We come in this session to address
the subject of definite atonement, our particular redemption. And
the question that is on the table is, for whom did Christ die? Did Jesus Christ upon the cross
merely make salvation possible for all people, or did Jesus
actually save? Did Jesus merely make reconciliation
possible depending upon man's response, or did Jesus Christ,
through the shedding of His blood, actually take holy God in one
hand and sinful sheep in the other hand and reconcile them
together through His cross? Did Jesus merely make the propitiation
of the righteous anger of God? toward all people potentially
possible, or did he actually placate and satisfy the righteous
anger of God towards a distinct group of people? That is the
question. And when we answer what is the
intent of the cross, we therefore automatically answer the extent
of the cross. You tell me why He came into
this world, and tell me what He actually did upon the cross,
and you have just answered for whom Christ died. I invite you
to take your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 10. John chapter 10 is a text of
Scripture that speaks directly to this issue, which is a very
important issue because I can never come to the Lord's table
the same again. Knowing that Jesus did not merely
die for an anonymous group of people, but that my name was
actually written upon His heart, and that He bore my sins, and
that there was a literal transaction that took place between the Father
and the Son as He died upon the cross. As we come to the reading
of God's Word, as we do at every chapel service of Reformation
Bible College, and as we do at St. Andrew's Chapel, I want to
invite you to stand for the reading of the Word of God, that we would
give honor to the Word of God, because as Calvin said, when
the Bible speaks, God speaks. And it is the very Word of God
Himself. For the Word of God is living
and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And as Spurgeon
said, one ounce of what God has to say is worth more than ten
thousand pounds of what the philosophers say. So this is the reading of
the Word of God. John chapter ten. I want to begin
reading in verse eleven. This is the inspired, the inerrant,
and the infallible Word of the living God. The speaker is none
other than the head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
the second person of the Godhead, the One who is seated at the
right hand of the Father, who has all authority in heaven and
earth. I am the Good Shepherd. The Good
Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep, he who is a hired
hand and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep,
sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the
wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is
a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good
shepherd. And I know my own, and my own
know me, even as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And
I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep which are
not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they
will hear my voice, and they will become one flock with one
shepherd. And for this reason the Father
loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it
again. No one has taken it from me,
but I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down,
and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment
I received from my Father. You may please be seated. The very heart of the gospel
is the saving death of Jesus Christ upon the cross. Paul said, we preach Christ and
Him crucified. And the cross stands erect in
the very center of the five doctrines of grace. In the centerpiece,
in the place of primacy, at the highest summit. is the doctrine
of definite atonement. Flanked on both sides are the
other four doctrines. To the left is total depravity
and unconditional election. Flanked on the right of definite
atonement is effectual grace and the perseverance of the saints. But occupying The very epicenter
of the gospel and the very epicenter of the five headings of the doctrines
of grace stands the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is this cross upon which
Christ died to which I want to draw our attention in this session. What I love about John chapter
10 and these verses is that this is Jesus' own commentary on His
own death. The entire Bible is inspired.
Everything that Paul and Peter and all of the other biblical
writers wrote about the substitutionary, sin-bearing death of Jesus Christ
upon the cross is perfectly true and accurate. But here we find
the one who would die upon that cross, the one who would hang
suspended between heaven and earth, the one who would be the
mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Here we
have the gospel according to Jesus. Here we have Christ's
own commentary upon His own death. And so I want us to look at these
verses, and I must move rather quickly. I want you to note first
the person of Christ. He begins in verse eleven with
a self-identification that there is no doubt who is this one who
would lay down his life for the sheep. He says in verse eleven,
I am the Good Shepherd. This is the person of Christ. If you are familiar with the
gospel of John, you well know that there are seven I AM statements
that are sprinkled through the gospel of John. Each one of these
I AM statements is a declaration of the deity of Jesus Christ. This is the fourth I am statement
in the gospel of John. And in these few verses we have
three I am statements. In verse 9, I am the door. Verse
11, I am the good shepherd. And verse 14, I am the good shepherd. Rapid fire, staccato fashion. It leaps off the page before
our very eyes. And this looks back to Exodus
3 and verse 14 when Moses came to the burning bush and he saw
the bush that was burning, yet it was not consumed. And there
was a voice that came from that burning bush. Moses, remove your
sandals. The ground upon which you stand
is holy ground. Now this was no ordinary bush,
for God was in this bush, and God was speaking from this bush. And as God would send Moses to
Pharaoh to say, let my people go, God gave a name for himself
that was a most elevated name, I am who I am. This name for
God meaning that He is transcendent, that He is independent and autonomous
of His creation. He is never changing. He is ever
the same. Everyone dependent upon Him.
He is dependent upon no one, the aseity of God. Now in the
gospel of John, Jesus takes this highest of divine names. and
He wears it, He owns it, because it is true of Him. He is God
in human flesh, fully God, fully man. And as God who has come
into this world to save, He has come to be a good shepherd. Perhaps no self-identification
of Christ is more endearing to our hearts than for Him to call
us a good shepherd. The word good means he is an
excellent shepherd. He is a superior shepherd. He is a perfect, he is the authentic
shepherd. He is a faultless shepherd who
is so mighty in his mission that he will lose not one of his sheep. He says, I am the Good Shepherd,
and only one who is fully God, yet fully man, could die an infinite
death upon Calvary's cross, and to be able to save all of his
people, and to be able to save all those for whom he came to
save. This is the person of Christ. But I want you to note more specifically
now the death of Christ. Because we go on to read in verse
11, after he says, I am the good shepherd, he says the good shepherd
lays down his life for the sheep. This is clearly the language
of self-giving death, self-sacrificial life giving death upon a cross. Here in John 10, verse 15, he
will say, I lay down my life for the sheep. And again in verse
17, I lay down my life. Again in verse 18, no one has
taken it from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative. Four times in these few verses. Jesus says that He lays down
His life. What is important for us to note
is that His life was not taken. It was given. His blood was not
spilled. It was poured out. His death
was not an accident. It was a divine appointment predetermined
from before the foundation of the world. The circumstances
of the cross were not out of control, for it was this death
for which Jesus was foreknown and predestined before time began. The Good Shepherd lays down His
life, please note, for the sheep. That little preposition for is
very important, huper, which means in the place of the sheep,
for the benefit of the sheep, on behalf of the sheep, in the
stead of the sheep. It is the language of substitution. And if we were to reduce the
entire meaning of the cross to one word, a case could be argued
for the word substitution, that Jesus Christ died in the place
of and for the benefit of those who are sinners. But please note
the object. He died for the sheep. It's important that we understand
that Jesus had a definite design which was entrusted to Him from
the Father as He came into this world. It was to lay down His
life for the sheep. Someone here today may say, well,
what about the passages that talk about the world? Well, you
need to understand that the word for world, kosmos, in the gospel
of John alone is used ten different ways. So it would be faulty interpretation
to move into any passage of Scripture and to automatically assume that
world always means everyone in the world, because such is not
the case. And here we have a very narrow,
tight focus upon those for whom Christ died, and it was for the
sheep. Now, who are the sheep? Well,
if you look earlier in verse 3, the sheep are those who hear
His voice. In verse 3 it says, to him the
doorkeeper opens and the sheep hear his voice. Referring to
the voice of the Good Shepherd himself, the Lord Jesus Christ.
They are given ears to hear the effectual call of God as the
Good Shepherd calls out his own sheep. He goes on to say in verse
3, and the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by
name. It is as though Jesus comes to
the community sheepfold that contains all of the sheep of
the world, and as He enters into this large sheepfold, He begins
to call out individually, one at a time, those sheep who were
given to Him by the Father before the foundation of the world.
Brown knows. white face, and He begins to call them out
by name. These are those for whom Christ
died. We continue to read in verse
4, when He puts forth all His own, note, all of His own, all
of His sheep, He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow Him
because they know His voice. These are the ones for whom Christ
died. These are the ones whom He calls
to Himself. He does not die for one group
and then call out a different group. He does not die for one
group and then lead a different group. No. There is perfect consistency
in the saving purposes of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we
read that He laid down His life for the sheep. It is these that
we read in verse 5, who will never follow a stranger. In the
end, they will never remain attached to any false shepherd or any
false prophet. We continue to read in verse
9, these are the ones who are saved. I am the door, if anyone
enters through me, he will be saved. These are the ones in
verse 10 who have life and have it abundantly. This is for whom
Christ died. Not one drop of his blood was
shed in vain. Not one drop of the blood of
Christ was shed in defeat. All for whom Christ died, His
sheep, He has saved them and He has secured them and what
He bought at the cross, He has received in full. He did not
buy the entire world and then was short-changed at the cross
and gypped at the cross, if you will, and only receive a portion
of that which he bought. No, there is perfect equity in
the exchange between the Father and the Son. And the Son laid
down His life and purchased the salvation for a specific group
of people, and it is these that the Father has been propitiated. And it is these that the Father
forgives and imputes the perfect righteousness of Christ. In John 15, verse 13, it says,
"'Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life
for his His friends, in total distinction from His enemies
in the following verses. In Matthew 1, verse 21, it is
said of Jesus, You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save
His people from their sins. And in Ephesians 5, verse 25,
we read that Jesus loved the church and gave Himself up for
her. This is the death of Christ. Third, I want you to note the
imposters of Christ, those who are the very opposite of the
Good Shepherd. And there is much for us to learn
here. In verse 12 he says, He who is a hired hand, and by this
he is referring to the false religious leaders for whom spiritual
leadership was merely a job. It was merely a paycheck for
them. He who is a hired hand, not a
shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep. There is no vested
interest in these sheep for the religious hucksters of Israel. And he goes on to say, who sees
the wolf coming, the encroaching danger of death. and leaves the
sheep. You see, they will only work
with the sheep in good times. They will not remain committed
to the sheep in tough times. And here, when the wolf comes,
they leave the sheep, verse 12 says, and they flee to protect
their own hide. And the wolf snatches them and
scatters them. Verse 13, he flees because he
is a hired hand. and is not concerned for the
sheep. But the Lord Jesus Christ is
the very antithesis. He is the very opposite. He is
the owner of the sheep. For the Father, by sovereign
election in eternity past, gave them to the Son that they would
jointly hold together the elect of God. And Jesus is the owner
of the sheep. because Jesus will buy the sheep. He will purchase the sheep with
His own blood, and we would now belong to Him because He owns
us by sovereign election, and He owns us by definite atonement. We're not our own. We've been
bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God with your
body. There is not a believer here
today who owns your own life. You are blood bought. You have
been purchased at the price of the Good Shepherd who laid down
His life for the sheep. And we spend the rest of our
lives following Him. We cannot remain where He found
us. We must turn our backs on the
world. We have been called out of dead religion. And we now
follow the Lord Jesus Christ and He leads us into green pastures
and beside still waters. Fourth, I want you to note the
love of Christ. In verse 14, Jesus reaffirms
the statement that He made in verse 11. He says, now for a
second time, I am the Good Shepherd. Of the seven I am statements
in John's gospel, this is the only one that is repeated. It
is repeated for emphasis. It is repeated to underscore
this in our own hearts. And when he says, I am the Good
Shepherd, the idea is, and no one else, I and I alone am the
Good Shepherd. And now note what he says in
verse fourteen, and I know my own. Please note this does not
say I know about my own, because Jesus knows about everything. There is not a sparrow that falls
apart from the Lord. The very hairs of your head are
numbered. He not only sees into everything, He sees through everything. He knows everything that will
occur before it ever happens, and Jesus has never learned anything. And the reason He has never learned
anything is because He and the Father have foreordained all
that shall come to pass. What would He ever learn? When
He says here, I know My own. It is a word in the original
language that could be translated one of two more ways. I love
my own, and I have chosen my own. This word was first used
in the Old Testament in the Hebrew in Genesis 4 verse 1 where it
says, Adam knew his wife. And she conceived and gave birth
to a son. That means that Adam had the
most intimate personal love relationship with his wife Eve. And the result of this personal
knowledge, in a way that he knows no other aspect of God's creation,
the result of that was a conception and the birth of a son. Later
in Matthew 7, Jesus will say, many will say unto me in that
day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out many
demons in your name and perform many wondrous works? And I will
say unto them in that day, I never knew you. I never had a relationship
with you. I never had an intimate, personal,
saving, love relationship with you. Oh, I knew all about you,
and the books will be open on the last day. But I never knew
you." That is how this word is used in verse 14. I know my own. I love my own. I have chosen
to love my own. And Jesus knows His sheep in
ways that He does not know those who are not His sheep. When I
was starting as a pastor, my wife and I began our family with
twin sons, Andrew and James. And after I would preach on Sundays,
I would go down to the nursery. that was growing by the moment,
and there were many young little babies in that nursery. And there was a sense in which
I loved all of them, but there was another sense in which I
had a special love for two of them. And my heart was set upon
them, and there was nothing that I would not do for those two.
That is the meaning when Jesus says, I know my own. He has a special, redeeming,
saving love for his sheep that transcends and goes far beyond
the general love that he would have for mankind. Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated."
And here is the meaning of the word foreknowledge, which has
nothing to do with foresight. Again, God has never learned
anything. What would God ever look down
the tunnel of time and ever see that He did not already know?
The answer to that is nothing. The word foreknowledge means
those whom God previously loved. those whom He chose to love with
a saving, special, particular love. That is what Jesus is saying
in verse 14. And what is driving Him as He
goes to the cross is the special love that He has for His sheep. And He says, and My sheep know
Me. It's a reciprocal relationship and at a point in time designated
by Him. He came and He called us out
of the world to begin to follow Him. And how close is this love
relationship that Jesus has with His sheep? At the beginning of
verse 15, He tells us, even as the Father knows me and I know
the Father. This is extraordinary. The intimate,
personal, special love that the Father has with the Son and the
Son has with the Father from all eternity past. The Son was
in the bosom of the Father. This is my beloved Son in whom
I am well pleased. This says now that the Son knows
us, and we know Him as the Father knows the Son, and the Son knows
the Father. And then He repeats it at the
end of verse 15, what He has already said, and He is underscoring
this by repetition. It's like saying, truly, truly,
I say unto you. knocking on our thinking that
we would open the door and receive this. He says it now again at
the end of verse 15, "'And I laid down my life for the sheep.'"
It was the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for His sheep that is
a special love. that drove Him to the cross in
obedience to the Father that He would secure our salvation. I want you to note now the sovereignty
of Christ. Number five, the sovereignty
of Christ. As we come to verse 16, Jesus
now speaks of the efficacy of His death, meaning cause and
effect, efficacy. That there will be a necessary
effect from the cause of His death. That He will lay down
His life for His sheep and there will be a certain guaranteed
effect that will transpire as a result of His specific death
for his sheep. Verse 16, he says, I have other
sheep, and this refers to elect Gentiles who are outside the
fold of Israel. I have other sheep which are
not of this fold. You can read the previous chapter,
all of John 9, and understand that this fold refers to the
dead religion of Israel. And he says, I must bring them
also. And the them refers to the elect
Gentile sheep. And please notice this, and they
will hear my voice. I must, they will. I must, they
will. I must bring them and they will
come. And they will hear my voice. And they will become one flock
with one shepherd. This is the sovereignty of Christ. It was a sovereign death that
He died upon Calvary's cross. And He will bring to Himself
every single one for whom He died. And if Christ died for
you, you will have eternal life and you will be with Him forever
because He is a good shepherd and He loses not a one of His
sheep. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said,
Oh, I love God's shalls and wills. There is nothing comparable to
them. Let a man say shall, what is it good for? I will, says
man, and he never performs. I shall, he says, and he breaks
his promise. But it is never so with God's
shalls. If God says shall, it shall be. If God says will, it will be. The Spurgeon says, now here he
has said many shall come. The devil says they shall not
come. Some of you yourselves say we won't come, but God says
you shall come. Yes, there are some here who
are laughing at salvation and who mock Christ and the gospel. You yourselves say, we won't
come. God says, many of you shall come. What? You say, can God
make me become a Christian? I tell you, yes. For herein rests
the power of the gospel. It does not ask for your consent. It gets it. It does not say, will you have
it? But He makes you willing in the
day of His power. And then Spurgeon concludes,
Christ shall see His seed. He shall prolong His days. And
the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands. They shall
come. And not in heaven, nor on earth,
nor in hell can stop them from coming. This is exactly what Jesus is
saying. Look in your own Bible in verse
16 again. I have other sheep which are
not of this fold. I must bring them also and they
will hear my voice and they will become one flock with one shepherd. I love a shepherd like this.
He is not a defeated shepherd. Look at verse 17, the sovereignty
of Christ. For this reason the Father loves
me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it again. He has sovereignty to lay down
his life. He has sovereignty to take his
life back up again. And all three persons of the
Godhead were involved in his resurrection, but Christ himself
raised Himself from the dead. And He came walking out of that
tomb, a risen, living, victorious Savior, the Good Shepherd of
His flock. Verse 18, no one has taken it from me.
Not Pilate, not Herod, not the Roman soldiers, not the Jewish
leaders. No one. No one. This is His sovereignty. He was
delivered over by the will of God. He gave Himself and He laid
down His life. No one has taken it from me,
but I lay it down on my own initiative. It was at His time at three o'clock
in the afternoon on that Friday when He said, Father, into Your
hands I commit My Spirit. And He said, It is finished.
I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take
it up again." He was in total command of the cross. The cross
was as though it was a throne upon which sovereign grace was
reigning as He interceded on our behalf with the Father. and none for whom he died will
ever perish." At the end of verse 18, this
commandment I received from the Father. Jesus received this assignment
and this commandment from the Father in eternity past when
the father chose his elect and he gave them to the son to be
his bride, a chosen bride for the Lord Jesus Christ and the
father then commanded the son to come into this world and to
purchase his bride and to pay the price for her that she might
be holy and blameless and be presented by him before the father
And Jesus, in perfect obedience to the Father, laid down His
life for those whom the Father had given to Him. There is perfect
unity within the Godhead. And those whom the Father chose
are those for whom the Son died, are those whom the Spirit calls
out in the world. And to have any other theological
position is to be inconsistent and to fracture the unity of
the Godhead. I say that is fairly serious.
Because the Arminian position is forced to say, the father
saves one group, those whom he looks down the tunnel of time
and sees who will believe Jesus. So the father works with only
believers. The son, no, no, no, he will
die for everyone. You may simply foresee this group,
but I'll die for everyone. And then the spirit of sin in
the world and works with a group halfway in between, bringing
about conviction that could be resisted. like a man getting on a horse
and riding out in three different directions at once. No, only with an understanding
of definite atonement do we see the perfect unity of purpose
in the Godhead. And I leave you with verse thirty.
I'm skipping over twenty-six to twenty-nine, but look at verse
thirty and I finish. I and the Father are one. The word one is not in the masculine,
which would indicate one person. That would be heretical. One
God, three persons. It's in the neuter, which means
I and the Father are of one saving purpose. One mission, one goal,
one objective, one essence, one attributes, one eternal purpose
and decree. In verse 28 it says that Jesus
holds all the sheep in His hand and not a one of them will perish.
And in verse 29 it says, and the Father holds us in His hand
and none of us will perish. And we are doubly secure in the
Son and in the Father and then sealed by the Spirit It is the
unity between the Father and the Son that necessitates the
perfect economy and equity of the definite atonement of the
Lord Jesus Christ. May in this house, this day,
may the head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ, be in the
place of preeminence and have all glory and honor, because
He has laid down His life for the sheep, and He has purchased
and secured our eternal salvation throughout all of the ages to
come. Let us pray. Father in heaven,
how we bless Your name that You have given to us, the Good Shepherd. You did not send an angel. You
did not send one of your created beings to intercede on our behalf,
but you sent your Son, your only Son, your only begotten Son,
to become our Good Shepherd. We are sheep prone to wander. We are defenseless. We are lost.
We are ruined. We are wayward. And we thank
you for such a Good Shepherd who left the glory of heaven
above and came down into this world and went to that cross
that there He would purchase with His shed blood our salvation. And we rejoice that our names
were written upon the ephod of His heart. We rejoice that we
were on His mind as He died there in our place. Father, bless us
this day, Your people, with this knowledge. May You encourage
Your people. In Jesus' name, Amen.