First Corinthians, chapter 15,
verses one, and we may reach verse 11, but I don't know if
we will, so I'll say four. I want to, while you're turning
there, I want to emphasize the sweetness of this song we just
sang. At the end of it, it says, well, the whole song is about
the suffering of our Savior, the Lord Jesus, as our Redeemer.
Now, a Redeemer is someone who pays a debt. The debt that Christ
paid was our debt. meaning our crimes, our sins
against God that had indebted us to the wrath of God, to suffer
God's wrath in eternal death under the curse of God's law. But the Lord Jesus Christ as
our Redeemer gave himself as the ransom price to deliver us
from that debt. and that curse we owe to God.
And so the song is about our blessed Redeemer. Notice it says
in the chorus of the song, first it says, blessed Redeemer, precious
Redeemer. There's no accolades that we
can give him that are really able to reach the level of our
gratitude. Blessed and precious are used
here, but we could go on and on, but there's only so many
beats in the measure, so we have to limit it somehow. Seems now
I see him on Calvary's tree. Why is he there? He's wounded
and bleeding, and for sinners he is pleading. All the while,
the sinners for whom he is wounded and bleeding and pleading are
blind and unheeding. And so the songwriter includes
himself in that mostly, dying for me. He sees the Lord Jesus
Christ in his mind's eye as his blessed and precious redeemer.
And yet he sees him there paying the debt we owe to God, the ransom
the ransom price of himself given to God to obtain our liberty. And so he sees this, and then
the next verse begins, oh, how I love him, Savior and friend.
You know why our love to Christ is limited? Because our faith
is limited. Our love to Christ is in proportion
to our faith in Christ. Because faith sees everything
in Him for my salvation. Faith finds everything it needs
in the Lord Jesus Christ and in Him alone and brings nothing
but ascribes everything to Him for all of my salvation. And
when we see that, then we see that His love was from eternity
and not only did not depend on me, but was in spite of my sins. He saw my need and my enmity,
my hostility towards him and in his grace and love, took my
sins and bore them and bore the wrath for them that I owed from
God. And so in proportion to that
faith of seeing this, knowing that I don't bring something,
I don't work this love up, I don't work up this faith, I see it,
I see him as all in my salvation. And my only response is to admire
him and adore him for it. And so he says, oh, how I love
him, savior and friend. How can my praises ever find
end through years unnumbered on heaven's shore? When I reach
heaven, when I reach that consummation of my redemption, he's my redeemer,
he's going to give it to me. Now I possess it by faith. When
I reach that shore, my tongue shall praise him forevermore.
Last week in the bulletin, I think what Spurgeon said, and he said,
there was a woman who said, if the Lord Jesus saves me, he'll
never hear the end of it. I like that. 1 Corinthians chapter
15. I've entitled the message today
differently than I wrote in our bulletin because it often happens
as I'm preparing the message that I think of it differently.
So I'm going to give you the updated title. Three words, ordained,
obtained, and given. Eternal life in Christ, ordained,
obtained, and given. And that's what we're going to
see here, that God's life, this eternal life, is in His Son. It was ordained by God the Father
from before the foundation of the world, before time. And because
He ordained it, He promised it, He spoke of it, He gave His word
concerning it, and He sent His Son. He provided His Son to give
it to us. He ordained it and obtained. Christ came into the world to
work it out. He labored under in obedience
to God. As a woman labors in pain to
deliver her child, so the Lord Jesus Christ labored to bring
forth His people. as children of God in His own
redeeming blood. And it is given. What God has
ordained for us and Christ obtained for us is now given to us by
the Lord Jesus Christ when He sends His Spirit to us. So that
really is essentially the sermon, but I want to give it to you
in outline first before we begin so you don't lose track. Let's
pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gospel of
your Son. Thank you that you ordained before
the world began. You ordained us to eternal life
and to eternal glory by giving your Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. To stand for us where we could
never stand. To obey what we could never fulfill. and to do
all in accord with your will to save us to the uttermost by
his work for us on the cross and in his intercessions for
us both on the cross and in heaven at the right hand of God. Thank
you for this gospel and thank you Lord Jesus for doing all
for us who are deserving only of hell under the wrath of God
when we were dead in our sins When we were the enemies of God,
hostile in our minds and by wicked works, and had no power to do
one thing to deliver ourselves or to fulfill God's Word, His
Law, You undertook to do all for us. And then, in glorious
triumph, You sent Your Spirit to bring this glorious news to
us and to give this life to us. And we pray, Lord, that You would
show us that this life that this life that you ordained and Christ
obtained for us is in him and is given to us when your spirit
gives us life. Thank you for this gospel. We
pray, Lord, that you would open it from your word today and apply
it to our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In 1 Corinthians 15, The problem
that the Apostle Paul is writing to correct is that some of those
in the Corinthian church did not believe there was a resurrection. Paul is writing to correct this
error. It's a grievous error, isn't
it? And so we see that God is patient with us in our errors. How often do you come to the
Lord and ask him to forgive you for the same sin? And if you've
ever had someone tell you, I've done it again, you have a reaction
to them, don't you? Your natural reaction is, I'm
getting tired of you coming to me and telling me this. I've
told you before what you ought to do, and you didn't do it.
But that's not the way God treats us, is it? He patiently hears
us over and over and over again. And so the Lord, in his mercy
and his kindness to us, has taken the error of the Corinthians
and he's taken occasion of that error in order to teach us the
gospel and the resurrection by the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Aren't you thankful that God
took the error, this unbelief of the Corinthians, and used
it for our good? That's God's way. He takes things that are
in themselves evil, and He turns it for the good of His people.
Didn't He do that? Didn't He do that when He saved
us from our sins? It was our sins that put us under
the sentence of God's judgment and condemnation, wasn't it?
And yet He turned that to our good because before we were even
born, He ordained His Son to bear our sins. He laid our offenses
on Him in that covenant of grace that God set up before time began
when He was named as the Lamb of God. And when He bore our
sins and fulfilled that commitment in the eternal will of God, when
before the foundation of the world, by the will of God, by
the decree of God, He was ordained as the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. And so we see God's patience
to us. We see His grace towards us,
and that He used this evil, not only of the Corinthians' unbelief,
but of our own sin. to shine forth his goodness,
to make his glory known in our salvation. And so he says in
verse one here, he's going to correct them, but notice how
gently the apostle corrects them. He corrects them with the word
of God. He corrects them by the testimony from those who believed
and saw and believed Christ. He corrects them by the grace
given to him as an apostle. And he corrects them by arguments
from the gospel in order to convince them and persuade them. And then
he corrects them by the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and
what he has done in the resurrection and his own resurrection for
our salvation. All these things show how God
uses his correction to make known his goodness to us in the Lord
Jesus Christ, corrected. by the gospel. First of all,
notice in verse one, Paul writes, moreover, brethren, I declare
unto you the gospel. which I preached to you." So
he's using the gospel as the reference, as the foundation,
as the unprovable axiom on which all of our salvation rests is
God's testimony concerning his son in the gospel. How do we
know that we can be saved as sinners? How do we know that
God even saves sinners? And how do we know he does it
all by himself, by his son? because of the gospel. This is
all of our confidence. This is all of our hope. And
we only know it by the testimony of God revealed in the gospel. The gospel explains the entire
word of God. The gospel is the culmination
of the historical revelation God has given to us step by step
with increasing clarity. When Christ came, the gospel
now is that complete revelation. and it points us to the Lord
Jesus Christ. How dare anyone say that the
gospel is somehow less and that we should preach something less
than the gospel? Because the gospel is the power
of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. So Paul uses
the gospel to establish the fact of the resurrection because he
lays that gospel foundation first. There is a foundation which no
man has laid but God has laid and on which nothing else can
be laid. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. He
is the foundation. If our life is built on the rock,
Jesus said, no matter what the storm is, when it comes, your
house shall stand. But if it's built on anything
but Christ, it's built on sand, and it doesn't matter how small
the storm, you are going to fall. And so he says here, I preached
unto you the gospel, which I preached to you, which also you have received. When you heard it, you welcomed
it. You said, this is mine. As a
sinner, I find all of my salvation in the gospel of Christ that
God has declared to the preacher. And it says, which also you have
received and wherein you stand. We don't leave the gospel. We
stand on it. We stand on the truth God has
revealed in Christ. And he says, by which also you
are saved, because the gospel is the gospel of God's saving
grace. It's the gospel of our salvation.
In Ephesians 1, verse 13 and 14, it uses that very phrase,
the gospel, the truth of your salvation. That's where it is. It's revealed in the gospel.
And unless God gives us the gospel, we're ignorant and blind to it. But remember, the gospel is the
light. It's the light shining from heaven into the darkness
of our spiritually dead souls. And when God shines that light,
what happens? We look to Christ. Look! God
has done something. He finished the work. He obtained
our eternal salvation. That's the gospel. For sinners,
according to His eternal will. And so he says, by which you
are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached to you, unless
you have believed vain. The gospel is for those God is
saving. It goes to all. It goes not to
every person in all the world, but it goes to many. And yet,
though the gospel goes to many, few believe it in proportion
to the total. But those who are saved by it
believe that gospel. because the belief in Christ,
the belief of the gospel, the two are synonymous, but that
belief is the gift of Christ from his throne on glory because
he accomplished our salvation according to the eternal will
of God. He sends his spirit to us by his ruling sovereign power
and gives us his spirit and in giving us his spirit he attends
the preaching of the gospel with the almighty power and he lifts
us from spiritual death to life, and we suddenly find Christ to
be all important. Everything he's done is all the
focus of my heart's desire, the relief, the peace in my heart,
knowing that the burden of my sin is lifted. The obligation
of my performance and the righteousness God requires from me has been
fulfilled in my Savior, in my substitute. And we find it captivating. We find it enthralling, overwhelmingly
wonderful. And it becomes the meditation
of our heart, the desire of our life, the pursuit of all of our
thoughts, the prayers, the subject of our prayers. We take this
gospel God has given to us now, and the faith with which He's
given us that gospel by His Spirit, and we take it in our prayers
to God, and we live upon Christ. We find Him in every defeat,
in every success, in all the trials, in everything, to be
all to us. and we continue in it, because
God preserves. He perseveres, so we persevere
in this faith. So if you continue in it, it's
the evidence that Christ has given you life, and that life
by His Spirit, and the Spirit of God has given us faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ. I write these things unto you
that believe on the Son of God, that you might know you have
eternal life, and that you might believe on the name of the Son
of God. You see, it's all connected.
From the first to the end, we walk in this life by what? By
faith. By faith in Christ. We see our
eyes were first opened, but we continue looking to Him, looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. And then he goes
on. In verse 3, he says, For I delivered
unto you first of all First of all, that which I also received. I didn't invent this. I didn't
come up with it. I didn't discover it. I received
it. Christ gave it to me. And so
I'm preaching it to you. I'm delivering it to you. I delivered
to you, first of all, that which I also received. We're all sinners.
Like Peter said in Acts 15, verse 11, we believe, we Jews, believe
that we shall be saved even as they, they Gentiles. Just like
God saved the Gentiles, we have to be saved in the same way.
And so Paul says here, I delivered to you what I received. We're
both in this thing together. We're all sinners. We're saved
only by God's grace, and that grace is in His Son. That's the
only place it is in what Christ has done, in His risen, ascended,
sovereign, reigning power to save His people for what He's
done. And so he says, I delivered first of all that which I also
received. Listen, how that Christ died for our sins according to
the scriptures. Sometimes you wonder, is it really
true? Is what I believe really true?
Has God ever said in scripture that someone else, that he himself
has taken my sins from me and laid them on another? Where is
that found in scripture? I don't remember. Here it is.
Christ died for our sins. He didn't die for his own sins.
Death is the payment. It's the chastisement. It's the
payback of God, the wages of sin. The wages of sin is death,
Romans 6.23. But the Lord Jesus Christ interposed
himself Between us and the wrath of God, and he himself, according
to God's eternal will, bore our sins in his own body up to the
tree. He carried them in himself. He
bore them. He didn't commit them. In him
was no sin, but he bore our sins. That's why he died. That's why
he suffered. That's why he cried, Father,
He said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Thy wrath
lieth hard on me, from Psalm 88. And so we see here that Christ
died for our sins. He died. He really died. And
death is the reason for death is sin. He died under the punishment
of our sins. Death is not natural. When God created the world, God
said, in the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die. It was
the consequence of our sins. But the consequence of our sins
came upon him. How is that fair? How could that
be possibly fair? been complained that God created
many people on the world who would never believe on Him. And
they say, why would God do that? Why would He, knowing that they
were not going to believe that He had not chosen, why would
He do that? The bigger question is, why would God choose and
appoint his son to bear our sins? That's the bigger question, isn't
it? It's just when God gives us what we deserve. What's remarkable,
what's unbelievable, is that God would give his son what we
deserved in the punishment of our sins. That he would take
the crimes against his law that we committed, the offenses that
our sins were to him, and he would bear them. take full responsibility
for them, full obligation to God for them, and bear them an
answer for them. That's Christ dying for our sins. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement from God for
our peace came upon him and by his stripes. We are healed. That is a substitution. The Lord
Jesus Christ in our place for our sins, taking them, bearing
them in himself. Now if he took them and he bore
them, what are they to me then? What sins do I have if He took
my sins? And what punishment do I have
if He bore my punishment? I have no sins. I have no punishment. In fact, I have the very opposite.
I have the reward of His obedience. I have the cleansing of His blood.
I have the blessings of God given to the righteous one. I have
life. God has justified me in the obedience
and righteousness of His Son, and now He gives me the life
due to Him, the blessings due to Him, because that's why He
came. It was on our behalf, not only
to take our sins and bear our punishment, but to give us His
righteousness and the life and the blessings due to Him for
His obedience. He magnified God's law and honored
it in his obedience. And he glorified God in all of
his attributes, his wisdom and grace and justice by what he
did in dying for our sins because it was the love of God. It satisfied
the justice of God according to the wisdom of God and the
eternal purpose of God. And all of this is to the glory
of God. He says that he was delivered
The Lord Jesus Christ, how that Christ died for our sins according
to the scriptures. He died for our sins. This is
not a new thing. It was in the scriptures and
is declared to us in the gospel, the gospel of our salvation.
And it says in verse four, and that he was buried. He was buried. We don't think so much about
this. And often we just say Christ died and rose again, but he was
buried. The Lord Jesus Christ, who never
did sin, died for our sins, and he was buried. He took our sins
in his own body up to the tree as a body of sins. And on the
cross he was crucified, and the body of our sins was crucified. It was put to death. The guilt
of our sins before God in his justice, before his throne in
heaven, The bar of God in the legal place of heaven. God put
to death our sins in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
then he was buried. He was buried. It means that
our sins were buried. As a body that was put to death,
our sins were buried in the burial of Christ. And what does that
mean? Well, Scripture says that God, as in Psalm 88 and other
places in Scripture, that God remembers no more. That when
someone is buried in the ground, we remember them no more. That's
the place of the forgotten memory. And so when someone dies, we
remember them, but after a while, we tend to forget. And over time,
we forget. It's just the nature. Those that
are buried aren't seen anymore. And our sins are not seen anymore. God has forgotten our sins because
he buried them. It's the same analogy that God
uses in Leviticus 16, where he says the high priest would lay
his hands on the head of the scapegoat. And then he would
transfer the sins of all the people of Israel onto the head
of that goat when he laid his hands there. And then he would
send the goat into the wilderness in a place that was out of mind. No one could find it. That's
where God has sent our sins, in the burial of Christ. But
He not only put away our sins and out of His mind in the burial
of Christ, but He also did something else. He overcame the grave. Because the Lord Jesus Christ
as God was put into the grave, as the sinless one, because our
sins were put away when He died on the cross. But He was buried
in order that He, the Holy One of God, would claim his victory
over the grave, because that's where we are when we die. Our
body goes into the grave. But the Lord Jesus Christ, having
answered God for our sins, brought a satisfaction to God, made propitiation
to God in his own blood, now he enters the grave in order
to gain the victory over the grave. And so he says in Hosea
chapter 13, verse 14, oh, I will read this to you, in fact. It's
in 1 Corinthians 15 later, but I want to read it from Hosea,
because this is where it's quoted from. He says in verse 14 of
chapter 13, Hosea, he says, I will ransom them from the power of
the grave. We remember the ransom. This
is the exchange. He gave his life for our liberty. And I will ransom them. I will
redeem them. He says, I will redeem them from
death. Oh, death. I will be thy plagues. Oh, grave. I will be thy destruction. Repentance shall be hid from
mine eyes. The Lord Jesus Christ is speaking here. He's speaking
of himself. He, spoken of, I, I will enter
the grave. I will ransom them. I will give
myself as the ransom, and I will set them free from death and
the grave. That's what he did. The Lord
Jesus Christ did that for us. It's phenomenal that he would
do this for us, that he would enter the grave, that he would
ransom them. And so what are we going to do?
We're just going to stand back and watch, aren't we? Did we
have a part in that? Did we put him there? Well, our
sins did, but we didn't have a thought of it. It never entered
into our mind. First of all, we weren't born
then, were we? But even so, we were opposed to God. We had no
interest in reconciliation. We had no knowledge of how it
could be accomplished. But the Lord Jesus Christ had
both an interest and the understanding of how to do it. And he took
it on himself to do it, and he accomplished it. And therefore,
he has overcome the grave. God, in the Lord Jesus Christ,
has overcome the grave. A sermon we had some time ago,
I was pointing this out, and it came to me. as I was thinking
about that. Who let Him in here? Who let
God into the grave? The Holy One of God here? he
let himself in, in our own body, in our own nature, in the body
of a man, he took our sins, he underwent the punishment, and
he was buried, and then he overcame the grave. He took the body of
our sins to death with him, he put them to death, and then he
buried them out of mind, and he overcame the grave, so that
when we are buried in our bodies, and he has ransomed us from the
grave, the grave and death have no power over us, because the
Lord Jesus Christ has overcome the grave and death. in his own
ransom, of his own burial and sufferings in our place as our
substitute. Now I want you to think about
this for a minute, that this work of the Lord Jesus was not
in our own experience, was it? Did we participate in it? Did
we help him? Did we contribute any thought
to it? Did we influence him to do it? Did we consider it and
make it and declare it to be good after he did it? None of
those things. We didn't contribute one thing,
not the smallest part. In fact, the only contribution
we made was our sins that put him there. So here we see the
work of Christ by himself. completely outside of our own
experience, don't you? Don't you see that? That what
Christ did, he did entirely apart from us, without our works, without
our thought, without our influence, without our sympathy, without
our sincerity, without any contribution, without any thought of us contributing
down the road someday. Because when he did this, he
accomplished it. He finished the work. He did
the will of God. And when it was done, what did
he do? He rose again. God received from him a full
payment. Therefore, the payment was expunged. It was remitted. Our sins were
paid for. Therefore, our sins are remitted
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. God has forgiven us for
what he received from his son. And when did that take place?
It took place when he raised him from the dead. Notice he
says here in verse four, he was buried and that he rose again
the third day according to the scriptures. The Lord Jesus Christ
accomplished our salvation and therefore God raised him from
the dead. Look at Romans chapter four. In Romans chapter 4, the
account here is of Abraham. And remember Abraham in his life?
He and Sarah were old. God promised them a son, Isaac,
the one through whom Christ would come. And yet all the time after
God promised this son to them, They never saw it. They never
saw it happen. It seemed like it was not going to happen. They
got old. Abraham turned 100, almost 100 years old. And Sarah
was 90 years old, well past menopause, well past the age of bearing
children. Her body was dead to bearing children. Dead. That's the key here. In Romans
chapter 4, he was dead. Abraham and Sarah were dead to
bearing children. Notice what he says here in chapter
4 and verse 4. Now to him that works or worketh
is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. If you want
to work for your salvation, you know what you're going to accumulate?
Debt. You're only going to indebt yourself more and more. The harder
you work, the more indebted you will become because all that
you do is sin. Verse 5. But to him that worketh
not, You're not trying to do what Christ alone did. But you
believe on Him, God the Father, that justifieth the ungodly. Amazing. We believe on God who
justifies the ungodly, and therefore we're believing that we ourselves
are the ungodly. The ones God justifies by His
righteousness. by the work of Christ. That man's
faith is counted for righteousness because that faith is seeing
that my righteousness and the cleansing from my sin is in Christ. It's not that faith, our subjective
act of faith, is somehow exchanged for righteousness. It means the
one we believe is our righteousness is in fact our righteousness
and that faith is the evidence that God has given us that gift.
We like to distort things, but this is what is teaching here.
Now, look at verse 16. Therefore, it is of faith. What
is of faith? Our justification before God,
our standing before God in righteousness. Therefore, it is of faith that
it might be by grace. That removes it entirely from
us, because it's by grace. To the end, for this purpose,
that the promise might be sure to all to see. And there's only
one way the promise can be sure. It's if all necessary to do and
fulfill that promise rests on God and not on us. That's the only way it can be
sure. And God has made our salvation to be by Christ and received
by us, received what he did for us by faith in order that everything
in our salvation might be ascribed to the Lord Jesus Christ and
nothing to us. But God gives us faith to see
it. So that's why it's a faith. Notice now, not only is it to
the end that all the seed, all those chosen of God and given
to Christ, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also
which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
Look at verse 17. quickeneth the dead, gives life
to the dead, and calls those things which be not as though
they were. Who did Abraham believe? Who is the one Abraham's faith
looked to? To God who justifies the ungodly,
to God who raises the dead, to God who calls things which are
not, at least we can't see them, as though they were, because
when God thinks it and says it, it is done. It can't be reversed. God doesn't change his mind.
He doesn't turn around and go the other way, back up and reposition
and think, I should have done it a different way. No, God only
moves forward. All of his thoughts are done.
All of his will is done. Nothing is ever left out. And
faith, God-given faith, causes us to see that God is the one
who raises and gives life to the dead. Abraham and his wife
Sarah were dead to burying children, and this is why this is said.
Abraham believed God gives life to the dead. And notice in verse
18 of Romans 4, who against hope? Abraham against all human hope. All evidence in himself. He believed
in hope, in confident expectation that he might become the father
of many nations according to that which was spoken by God,
so shall thy seed be. This is what God said. So shall
thy seed be. Speaking of Isaac. In verse 19
he says, And being not weak in faith, notice very carefully,
he considered not his own body now dead. when he was about 100
years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. He staggered
not at the promise of God, because it was all the requirements to
fulfill that promise. All the power, the wisdom, and
the timing, everything was on God. He did not stagger, because
it didn't depend on him. His body was dead. Sarah's body
was dead. He didn't consider his own body,
because they were dead. So he didn't stagger at the promise
of God to unbelief. But he was strong in faith, giving
glory to God. Faith gives glory to God. It
describes everything in my salvation to God. Verse 21. Here's the
definition of faith. What is faith? How do I know
that I'm one of those for whom Christ died, was buried, and
rose again? Well, the Corinthians, Paul said,
because you believed him. Verse 21, here's the definition.
And being fully persuaded, Abraham was persuaded, God did the persuading,
and he was fully persuaded that what he, God, had promised, he
promised it, he was able also to perform. You see? It's not in me. He did not consider
his own body. He considered God's word, God's
promise, God's faithfulness, God's power. He therefore didn't
stagger. It's all in him. Now, all this
is said to direct us to our salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice. Verse 21, And therefore it was
imputed to him for righteousness God counted, he credited to Abraham
the very obedience and righteousness of his son. Now, it was not written
for his sake alone that it was imputed to him. Abraham's life,
his experience with Sarah, and having Isaac according to God's
promise, all that was written for another purpose. But for
us also to whom it shall be imputed, the righteousness of Christ,
if we believe on him, that didn't just give a boy, a son, to Abraham
and Sarah when they were dead, but that raised up Jesus, our
Lord, from the dead. God is the one who quickens the
dead. You see? He raised up Jesus, our Lord.
Now notice this most important verse, who was delivered Who
delivered him? God the Father delivered him.
What did he deliver him to? To the curse, to bearing our
sins. Who was delivered for our offenses. And he was raised again. Raised again. Why? For our justification. What part did you contribute?
Zip. Zero. Nothing. except your offenses. And before the world began, out
of motivations found in the heart and character of God Himself,
and for His glory alone, He determined with His Son to bear our offenses
against Himself, to take full responsibility, to lay the full
requirements of our salvation on Himself in His Son. And He
made Him the one to bear our offenses, to carry them away,
to reconcile us, to make our peace with God. And therefore,
when He came, when He sent His Son into the world and laid our
sins on Him, on the cross He was buried, He said, that's enough. And He raised Him from the dead. The debt was paid, the ransom
was given. And God said, with thee I am
well pleased. And He raised His Son from the
dead. And it is spoken of in the Old Testament this way. When
God told the Israelites to put the blood on the post of the
door, when I see the blood, when I see the blood, I will pass
over you. When God saw the blood of His
Son bearing our sins in Himself on the cross, and the Lord Jesus
cried from the cross, it is finished. God received from Him everything
God required to raise us from the dead. He justified His Son. And because He justified Him,
He raised Him by His Spirit. So great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit. 1 Timothy
3.16, the Lord Jesus Christ was raised again by the power, the
exceeding great power of God the Father when His Spirit raised
Him from the dead. And the Lord Jesus Christ said,
I have power to take my life back again. So God Himself raised
His Son from the dead. The Lord Jesus Christ, having
paid our sins, removed the curse and the death we were owed, There's
no more sin. The debt is paid. The punishment
has been endured. God raised him from the dead.
We're justified by the blood and righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Look at chapter five and verse
nine. of the next chapter in Romans chapter five, verse nine,
he says, much more than being now justified by his blood. You know what that means? God
looked on his blood and he said concerning us, justified. Blood, shed, my son's blood,
you're not condemned. His obedience unto death, His
sufferings and laboring under the will of God to make Himself
an offering for our sins. Righteous, perfectly righteous.
He took the robe the Savior wrought and He wrapped it all around
us. He clothed us in the garments of His salvation. Isaiah 61 verse
10. And now we're justified. And
even so shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness, and
in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall
glory. Their righteousness is of me.
These are verses from Isaiah 45 and 54. This is the great
transaction between God the Father and God the Son that He would
lay our sins on Him and receive payment for them from Him when
He offered up Himself to God and He received Him. And guess
what? In receiving Him, He received us because He put us in Him before
the foundation of the world. All that the Lord Jesus did we
did in Him. All that we did in sinning was
laid upon Him, and He bore it all and took it away, and God
remembers our sins no more, but considers us in His Son as holy
and righteous." Back to 1 Corinthians 15. Now, when in your experience
did all this occur? What part in your experience
of this transaction between the Father and the Son did you have
a part in, in your own experience? Nothing. It was already done
when the Lord Jesus Christ raised from the dead. When he rose from
the dead, after he was on the earth 40 days, he ascended back
to heaven. And when he ascended back to
heaven, he took his place on the right hand of God. He was
exalted by the Father because he laid his life down in obedience,
even unto death. And he was given all glory, all
power, all blessings, and all sovereign rule over heaven and
earth. for this purpose, that because of what God ordained
before the foundation of the world, our eternal life, and
what Christ obtained when He offered His blood to God, that
God would give it to us. And God gives it to us when the
Lord Jesus Christ sovereignly sends His Spirit, and He sends
His Spirit because He earned it for us. because God gave it
to him. Hold your place there in 1 Corinthians
15 and turn to John chapter 17 verses speak of this John chapter
17 in verse 1. He says these words this is after
Jesus was with his disciples and going to the cross and on
the way to the cross he pauses and he speaks these words aloud
and they were recorded in scripture for us so that we would see the
prayer of our Savior as our high priest. He's praying to God as
our high priest as the mediator. about to offer himself. In fact,
it's about to be done, but it's essentially done because he committed
to it. He committed himself to it before
the foundation of the world, and here he's about to do it.
These words, John 17, 1, spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes
to heaven, and he said, Father, the hour has come. glorify thy son, that thy son
also may glorify thee. To glorify his son means to lift
him up, make him prominent, reveal him, display his perfections
and his accomplishments, his power and his grace, his power
over our enemies, his submission to the will of God and his humility
and his obedience, is to make known and display all of his
glorious perfections. glorify thy son." How? He's about
to go to the cross. He says, when I go to the cross,
in so many words, then you glorify me. Notice, that thy son also
may glorify thee. God's glory hinges on the glory
of his son. He makes himself known only in
the glory of his son. And so he prays, Father, glorify
thy son that thy son also may glorify thee. Make successful
the work I've undertaken to do. Make it successful. Verse two. As thou, Father, has given him,
myself, he's speaking of these words in the third person, as
thou, Father, has given him power over all flesh, he had power
over everyone, that he should give eternal life to as many
as thou has given him. That's the ordained purpose of
God, to give eternal life to as many as God the Father gave
to him. Will he do that? Will he be successful in that?
Will he fulfill that contract? Will he fulfill that obligation
he put himself under to give eternal life to all the Father
gave him to save? Just like Judah with his little
brother Benjamin. On behalf of his father goes
to Joseph the judge and stands before his judge and he pleads
for Benjamin. He pleads the love of his father.
He pleads himself as a substitute for his brother. Here Christ
pleading for his people. He says, as you have given him
power over all flesh. to give eternal life to as many
as thou hast given him." This is clear. Salvation is the sovereign
gift of God by the Son, a gift of eternal life, life earned
by the Lord Jesus Christ as our substitute and our surety. Verse
3, And this is life eternal, that they might know thee. the
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. What is
eternal life? It's knowing God in His Son, Jesus Christ. That's
something we know in our experience, isn't it? That's something we
find out when we believe. When you see that your salvation
as a sinner, as an ungodly enemy of God in your nature, in your
thoughts, in your motives, in your works, in your words, in
all that you do, you're a sinner and have no hope and no strength.
And God has laid all on His Son and delivered Him up for you.
and raised him up again in your justification, and you see that
your salvation is not what God thinks of what you've done, but
what he thinks and has received from his son, then you say, wow,
I never realized God was so good. And you understand and you know
his wisdom and grace and justice and power in his son. You have eternal life. And then
Jesus says, I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished
the work which you gave me to do. And now, O Father, glorify
thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with
thee before the world was. So the Lord Jesus Christ is sitting
in heaven now. He's been given all blessing
and honor and power and might and sovereign rule over all things
that he might give the eternal life. that God ordained, which
he by his blood obtained, and now he's giving it to us. There's
no ambiguity. God gave those to Christ that
he should save. It was God's will to give them
a kingdom prepared for them before the foundation of the world.
And He ordained Christ's blood to be shed, the precious blood
of the Lamb, ordained for you before the foundation of the
world. And now He's going to give it to them. He exalted His
Son to give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. And here He
sits, reigning, and He sends His Spirit. And what does He
do? Well, his father had given him the gospel. And he came and
he preached it. And he fulfilled it. And then
he sent his apostles with that gospel. You go, you preach it. And those who hear it would be
those he gives eternal life. He would send his spirit and
attend the preaching of his word with his spirit, so that those
God the Father gave to him would hear it and believe it. And then
he would give them eternal life. He would give them what he earned
for them, which God had ordained for them. This is amazing, isn't
it? In him was life, and his life
was the light of men. The life of Christ which is eternal
life, which is in Him, is given to us, and when it is given to
us, the lights are turned on, isn't it? His life. It's out
of His life that we see the gospel fulfilled in Him, and then we
believe it. Look at John chapter 5. I want to show these things
to you. Who gives us this life? The Lord Jesus Christ. He is
the way, the truth, and the life, isn't He? He says in John chapter
five, notice how he does this. He says in verse 24, verily,
verily, John chapter five, the gospel of John, chapter five,
verse 24, verily, verily, Jesus said, I say to you, he that,
notice, heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me,
you're believing the word God gave me to tell to you, the one
who sent me, when you hear my word and you believe on him that
sent me. Because if I tell you something,
if I tell you how old I am, you say, okay, I believe you. Notice
the two are synonymous. You believe what I say because
you believe me, right? Or if you believe me, then when
I tell you something, you're gonna believe it. When we believe,
when we receive the word Christ gives to us, who are we believing?
Christ. And if we believe Christ's words
which were given to him by his Father to tell us, who are we
believing? The Father. So he says this.
He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me has already
everlasting life. So our faith is the evidence
that we already possess this life. And he says, and he shall
not come into condemnation, not the judgment at the end of the
world. Men are going to be condemned for our sins. We're not going
to come into that judgment. We've already been judged in
his son. But he is passed from death to
life. The one hearing and believing
my word has already passed. The gift comes from Christ. He gives us life. He speaks his
word like when in the beginning when he created the world and
his spirit then gives us that life. Notice in verse 25, verily,
verily I say to you, the hour is coming and now is, now is
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they
that hear shall live. There's a distinction, isn't
it? They that hear shall live. Do you hear him? Do you hear
the gospel of His salvation as your only hope as a sinner? And
do you realize that God has justified His people, who in themselves
are ungodly and sinners and dead in sins, by what He did in the
Lord Jesus Christ? Is this all your hope? Do you
find anything else that you desire? Is it enough that Christ has
died and that He died for sinners? And do you lay your eternal destiny
on Him and what He did so that you don't need anything or want
anything else but what God thinks of Christ? Or do you think, as
we are prone to do in our limited, in our unbelief, to think that
I have to contribute something? Are you constantly brought to
that place of abandoning all defenses and relinquishing all
pleas and laying everything on what God thinks of Christ? And
do you say, this is your word, Lord. This is your work. And
you leave it there. And you look. That's believing
on Him. So he says, Verily, verily, I
say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall
hear, let me put it in other words, the gospel of this salvation,
the voice of the Son of God, because he that attends with
his spirit, and they that hear shall live. For as the Father
hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life
in himself, and he has given him authority to execute judgment
also, because he is the Son of Man. And look over at chapter
six, John chapter six, verse 63. The Lord Jesus says this,
it is the spirit, the spirit of God, that quickeneth, that
gives life. It is the spirit that quickeneth.
The flesh profits nothing. Anything you do profits nothing. Anything that you can think of
doing profits nothing. Your resolve, your repentance,
your tears, your sympathy, your sincerity, Anything, nothing,
prophets nothing. The words that I speak to you,
they are spirit and they are life. The gospel applied by the
spirit of God is life to the sinner. That's that eternal life.
That's the way we know God. We see Christ and him crucified.
For our sins died, buried, and risen again, outside of our experience. And we look away to him. He has
risen, he's alive. His life is the light in our
souls. And he that has a son has life.
Aren't you thankful? The Lord Jesus Christ, he rose
from the dead. He didn't do it for himself.
though He gets all the glory in our salvation for doing it.
Death is not natural. It comes as a consequence of
our sins. But God ordained before the foundation of the world,
He ordained His people to eternal life, and He therefore gives
them faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who obtained that salvation
for them. And when it's given to us, it's
as if we never saw it before. And when he gives it to us day
by day, it's like we're seeing it again, all over again, and
we're coming back to him for our life, the very life we need
to live. And we even come to him for the faith we need to
believe him, don't we? Everything has to come from him.
The man prayed, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. He asked
Jesus to help his unbelief. The disciples said, Lord, increase
our faith. And Jesus prayed for Peter. He
says, I prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. He is able
to keep us from falling and to present us faultless in the presence
of his glory with exceeding joy. Let's pray. Father thank you
for the Lord Jesus Christ who put himself in our place according
to the will of God that eternal will that ordained him before
the world began for our salvation and he came in time and fulfilled
it and obtained our salvation and now he gives it to us when
the gospel comes to us in power by his sovereign rule and by
the gift of his spirit to us. And we plead with you, Lord,
give us this life that we might know the Lord Jesus. We would
not trust in ourselves or consider our sins a barrier too great
for you to put away, but to look to Christ, who by himself took
care of everything. and now we can rejoice in him
and trust him alone. In so doing, Lord, we pray for
this love for him and the love for your people. You've forgiven
us an insurmountable debt, an unfathomable amount of crimes,
and you bore them all. You did it in justice according
to your holiness, and we're thankful, Lord. Help us to worship you
for this great grace and wisdom and power. According to your
righteousness, Lord, we pray, take our sins away and look upon
our Savior and receive us for His sake alone. In His name we
pray. Amen.