[BBC List] obedience for you

Thu Jun 21 10:40:15 EAST 2007

God Is for Us: Christ Obeyed and Died

An Excerpt from the Conclusion to the Upcoming Book, The Future of
Justification 

By John Piper June 13, 2007 

Our only hope for living the radical demands of the Christian life is that
God is totally for us now and forever. Therefore, God has not ordained that
living the Christian life should be the basis of our hope that God is for
us. That basis is the death and righteousness of Christ, counted as ours
through faith alone. All the punishment required of us because of our sin,
Christ endured for us on the cross. And all the obedience that God required
of us, that he, as our Father, might be completely for us and not against us
forever, Christ has performed for us in his perfect obedience to God. 

This punishment and this obedience (not all obedience) is completed and
past. It can never change. Our union with Christ and the enjoyment of these
benefits is secure forever. Through faith alone, God establishes our union
with Christ. This union will never fail, because in Christ, God is for us as
an omnipotent Father who sustains our faith and works all things together
for our everlasting good. The one and only instrument through which God
preserves our union with Christ is faith in Christ-the purely receiving act
of the soul. 

The Place of Our Good Works in God's Purposes

Our own works of love do not create or increase God's being for us as a
Father committed to bringing us everlasting joy in his presence. That
fatherly commitment to be for us in this way was established once for all
through faith and union with God's Son. In his Son, the perfection and
punishment required of us are past and unchangeable. They were performed by
Christ in his obedience and death. They cannot be changed or increased in
sufficiency or worth. 

Our relationship with God is with One who has become for us as an omnipotent
Father committed to working all things together for our everlasting
enjoyment of him. This relationship was established at the point of our
justification when God removed his judicial wrath from us, and imputed the
obedience of his Son to us, and counted us as righteous in Christ, and
forgave all our sins because he had punished them in the death of Jesus. 

Therefore, the function of our own obedience, flowing from faith--that is,
our own good works produced as the fruit of the Holy Spirit-is to make
visible the worth of Christ and the worth of his work as our
substitute-punishment and substitute-righteousness. God's purpose in the
universe is not only to be infinitely worthy but to be displayed as
infinitely worthy. Our works of love, flowing from faith, are the way
Christ-embracing faith shows the value of what it has embraced. The
sacrifices of love for the good of others show the all-satisfying worth of
Christ as the One whose blood and righteousness establishes the fact that
God is for us forever. 

All the benefits of Christ-all the blessings that flow from God being for us
and not against us-rest on the redeeming work of Christ as our Substitute.
If God is for us, who can be against us? With this confidence-that God is
our omnipotent Father and is committed to working all things together for
our everlasting joy in him-we will love others. God has so designed and
ordered things that invisible faith, which embraces Christ as infinitely
worthy, gives rise to acts of love that make the worth of Christ visible.
Thus, our sacrifices of love do not have any hand in establishing the fact
that God is completely for us, now and forever. It's the reverse: The fact
that God is for us establishes our sacrifices of love. If he were not
totally for us, we would not persevere in faith and would not therefore be
able to make sacrifices of love. 

Our mindset toward our own good works must always be: These works depend on
God being totally for us. That's what the blood and righteousness of Christ
have secured and guaranteed forever. Therefore, we must resist every
tendency to think of our works as establishing or securing the fact that God
is for us forever. It is always the other way around. Because he is for us,
he sustains our faith. And through that faith-sustaining work, the Holy
Spirit bears the fruit of love. 

Avoiding the Double Tragedy

There would be a double tragedy in thinking of our works of love as securing
the fact that God is completely for us. Not only would we obscure the very
reason these works exist-namely, to display the beauty and worth of Christ,
whose blood and righteousness is the only and all-sufficient guarantee that
God is for us-but we would also undermine the very thing that makes the
works of love possible-namely, the assurance that God is totally for us,
from which flows the freedom and courage to make the sacrifices of love. 

Our obedience does not add to the perfection and beauty and all-sufficiency
of Christ's obedience in securing the reality that God is for us; it
displays that perfection and beauty and all-sufficiency. Our works of love
are as necessary as God's purpose to glorify himself. That is, they are
necessary because God is righteous-he has an eternal and unwavering
commitment to do the ultimately right thing: to make the infinite value of
his Son visible in the world. 

C Desiring God

Thanks.

For the King's honor,

Charis,

Mike Abendroth

 <http://www.bbcchurch.org> www.bbcchurch.org

Ephesians 3:21 auvtw/| h` do,xa evn th/| evkklhsi,a| 

2 Tim 1:2b  "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Lord."

"Faith is not our physician; it only brings us to the Physician ... Faith is
not our saviour. It was not faith that was born at Bethlehem and died on
Golgotha for us. It was not faith that loved us, and gave itself for us;
that bore our sins in its own body on the tree; that died and rose again for
our sins.  It is a sin-bearer that we need, and our faith cannot be a
sin-bearer. Faith can expiate no guilt; can accomplish no propitiation; can
pay no penalty; can wash away no stain; can provide no righteousness. It
brings us to the cross, . but in itself it has no merit and no virtue.
Faith is not Christ, nor the cross of Christ. Faith is not the blood, nor
the sacrifice; . Our faith does not divide the work of salvation between
itself and the cross. It is the acknowledgment that the cross alone saves,
and that it saves alone. Faith adds nothing to the cross, nor to its healing
virtue. It owns the fulness, and sufficiency, and suitableness of the work
done there, and bids the toiling spirit cease from its labours and enter
into rest. Faith does not come to Calvary to do anything. It comes to see
the glorious spectacle of all things done, and to accept this completion
without a misgiving as to its efficacy. It listens to the "It is finished!"
of the Sin-bearer, and says, "Amen."   

NOT FAITH, BUT CHRIST 

by Horatius Bonar 
(1808-1889) 

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