

answers: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever

believes in me . . . shall never die” (John 11:25-26).

Like every historical fact, the resurrection of Jesus can be

doubted. But when God takes in hand the reliability of the

witnesses, the courage of their preaching, the futility of

the opposition, the effects of the Gospel, the coherence of the

message, the all-embracing sufficiency of the Christian worldview,

and the spiritual glory of Jesus Christ—when God takes

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all this and more in hand, he is able to open the mind of the

most resistant skeptic. When God wakens us from the stupor

of unbelief and shines into our mind with “the light of the

gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6), what we

see, along with the terrible splendor of his suffering, is the

grandeur of his resurrection.

A P R A Y E R

Father of glory, we praise you that you mightily raised

your Son, Jesus, from the dead. We praise you that the

stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

This is your doing and it is marvelous in our

eyes. Death could not hold him! Our last enemy has

fallen before your power in the triumph of Jesus over

death, and we have been freed from fear of this ancient

enemy. And now, O God, grant us to live in the riches

of all that Jesus’ resurrection means. All authority

belongs to him in heaven and on earth. No power and

no enemy can prevail against him. Only good can come

to us in the end as we trust in him. The best is always

yet to come. So, Father, banish fear and fretting and

discouragement and moodiness from our lives. Rivet

our attention on the ultimate reality of Christ’s final

triumph over death. Never let us forget or fail to feel

universal glory that you have given Jesus a name that

is above every name. Make this practical in our daily

lives as we see every person, great and small, facing

someday the risen and triumphant Judge of all the

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nations. Give us a brokenhearted boldness in the mercy

and the might of Jesus. O Father, we want our lives to

count for the display of his greatness. Work in us to

this end with all your might, we pray. In Jesus’ name,

amen.

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“For as the lightning

flashes and lights up the sky

from one side to the other,

so will the Son of Man be in his day.

But first he must suffer.”

LUKE 1 7 : 2 4 - 2 5

The Lord Jesus [will be] revealed

from heaven with his mighty angels

in flaming fire.

2 T H E S S A L O N I A N S 1 : 7 - 8

13

THE APPEARING OF THE

GLORY OF OUR

GREAT GOD AND SAVIOR

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ

At his first coming, Christ partook of flesh and blood so

that “through death he might destroy the one who has

the power of death . . . and deliver all those who through

fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews

2:14-15). He will appear a second time to save those who

are eagerly waiting for him (Hebrews 9:28).

The time is coming when faith will be swallowed

up by sight. For now, “we walk by faith, not by sight”

(2 Corinthians 5:7). But at the last trumpet, when the

dead are raised and we are changed in the blink of an eye

(1 Corinthians 15:52), spiritual and physical seeing will

coalesce into one overwhelming apprehension of the glory

of Christ.

For now, we see Christ with the “eyes of [our] hearts”

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(Ephesians 1:18). God shines in our hearts to give us the

“light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians

4:4, 6). “No one knows the Son except the Father”

(Matthew 11:27). So if we see the glory of the Son, what

Jesus said to Peter is true of us as well: “Flesh and blood has

not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven”

(Matthew 16:17). When that happens, we are “beholding

the glory of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

But there is a glory to come that we do not now see. Paul

calls it “our blessed hope”—“the appearing of the glory of

our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). First

there was the suffering of the Son of Man and the revelation

of its glory only to the eyes of faith (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23).

Then, at the end of the age, comes a glory for all to see with

the natural eyes. “As the lightning flashes and lights up the

sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in

his day. But first he must suffer” (Luke 17:24-25).

Glory—this is the way the inspired writers speak of that

event again and again. “The Son of Man comes in his glory,

and all the angels with him” (Matthew 25:31). Not just

some of the angels. All of them, “numbering myriads of

myriads and thousands of thousands” (Revelation 5:11).

Heaven will be left without a single angel.

And when the Son of Man comes, “he will sit on his glorious

throne” (Matthew 25:31). And from that glorious

throne he will reign. “The government shall be on his shoulder.

. . . Of the increase of his government and of peace there

will be no end . . . with justice and with righteousness . . .

forevermore” (Isaiah 9:6-7).

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That glory will be the glory of the Son of Man (Matthew

25:31). But because the Son of Man is also the Son of God

and he and the Father are one, it will also be “the glory of

his Father” (Matthew 16:27). His coming is simply called

the revelation of “his glory” (1 Peter 4:13), and every saint,

Peter says, will be “a partaker in the glory that is going to

be revealed” (1 Peter 5:1).

The joy of the saints, who “rejoice and [are] glad” at his

coming (1 Peter 4:13), will be the joy of prizing and praising

the unclouded glory of Christ. This is why he is coming—“

to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at

among all who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10).

And what will the display of all this glory be? It will be

“the voice of an archangel, and . . . the trumpet of God. . . .

The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and

every mountain and island was removed from its place”

(1 Thessalonians 4:16; Revelation 6:14). It will be the fire

of judgment. “The Lord Jesus [will be] revealed from heaven

with his mighty angels in flaming fire” (2 Thessalonians

1:7). All nations will be gathered before him, and every

unbeliever “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction,

away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory

of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Kings of the earth and

lowly slaves will hide themselves “in the caves and among

the rocks of the mountains” and will cry out to the rocks,

“Fall on us and hide us from . . . the wrath of the Lamb”

(Revelation 6:15-16). “The lawless one will be revealed,

whom the Lord will kill with the breath of his mouth”

(2 Thessalonians 2:8). “Every eye will see him, even those

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who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on

account of him” (Revelation 1:7).

But the glory of the coming of the Lord will also be salvation.

“Christ . . . will appear a second time, not to deal

with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for

him” (Hebrews 9:28). At “the voice of an archangel, and

. . . the trumpet of God . . . the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up

together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the

air” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

“By the power that enables him even to subject all

things to himself” he will “transform” our disease-ridden,

decaying bodies into the likeness of “his glorious body”

(Philippians 3:21). “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye

. . . we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52). “He will

wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no

more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain

anymore” (Revelation 21:4).

And perhaps most glorious of all is the jealousy with

which he will magnify his grace. He will not share the glory

of being the grace-giver. Peter tells us simply, “Set your hope

fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation

of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13). And what will that grace

look like? Jesus pictured it in a parable: “Blessed are those

servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.

Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have

them recline at table, and he will come and serve them”

(Luke 12:37). It is the grace of God’s being our “Servant”—

the Giver—even to eternity.

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Jesus asked at the Last Supper, “Who is the greater, one

who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one

who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who

serves” (Luke 22:27). And so it will be to all eternity. Why?

Because the giver gets the glory. Christ will never surrender

the glory of his sovereign grace. “Nor is he served by

human hands, as though he needed anything” (Acts 17:25).

He created in order to have beneficiaries who magnify his

bounty. And he will bring history to an end as the everlasting

Giver. From beginning to end his aim is the same:

“the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6). Come,

let us worship and bow down. Let us love his appearing.

“Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,

which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award

to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who

have loved his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8).

A P R A Y E R

Forgive us, Father, for our indifference to the coming

of your Son. We have not kept our lamps of expectation

burning or bought the oil of eagerness in hope for

the Bridegroom to return. We have bought a field and

gone to look at it. We have bought oxen and spent time

ooing and aahing over their height and weight. We

have married a wife and desired her more than the

coming of your Son. O Lord, forgive us. We are sorry

for the dishonor that our wandering affections show to

you and your servant, Jesus. But, Lord, we are eager to

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change. And we come to you for help. Incline our

hearts to Christ. Open our eyes to the glory of Christ.

Make the appearing of our great God and Savior a

“blessed hope” in our hearts—a happy hope, a satisfying

hope. Break our addiction to this world. Cause us

to set our minds on things that are above where Christ

is seated at your right hand. Work in us the command

of Peter to “hope fully in the grace of God that is coming

at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Free us from the

anxieties that come from too much dependence on

earthly circumstances. Form us into a radical band of

risk-takers in the cause of love because we know that

this mortal flesh will put on immortality and this body

of lowliness will be transformed into a body like

Christ’s glorious body. We love you, Father. We love

your Son’s appearing. Grant us to live out this hope in

the freedom of self-sacrifice to the glory of your great

grace. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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AFTERWORD

How Can We Be Sure About Jesus?

In the middle of the last century the British writer C. S.

Lewis got it shockingly right:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said

would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—

on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else

he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up for a fool,

you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at

His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any

patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He

has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.1

In other words, Jesus will not be domesticated. But people

still try. There seems to be something about this man for everybody.

So we pick and choose in a way that shows he is on our

side. All over the world, having Jesus on your side is a good

thing. But not the original, undomesticated, unadjusted Jesus.

Just the revised Jesus who fits our religion or political platform

or lifestyle.

117

When I was in graduate school in Germany in the 1970s,

I reviewed a book called Jesus für Atheisten,2 which you

don’t need German to translate. It was a Marxist “reading”

of the life of Jesus. According to that book, the essence of

Jesus’ teaching was the call to radical action against the

establishment. It was a call to ultimate devotion to “the

kingdom”—the inbreaking of the new society (Marxism).

It is a strange thing that, among folks who do not follow

Jesus as their Lord and God, almost no one wants to

say bad things about him. The same thing is true of

crosses: They are nice to wear for jewelry, but nobody

wants to die on one. The only crosses people want are

domesticated ones. It makes sense, then, that a man who

calculated his whole life to die on one would be dangerous

to believe in.

Can we know him as he really was—and is? How do we

come to know a person who lived on the earth two thousand

years ago—one who claimed to rise from the dead with

indestructible life and therefore lives today? Some people

say you can’t. The real Jesus is buried in history, they say,

and there is no access to him. Others are not so skeptical.

They believe that the biblical records of Jesus’ life are reliable,

and that its earliest interpreters—like the apostle

Paul—are more dependable guides than today’s critics.

But how can you be sure that the biblical portrait of

Jesus is true? People take two paths in search of solid

ground under the feet of faith. One is the path of painstaking

historical research to test the authenticity of the historical

records. I followed this path during my formative years

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in seminary and graduate school and college teaching. In

spite of all the challenges to my faith in those days, I was

never shaken loose from the conviction that there is good

warrant for trusting the New Testament documents about

Jesus. Today there are many compelling books—both scholarly

and popular—that support this confidence.3

But now I am a pastor rather than a college teacher. I still

value the path of scholarly historical research. In fact, I lean

on it often. However, I am more immediately aware now

that the vast majority of people in the world will never have

the time or the tools to trace out all the evidences for the historical

reliability of the New Testament. If Jesus is the Son

of God, if he died for our sins and rose from the dead, and

if God meant for people, two thousand years later, to have

a well-founded faith, then there must be another path to

know the real Jesus, other than by rigorous, academic, historical

research.

There is another path. It’s the path I have followed in

this book. It starts with the conviction that divine truth can

be self-authenticating. In fact, it would seem strange if God

revealed himself in his Son Jesus Christ and inspired the

record of that revelation in the Bible, but did not provide a

way for ordinary people to know it. Stated most simply, the

common path to sure knowledge of the real Jesus is this:

Jesus, as he is revealed in the Bible, has a glory—an excellence,

a spiritual beauty—that can be seen as self-evidently

true. It is like seeing the sun and knowing that it is light and

not dark, or like tasting honey and knowing that it is sweet

and not sour. There is no long chain of reasoning from

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premises to conclusions. There is a direct apprehension that

this person is true and his glory is the glory of God.

The apostle Paul described this path to knowledge of

Jesus in 2 Corinthians 4:4-6:

The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers,

to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory

of Christ, who is the image of God. . . . For God, who said,

“Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to

give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face

of Jesus Christ.

Notice that Paul speaks of God’s enlightening our

hearts (as in the work of creation) to apprehend “the

knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

He is talking about people who have never seen the historical

Jesus. How can they know him and be sure of him?

What they “see” is the verbal portrayal of Jesus in the

Gospel, that is, in the apostolic preaching of Christ. This

portrayal, Paul says, accompanied by God’s shining “in our

hearts,” appears to us as what it really is—“the glory of

God in . . . Jesus Christ,” or as “the glory of Christ . . . the

image of God.”

You can see that two things make this path possible.

One is the reality of the glory of Jesus Christ shining through

his portrayal in the Bible. The other is the work of God to

open the eyes of our blinded hearts to see this glory. This is

very different from God “telling us” that the Bible is true. It

is, rather, God’s enabling us to see what is really there. This

is an important difference. If God whispered in our ear, as

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it were, that the Jesus of the Bible is true, then the whispering

would have the final authority and everything would

hang on that. But that is not the path I see in the Bible nor

the path I follow. Rather Jesus himself, and his divinely

inspired portrayal in the Bible, have the final authority.

The practical effect of this path is that I do not ask you to

pray for a special whisper from God to decide if Jesus is real.

Rather I ask you to look at the Jesus of the Bible. Look at him.

Don’t close your eyes and hope for a word of confirmation.

Keep your eyes open and fill them with the full portrait of

Jesus provided in the Bible. If you come to trust Jesus Christ

as Lord and God, it will be because you see in him a divine

glory and excellence that simply is what it is—true.

Sometimes this path is called the “testimony of the Holy

Spirit.” The old catechisms say it this way: “The Spirit of

God, bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart

of man, is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the

very Word of God.”4 Be sure to notice that the Spirit persuades

“by and with the Scriptures.” He does not skirt the

Scriptures and substitute private revelations about the

Scriptures. He removes the blindness of hostility and rebellion,

and thus opens the eyes of our hearts to see the selfevident

brightness of the divine beauty of Christ.

Therefore, what I have tried to do in this book is to put

the biblical portrait of Jesus on display. I have not argued

for it historically. Others have done that better than I could,

and I rejoice in their work.5 I have tried to be faithful to

what the Bible really says about Jesus Christ. As imperfect

as my writing is, compared to Scripture itself, I still hope

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that reading these thirteen chapters has been like viewing a

diamond through thirteen different facets. The Bible itself is

the only authoritative description of the diamond of Jesus

Christ. I hope in the end you will turn from this book to the

Bible. That is why I have saturated these short chapters with

Scripture.

I hope this book will be useful for both believers and

unbelievers. I pray that God will use it to awaken unbelievers

to see the self-authenticating greatness and glory of Jesus

Christ. And I pray that it will sweeten believers’ sight of the

excellence of Christ.

In this way, the title of the book would come true: Seeing

and Savoring Jesus Christ. When we see Jesus for who he

really is, we savor him. That is, we delight in him as true and

beautiful and satisfying. That is my goal, because two things

flow from such an experience of Jesus Christ: He is honored,

and we are freed by joy to walk the narrow way of love.

Christ is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in

him. And when we are satisfied in him, we are crucified to

the world. In this way, seeing and savoring Jesus will multiply

the mirrors of his presence in the world. As the apostle

Paul said, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory

of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from

one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord

who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Beholding is becoming.

Seeing Christ saves and sanctifies.

Since all of this, as Paul says, “comes from . . . the

Spirit,” I have included prayers after each chapter. The

work of the Spirit in our lives is essential. And Jesus said,

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“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to

your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give

the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). I join

with serious readers in asking for greater and fuller measures

of the Spirit’s work in our lives. As we look to Jesus,

may he grant us to see and savor “the glory of God in the

face of Jesus Christ.”

I invite you to join me in this serious quest for wellfounded,

everlasting, love-producing joy. Everything is at

stake. There is no more important issue in life than seeing

Jesus for who he really is and savoring what we see above

all else.

N O T E S

1 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 56.

2 Milan Machove, Jesus für Atheisten (Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag, 1972).

3 F. F. Bruce, New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Downers Grove, IL:

InterVarsity Press, 1984); Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels

(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987); Paul Barnett, Is the New Testament

Reliable? A Look at the Historical Evidence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,

1993); Gregory A. Boyd, Cynic Sage or Son of God? Recovering the Real Jesus in an Age of

Revisionist Replies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1995); Gary R. Habermas,

The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press

Publishing Company, 1996); Michael J. Wilkins and James P. Moreland, eds., Jesus

Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI:

Zondervan Publishing House, 1996); Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The

Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San

Francisco: Harper, 1997); Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal

Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House,

1998).

4 The Westminster Larger Catechism, Question Four. John Calvin describes the “testimony of

the Spirit” like this: “The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as

God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, the Word will not find acceptance in

men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit

therefore who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our

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hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded

. . . because until he illumines their minds, they ever waver among many doubts!” (The

Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, vii, 4, ed. John T. McNeill [Philadelphia: The

Westminster Press, 1960], p. 79). “Indeed, Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its

own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their

taste” (Institutes, I, vii, 2, p. 76).

5 See note 3.

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