Tag: christianity

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What We Believe – Salvation Belongs to the Lord

This is an ongoing series of blog posts based on papers originally written for my church’s elder class. This week’s prompt: “Please describe the nature of our assurance of salvation. Can we lose our salvation?”

“Salvation belongs to the Lord.” 

This statement, or variations of it, is all throughout Scripture. It’s like a diamond that you can hold up and see many facets as you turn it. Salvation belongs to the Lord because to be saved means to belong to God. Salvation belongs to the Lord because it is by His work – the Father’s choosing, the Son’s death and resurrection, and the Spirit’s renewal – that we are saved. And salvation belongs to the Lord because it is entirely His work. There’s a famous quote that’s attributed to various Christians in history, including Philip Melancthon and Jonathan Edwards: “The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.” This is a simplification of the life of a believer, but it does capture in its essence the truest nature of the life of God’s people from beginning to end: God has saved us. God is saving us. And God is going to save us. His hand holds us fast.

I originally wrote this for our class almost exactly one year ago, and in that time, it wound up with a personal context I couldn’t have possibly anticipated, one which still lingers on my heart as a wound. My friend Jarod, who I had known for years, took his own life, an act that brought a deep and abiding grief to me and many others in my community. Wrestling with this grief while also thinking through this question required a great deal of conversation with those close to me, as well as a lot of prayer. 

Now that I’ve come to this paper, one that was written in such a raw moment, reposting it with just a bit of tweaking seems inappropriate. I also want to take time to consider everything I write here in a pastoral light. While the sadness over Jarod still lingers, I have taken a lot of time to consider what it is that needs to be said. What does it mean for God to be the author of salvation in the face of sin, tragedy, terror and loss? What does it look like for someone to reach his breaking point – can he break the hold of grace? Or perhaps, do we shrug and go “well, I guess he was never saved to begin with?” Neither seem sufficient either to minister the Word rightly, nor to answer humanity’s deep need for God’s bottomless grace.

This brings me to the phrase “perseverance of the saints,” the last point of the famous “five points of Calvinism.” When we say that the saints will persevere, we say that those who are Christ’s will ultimately stand before the Lord in triumph, that no blow the enemy might strike or sin that might lead to backsliding will undo what Christ has done. And this is so because God is the one who saves. It is the very name of our savior – Jesus, Yeshua, “God saves.”

So we have this doctrine, and we have significant Scripture pointing to it. Paul says to the Philippian church in chapter 1 of his epistle, “I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Or Jesus’ own words in John chapter 6, verse 37: “Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out.” And again in verse 44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.” 

But when I got the heart-breaking news about my brother, I was forced face to face in reckoning with many questions. The first and most frustrating one remains “Why?” But along with it comes questions and doubts that linger around the work he had accomplished in his life in serving others in Christ. To see one of our own brothers, one who has served in ministry so faithfully over the years, who has been seen by our and other churches as a faithful servant take his own life is a strong blow dealt to our experience of the faithful love and work of Jesus. The very real pain that is poured out in such a time cannot be ignored, nor can we simply turn away from the enemy’s assault on the faith of brothers and sisters. 

It is one thing to say simply that God saves us. But here we had an example of someone who has demonstrated with so much of his life that he placed his faith in Jesus, but suddenly he displayed a deep and abiding despair, or at least that is what it seemed. In this life we shall never know the true depths of his heart in those final moments. So we have to turn to God’s promises. Jesus said no one will snatch His people out of His hand. But can we jump out?

Christian tradition is certainly divided on this. But if salvation is founded on the work of God, and continued by the work of God, it must certainly be completed by the work of God. Over and over my mind has returned to 2 Timothy 2:13, where Paul seems to be quoting from a hymn or creed of his day: “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” Believers will struggle and feel weak, but His strength far exceeds any we could ever need. Believers will have crises of faith, but He never will. Believers can find the way clouded, we can fear to take the next step that’s set before us. We can sin. We can fail in myriad ways. But in those times, it is more important than ever to take the character of God into account. 

Does God cast aside His people? No, He does not. Does He found their place as “His own” on their deeds and strength and faith? No. While the means of salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, the rock upon which it all rests is Christ – His love, His work, His life. I think in a tragic way it was fitting that I should have to address this topic in such a time of heartache and sorrow. I believe that in that dark moment, my brother struggled with believing that Jesus was enough—and yet, I trust that God’s grace covered him even in that doubt, as it does for all of us when we face our darkest moments. 

In His Hands

When I wrestle with what this means for his faith, for his eternity, I have to come face to face with the Bible’s prescription over and over that salvation is God’s, from beginning to end. On one hand it feels almost terrifying. I can do nothing to save myself, not even one tiny bit? Even the parts that are worked out through my actions are rooted in the Holy Spirit’s work? The room for doubt grows by the minute. But really, this is something that should be a call to rest, to peace. I can do nothing to save myself, not even one tiny bit. Even the parts that are worked out through my actions are rooted in the Holy Spirit’s work. The words of Paul in Romans 8:31-39 are a balm to my soul: 

What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

Because of you
we are being put to death all day long;
we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And so, I pray that the Lord will prepare my heart to endure to the end, even though I am still a broken and sinful human who longs for wholeness in Christ. My brother Jarod acted in a way that made many wonder – did he really believe that Jesus was enough? I believe that for a moment, a critical, horrifying moment, he believed that He wasn’t – and now, He is with Jesus, and learning that he was wrong. May the Lord’s grace strengthen us to endure trials and temptations until the day comes that we all stand before Him.

How have you faced the dark moments of the night? How can we and other believers support you in such moments? Leave a comment below or email us – prayer requests, comments, reflections are all welcome.

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What We Believe – The Grace of God

This is an ongoing series of posts based on short papers written for our church’s elder class and edited (and in some cases, expanded) for this format. Today’s writing prompt: “What is your view of God’s grace?”

God’s grace is a subject that is on my mind daily, every hour as I struggle against sin or feel the weight of failure. The beauty of His grace in my life is has been transformative in the way I’ve grown, and yet it provides so much relief from the weight of the fact that on my own, I am utterly incapable of doing what is pleasing to God. God showers the whole world with His grace even as it revolves daily in rebellion – rain falls on saved and unsaved alike, happiness and joy persist even for the most virulent atheist. His common grace is a sign of who God is – the loving Creator and Father of all of us. Yet the grace that we seek is the grace that is available in Christ. This is the special grace that saves all who receive it, all who stand in Christ in faith. I think about this often, as I pray and work after my desire to grow into the image of Christ.

What is grace?

Grace could be described as the application of God’s love. His love is shown in all creation through grace as I mentioned, by His provision of our needs. God provides for our need for food, in abundance and variety. He “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” He gives both work and rest to humanity.

And more than that, He provides an abundance of beauty in our world, of a form that humans continue to seek to recreate through our own artistic methods. I’m reminded of what I like to call the “Holmes apologetic,” from a Sherlock Holmes story where the detective stops mid-thought to remark on the beauty of flowers, and how a flower’s “smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives these extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.” When we look at nature and consider it, from the incredibly minute detail of particles so small no eye could see them, to vast stellar nurseries discovered deep in our galaxy and beyond, the artistry of God demonstrates His love for his creation.

In theological terms, we see two concepts of grace: what is called “common grace,” which is God’s provision for our existence and for creation itself, and “special (or saving) grace,” which is His provision of salvation in Christ. Common grace is what I described above, in God’s provision for all His creation. Special grace is not given to all, but to His people – to all who believe in the name of Jesus and look to Him for life and hope. For those who do not, God’s common grace will ultimately become a condemnation – they received God’s goodness while refusing to worship Him as God.

As Paul says in Romans 1, the truth of God seen in creation is not new information to humanity. We know this, but we also “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” In our sin and our refusal to honor our Creator, we deny God’s handiwork as being special or of showing His glory. We allow cynical, nihilistic beliefs to draw us into attitudes of self-absorption, rather than humility. But humility is the key that unlocks the gate to the way of Christ, a humility brought about by the conviction of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who hear the gospel and by God’s grace respond. In Romans 3:23 Paul writes that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But Paul answers this problem with the only possible solution: the grace that is given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus. We are all tainted by sin, and there is no way we can “un-sin” by our own means – as Isaiah writes, even our attempts to do good are tainted by our evil desires before God. But the special grace of Christ truly and perfectly covers our sin, and He delights to administer that to us each day, as our great high priest before the Father. 

God’s grace transforms our hearts

Paul continues in that chapter to demonstrate that humility is the necessary consequence of this realization – boasting in ourselves “is excluded” he writes, “by a law of faith.” Our way is not a free ticket to do what we please because God doesn’t care any longer. His grace creates in us a realization that we have received what we do not and could never deserve.  And as that truth works inward like a seed that is sprouting out of the ground, it changes us bit by bit, breaking away hard-hearted and selfish attitudes and bringing idols to light so they may be thrown down. God’s saving grace shows us that truly resting in God for all our needs, from the most basic to the most profound, is precisely the life God intends for us to live in Him, now and in eternity. As Charles Spurgeon said, “The more grace we have, the less we shall think of ourselves, for grace, like light, reveals our impurity.”

I remember how this happened in my own life, and the moment I experienced that deep conviction of my own sin even as I also felt a tremendous sense of joy of knowing that Jesus was, in fact, enough. It was during a sermon many years ago that the Holy Spirit used as a transformative moment beyond description, and I think about that day often, even as I think about the days and years to come walking the path of Christ.

This applied love of grace is not simply an expression of pity, though pity could be said to share in it. When God saw the sorry state of Adam and Eve in the garden, even though He surely was not surprised by any turn of events, might pity not have had its place in His promise that the woman’s offspring would destroy the enemy and his work? When Jesus stood among weeping mourners at the tomb of Lazarus and joined in their tears, pity surely must have been one of the feelings he bore as he demonstrated the great hope of life that was His gift to humanity, when he called Lazarus forth from the tomb. But this great love expresses the perfect love in unity shared by Father, Son, and Spirit. Again returning to Romans, Paul writes in chapter 5 that “God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

Knowing that, we can bring our heavy burdens to Him. We can truly obey the call of Psalm 55:22, to “cast all our burdens on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken.” We often do feel shaken, it is true, but God knows our needs and provides for them, in His love, by His grace. The more we realize this grace, the more we lower our own self-estimations, and raise our worshipful attitudes in expressing that love we have received to God, and to one another.

Living in His grace

The implications for our day to day lives are nothing short of tremendous. Yet they are also the implications that we often find ourselves blinded to the most by our day to day lives, our personal sin struggles and sufferings, and even our successes. When we build our lives around His grace, we find a rest that supports and extends far beyond all our earthly hopes, because life in Christ itself likewise is far beyond our brief years in this world. 

I want to end with three ideas of ways we can grow in the grace of God in our daily lives:

  • Pursue the things that bring His grace to mind. This can be done in many ways, from taking time to reflect on the beauty of God’s grace in nature and the goodness of His provision for your life in things like a good meal, to meditating on the testimony of Scripture and the teachings of those who have pursued this deeply. 
  • Find ways to express the ways you’ve seen God’s grace move in your life. You don’t have to have a big formal journaling effort, though keeping a personal record of the ways you experience God’s grace is a good idea. When dark times come, being able to remember that God’s presence has not lessened is wise.
  • Don’t try to walk alone. Have people who are close to you, who you trust and who knows you. When hardship comes and clouds fill the horizon of life, have someone who can encourage and pray with you. This should be a person who can listen to confessions of the sins, fears and failures of your life and remind you of your true worth in Christ. My podcast cohost Jake is a person like this for me, someone who I turn to often when I’m needing to talk about life struggles or confess sins.

None of this is dynamic and new, but then that’s not the point. The goal is to build a reminder into our lives of the constant grace of God, and the Holy Spirit has given us so many ways to do so through the Word, through prayer, and through the people around us. Pursue the grace of Christ daily, and the day will come where both suffering and success in this world will be a dim memory compared with the joy of truly being in the presence of Jesus. My prayer for everyone who reads this is that you will strive each day towards that moment for yourself.

How has the grace of God impacted your life? How do you want to see God move further in your life and transform your heart? Leave a comment below or email us, prayer requests are welcome!

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What We Believe – The Work of Christ

In this ongoing series I am publishing slightly edited versions of short papers I wrote for my church’s elder pipeline class. The prompt for this paper was, “What did Christ accomplish on the cross?”

We have talked about who Christ is – He is the Son of God, He is a man born at a certain place in a certain time, He is the fulfillment of prophecy and a prophet Himself. But it is that last part that we must look to now, not just who He is, but what He has done, and continues to do. We cannot examine the work of Jesus without looking closely at the central focus of His whole life: the cross, His death there, and His resurrection. This was no mere display of power, nor is it simply a tragedy we mourn as unjust. This was the point at which God inaugurated His kingdom, and began the work that will conclude when Jesus returns: namely, the restoration of creation to true holiness, and true and total intimacy between God and His people.

Firstly, Jesus atoned for the sins of His people. There has been much debate over the concept of penal substitutionary atonement and its centrality to what Christ accomplished on the cross, but the testimony of Scripture is clear. All those who draw near to Christ receive the benefits of His atonement, just as all those who drew near on the Day of Atonement each year received those benefits for their sins. The difference is that Christ’s atonement is a better one, for it does not need to be renewed year after year, but as the author of Hebrews says, it is completed and perfect. 

Continue reading “What We Believe – The Work of Christ”
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What we believe – Who is Jesus?

In this ongoing series I am publishing slightly edited versions of short papers I wrote for my church’s elder pipeline class. The prompt for this paper was, “What is your view of Jesus Christ?”

The question “what is your view of Jesus” could receive so broad an answer that literally, many books exist just to tackle it. I want to address this by answering three specific questions that serve as the foundation upon which Christology is built.

Continue reading “What we believe – Who is Jesus?”
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What We Believe – The Imago Dei

This series is taken from short papers I wrote for my church’s elder class in response to different questions. This week’s question: What does it mean that man is an image-bearer of God?

Genesis 1 contains the account of God creating everything, day by day. Each part of creation has its place and is authored by God’s will, and each part is declared to be good. In verse 26, humanity is created specially and uniquely, “in our image, according to our likeness,” as the passage reads. But we struggle with understanding what it means to be truly made in His image. With the fall of man in chapter three of the same book, we see that humanity takes on a desire to be God. In the subsequent chapters and books and continuing down through human history, people have tried to make gods in the image of humanity, either literally or in the reckoning of what we believe is powerful. 

If we look in a mirror, we see an image of ourselves created for that moment, the product of light reflected off a surface that displays what we look like. But it is not us, and it only exists as long as we choose to stand there. Walk away, and the image vanishes, yet we continue. In her book Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age, Rosaria Butterfield uses this analogy to explain this unique relationship between God and man, one that is not shared by any other aspect of creation. She says, “God is the object in the biblical creation account, and we are the reflection.” 

Her analogy is rooted in the one Paul uses to express the longing we experience in this life as we look toward a future of truly seeing and knowing God in 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.” And he follows it up with a very telling concluding verse to chapter 13: “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.”  

Love is what flows from God to His creation, and most especially to humanity. Love is what propels Him to mercy when Adam and Eve sin, and to promise a redeemer who will restore what they have broken. Love drives God to display mercy to the Israelites over and over, to be patient beyond any human reckoning, as generation after generation falls into rebellion and idolatry and requires reminding again that there is only one true God. And most of all, love is what drives the Trinitarian work of salvation – love within the Trinity, and love of God for His creation, for His image seen in His people. To acknowledge that we are made in His image is to accept and share in His tremendous love, and to rest in that love and all the promises it carries for provision, protection, and ultimate salvation in this world and the next.

By the same token, to deny that we are made in God’s image is to deny that love, and to deny the very thing that makes us human, more than just animals with higher intelligence and greater emotional capacity. Sin is an attack on that image. The first sin in Genesis 3 was a denial of God as creator and ruler, and an attempt to assert the right to decide right and wrong apart from Him. Murder is a vicious assault on God’s image, and carries the death penalty in Israel’s law because to kill a man is to destroy that image. Idolatry is a sin because it says that a man may know better what God should be, than the One who created us.

When the author of Hebrews describes Jesus in chapter 1, he calls him “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature,” that is to say, while we are made in the image of God, Christ is the image of God. When we trust in Christ, we are looking to He who bears the unscarred, unbroken perfection of God’s image in His humanity, and the perfect power and total authority of God in His divinity.

When we place our trust in Jesus, when we preach the power of His name and the love and mercy of God found in Him, we are calling out to all humanity with a tremendous message. We are saying, “Stop trying to be something you are not, and remember that you are something so much greater in creation – you are made to reflect the perfect, the complete, the holy.” When we preach the gospel we say to our listeners, “Be who God made you to be, because to be His image is to find true life that transcends anything your base desires in this world could hope to find.”

How does knowing that you are made in the image of God affect your view of yourself and others? How can this empower you in your walk with Christ and the way you love your neighbor? Let us know below in the comments!

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What We Believe – Our God is Three in One

This is a continuing series based on short papers I wrote for my church’s elder class to prepare for discussions of different doctrinal questions. This week’s prompt: What is your view of the Trinity?

The doctrine of God’s existence as one being in three persons is one of the most controversial and defining doctrines of the faith. It is sensible that discussion of this topic follows an exploration of the nature of Scripture, because it is through a belief in the character of Scripture as God-breathed and therefore infallible and supreme that we must arrive at the conclusion that the doctrine of the Trinity is true. 

As with so many doctrines, it was defined in the face of error. It is tempting to linger on these errors in a historical sense, and it is important to understand them because so often people tend to repeat them. There are whole offshoot faiths from Christianity that are founded on denials of various aspects of the Trinity – for example, United Pentacostals who hold to a modalistic view of God, or Jehovah’s Witnesses who insist that Jesus is a mere created being. But it’s important to define what we do believe, rather than just what we do not. 

Looking back at the early discussions in the church that hashed out the doctrine and the way it is stated across denominational lines to this day, we see the priorities of these believers as they examined what the Scriptures say for the sake of clarifying teaching and avoiding error. We see them prioritizing the nature of God, and the distinction between God’s being (or substance, to use the Nicene term) and the persons of the Trinity, who Scripture reveals as unique in role and action, yet utterly united in will and fully bearing the nature of being God.

We see the early church’s recognition that for salvation to be effective, Christ must be fully man and fully God. He must be fully man so that He may share in our existence and bear our suffering and sin upon the cross, and He must be fully God so that He may endure in a way no mere sinful human ever could alone. We see the Father as the one who declares the nature of creation and trajectory of history through His perfect plans. He does not do anything alone, but plays His own unique role in sending forth the Son and blessing His work. He calls all those who will be Christ’s. And we see the Holy Spirit as the one who ministers constantly through and in Christ’s church, to glorify Christ and to be the “Giver of Life” as the Council of Constantinople put it, as He makes possible Christ’s words from John 3 that to be saved, we “must be born again.”

God’s Trinitarian nature is beyond our comprehension in many ways, but that itself is evidence of it being a revelation of God and not a production of man’s own mind. The legion of heresies that the church has contended with through the centuries show what happens when humans attempt to apply their own wisdom to God’s nature. From Sabellius teaching that the persons of the Trinity are little more than masks worn by one being of God, to Arius’ claims that “there was a time that the Son was not” and his theological children in groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to outright polytheists like the Mormons, many times man refuses to be satisfied by trusting to what God says but insists that he has better wisdom. Yet none of them can truly say they believe that Scripture is God’s Word, when they refuse to heed God’s own revelations of Himself. They cannot claim to have true salvation in a Christ who is not who He said He was, in His own words – “I am.” 

To rest in God’s promises we must trust in the words of Deuteronomy 29:29, “The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.” We cannot truly reckon as created, mortal, singular beings with the true nature of existence for an eternal, Trinitarian God, but we can trust that He is truthful and trustworthy. We rely on Him to grasp this, and His work and Word calls us to let our doubts and confusion rest on His promises.

Do you have questions or areas where you struggle to understand? Please ask them below or email me if you prefer, our hope here is to bless the body and engage in dialogue.

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My friend Jarod

A week ago Friday I picked my wife up from work, our 3 year old riding in his seat in the back singing and pointing out fire trucks and windmills as we drove across town to to the grocery store. We pulled into a spot and started making a list – after all, the only bigger mistake to make than going grocery shopping without a list, is going while hungry.

As we sat there chatting about what to get, watching grey clouds roll in, my phone buzzed with a text message from a friend of mine. “Dave, I just heard about Jarod. I’m so sorry.”

I looked at my wife and we both sat there confused and horrified for a moment. Neither of us had no idea what was going on, and I asked him to clarify.

“I’m so sorry, I thought you would have heard by now. Jarod took his own life today.”

It didn’t make sense. We didn’t have a category for this information, because…we thought we knew him. As we learned more about the circumstances surrounding everything, our grief and the grief of many others was mingled with the question that always seems to come up when someone reflects on someone who recently committed suicide: “Why couldn’t he just talk to me? To somebody?”

I met my friend Jarod shortly after I started going to Christ Community Church. He was a regular musician there, and on staff helping, among other things, to coordinate with the small group leaders. He and I developed a friendship that developed over many years. We had many things in common – we were both musicians, albeit of a very different variety; Jarod was a singer and songwriter who played guitar and taught many students, while I was a tuba player with on-and-off times playing with New Orleans brass bands in town. We were both strongly in the “reformed” mindset of Christianity, though over the years we parted ways on certain issues; he wound up developing convictions that led him and his wife Morgan to leave the Baptist tradition and join an Anglican church, while I grew more firm in my credobaptist and church autonomy convictions.

But through all that we remained close. While that was going on I started my previous podcast, formerly known as Spurgeon Audio, then Kings Way Talk. When I wanted to have a regular partner to discuss subjects, my first choice was Jarod. We’d always spent hours many weekends up at the local cigar shop discussing the books we were reading, the goings-on of our lives, and the struggles of sin and faith we were working through. He sat with me and listened as I discussed issues like my previous marriage collapsing and trying to find healing in that. He was a tremendous encouragement to me in very dark times, and an incredible blessing in good ones. He served as a groomsman for my marriage to Ravyn and led us all in worship for the service.

When we’d get behind the microphone his insights were always helpful. He helped me think through my own maturing faith in new ways, and helped me to get away from looking at my faith as a matter of “us versus the world” and more as a matter of “serving those around us in patient love.” Because of his encouragement I was able to grow in new ways as I saw the deeper truth underlying the reality of God’s gracious and sovereign rule over our world. Our discussions especially helped me think through the dangers of valuing certainty over truth.

So when I read those texts, I was shocked and horrified to my very core. My good friend, my brother, wasn’t just dead – he’d taken his own life. I was shocked, because I couldn’t imagine him feeling like he couldn’t just talk to me about difficult things. I couldn’t picture him reaching that level of despair.

But then I took another step in thinking about it that I found later many of my friends who’d known Jarod were also doing: I began asking myself, “What would drive me to that level?” I know my sin tendencies. I am well aware of the ways in which I tend to fall when life’s pressures are turned up. Is there a fear, a frustration, a doubt that could grow like a weed in my heart to the point that I begin to believe I can’t dare confide in someone else? Or that even if I do find that someone, that my life is about to be blown open in irreversible ways?

I don’t know. I don’t think any of us truly know the depths of our own hearts, and only God can say He knows us to that level. So grief and confusion become mingled with a flavor of fear and self-doubt in such a time. And then there’s the anger. Anger at myself for not pursuing our friendship harder than I had been in the days leading up to it. For not somehow knowing what even his closest family didn’t know. And anger at him, for not knowing – he could have come to me. To someone.

Honestly there are lots of questions I’ve wrestled with over the course of the last week. But as I do, I find myself sitting in the dirt with Job, my hand over my mouth. My wisdom is so small, and I certainly have no special insight into his mind in those last moments. All I do know is God’s character. I know God is merciful and kind. I know His grace is greater than we can imagine. I know that our salvation is His work, not our own.

And so, I grieve the loss of my friend. I grieve my brother. And I trust to God’s perfect wisdom and love for Jarod, and for myself. I’ve had dark moments in my life and I’ve known those who have died, but this is a uniquely difficult flavor of sadness. But as Paul said, I don’t grieve as one without hope. I look to the day that I will see him again. And I am incredibly grateful for all those around us who are grieving in this time who are offering comfort and wise counsel, who are helping us to turn our eyes to Jesus and find our hope there even in this dark time.

I would like to close by asking you to consider supporting his widow Morgan in this time, to help offset funeral costs and to give her what she needs as she works through this tragic period: time, to heal and to see what her next steps will be. You can find the GoFundMe being managed by one of her church leaders at this link. And if there is anyone reading this who is finding that despair growing, who is beginning to think on some level that this “permanent solution to a temporary problem” is the right choice – please, find someone to talk to. Know that you’re not alone. You can even send me an email. Our life in Christ is not made to be run on our own, but we are to bear one another’s burdens, and yours is not too great for such a grace.

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What We Believe – The Gospel in the Old Testament

In this continuing series, I am posting short papers I’ve written for my church’s elder class on different topics. This week’s paper is on finding the gospel in the Old Testament.

When I was young, I remember that at the church we went to, “preaching the gospel” referred specifically to sermons that were on the story of Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection. We weren’t a terribly expository church in terms of the approach that was taken to Scripture, and this meant that “preaching the gospel” happened maybe a couple times a year.

But the truth is, the gospel is a much bigger concept than that, and in fact, it is seen all throughout Scripture. Some take this idea and apply it in ways that go beyond good hermeneutical principles, with one more extreme example being something like, any reference to the word “rock” is a reference to Christ because Christ is the rock upon which we are to build our lives, as Jesus says in a parable in Matthew 7.

But we truly can see the gospel all throughout the Scriptures. The Old Testament constantly points ahead to the person and work of Jesus Christ, and if we look at the whole message of the gospel, we can see how this works. It’s not that every part of the Old Testament points to the entire gospel, but that it touches on different elements all throughout. To illustrate this I want to introduce a tool I’ve borrowed from the Simeon Trust preaching workshops, a truly excellent program I think everyone who aspires to teach and preach in their churches should consider taking part in at least once. That tool is what is referred to as the Eternal Gospel Timeline:

Each section of the diagram points to different points in the life and work of Jesus, from His existence in eternity past before the incarnation (“before” being a relative term of course, given the timeless nature of eternity), to the different elements of His life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and beyond – His current position as the firstborn of those who will receive eternal life, and to our future hope in His return and the restoration of creation to sinless perfection.

Using this tool, I will take three passages in view and argue how they point to different elements of the gospel as this diagram breaks it down. These aren’t intended to be exhaustive, but simply brief summaries that could be expanded upon in sermons or other settings.

Isaiah 14:1-2

This passage is a break between two long poetic sections of prophecy, running from all of chapter 13 and 14:3-21, where God pronounces judgment upon Babylon, who had taken the remaining tribes of Israel into captivity (after Assyria had taken the 10 tribes of Samaria). Prior to this section God declares that Babylon itself will be destroyed, and subsequent to it, that the king of Babylon will lose everything and fall from the greatest heights to the deepest depths.

These two verses are held to point to the return of Israel to its lands seen in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and certainly that is true, especially in the fulfillment of phrases such as “The nations will escort Israel and bring it to its homeland.” But even in those books we don’t see a total fulfillment of this prophecy in that time, because while the Israelites did return with the support of the Persian king and enjoyed their protection while they began to rebuild, they certainly did not “possess them as male and female slaves in the LORD’s land” or “make captives of their captors and…rule over their oppressors.”

The greater fulfillment in Christ can be seen in the eternal future, when there is no longer any animosity remaining between Jew and Gentile but all are one in Christ, and worship Him together in a kingdom without end. Isaiah draws this picture out further in chapter 60, as he describes Zion as the center of all human commerce and worship, where all the peoples of the world will come to pay tribute to God and to God’s own people.

Deuteronomy 26:16-19

This passage sees God summarizing the covenant to Israel, and reminding them of His promises if they fulfill the covenant and obey His laws. Of course, Israel did not do so, repeatedly falling into idolatry throughout their history. But we see this fulfilled finally in the consummation of all things, when Christ stands in the place of His people as the one who has perfectly honored and fulfilled God’s law in life, and taken on the punishment due His people in death.

In Christ we have a better Adam who we can rest in (Romans 5:12-21), and who receives glory in His triumph that we can rejoice in (Revelation 5:6-14). In Christ we find success in our desires to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, laws and ordinances, and to obey Him, and in that restoration of creation we will see that finally fulfilled before our eyes.

Psalm 88

In this desperate cry to God for help, the sons of Korah cry out with the agony of an Israelite suffering not just from an enemy’s attack, but under God’s own wrath. Death is approaching, and is here, as the psalmist pleads with God for mercy. We see throughout this psalm the agony of Jesus dying, and the mourning ache of His burial, the questions of God’s silence in the face of such a loss that weighed on His disciples’ minds in the days before His resurrection.

The heart of suffering sees its cause in God’s own will, yet also trusts to God as the one who will bring a perfect resolution to that suffering, as Jesus did. When we walk through times of suffering as believers, we see in passages like this that our circumstances are not out of God’s control, but rather, that even in this His will is accomplished. We are also reminded that to suffer in this world is a tiny thing in the face of the glory of eternity with God.

This is only a small sample, but we can use this same method to work through the entire Old Testament. Because Jesus and His work are the lynchpin of all of Scripture, He truly provides the lens through which we can understand the entire Bible, and through Him we can preach the gospel from every passage.

Take some of your favorite Old Testament passages and use the diagram above to see how it points to the gospel. Share your thoughts and questions below!