The Necessity of Christian Character (2 Peter 1.5-11)

Let’s suppose that after years of saving and hard work you are finally able to build your dream house. The project is completed and the house is ready. Everything has been done perfectly and the house is both beautiful and strong. Now you can move in and call it home for the rest of your life. It is at this point that you suddenly realize that you have made a serious error. In your budget you did not allow resources to furnish the house. You spent all your money on the building of the house and now you have nothing left to furnish it! There is no money for couches, chairs, tables, desks or bookcases. You have no bed to sleep in, no dressers for your clothes, and no television! The house is structurally sound. The walls are straight. The roof will keep out the rain. But because the house is not furnished you cannot use it. Even if a house is well-built and ascetically pleasing, it cannot be used unless it is furnished.

The same principle applies to our Christian faith. There are certain things that we must have to furnish our faith so that we can actually live by faith, putting it into practice. This is exactly what the Apostle Peter is teaching believers to do in our text. Peter is exhorting believers to add character to their faith, which will furnish their faith and make it practical. Faith must be applied to life and character is where the rubber meets the road in spiritual life. Faith itself is useless unless accompanied by character.

A Reasonable Exhortation

There are several incentives held out by the Apostle that will motivate a true believer. There are also some warnings against backsliding, or failing to grow in character. Peter says we should be diligent or earnest to add character to our faith. We must be involved in this process or it will not happen. There is a Christian proverb that tells us to “let go and let God.” But proverbs must be properly applied to the right situation. This proverb to let go and let God is certainly applicable to certain situations that are out of our control. But adding character to our faith is not one of those situations. This is something we must do, with God’s help, or it simply will not get done.

If God gives us something to do then He will also supply the ability to do it. The believer has already been given every resource needed in the spiritual life. The resources that we need come through the promises of God. I believe Peter is referring to the promises in the Gospel, though there is a sense in which all of the promises of Scripture may apply in some way to believers in Christ. Believers share in the Divine nature and therefore escape the corruption of the world. The world is going one way and believers are going in another direction. Everything Peter tells us to do in this text is contingent upon sharing in the Divine nature. It is pointless to tell unregenerate people to build godly character, though many preachers today are trying to make that happen!

Peter will go on in the heart of his epistle to argue that we must take advantage of every resource to grow in our faith because of the presence of false teachers that will infiltrate the Church and lead unstable people astray, even to their destruction.

The goal of the Christian life is to have an abundant entrance into the eternal Kingdom. Everything we do is for this single purpose. We must see our growth in character as a preparation to be forever with the Lord. If we do not see it this way it will be easy for us to lapse into legalism or to simply become moralists. But the Christian life should never be reduced to law-keeping or just being good. There is a much higher calling. We want to be ready to dwell in the courts of the Lord forever. The time we have on earth is to prepare for our heavenly home, which is ultimately going to be the New World, or the New Creation, that God will unveil when Jesus comes again.

A Relevant Exhortation

Some doctrine would make believers question the necessity of adding anything to faith. Is faith not sufficient by itself? Are we not saved by faith alone, apart from works? I would affirm that we are saved by faith alone, but true faith is never alone. It is always accompanied by works and by growth in character. Others might ask if we can really add character ourselves, through our own effort, or is this only the work of grace and the Spirit in us? This could be construed as legalism. The answer to this objection is that God has given us all the resources we need to grow, but we must be involved in the process and show diligence to the end.

Another question might be: how are we to add character? What should we do? If this were a modern preacher he would give us several ways to add to our faith. Some Christian traditions provide very structured ways for people to grow. But Peter does not do this and there is a very good reason for this omission here. We cannot grow spiritually by a routine, discipline, or even a law. We must understand the nature of spiritual life in Christ.

Peter’s instruction is a relevant word for our generation because we have so many who claim to have faith. And it is rather easy to say that you believe. But Christian character is what is often lacking from the lives of professed believers. If we are honest we all must confess a need to grow in some area of our character, even if our faith is strong. Peter’s instruction is needed today in the Church because it is often assumed that if people just believe and make some initial decision to follow Christ that this is sufficient and insures their ultimate entrance into the eternal Kingdom. But there is no certainty that an initial conversion or decision will ultimately result in a person entering the eternal Kingdom. Something must happen in between the point of conversion and the day when we leave the body and this world in death. It is also assumed that spiritual growth will just happen automatically if people are true believers and that the individual is passive and uninvolved in the process.

If the process of growth were automatic then there would be no need for this exhortation or for diligence on our part. We would simply let go and let God and coast into heaven. If building character did not really matter then God would simply take us up to heaven the very moment we believe. But God leaves us in the world for a time because there is some work that must be done. Christian character is not optional and it is not automatic.

Why Do We Need To Develop Character?

Most Church members today probably don’t feel that the exhortation in this passage is absolutely necessary. Many have been taught that once you believe there is really nothing else for you to do, except wait for heaven. We should dismiss any notion that developing Christian character is only necessary for those really spiritual Christians who might want to be clergy or go to the mission field while the regular Church members are exempt! Peter is talking to rank-and-file Christians in his epistle. It is absolutely vital that the Christian grows in character – adding virtue to his or her faith. And there is one person for whom you should be very concerned: yourself! It is not your job to make sure that everyone else is adding character to their faith, even though we are usually very good at noticing what others need to work on while ignoring our own faults.

When the Scripture tells us to do something that ought to be enough for us to obey. Peter is not giving us a suggestion here but an imperative. However, Peter is also reasoning with us because we are new creatures in Christ and we have the ability to understand the underlying reasons for this exhortation. We will likely be more motivated to do what Peter says if we understand why he said it.

To Put Our Faith into Practice

I think another way of looking at Peter’s exhortation is that we are to apply our faith to our lives so that our faith is the driving force behind who we are. There should be no area of our lives that does not connect to our faith. Christians should not live compartmentalized lives – putting faith on for Church services or during a crisis only to take it off again when it is not perceived to be needed or applicable. But I fear this is all too common in the Christian community. Religious people do not live by faith. Religion is something that can be turned on or off at our convenience. Our faith must become practical or useful. By this I mean our faith ought to have a powerful and pervasive impact on our lives. Surely this is what James meant when he said that “faith without works is dead.” If faith is not practiced there will be no clear demonstration of its authenticity. How do you know your faith is real if it has nothing to do with you personally and how you think, feel, and act? Faith should form your character and provide an overall focus and direction for your life. We build our lives around the promises of God.

I do not mean to say that faith in God allows us to get what we want out of life, as if God is just a tool for us to use. Unfortunately, this view of faith is nothing more than a way for us to be successful in this world. But God defines success very differently and faith means living to please God while participating in HIS agenda.

Faith is a dynamic force that moves people who believe the promises of God to do what they would not otherwise do by nature. Abraham was willing by faith to sacrifice his son Isaac, reasoning that God could raise Him from the dead. David was willing to fight a giant, reasoning that the battle belonged to the Lord in the first place and that God would give him victory. A person who says “I have faith” but does nothing is probably a liar and is self-deceived. Living by faith means trusting God, but not in a passive way. There are times when we cannot help ourselves and we need to sit quietly and wait on the Lord. But we must exercise our faith just like we would exercise our muscles. You don’t get in shape and lose weight passively sitting in front of the TV at home. You must get in the gym and do something! The same is true with faith. Faith must be put to use or it will atrophy. So put your faith to work and do something with it! That is what Peter is exhorting us to do.

To Replace the Works of the Flesh

Salvation is not simply getting out of something bad, it is getting into something good. We get out of Egypt like the Israelites, but we must also get into the Promises Land. The fruit or works of the flesh must be replaced by the fruit of godly character. We can forget that the purpose of salvation is for us to bear fruit unto God, not simply to be forgiven of sin and then to keep wallowing in it. We often focus on eliminating the negative things, not adding positive things. But the power to eliminate the negative is found in adding the positive character qualities.

You will notice that Peter’s exhortation is entirely positive. He is not telling us what we should avoid or eliminate from our lives but what we need to add and keep on adding. If we do add these character qualities, like self-control, then most of the negative qualities of the flesh will disappear from our lives. We have trouble with the Flesh precisely because we have not added the positive virtues. If you want to avoid getting sick, the best medicine is to be healthy.

Unfortunately Christianity is almost always viewed negatively instead of positively. People think being a Christian just means giving up everything that you might enjoy in life. The Church has managed to teach people that Christianity is morality, which means avoiding certain things. Of course, we can avoid worldly things while never getting around to actually adding any character to our faith! Being moral is not necessarily being Christian. And even morality must be about what we do, in a positive sense, and not just about what we avoid.

Don’t misunderstand me. There are things we must avoid. We must crucify the Flesh and keep it up there on the cross. But surely the reason for this crucifixion of the Flesh is so that the Holy Spirit can start producing a new kind of fruit in our lives. The cessation of carnal living should be a prelude to godly living and not just the creation of a giant vacuum in our lives. I have noticed that the Christians who only speak of what to avoid are usually not very joyful people. Let’s begin to talk more about what we are for and not just what we are against. Replace the works of Darkness with the Light and then let your light shine!

To Reflect the Character of God

We are not simply about morality for its own sake. The goal is godliness which means being like God. We have been born again and God is our heavenly Father. He has given us birth and has implanted His Divine life within us. If you are a believer in Christ you are carrying the Divine DNA around with you! And the children of God should be like their Father. So Peter is not telling believers to do something that is fundamentally against their nature. Yes, it is against the nature of the Old Man that came from our father Adam. But Peter is appealing to that part of us that has been born from above. So not only is Peter’s exhortation possible, it is something we are eager to do because we long to reflect the character of our Father.

From one perspective you were saved for no other purpose than this: that you can be a partaker of the Divine nature and be like God. God’s purpose is to conform those in Christ into the image of His Son, who is the express image of the Father. We have been given the indwelling Holy Spirit so that this amazing transformation can commence even while we are still in these clay vessels that we call our bodies. No believer should say that what Peter is telling us to do is impossible because you have been given life through the Spirit so that you are no longer a debtor to the Flesh that you have to obey its sinful desires. Now we have been joined to Christ so that we can bear fruit to God. This spiritual fruit is actually the character of God reproduced in us!

Divine Resources for Character Development

I anticipate that the response of many people would be that developing the character of God is an impossibly high goal. We must remember that man was originally made in the image of God and so we already have been made to reflect something of God’s glory, though we fall short because of sin. Salvation through Christ, who is Himself the perfect image of God, is the way that God has made to redeem that which originally bore His image. Though we fall short in Adam we are being remade in Christ in the image of our Savior, who is the image of the invisible God. So we should be able to see that salvation is much more than just morality or even law-keeping. If God wants us to be like Him then we can be assured that He will give us the means to accomplish His will. It is possible to grow in character because we already have every resource we need. Salvation is a complete package that leaves us lacking nothing, though the believer will not automatically realize everything about salvation the moment he or she believes.

There is a process of growth that begins when we believe and will eventually, unless something short-circuits the process, end up in eternal glory where will be like Christ completely. At this stage in the process, when we are still in the world and in the body, we are a work in progress. God is working in us but we must also work out our salvation. There is a sense in which we are not saved yet. Salvation has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We have been saved – that is justification. We are being saved – that is sanctification. And we will be saved – that is glorification.

Peter’s exhortation is really about our sanctification. He is writing to people who have already believed and been justified. Nothing Peter says here contradicts the doctrine of justification by faith. But now that we have been justified we must also be sanctified. Faith is just the beginning, not the end of our salvation.

The Beginning of the New Life

Everything must begin with faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11.6). Faith is not just a step in our salvation, like a one-time exercise that must be performed before we can advance to the next step. The righteous live by faith. Faith is to the spiritual life what breathing is to the health of the body. No faith means no life. Faith is like a spiritual life-line that connects us to Heaven. If we don’t have faith then Peter’s exhortation is not meant for us because we cannot add to what we don’t already possess. The trouble is that there are many professors who are not possessors. That is, there are many who say they have faith but do not manifest the evidence of faith in their lives. We are talking about faith, not religion or Church membership. It is necessary for us to examine ourselves to see if we are really believing. Our faith must be in the promises of God, which is how we then participate in the Divine Nature. Faith is the key to everything in the Christian life. Faith is not purely intellectual but is something we do in our hearts. In other words, faith involves the whole person and not just the mind. Here I am mostly interested in what faith does in us and not in defining faith, though every believer should have an understanding of what faith is (See Heb. 11.1).

In C.S. Lewis’ story The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the children open the door of an old wardrobe and are transported into the world of Narnia. Lewis was not just a master storyteller, he was also a master of metaphor. The wardrobe is about what faith does for us. When a person turns to God in faith it is like a door has been opened and that person has entered into a whole new world. When we go through the wardrobe door, life will never be the same again because we will never be the same. And yet going through that Door is just the beginning of our adventure. Faith is a journey. Along this journey there are many things that we must learn, even through conflict, temptation, and pain. God wants to use us, but we must be made ready. Faith makes us ready for God to work in us.

But faith is only the beginning and not the sum total of our character transformation. No one who comes to God in faith is instantly made perfect in his or her character. God accepts us through faith, not because we have a flawless character.

Salvation is by grace through faith, not by works. We do not develop character so that God will accept us. We develop character because we are God’s children. We are already accepted and THEN we start to work on our character. We do this with God’s help, which is the work that grace does in our lives. God’s grace is God’s help. God wants to make us into new creatures who are pulsating with Divine life, love, joy, power, and beauty. Its going to take a lot of grace to make that happen. And when we finally stand before our Maker and receive praise from Him, it will only be by His grace that this glory will be ours. That journey to glory begins with faith.

The Knowledge of God

Every race has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Getting a good start is important to a runner, but does not necessarily mean he or she will finish well. Faith is our starting point, but we must then run the race that has been marked out for us. Glory is the finish line. But in between we must run the race. Christians tend to celebrate the beginning of the Race. We are overjoyed when people are converted. When our beloved brothers and sisters leave the world in death we will miss them, but we are also glad when a person dies in the Faith and enters into glory. But that time in between is more difficult and for some reason the modern Church does not talk very much about what happens in between conversion and death. But it is that in between stage that Peter is addressing. This is the time to develop character. We have everything we need to do this. We are not on our own. We have God’s grace to help us.

So how does this work? The ability to add character to our faith is found in our knowledge of God. Everything we need is found in God Himself and is realized through our intimate association with the entire Godhead. When we encounter God we are changed. I am not talking merely about intellectual knowledge. A person may know about God and yet not really know God. God is a living presence and not just a fact in a book. We come to know God through reading the Scriptures, but this is not like studying some historical figure who is passed away. We do not study God as if He were some object to be dissected. We come to know God like we come to know a person because God is a person. I do not mean that God is a man. I mean that God is personal and not just a Force or a Mind.

When we come to know God we find that we are actually entering into a Divine fellowship that consists of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We are being welcomed into this Divine relationship that has always existed and will always exist. The knowledge of God is more like being part of a family than it is like going to school to learn algebra. Knowing God is eternal life (John 17.3). This eternal life is found in fellowship with God. Just being with God is a life-giving experience. We remember how Moses’ face radiated with the glory of God after Moses came down from Sinai. And that was a brief exposure that soon faded away. Through Christ was can gaze continually at the glory of God and we are transformed by it, even though now we see through a glass darkly. But the transformation of our character begins now as we gaze at the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ.

The knowledge of God comes through the light of the Gospel of Christ and from no other source. If our vision of God is growing dim it is because we have lost sight of the Gospel of Christ and we need to look more earnestly at the face of Jesus.

This kind of knowledge has nothing to do with a ritual or procedure. The living God cannot be packaged in a program or a discipline. That is too small of a box for the glory of God! The folks who are looking for such things do so because they do not know the living God and they are not gazing at the face of Jesus. When we have seen His glory we will have done with lesser things. When we have God we find that we need nothing else. And through Christ we have been given access to God. So let’s approach His Throne of Grace with confidence and we will find all the grace we need to be everything God wants us to be!

A Changed Affection

Peter says that we must be earnest or diligent. There must be some effort and some desire on our part or this work will not get done. It’s true that we can’t do it ourselves by our efforts alone. We need God’s grace. But God’s grace does not drag us along kicking and screaming! Some people seem to think that God will overpower them in order to bring them to a point of repentance and change. But those who have to be overpowered are seldom the recipients of a blessing from God. God may discipline His children to produce repentance and make them ready to be blessed. But the blessing does not come to us when we are resisting God. God is working to change our character, so we should be prepared to submit to this process instead of stubbornly resisting His will.

God only works with those who have a desire for Him. We cannot be passive and expect a blessing. We must be like Jacob when he wrestled with that angel all through the night and refused to let him go until he got the blessing. God can work with a man like Jacob who wants the blessing more than anything else in the world and is willing to do just about anything to get it! You may not be everything that you need to be, but you can WANT the blessing of God and that counts for something with God. In our present state while we are in these weak, mortal bodies our desire to serve God will usually fall short of our ability to actually carry it out. But God will bless our desires to grow. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled.

Promises for the Faithful and Warnings for the Backsliders

What the Christian must beware of is beginning to think that this process of growth in character is something that just happens automatically and that once we have believed there is nothing else that we must do. This kind of thinking can lead to slothfulness in the Christian life. A routine and a discipline cannot by itself insure that we will be growing, but that does not mean that we can be sloppy and undisciplined and expect to grow. We must avoid these extremes. One person will say that there is nothing we can do but believe, while another person advocates some kind of disciplined routine. Christian people tend to go to extremes and there are trends in the Christian community where the pendulum will often swing in one direction or the other.

But Peter is teaching us a kind of balance. We must have faith, everything begins there, but we must then add to our faith and we must apply ourselves diligently. So we must avoid the extremes of being overly mystical or becoming legalistic and trusting in our works. It is not wrong to work as a Christian but it is wrong to trust in our works as the basis for our justification.

It is not our part to begin to tell people exactly how to discipline themselves and how to order their lives. Peter does not do that here and we will get off track if we emphasize how people ought to live their lives. However, there are certain things that simply must be done. You must work this out for yourself. And you must be serious about this and put some effort into this activity or it will not happen. So Peter is motivating us here to do this work of adding to our faith, but he is not giving us specific directions. The important thing is that we are motivated in a certain direction and then the Apostle is confident that people who have faith and who are guided by the Holy Spirit will be equipped to do the Lord’s will. To motivate us Peter supports his exhortation to add to our faith by showing that there are great benefits in the Christian life that come with character and great dangers when we continue to lack these character qualities. So there are promises along with warnings to conclude this passage and we may need both the promises and the warnings to motivate us, depending on where we are in this process of growth. A person who is doing well might simply need to remember the promises to be motivated to do even more. A person who is falling back will need to be warned so that they will turn things around.

Weakness and Inconsistency

There are certain things that can plague the lives of believers and contradict the very purpose for salvation through Christ. These things must be addressed because Christ did not deliver us so that we would go back to that old life. Christians who go backwards instead of forwards do not glorify God and in the process they will also probably make themselves miserable as well! If this backsliding is not corrected it will eventually lead a person away from Christ entirely.

We can be delivered from a life of weakness and inconsistency. It is possible for us to be stable and strong, with possible moments of weakness or discouragement being the exception not the norm. I fear that moments of strength and consistency are the exception and not the rule for many Church members today. We should not think that being a Christian is always a mountaintop experience. But always living in the valley of despair or always falling into temptation and sin should not be the normal state of the believer. It might surprise some people to know that Christians do not have to be weak and always stumbling and falling. Some people may not know what to do to be strong. Some people are living in a wilderness, spiritually speaking, and they don’t know where to find a well of water to refresh themselves. Some people are trying to drink out of dirty cisterns. There are all kinds of religious things our there that promise strength and yet fail to deliver. But Christians should not be constantly blaming other people for their lack of character. We may have had some serious setbacks in the past.

But the important thing is what we are doing now. We are responsible for our own spiritual lives. But if we don’t do these things and add to our faith we will be unstable and will eventually fall, possibly beyond recovery.

The Full Assurance of Faith

We can have full assurance of our calling and election. We must be able to know that we belong to the Lord, that we please Him, and that we are destined for eternal glory. It is possible to know that you have been called and elected by God. Adding these character qualities is the evidence. If you are not sure about your election you must look for the evidence. Is there any proof that you have believed? What difference has faith and salvation made in your life? Are you a different person now or are you still doing the same old things, thinking about life the same old way? If you have been saved then you must know it by the different kind of life you now have. If nothing has changed then what salvation has actually occurred? Perhaps you have not grown or you have fallen backwards into the old life.

If we know our calling and election then there can be nothing that will shake us. If we don’t know these things then almost any trial or pain could be our undoing. There are many people who seem to be doing good in the Christian life up until that moment when some trial comes their way. Then all of the sudden they are filled with doubts about their faith and even about the goodness of God. It is not uncommon to hear people say they are angry with God because they have encountered some hardship in life. That hardship has shaken their faith. I would argue that they were not adding to their faith these other character qualities and so when the storm came they were not prepared for it.

When we are not growing the first thing to leave us will be our assurance. All kinds of doubts will begin to flood our minds. This is directly from our Enemy who is constantly shooting his flaming darts at us. If we are not adding to our faith and being diligent about the Christian life the Devil will attack us and find us vulnerable. And the Devil loves to attack the Saints with doubt and discouragement. The Saints must remember who they are in Christ in order to have confidence. This is the confidence that enables us to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus!

Preparing for Eternity

The whole point of this exhortation is so that we might be prepared for the very presence of God. Someday either we will leave the world or the world itself will leave and we will stand before God. Every person is on a collision course with God and life is really about nothing else other than preparing our souls for that critical moment when we must give an account to our Creator. The Day of Judgement will be the time when the Master will inspect His servants and all their works. There are some who will not stand on that day but will be unacceptable to the Master and will be excluded from His Kingdom.

We are to add to our faith so that this terrible fate will not be ours. We want to add to our faith these character qualities so that we will hear “Well done good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your Master!” When we hear those words that will be glory – having the eternal praise and pleasure of our Lord.

If we add to our faith, then we can expect to spend eternity in the presence of God. When our time on earth is done, Christ will bring us into His eternal Kingdom where we will fit perfectly, having been prepared on earth for this glory. We can have an abundant entrance there. That is, we can go on our way to heaven with our sails filled by the Winds of God, a smile on our faces, and a song in our hearts. Sometimes we might feel as if we are hanging on by our fingernails and just barely making it in the good fight of faith. Perhaps we always feel this way because we are not adding to our faith the character qualities that are necessary for us to be more than conquerors. After the dust from the Battle has cleared we shall see His face and reign forever with Christ on His throne. We must have that eternal perspective or we will find ourselves discouraged. If we are not preparing for eternity then the tyranny of the temporal will prove too much for us. The modern world is filled with distractions that try to steal our affection away from heavenly things. It has never been more important for Christians to set their affections on things above. This is not so we can escape what is unpleasant in the world, but so that we can expect to have an abundant entrance into the World to Come!

It should be the desire of every believer to keep growing and increasing. If we are not moving forward then we are in danger. This also implies some humility in realizing that we have not yet arrived. This process of growth does not stop as long as we are in the body. Even if you have made great strides in some area there is probably some other area that needs work. The Spirit has His ways of showing us where we still need some work. We should be sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit and to the Word of God to identify those areas of our lives that still need growth. So keep adding character to your faith until the day your faith becomes sight!

Be Reconciled to God! A Communion Meditation

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20).

This verse appears in the context of having to stand before the judgement seat of Christ and give an account. We know that our bodies are mortal and that we will eventually have to fold up these tents and move into our eternal dwellings. But this does not mean that it doesn’t matter what we do while we are in the body. We will give an account for what we did while in these earthly vessels. There have been those who teach that the body does not matter, everything is purely spiritual, and so we can do whatever we want with our bodies. But the body belongs to the Lord. He has purchased us, including our earthly bodies, at a great price. So our bodies belong to God and are not to be used for selfish and sinful desires. The body is for the Lord, not for pleasure. Those who live in the body only for pleasure will have to give an account to the Creator for squandering His gifts. So as we remember the death of Christ we must think about the fact that our lives are not our own, to do as we please, but we have been purchased by the body and blood of Jesus. And eventually we must all stand before the Lord who purchased us. We want that day to be one of glory and salvation instead of condemnation and sorrow.

The reality of the coming judgment should be sobering and could be fearful. When our physical bodies and the rest of this physical cosmos have all melted away, we will stand before the Lord naked and completely exposed as we really are. There will be no place to hide from the Lord on the Day of Judgment. Many people spend their whole lives attempting to hide from God, just as the parents of the human race did after they sinned and realized that they were naked. Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves with fig leaves, a woefully inadequate covering. And so men and women still try to cover themselves, hiding their shame and nakedness. We cover ourselves with material things, entertainment, careers, education, and all of the pleasures and distractions an affluent society has to offer. Not all of these things are inherently wicked. But people use these things to hide from God. Even morality and religion can be a man-made covering designed to make us feel that when we stand before God we will not be completely naked and ashamed. At least we have been nice, decent folks! But all of our righteousness is like filthy rags in God’s presence. The only covering that God will find acceptable is the righteousness that He Himself will provide. And this righteousness cannot be earned, it must be imputed through faith in God’s only Son. Jesus died so that we could be clothed with the very righteousness of God and stand in His presence without any shame.

Being able to stand in the presence of God without shame or fear, having been completely accepted by Him, is to be reconciled. Because we have been reconciled through the death of Christ, we do not have to fear being condemned at the Judgment. This reconciliation was accomplished by Christ on the cross. Instead of just writing off the human race and destroying us as our sins deserved, God sent His own Son to take away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. It was sin that separated us from God and even created enmity. We were all enemies of God, alienated by sin. We are hostile to God by nature, not wanting to submit to God. And we know that it never goes well for those personalities who choose to rebel against the living God! Satan and all of his demonic hosts were cast out of heaven and await the Day of Judgement and the Lake of Fire without any hope of being reconciled. But in His infinite wisdom God has devised means by which those sons of Adam and daughters of Eve who are estranged from Him might be reconciled! Even the angels who are still in heaven have never seen anything like the reconciliation that God has made through Jesus and they desire to look into these things that we remember at the Lord’s Table!

Having been reconciled through the death of Christ we now live for Him. Being reconciled to God means we are at peace with Him instead of being hostile to His will. Before we were reconciled we wanted to go our own way and live for ourselves, not for God. And for those who have not received this reconciliation that God offers in Christ, they still live in opposition to God’s will and are therefore alienated from Him in their minds because of their sinful deeds. These sinful deeds do not have to amount to murder or the base desires of the Flesh. Many of those who are alienated from God might seem moral and may even be religious! But they are not living to please the Lord. The Lord and His will are not the primary thoughts in their minds. They are living for themselves and perhaps they add the Christian religion to their lives just to insure their personal happiness and development. But those who have been truly reconciled no longer think of themselves in this way. We have not been reconciled to God so that we can then just go on our way to live as we please, still separated from God. We have been reconciled to God so that we can have fellowship with Him and can participate in His purpose and work. And so the Lord’s Table reminds us that we are to live for the One who died for us.

We must continue to appropriate the reconciliation that Jesus died to accomplish. To appropriate means to make it your own possession. When we appropriate food we ingest that food so that the nutrition is able to benefit our bodies. I think it is for this very reason that the Lord gave us something to eat in order to remember Him. We must personally appropriate the body and blood of the Lord, which is done through faith, so that His death actually benefits us personally. There are those who teach the doctrine of universalism – that everyone will automatically be saved – and they ignore the fact that the death of Christ must be personally appropriated. No one can be reconciled who does not personally receive the reconciliation. The reconciliation has been accomplished. Now you and I must actually be reconciled to God! Let us not just talk about reconciliation, as if it is some intellectual abstraction. Let’s actually be reconciled and appropriate this peace with God! There are many people who long to have that inner peace but who continue to refuse to appropriate the reconciliation that God offers the world through the death of Christ. But no one will have the peace of God until they have peace with God. As we come today to remember the death of Christ, let us be reconciled to God!

Revelation: The Gospel of the Kingdom (Revelation 1.4-6; 5.6-10; 11.15; 19.11-16)

Introduction

There is no book in the Bible like Revelation. No other book has created such conflict and confusion in the Church, even though it is, ironically, A REVELATION! A revelation means that something is being revealed not concealed. So this book should make something clear. Yet this book seldom clarifies anything and I think I know why: most people get caught up in the details and miss the message of the book of Revelation. What is the central message or theme of this book? What is the one truth that is being revealed in Revelation? The theme of the book of Revelation is the current reign of Christ.

You will notice I did say the CURRENT reign of Christ not the FUTURE reign of Christ. That is on purpose. I am making an intentional distinction here and am also leaving behind some of the more popular interpretations of the book. It is usual for interpreters of Revelation to treat this book as if everything in it is for the future. Certainly there are things in Revelation that have not happened yet. But this book is not just about the so-called End Times and much of the misunderstanding has come from reading Revelation as a graphic novel about the end of the world.

We seem to have something in our nature that gravitates toward doom and gloom. People are fascinated by the so-called Apocalypse – a word that has completely changed its meaning in modern usage. Apocalypse is actually the word for a revelation and had very little to do with the end of the world, though that is mentioned in the book of Revelation. But that is not the theme. The true Apocalypse or Revelation is not the end of the world, it is the Kingdom of Christ. Revelation is not about the end of something but about the beginning of something. This book is not doom and gloom at all, it is a book of good news and glorious hope – IF we will submit to what God is doing. The only scary stuff in Revelation is for those who will not submit to the reign of Christ. For those who do bow the knee to Christ, in anticipation of every knee bowing, the book of Revelation is the good news of the Kingdom of God!

The Gospel of the Kingdom is not a new theme. Jesus preached the Kingdom. The book of Revelation is not revealing any completely new doctrine. This is a vision designed to inspire hope. To inspire this hope the book of Revelation is helping us to see something that is otherwise unseen.

Modern science has helped us to see things we could not see. With the help of electron microscopes we have seen into the fascinating and surprising world of atomic particles. These were things so small they could not be seen by past generations. The Hubble telescope has helped us see deeper and deeper into space and revealed new galaxies, stars, and even planets. These wonders were previously too vast and far away to see. The tiny subatomic world has always been there. The vast celestial worlds have always been holding their cosmic dance. But we could not see these things until now.

There is more to reality than meets the eye. This is one of the enduring lessons of the book of Revelation. This book opens a door into another world. There is a higher reality we have not been privileged to see. But now someone from that World has opened the Door and invited us to follow Him in!

What John saw was a revelation of Jesus Christ. This was not just a revelation that Jesus gave to John, although that was certainly the case, this is a revelation of Jesus Himself. But the Christ John saw on the Isle of Patmos is not the humble carpenter who walked the shores of Galilee. This is Jesus, the same Jesus who was crucified and raised from the dead, but He has changed. He has ascended. He is in His glory not His humility. The days of His humility have ended.

The book of Revelation picks up where the Gospels and the first chapter of Acts end – He ascended into Heaven. He has begun to reign. That is the revelation of Revelation!

This revelation of the current reign of Christ in heaven is in the form of a vision. This vision is given in a series of ever-enlarging cycles, each cycle consisting of the same structure or pattern. The book of Revelation is a single revelation. There is a unity in the book. It is not a series of revelations, it is a single revelation given in a widening and expanding cycle of visions, all of which relate to this central theme of the reign of Christ. The book is cyclical, not linear or chronological. The same territory is covered multiple times as the cycles keep spinning, each time the scope of the vision getting larger and larger.

The vision unfolds in a series of 4 cycles, each cycle consisting of 7 objects: 1. 7 Churches, 2. 7 Seals, 3. 7 Trumpets, and finally, 4. 7 Bowls. The theme is the Kingdom of Christ. Each cycle gives a slightly different perspective of this theme:

·The 7 Churches show us that the Kingdom is being established on earth in the Church.
·The 7 Seals show us that the Kingdom is being established in heaven by the Lamb seated on the Throne.
·The 7 Trumpets show that the Kingdom is being established even in the midst of conflict with rival kingdoms.
·The 7 Bowls show that the Kingdom is being established by God’s judgment.

Each of the 4 cycles have a similar internal structure containing the following 3 elements: 1. the revelation of enemies that are in opposition to God and to His people in the world. 2. God judges these enemies and destroys the opposition to Christ and His People. 3. The Kingdom is established, and the Saints overcome and reign with Christ.

In human warfare historians can often point to certain battles that were turning points that determined the outcome of the war. In the American Civil War there was a turning point at the Battle of Gettysburg when Pickett’s charge failed to break the Union lines. At that point the tide had turned in favor of the Union and against the Confederacy. In the Second World War the Allies hit the beaches at Normandy to invade Hitler’s European defenses. When a beachhead was finally established, the tide had effectively turned against Germany in favor of the Allies. In both of these examples the war did not end with these battles and there was much more conflict to follow. But there was a decisive moment when the war was all but over.

The book of Revelation shows us a Cosmic Conflict. But the outcome of this conflict has already been decided by a decisive turning point. That turning point was the Ascension of Christ into Heaven and His subsequent enthronement at God’s Right Hand. There will be more conflict before the End but the outcome is not in question: God is setting up a Kingdom in which His Christ will reign forever!

I. At the present time there are rival kingdoms in conflict with Christ’s Kingdom.

The cycles of Revelation culminate in the New Creation when all opposition to God and His Christ is removed forever. But at the present time the enemies have not been removed. What we are seeing is the wisdom of God being displayed in that God is working out His eternal purpose in the very presence of opposition.

In Revelation the enemies of God and His people are unmasked for us to see. Behind the scenes is a vast network of spiritual darkness that has for most of human history exercised its dominion over the world. Under the influence of these invisible forces of evil, the world has set itself in opposition to God and His reign.

The very idea that people are free to do what they want is laughable when we consider the fact that Satan has successfully deceived the entire world into joining his cosmic rebellion against God.

There are a couple of prophetic, Messianic Psalms often quoted by New Testament authors that perfectly expound the message of the book of Revelation. These Psalms are not quoted in Revelation, but the ideas are woven through the visions of the book:

Psalm 2:

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,

“Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”

He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying,

“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”

I will tell of the decree:
The LORD said to me, 

“You are my Son; today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.”

Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Psalm 110:

The LORD says to my Lord:

“Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”

The LORD sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter.
Rule in the midst of your enemies!
Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours.
The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind,

“You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth.
He will drink from the brook by the way; therefore he will lift up his head.

Both of these Psalms prophecy the reign of God’s Christ IN SPITE OF THE WORLD’S OBJECTIONS! The role of Christ is something God has given to Jesus. The World did not vote for Jesus as their King. In fact, the world voted AGAINST Jesus! But this does not change the decree of the Lord one bit! Jesus is still the King in spite of all the raging and opposition of the World, which is still going on today.

And God has chosen to bring His chosen people through this world of opposition.  Jesus had to come through this world of opposition on His way to Glory, and so do the Saints! Faith must be tested by opposition and adversity just as gold must be refined by fire or an athlete’s body must be strengthened by being afflicted in training. God is using the wicked world to perfect the faith of the Saints.

The World seems to be raging out of control, but it isn’t. God sets limits for the World just as He does for the waves of the sea. Even Satan is God’s Devil and can go no further than the length of the leash God measures for him. The World is afraid that we are going to destroy ourselves, blowing ourselves away in some self-inflicted, fiery cataclysm. Perhaps someone will finally push the nuclear button!! It is a fear depicted in a hundred Hollywood screenplays. The book of Revelation assures us that this world will stand until God accomplishes His purpose and He will dispose of it in His own good time.

II. God is currently demonstrating that Christ’s Kingdom is the absolute authority and cannot be successfully opposed.

The fact is that God has always had a Kingdom because He has always been God. While there may be personalities in the universe who are in rebellion against God or who do not acknowledge God this in no way threatens the reign of God. Every personality must eventually acknowledge and submit to God’s rule, even if forced to submit against their will – which never results in a blessing.

When John saw a door opened in heaven and was invited into the heavenly realm, the first thing John saw was the Throne of God. Jesus first addresses the Church which is in the earth. But the rest of this vision will be given from a heavenly perspective.

To orient us to the heavenly realm we are taken directly to the center of all reality, which is the Throne of God. John saw a throne with someone sitting on it. The Throne is not empty – God is ruling and reigning! This Throne is never vacant and so the Kingdom of God is eternal. Nothing is out of control because God is seated on His Throne, in spite of all appearances to the contrary down here on earth. We must come up higher and see things from the Throne.

John also sees that the Lamb is seated there in the Throne with God. The heavenly worship is directed at the Lamb just as it is directed at the One seated on the Throne. And it is the Lamb who takes the scroll from the One seated on the Throne – taking charge of the purpose of God and unveiling it for us to see. And so the Throne of God and the Lamb is the central fact of John’s Revelation.

The vision of the Throne is the theological center of the book of Revelation. I would even go as far as to say that the Throne of God, which was seen by other men in Scripture before John saw it, is the most foundational truth in all Biblical revelation. God is on His Throne! Is there any personality in heaven or on earth who can move God from His Throne or defy His righteous reign? This book of Revelation will show us that there are those personalities, including men, who will actually try to oppose God. Their failure will be complete and their ruin beyond repair.

Everyone trusts in some absolute – something that they deem to be firm, solid, reliable, and maybe even immutable. We build on lives on what we believe to be absolute. Everyone deals in absolutes, just not the same absolutes. And eventually all of our absolutes will be tested to see if they are everything we believe them to be. Some folks are going to be eternally disappointed! Many of the things people have trusted in all their lives will evaporate underneath their feet, leaving nothing but the yawning chasm of death and eternal despair.

But our Absolute is the Throne of God! “A glorious throne set on high from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary” (Jeremiah 17.12). The Saints will never be disappointed because we have trusted in God’s eternal Throne as our place of sanctuary.

John’s vision into the Heavenly courts is meant to drive home the fact that the Heavenly realm is always superior to the Earthly realm. Heaven rules Earth. Heaven always trumps Earth. Heaven is the real place, the main place.

Heaven is the control-room for the earth and that is where the Savior has gone on our behalf! If you want to make sense out of the earthly realm you must go up into the heavenly realm. The view from the mountaintop is always the clearest.

This is why we must always live from the top down, never basing our understanding of life with the earth foremost in our vision. Until we get this order right – heaven comes first and earth a distant second – we will never live rightly. So it goes with most people in our society.

Too many people are like Nebuchadnezzar, strutting around on his palace like a rooster, boasting and puffed up with pride. It took Nebuchadnezzar seven years of theological training to get his perspective corrected so that he finally acknowledged that the heavens do rule. Many people never learn this lesson. I hope we can learn humility faster than old Nebuchadnezzar, and without eating all that disgusting grass!

Humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand! That hand will either squash you into powder or exalt you in eternal glory. God’s people are those who have learned to humbly pray “our Father who art in Heaven.” And then “Thy Kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

III. Jesus is currently in Heaven so that He can be both Priest and King.

In the Tabernacle there was a veil separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. This is an illustration of the separation between the earth, where we dwell, and Heaven, where God dwells. Once a year on the Day of Atonement the High Priest would go beyond the veil into the presence of God in the Holy of Holies to intercede for the people. In the same way Christ, our Great High Priest, has passed beyond the Veil separating Heaven and earth and is now in the presence of God. This is the meaning of the Ascension. Some modern people find it almost ridiculous, as if Jesus blasted off like a rocket into space. But Heaven is not a part of this creation and could not be reached in a spaceship.

Jesus passed beyond this creation into the presence of God. Heaven is the presence of God. Jesus had to go back into Heaven for our salvation to be complete. His work on earth is finished, but His work, or ministry, in Heaven is ongoing.

Jesus has assumed the role of the High Priest. His earthly sacrifice would have meant nothing unless He entered into the Heavenly Places.

Presently, He is our Intercessor in Heaven in behalf of the Saints who are still sojourning in the hostile World. The book of Hebrews lays out this doctrine, which was prefigured in the Law and especially in the mysterious Melchizedek, who was both a king and a priest. Jesus has also assumed the role of King and Priest.

The book of Revelation shows us Jesus the High Priest from the very beginning of John’s vision:

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. (Revelation 1:12-16)

Jesus appears to John as a glorified priest who is walking in the midst of the Churches. Jesus’ first order of business is to minister to the needs of the Churches. As it turns out the Church is very much in need of this High Priest as there were all kinds of deficiencies found by the searching eyes of the Lord. While the Church is still in the world she needs a good priest because the world is a place of separation, impurity, and temptation. Our High Priest knows exactly what it is like to be in the world and to be handicapped by the weakness and limitations of the Flesh and to even be tempted by the Devil. So Jesus is perfectly qualified to be our High Priest. And since He is in heaven He is no longer limited by the Flesh and can minister to His Church in the World without the restrictions of time and space. Jesus is there to make sure we get all of the grace we require to overcome the world, the flesh, and the Devil.

There is an excellent illustration of Christ’s intercessory ministry in the life of the Apostle Peter. We remember how confident Peter was in his ability to follow Jesus even unto death. But Jesus knew that Peter was not as strong as Peter thought he was. Jesus said to Peter:

“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. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”(Luke 22:31-32)

We learn from Peter’s overconfidence that it is our tendency to think we can do more than we can actually do. We overestimate our natural strength and ability and therefore we sometimes think we can do things on our own. But there are all kinds of things we cannot do for ourselves and we have to get some help. All of us have been in the position of being blessed by someone’s help. If this is true on a carnal level, then how much more is it true when fighting the good fight of faith! We have to have help from our Great High Priest or we won’t make it through the world with our faith intact. Jesus is praying for you, that your faith will not fail as you sojourn through the world!

Conclusion

Jesus went back to Heaven to be our High Priest. When the intercession is over, the High Priest will come out of the Holy of Holies. Jesus will appear. The veil that separates heaven and earth will be torn asunder and every eye will see Him.

He is not coming back to earth to reign or to fight any enemies. He has already defeated all the enemies and He has already received the Kingdom from His Father. But when He appears every knee will have to bow and every tongue will have to confess that He is Lord. His appearing will mark the end of the Old Order and the fullness of the New Creation in which Heaven and Earth will be one.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnificent story The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is a king who has not yet ascended to the throne. First, Aragorn must fight many battles and win the war against the Dark Lord’s forces. But when Frodo and Sam reach Mount Doom, and the terrible ring of power is cast into the fire, the Enemy is utterly defeated. Aragorn has no more enemies to fight and returns to his city victorious. But Aragorn must then assume the role of a Healer, restoring his people who had been afflicted with the evil weapons and dark magic of the Enemy. And so when the King returns the people discover that he is not only their victorious Lord but also the only one who can bring healing and restoration. A victorious king who is also a healer!

The Lord Jesus is not coming back to fight another battle, but to bring healing to everything touched by the curse of sin and death. Contrary to what many people think the book of Revelation teaches, the Lord Jesus is not coming back to fight. The world itself will not be able to stand the glory of His appearing. Jesus does not have to fight, He just has to show up and it is all over! He has already won the battle and He could not have been exalted into Heaven if He had not overcome all of His enemies. There is no more enemy for Jesus to defeat when He comes, just the final casting away of everything and everyone that does not belong in the New Creation.

Ultimately, the home of the Saints is the New Earth that John saw. In this New Creation the two realms of Heaven and Earth are merged together and the Saints will reign forever while living in the fullness of the Divine Presence, even seeing the face of God. When that happens then the Kingdom of God will have come in all its fullness.

The Kingdom of God has already invaded and we are awaiting the final stage of God’s eternal purpose. In the meantime we are living in that uncomfortable and sometimes painful period of time in between the Ages. The Wheat and the Tares are still growing together.

I have always enjoyed canoeing and whitewater rafting on rivers. The idea is to slip your boat into the stream and let the current carry you down the river. It takes very little work to go downstream. Trying to paddle against the current is exceedingly difficult and takes tremendous strength and stamina, even on a small river. As long as we are in the Flesh we must paddle upstream, against the current of this present, evil World. There are powerful forces pressing against us. But our King can bring us through. So hold on to Jesus and learn to rest in His everlasting arms.

The Cross of Christ

As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “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.” So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

(Matthew 27:32-56 ESV)

There was an old police show on television called Dragnet. One of the main characters was famous for always saying when questioning a witness or a suspect, “just the facts, please, just the facts.” Many people have the same approach to religion – they just want the facts. We want to know that the things we believe are true. Fairy tales are fun to read, but we don’t build our lives on something made up. And we would not base our hope for eternal life on an outright fabrication.

The Christian faith claims to be based on certain facts. Christianity is unique in that it is not just a philosophy or mysticism. The crucifixion is one of the central facts of the Faith.

But some facts still require explanation. Even when we know the facts we have to know what these things mean. What is the significance? The Cross is like that. Jesus’ death on the Cross is dark and mysterious without some explanation of its significance. Unfortunately, the Gospel writers give us only the facts and very little explanation.

When something especially horrible happens we are interested in finding the meaning behind the facts. We want to know why bad things happen because evil is an aberration – a departure from what is normal and expected. And so we have always struggled to explain evil so that it might make some sense – that which is otherwise unwelcome nonsense. The most troublesome question is why bad things seem to always happen to innocent people.

Jesus was innocent and did not deserve to die. Perhaps this is why the Cross doesn’t make sense to many people. Why did God let Jesus die in such a horrible manner? God could have sent a legion of angels to rescue Him! Here is another instance in which something really bad is happening and God seems to be passive and uninterested. But maybe Christians are so familiar with the Crucifixion that we are no longer shocked by it and we have stopped asking the hard questions. We even wear crosses for fashion statements! Why did the darkest moment in human history have to happen? Why did Jesus have to die like this?

There are many people who admire the teaching of Jesus but can’t explain the meaning of the Cross except that it was just another tragic injustice. We have never listened to the great moral teachers and have always persecuted the prophets. What is harder to explain is Jesus’ willingness to embrace the Cross and walk open-eyed into the Darkness alone.

We should not ignore the obviously evil and ugly nature of the crucifixion of Jesus. To make like life easier we often ignore the unpleasant things and live in denial. But the ugly reality of the Cross is the most important reality we must all face.

At the Cross we see the most evil side of human nature on display. The first thing we notice is that it is not enough for the enemies of Jesus to put Him on the Cross, they also had to mock Him as He suffered. It is the nature of human cruelty to abuse the weak and the vulnerable, to add insult to injury, and to kick the person who has fallen down. At His weakest and most vulnerable point, the enemies of Jesus surround Him like blood-thirsty animals and continue to bite and tear at Him. But Jesus remains silent before His tormentors.

There were evil men who wanted Jesus dead and these men were fully responsible for their evil plan. Of course, God knew about their plan and God used them to accomplish His own plan. But the fact that the Cross was a Divine plan in no way removes all human responsibility. There is no conflict between Divine sovereignty and human responsibility. But the evil of man cannot overcome the purpose of God.

The Cross shows us that evil aspect of human nature that would even get rid of God Himself. We do not want to submit to God. We want our way, even if we have to crucify the Son of God! The greatest evil in the world comes from a desire for power and control.

If the human race is basically good, then how do you explain the Cross?

Evil always looks uglier out there in the world, but evil is planted in the heart of every person. We find it easier to point out the evil in the world than to look at the evil in our own hearts. Then we would have to admit that we are part of the problem! The Apostle Paul said that the Cross is foolish and offensive to the world (See 1 Cor. 1.18ff). One reason for this offense must be that the Cross causes us to look at something about ourselves that we would rather avoid seeing. The Cross illustrates our inability to change the basic structure of the world, not to mention our hearts. The Cross is God’s answer to all the evil in the world. The Cross should be enough to prove that only God can overcome evil and apart from the Cross of Christ we have no hope of a better world or a better Self.

There is an old song that asks the penetrating question: “were you there when they crucified my Lord?” There is a sense in which we were all there at the Cross of Christ. Those who actually did the deed and had Jesus crucified or who pounded in the nails were not the only guilty ones. We continue to crucify the Son of God when we choose to do our own will instead of the will of God! The Cross was man’s foolish attempt to get rid of God and that wicked spirit is still alive and well in the world today. But the wicked intentions of man cannot overcome the purpose of God. While men were doing their best to get rid of Jesus, God was actually working out His own plan.

The crucial thing to see about the Cross is not what men were doing but what God was doing. It is hard to see what God is doing, especially when something evil is happening. When men are doing something evil we don’t see how God can be at work at the same time. We usually think that man’s evil stops or at least frustrates the work of God. But it doesn’t and the Cross proves it!

At the Cross God was using evil to defeat evil. Only God could figure out how to make this happen! The Cross is a demonstration of the wisdom of God. Evil was turned back on itself at the Cross, causing its own destruction. I am not saying evil will eventually turn into something good on its own, given enough time, or that good somehow needs evil to exist – that is the philosophy of Dualism. Evil was defeated at the Cross of Christ because God was there working out His eternal purpose – something God had planned before the foundations of the world were even laid. The Cross could have never happened apart from the will of God because no one could have killed the Son of God against His will. Jesus laid down His life willingly because He was doing the will of the Father. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed “not my will but yours be done.” Jesus had previously asked His Father to find another way to accomplish His will, something that did not include the Cross, but there was no other way to accomplish God’s perfect will and eternal purpose. Evil is rebellion against God’s will. So Jesus defeated evil by submitting Himself completely to God’s will.

In his story “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” C.S. Lewis illustrates how Jesus willingly offered Himself. The great lion, Aslan, the Creator of the land of Narnia, offers his own life in exchange for the life of the boy Edmund, who had become a traitor and served the White Witch. Aslan surrenders himself to the Witch and her dark forces, allowing himself to be tied down to the Stone Table, mocked by the Dark Powers, and his majestic mane shaved off in humiliation before being killed by the Witch’s cruel, stone knife. In the same way, no one could have arrested, bound, and killed the Lion of the Tribe of Judah if He had not offered Himself as a willing sacrifice. It is no wonder that in the book of Revelation Jesus is depicted as the Lion who became the Lamb!

From the highest perspective, Jesus went to the Cross for His Father, not just for us. Jesus was doing the will of God and that is why Jesus is the Lamb of God. God was offering His Son as a sacrificial lamb that would take away the sin of the world. The Cross was God’s work. You and I had nothing to do with the offering of Christ.

But why did God have to offer His Son as a sacrifice?

The Cross was a transaction between Jesus and His Father which is hard for us to grasp. It is hard to understand what happened behind the scenes in the spiritual realm when Jesus died. But the Gospel writers give us some clues that help us understand what really happened when Jesus died. First, there was three hours of darkness. Then there was Jesus’ piercing cry from the Cross: “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” The darkness and the cry from the cross are both signs pointing to a single, terrible reality: when Jesus was dying on the cross He was bearing the guilt of our sin. The darkness was symbolic of the wrath and judgment of God. The piercing cry of Jesus was not just symbolic but was something that actually happened. Jesus was actually forsaken by God when He was on the cross bearing our sin. This is because Jesus was being judged by God for our sin.

Many people today are offended at the idea of God being angry at sin. We have chosen a God of love instead. But the Biblical God is both righteous AND loving and He is both of those things all the time. To say that God is ONLY loving is to have an unbalanced and unbiblical view of God, perhaps to even have invented a false god. The real question is how God can be righteous in dealing with sin and yet still be merciful to sinners and forgive their sin? The Cross is the answer to this dilemma!

The Cross is God graciously providing Atonement, or a covering, for sin. This was the only way for God to be both righteous and merciful (See Rom. 3.23ff). Jesus became a lightning rod for God’s wrath, taking the blow of God’s justice for us. So God can be merciful to us and forgive our sins through Christ because He had already paid the penalty and satisfied the righteousness of God. And so Jesus became the PROPITIATION for our sins, or that which turned aside the wrath of God. In one sense Jesus went through Hell – being separated from God – so that we would never have to experience this ourselves. God is now free to forgive or justify those who believe in Christ’s sacrifice.

The Cross was God’s way to demonstrate, or show forth, His character. The Cross was a demonstration of the righteousness of God. God cannot ignore sin. However, the Cross is also a demonstration of the love and mercy of God, because God is providing a way for sinners to be justified and forgiven. The Cross allows God to be everything God is without compromising any aspect of His character in our salvation!

We must now receive this Atonement. Even if you can’t quite understand how Atonement works, you can still believe that it does work. Jesus has taken sin away! When we do to the doctor we do not have to understand all of the complex science behind the medicine to be cured. The whole point of the Cross is not to have an abstract theory of the Atonement but for the blood of Christ to be applied to our lives. The Blood of Christ will only benefit those who apply it to their live through personal faith and receiving the Gift of God.

The Gospel writers tell us that when Jesus died the veil in the Temple was ripped in two. This also gives us a picture of what the Cross has accomplished for us. That veil in the Temple was a picture of our separation from God. The veil blocked access from the Holy of Holies, which was the Presence of God. But when Jesus died sin was removed and so the veil was also removed. This means there is nothing between us and God. There is nothing in the way, not even your sin, to keep you from coming to God through the blood of Christ. Jesus has made a way, in fact, He is the Way and there is no other. If there is something that is keeping you from coming to God, like a guilty conscience, the blood of Christ can give you confidence in the presence of God (See Heb. 10.19ff.). When we know the holiness and righteousness of God, we fear His wrath, becoming aware of our sin and unworthiness. Those who do not fear God either don’t know God or are not aware of their sinfulness. But when the blood of Christ is applied to our live through faith, or trusting in the efficacy of His atoning death, we are made clean and acceptable to God. We no longer have to fear God’s wrath. We have no confidence in our own righteousness. We trust completely in the blood of Christ to justify us before God.

From Fear to Faith (Matthew 28.1-10)

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me” (Matthew 28:1-10 ESV)

Introduction

One of the problems with fictional stories is that certain elements of these stories may be predictable and even cliché. There is the fairy tale where the handsome prince saves and marries the princess and they live happily ever after. There is the old western where the good guy wears a white hat and the bad guy a black one. The good guy always wins the final confrontation and saves the day. We have become so familiar with these plot-lines that we roll our eyes when we recognize them and a drama turns into a comedy. Of course we know that these stories are not only predictable but also unreal. Many of our familiar stories are idealized projections of human desires. We really want the prince and the princess to fall in love. We want the good guy to win. But in reality that is not what happens. In real life the prince divorces the princess to marry a younger princess and the bad guy gets out of prison on a legal loophole.

You have probably heard that truth is stranger than fiction. Truth is messier and less predictable than fiction. But fiction is quicker and cheaper, which is why fiction is often preferred to real life. If you really want the truth you must be prepared to accept whatever it is, even if it is something unexpected or unwanted. Truth is just the way things are and reality is unwilling to compromise with our personal opinions or desires. And so many people fear the truth.

These Gospel accounts of the Resurrection do not read like fiction. We see all of the strangeness of truth and the messiness of humanity. If the Resurrection was a made-up story then we would expect the disciples to be the good guys who do everything right, but they don’t. The disciples don’t have a clue about what is really going on and it seems that the last thing they expected was a resurrection, even though Jesus had told them ahead of time that He would rise from the dead. They just didn’t get it.

And so their first response to the empty tomb was fear, not joy, as we might expect. And their first response to the women’s report of the Resurrection was doubt, not faith. The Gospel writers are telling the truth, not weaving a fairy tale. The truth is that the disciples were not the heroes of the story, Jesus is the hero.

Don’t misunderstand me, the disciples really loved and followed Jesus. But they were also normal men and women who responded as people tend to respond to a shocking truth: they were afraid and they doubted it, at least at first. The Gospels record their movement from fear and doubt to faith and then to joy at the fact that Jesus was really alive.

So we should not be too hard on their initial fear and doubt because there is nothing easy about faith. God has given us some hard things to believe! But these are wonderful things.

By nature we tend towards fear and doubt, not faith. And like the first disciples who witnessed the resurrection of Christ, we must also move from our initial fear and doubt to faith in the risen Lord. And when we have moved from fear to faith we can then live with the joy of the resurrection.

I. Human life is dominated by fear and doubt because of the reality of death. 

1. Fear is a normal part of our lives.

Experiencing some kind of fear is such a common feeling we tend to remember those times when we were NOT afraid as a little vacation from the normal stress of life.This fear includes what we call anxiety or worry. When we are not occupied with being worried about something we are preoccupied with worrying about something that MIGHT happen but hasn’t actually happened yet. Or, we have angst about those things that are inevitable, like the death of a loved one or our own death.

All of us experience fear to some degree, though not always to the same degree, depending on your personality and living conditions. Some people just seem to be predisposed to worry. Others may live in difficult circumstances where there is fear that the basic necessities of life will not be available. Some of our brothers and sisters in other countries have anxieties we have not considered. We are concerned about eating too much and being overweight. They are concerned about going through the day with nothing to eat. We are concerned about getting a Sunday afternoon nap. Some of our brethren are concerned about a terrorist’s bomb on a daily basis.

But fear does not consist only of moments of extreme terror, which are relatively rare. The kind of fear that is most often experienced is the daily grind of ordinary life and all its concerns that creates a constant undercurrent of anxiety. In our society this undercurrent of anxiety shows itself in nervous breakdowns, depression, ulcers, drug use, and even suicide.

But all of our fear can be reduced to two basic categories or causes: 1. something we cannot control. 2. Something we do not understand. Fear sets in when human ability or wisdom ends.

And we soon find out that our ability to cope with life is more fragile than we like to admit. And so the self-help section of the bookstore keeps growing. The lines in front of the psychologist’s office get longer. It seems to me that people today are more willing to admit that they do need help than were folks of an older generation. Admitting you are afraid and that you need help is a step in the right direction. But where to go to actually find that help continues to be another problem for our culture.

2. Doubt dominates our minds because of all our fearful experiences.

Closely related to our fear is our natural tendency toward doubt, skepticism, and even cynicism. Again the degree of doubt does depend on personality and circumstances. Some people are optimists while others are dark and morose.

We tend to be afraid when we believe that the worst possible scenario is going to be what befalls us. Bad stuff has happened before and we just assume it will happen again. We think this way because we learn things through experience. Many of these experiences are unpleasant. We live in a world where tragedy, pain, sickness, violence, evil, and death are daily realities and it becomes almost impossible to rise above what we see in the news each day and expect something good to happen. Why don’t the news reporters focus only on the good things? Because that’s not how we think about life.

Human reasoning begins with experience, which is usually bad, and so we can’t bring ourselves to expect the world to suddenly change and give us only good things. So when something good does happen we celebrate that as an unusual and out-of-character event. But life also teaches us not to expect these good times to last. All good things must come to an end, even if we want them to last forever. The party ends and reality sets in. We must go out and face the real world again.

And so people may become so cynical that they refuse to believe any good thing that they may see. We would rather disbelieve than be disappointed all over again. Or, being skeptics, people will instantly demand some kind of proof that such an unusually good thing really could happen in a world like this.

I am aware of the fact that in spite of everything I have just said about human nature and the world around us there are still those starry-eyed dreamers and eternal optimists who talk about changing the world and making it a better place. While their intentions may be good, this is mostly just talk. The world doesn’t change.

3. Death is the underlying reality haunting all human life and experience.

And there is one life event that can always bring a fast end to all the boastful, humanistic talk in the world: a funeral. Death has a way of bursting our bubble and instantly bringing us back down to earth. No one is noisy at a funeral. Everyone is quiet, serious, and thoughtful. Death is that great silencer, leveler, and limiter of humanity. It is the reality of death that made Solomon say about human life that it is all vain and a chasing after the wind.

Death should cause us to stop and think about life instead of just tearing through it like a fox in a chicken coop. The trouble with our culture is that we avoid thinking of death, which means that we also fail to examine our living! The poet Henry David Thoreau famously said that “most men live lives of quiet desperation.” But Thoreau did not live to see the modern world. It was the American satirist James Thurber who corrected Thoreau’s observation and said that “nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.”

But remember that it was God Himself who blocked the way back to the Tree of Life. It was God Himself who subjected His good world to the bondage of corruption and death. God imposed a sentence of death on the world.

This sentence of death was imposed AFTER the parents of the human race had eaten from the forbidden tree. That knowledge of good and evil came at a high price. Now the man and the woman knew what it was like to be on their own and to do their own thing, making their own decisions. If man wants to live on his own and do his own thing apart from God, then man must also accept the limitation and the imposition of death.

We were not made to die, we were made to live. But we were made to live with God, not apart from Him. With God there is life. Without God there is nothing but death. That was the great lesson of Eden and the Fall of Man.

But God did not impose death on the creation because He just wanted to punish and hurt us. There are those who think that God is nothing but a cosmic killjoy who just wants to ruin all of our fun and enjoyment in life. It is one of the Devil’s oldest lies about God.

II. The resurrection proves the goodness of God and His plan. 

There would be a way back to the Tree of Life. But God Himself would have to make a way. We were not meant to live forever without God. That would be a kind of living death, which is exactly what Hell will be.

But God was going to overcome sin and death and He made a promise to the first man and woman. The seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head (Gen. 3.15). This was the first prophecy about the resurrection of Christ! God meant to undo what sin and death had done. He would do it through a member of the human race. Later God made another promise to a man named Abraham that the world would be blessed through his seed. Another veiled prophecy fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ. Abraham believed God’s good promise.

Fear and doubt ends and faith begins when we come to know the living God and hear His word. God always keeps His word and the empty tomb is the supreme illustration of this fact. All of the promises of God are fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus. God did not abandon Jesus in the darkness of the tomb and so we are not abandoned to the slavery of fear and death. When Jesus was raised so was the whole human race!

The challenge now is for us to believe that fact, we who are so used to the finality and hopelessness of the Grave. But our belief in the empty tomb does not come first and it does not come by itself. Our faith must first be in the living God, the God of Abraham, who raised Jesus from the dead. When we come to know this God we come to understand that nothing is impossible, not even a resurrection.

This is the God who called the world into existence from nothing. Is anything too hard for Him? This is the God of Abraham, who brought life to a dead, barren womb so that Sarah conceived the Child of Promise and learned to laugh again. This is the God of Abraham, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17 ESV). Is anything impossible with God? Our faith in the resurrection of Christ is based on our faith in this God.

The kind of faith that justifies us before God is believing that God raised Jesus from the dead. Christians believe in a bodily resurrection, which is why the tomb of Jesus was empty, and not just in a spiritual afterlife or the immortality of the soul. Christian faith is in the One whom God raised.

The women went to the tomb that first Easter morning to honor a dead Jesus. But that is not what we are doing on Easter Sunday! We don’t worship a dead martyr but a living Lord who was shown with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection (Rom. 1.4). The resurrection proves that Jesus is the Son of God.

We worship and honor the Son as we worship and honor the Father. Our hope of eternal life is in the One whom God raised from the dead. There is salvation is no one else because no one else has been raised from the dead!

III. The meaning of the resurrection is that Jesus is Lord.

It would be almost impossible for us to fully understand the meanings of the death and resurrection of Jesus without some kind of further explanation beyond what we find in the Gospels. The Gospels give us the facts, but not much else.

After His resurrection Jesus appeared to His disciples and begin to explain what had happened, because they still did not understand that Jesus had to rise from the dead to fulfill Scripture. The problem was that they did not understand the Scriptures concerning Jesus.

This shows that understanding these things concerning Jesus and the Kingdom of God are not as easy as we sometimes think it is and no one arrives at these conclusions unaided. But we don’t have the living Christ here to explain things. He has ascended into heaven. To fully understand the meaning of the Resurrection we must understand the meaning of the Ascension.

Historically speaking, the resurrection and the ascension are two different events. But theologically speaking these are one thing. The appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection are really just Jesus giving His disciples a fleeting glimpse of Himself as He moves upward from earth to heaven. Few Christians today seem to understand the significance of the ascension of Christ and its connection to the Resurrection. The Ascension finishes Christ’s earthly work and then takes it to a whole new dimension.

The problem seems to be in our lack of understanding of Heaven. Heaven is God’s space and it is separated from the earth, which was given to mankind. Heaven is God’s Throne because God rules the earth from heaven. So heaven is always up because God is over all. Heaven is not a part of this creation and could never be reached in a spaceship. But there are places where heaven and earth touch one another, as Jacob saw in his dream at Bethel of a ladder from earth to heaven, or in the Tabernacle over the Mercy Seat. But Heaven is always the superior place and is kind of like the control-room for earth, just like the cockpit of a jumbo jet or the bridge of a battleship.

Christ entering the heavenly control-room means that He went to rule on our behalf. Jesus is Lord, and that is the post-resurrection message of the Church. The Gospel does not declare that Jesus will reign sometime in the future but that He has entered heaven and has begun to reign. The book of Revelation reveals that He is sharing the Throne of God and there is no higher place.

Jesus’ coming again does not mean that He will have to become some kind of astronaut and travel down to earth, but that He will appear. We can’t see Him reigning now because He is in heaven. But He will be seen because at the end of time the veil of separation between earth and heaven will be taken down, just as the veil in the Temple was ripped apart when Jesus died. Then every eye will see Him and know that He is King of Kings and every knee will bow.

Conclusion

It is obvious to us now that every knee has not bowed. There are still enemies running loose in the world. They are under the control of the risen Christ, but they are still here in the world. The Devil is still here, though His head has been bruised. Death is still here, being the last enemy to be defeated. Meanwhile, the earth in which we live is like a city under siege, encircled by powerful enemies. But news has reached us that the war has been won by our King on a field of battle and it is just a matter of time before the enemies surrounding us must withdraw.

The Resurrection is a preview of things to come. Jesus’ Resurrection is the first-fruits of the New Creation. The first-fruits are the initial gleanings of the harvest that are a foretaste of more to come. The tomb of Jesus was really a womb from which a New Creation is being born.

We are groaning as in the pains of childbirth, along with the Creation, as we wait and long for this New Creation to come. When Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachael, was giving birth to her second son she had great pain because she was dying. With what was perhaps her last breath she named her newborn son “Ben-oni,” which is “Son of Sorrow.” But Jacob quickly changed his name to “Benjamin,” or “Son of my Right Hand.” When Jesus was on the Cross, He became the Son of Sorrow, dying for our sin so that we could be born again. But on that first Easter Sunday Jesus became the Son of God’s right hand!

When a woman gives birth she is in great pain, but it is usually not the sign of death but a sign that a new life and great joy is coming. The pain is real and it is excruciating, but it is a hopeful pain. Something good is on the way. That is the believer’s situation in the world. There is pain, but do not be afraid, not even of death. Something good is coming.

The Resurrection set us free from fear so that we can serve the Lord while we are in this world, until He comes. The Resurrection promises peace and joy, but only to those who believe. There is no peace for the wicked.