A Rejection of Mediocrity

Christians love to read clever anecdotes about how to overcome a particular besetting sin or thwart the schemes of the devil. Why wouldn’t we? This isn’t necessarily a method of doing that….but hopefully it will bring you a little comfort anyway.

The flesh — it’s a constant battle, isn’t it? We fool ourselves into thinking that our own strength will keep us righteous, but sin overtakes us nonetheless. We cry out with the Apostle Paul, “Oh, wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Our answer should be the same as his.

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! ….there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.”

I was reading through part of Psalms when I recalled these words. King David wrote Psalm 18 as a celebration of God’s strength and the victory he’d been given over Saul and the rest of his enemies. Here’s an excerpt:

I love you, O LORD, my strength.
The LORD is my Rock and my Fortress and my Deliverer, my God, my Rock, in whom I take refuge, my Shield, and the horn of my salvation, my Stronghold.
I call upon the LORD, Who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.
The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me.
In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry to Him reached His ears.
He rescued me from my strong enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me.
They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support.”

I don’t know about you. But I was never really able to identify very much with King David in passages like these. I’d never had to fight against people who wanted me dead. Usually, when I was in a bitter dispute with someone, I had been the one at fault. I didn’t ever have a time that I “pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed.”

But even so, the passage really resonated with me today. So I read it over again a few times. Re-reading scripture is a really good idea.

Then I saw the parallel.

“The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me.”

“Oh, wretched man that I am? Who shall deliver me from this body of sin?”

The parallel continues.

“You have given me the shield of Your salvation, and Your right hand supported me, and Your gentleness made me great. You gave a wide place for my steps under me, and my feet did not slip.”

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”

What peace and what blessing! “If God is for us, who can be against us?” The battle against the flesh isn’t a battle we must fight alone, or even a battle that we can fight alone; the battle is and always will be the Lord’s. And He is more than capable of defeating sin.

For me, it’s just an awfully beautiful sight to imagine:

“The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered His voice, hailstones and coals of fire. And He sent out His arrows and scattered them; He flashed forth lightnings and routed them. Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at Your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils.”

Don’t you see? This is what God does to our flesh and our sin when we give Him the reins of our life! Is there any conceivable way that we’ll be defeated by our own selfish lusts when the Lord of the universe is fighting for us?

“For You equipped me with strength for the battle; You made those who rise against me sink under me. You made my enemies turn their backs to me, and those who hated me I destroyed.”

Dear Christian: trust in the Lord, and lean not on your own understanding. Seek Him first and He will bear you up.

David

For the past week and a half, I’ve been speaking with a Jehovah’s Witness about the nature of man, the nature of God, and the significance of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

It’s been interesting to realize that the primary difficulty that Jehovah’s Witnesses have is their denial of the seriousness of sin. They point to Adam’s sin, and say that since sin has been a part of the world since him, our own personal sin isn’t our fault.

Since sin isn’t our fault, there’s no reason for Hell. Our death is a consequence of Adam’s sin, not our own. Not only is Hell denied, but the substitutionary atonement is denied; Jesus needed only die to reverse the effect of Adam’s sin. They don’t believe He bore the wrath of God on our behalf, because our sin doesn’t anger God.

No wonder their theology is mixed up.

I was telling him about the cross and the interaction between God the Father and God the Son at that pivotal point in history. Yet the question came to mind: where was God the Spirit at this point? What was He doing? Was He present in the wrath being delivered by the Father, or was He supporting the Son?

After reading through part of Matthew this morning, I think I have an answer.

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’

“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.”

As Jesus died, the Father was pouring out infinite wrath. The Son was absorbing infinite wrath. For an instant, two members of the Godhead were completely occupied. Not even the creation of the worlds had required such limitless divine power, but this did. Infinite wrath met infinite love, and both were satisfied.

And in that instant, the Godhead was torn. Never before had there been anything less than perfect harmony between the Father and the Son. Yet for that moment, the Father turned His face away. No wonder the Son exclaimed, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

And the Spirit of God, resting in the temple, tore His garments in grief. The veil was rent from top to bottom, and the foundation stone of the temple split where the power landed. The earth shook and rocks tore asunder.

It wasn’t that the judgment of the Father spilled over. The Son drank every drop of the wrath of God. If even a single drop of that infinite fury had spilled, it would have destroyed the whole world. No, the destruction in the earth was the anguished cry of the Spirit, as He witnessed the Father forsaking the Son.

Rending the veil of the temple and shattering the earth wasn’t all that the Spirit did.

“The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.”

People were being raised from the dead? Never had anyone other than God done that. Angels never raised anyone from the dead. Men did it on occasion—Elijah and Elisha, for example—but only through the power of God. Yet two members of the Godhead, the Father and the Son, were at this moment completely occupied. Never before had any member of the Godhead been completely concentrated on a single object. But now, both the Father and the Son were exercising unlimited power in accomplishing the substitutionary atonement.

Who, then, provided the divine power to raise the dead? The Spirit, of course. Just as His grief at the separation of the Father and the Son was desperate enough the tear the curtain and rend the earth, so His joy at the accomplishment of the atonement—Christ’s cry, “It is finished!”—was more than sufficient to raise the saints, who now were freed from the bonds of death and Hades and would walk on the earth until the ascension 40 days later.

This passage not only demonstrates the intensity and passion in the Cross, but proves the full divinity and Personhood of God the Holy Spirit.

Infinite wrath met infinite love. Infinite grief was balanced by infinite joy. Infinite justice found infinite mercy at the Cross, and both poured out in infinite glory to our God.

Soli Deo Gloria. It’s the cross, yo.

David