the ark of salvation Jesus Christ — John Owen

"When a soul is turned out of its self-righteousness, and begins to look abroad, and view the heaven and earth for a resting-place, and perceives an ocean, a flood, an inundation of wrath, to cover all the world, the wrath of God revealing itself from heaven against all ungodliness, so that it can obtain no rest nor abiding, — heaven it cannot reach by its own flight, and to hell it is unwilling to fall; — if now the Lord Jesus Christ do not appear as an ark in the midst of the waters, upon whom the floods have fallen, and yet has got above them all for a refuge, alas! what shall it do? When the flood fell there were many mountains glorious in the eye, far higher than the ark; but yet those mountains were all drowned, whilst the ark still kept on the top of the waters. Many appearing hills and mountains of self-righteousness and general mercy, at the first view, seem to the soul much higher than Jesus Christ, but when the flood of wrath once comes and spreads itself, all those mountains are quickly covered; only the ark, the Lord Jesus Christ though the flood fall on him also, yet he gets above it quite, and gives safety to them that rest upon him.

Let me now ask any of those poor souls who ever have been wandering and tossed with the fear of the wrath to come, whether ever they found a resting-place until they came to this:— God spared not his only Son, but gave him up to death for us all; that he made him to be sin for us; that he put all the sins of all the elect into that cup which he was to drink of; that the wrath and flood which they feared did fall upon Jesus Christ (though now, as the ark, he be above it, so that if they could get into him they should be safe). The storm hath been his, and the safety shall be theirs. As all the waters which would have fallen upon them that were in the ark fell upon the ark, they being dry and safe, so all the wrath that should have fallen upon them fell on Christ; which alone causeth their souls to dwell in safety? Hath not, I say, this been your bottom, your foundation, your resting-place? If not (for the substance of it), I fear you have but rotten bottoms."

—John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

Redemption —John Owen

“That doctrine which will not by any means suit with nor be made conformable to the thing signified by it, and the expression, literal and deductive, whereby in Scripture it is held out unto us, but implies evident contradictions unto them, cannot possibly be sound and sincere, as is the milk of the word. But now such is this persuasion of universal redemption; it can never be suited nor fitted to the thing itself, or redemption, nor to those expressions whereby in the Scripture it is held out unto us. Universal redemption, and yet many to die in captivity, is a contradiction irreconcilable in itself.

To manifest this, let us consider some of the chiefest words and phrases whereby the matter concerning which we treat is delivered in the Scripture, such as are, redemption, reconciliation, satisfaction, merit, dying for us, bearing our sins, suretiship, — his being God, a common person, a Jesus, saving to the utmost, a sacrifice putting away sin, and the like; to which we may add the importance of some prepositions and other words used in the original about this business: and doubt not but we shall easily find that the general ransom, or rather universal redemption, will hardly suit to any of them; but it is too long for the bed, and must be cropped at the head or heels.

Begin we with the word redemption itself, which we will consider, name and thing. Redemption, which in the Scripture is λύτρωσις sometimes, but most frequently ἀπολύτρωσις, is the delivery of any one from captivity and misery by the intervention λύτρου, of a price or ransom. That this ransom, or price of our deliverance, was the blood of Christ is evident; he calls it λύτρον, Matt. xx. 28; and [it is called] ἀντίλυτρον, 1 Tim. ii. 6, — that is, the price of such a redemption, that which was received as a valuable consideration for our dismission. Now, that which is aimed at in the payment of this price is, the deliverance of those from the evil wherewith they were oppressed for whom the price is paid; it being in this spiritual redemption as it is in corporal and civil, only with the alteration of some circumstances, as the nature of the thing enforceth. This the Holy Spirit manifesteth by comparing the “blood of Christ” in this work of redemption with “silver and gold,” and such other things as are the intervening ransom in civil redemption, 1 Pet. i. 18, 19. The evil wherewith we were oppressed was the punishment which we had deserved; — that is, the satisfaction required when the debt is sin; which also we are, by the payment of this price, delivered from; so Gal. iii. 13: for we are “justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” Rom. iii. 24; “in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,” Eph. i. 7; Col. i. 14. Free justification from the guilt, and pardon of sin, in the deliverance from the punishment due unto it, is the effect of the redemption procured by the payment of the price we before mentioned: as if a man should have his friend in bondage, and he should go and lay out his estate to pay the price of his freedom that is set upon his head by him that detains him, and so set him at liberty. Only, as was before intimated, this spiritual redemption hath some supereminent things in it, that are not to be found in other deliverances…

Redemption is the freeing of a man from misery by the intervention of a ransom, as appeareth. Now, when a ransom is paid for the liberty of a prisoner, is it not all the justice in the world that he should have and enjoy the liberty so purchased for him by a valuable consideration? If I should pay a thousand pounds for a man’s deliverance from bondage to him that detains him, who hath power to set him free, and is contented with the price I give, were it not injurious to me and the poor prisoner that his deliverance be not accomplished? Can it possibly be conceived that there should be a redemption of men, and those men not redeemed? that a price should be paid, and the purchase not consummated? Yet all this must be made true, and innumerable other absurdities, if universal redemption be asserted. A price is paid for all, yet few delivered; the redemption of all consummated, yet few of them redeemed; the judge satisfied, the jailer conquered, and yet the prisoner inthralled! Doubtless, “universal” and “redemption,” where the greatest part of men perish, are as irreconcilable as “Roman” and “Catholic.” If there be a universal redemption of all, then all men are redeemed. If they are redeemed, then are they delivered from all misery, virtually or actually, whereunto they were inthralled, and that by the intervention of a ransom. Why, then, are not all saved? In a word, the redemption wrought by Christ being the full deliverance of the persons redeemed from all misery, wherein they were inwrapped, by the price of his blood, it cannot possibly be conceived to be universal unless all be saved: so that the opinion of the Universalists is unsuitable to redemption.”

—John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

Christianity is the easiest and the hardest religion in the world — Francis A. Schaeffer

"We must realize that Christianity is the easiest religion in the world, because it is the only religion in which God the Father and Christ and the Holy Spirit do everything. God is the Creator; we have nothing to do with our existence, or existence of other things. We can shape other things, but we cannot change the fact of existence. We do nothing for our salvation because Christ did it all. We do not have to do anything. In every other religion we have to do something — everything from burning a joss stick to sacrificing our firstborn child to dropping a coin in the collection plate — the whole spectrum. But with Christianity we do not do anything; God has done it all: He has created us and He has sent His Son; His Son died and because the Son is infinite, therefore He bears our total guilt. We do not need to bear our guilt, nor do we even have to merit the merit of Christ. He does it all. So in one way it is the easiest religion in the world.

But now we can turn that over because it is the hardest religion in the world for the same reason. The heart of the rebellion of Satan and man was the desire to be autonomous; and accepting the Christian faith robs us not of our existence, not of our worth (it gives us our worth), but it robs us completely of being autonomous. We did not make ourselves, we are not a product of chance, we are none of these things; we stand there before a Creator plus nothing, we stand before the Savior plus nothing — it is a complete denial of being autonomous. Whether it is conscious or unconscious (and in the most brilliant people it is occasionally conscious), when they see the sufficiency of the answers on their own level, they suddenly are up against their innermost humanness — not humanness as they were created to be human, but human in the bad sense since the Fall.  That is the reason that people do not accept the sufficient answers and why they are counted by God as disobedient and guilty when they do not bow.

People are living against the revelation of themselves. They are denying the revelation of God they themselves and all reality are.  They are denying it and yet they have to live with it. When the person comes to see that there are good and sufficient reasons, then he or she is faced with a problem; either they bow before those good and sufficient reasons, and bow to the Person behind the reasons, or they refuse to bow.
It is not that the answers are not good, adequate and sufficient.  Unless one gives up one’s autonomy, one cannot accept the answers."

— Francis A. Schaeffer (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books.

kerygma, that is, basic gospel facts — James Montgomery Boice

"Peter had a chance to give a brief sermon in his defense before the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:29-32). The sermon contains what in formal New Testament studies has come to be called the kerygma, the fixed structure to almost all New Testament presentations of the gospel message.

C. H. Dodd distinguished kerygma from didachē, which means “teaching.” 

The latter word refers mostly to ethical instruction, the kind of thing we find in the Sermon on the Mount and large portions of the New Testament letters. 

Kerygma, by contrast, refers to the basic gospel facts. These facts include: Christ’s death for sins, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension to heaven, and his appearance in his resurrected form to chosen witnesses. We find perhaps the clearest example of this proclamation pattern in 1 Corinthians 15. But it is also found elsewhere and is the basic structure for the four Gospels. It is precisely what we find in Peter’s short sermon to the Sanhedrin:

  •      The crucifixion: “whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 5:30)
  •      The resurrection: “God … raised Jesus from the dead” (v. 30)
  •      The ascension: “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior” (v. 31)
  •      The witnesses: “We are witnesses of these things” (v. 32)

Where is the ethical teaching of the New Testament? It is not present. Most of what Jesus taught in the Gospels was ethical teaching—sometimes in the form of parables, sometimes in more formal discourses. But when we come to this early Christian preaching we find that the apostles did not do as he did. Why not? Did they consider Jesus’ ethical teaching unimportant?

Obviously, the reason the disciples began with the kerygma is that they knew, as we should also know, that a person must first come to Jesus Christ as Savior before he or she can take on the burden of his teachings. It is true that we cannot have one without the other. But unless a person first believes on Jesus as his or her Savior and thus has the new life of Christ within, that person cannot even begin to live the life Christ commanded. As a matter of fact, unless you first confess your sin and find forgiveness, you only go on into increasing sin, which is what these leaders did.

The apostles did not tell the Sadducees to “do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Instead they told them to repent of their sin and come to Jesus Christ for cleansing from it. That is the message we have been given for a perishing world today."

— James Montgomery Boice, Acts: An expositional commentary (108–109). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

remembering our justification, redemption, & reconciliation — Elyse Fitzpatrick

2 Peter 1:1-13

“One reason we do not grow in ordinary, grateful obedience as we should is that we’ve got amnesia; we’ve forgotten that we were cleansed from our sins. In other words, Apostle Peter is saying that on-going failure in our sanctification (the slow process of change into Christlikeness) is the direct result of failing to remember God’s love for us in the gospel (2 Peter 1:1-13). If we lack the comfort and assurance that His love and cleansing are meant to supply, our failures will handcuff us to yesterday’s sins, and we won’t have faith or courage to fight against them, or the love for God that’s meant to empower this war. Please don’t miss the import of Peter’s statement. If we fail to remember our justification, redemption, and reconciliation, we will struggle in our sanctification.” — Elyse Fitzpatrick

our faith rests in His labors — A.W. Tozer

“So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” Hebrews 4:9-11

“The quality of our Christian faith is in direct proportion to our resting in God, which is a result of totally embracing His finished work… The majority of Christians frantically try to be what God wants them to be but will never be until they rest, that is, cease from their own labors & enter into His finished labor…

If you were in debt to the government for unpaid income tax you would be properly worried. Yet, if somebody came along and said, “Here, you owe $10,000 in back taxes, and the government is breathing down your neck; I will take care of it for you. I will pay your debt. Here is the receipt.” You certainly would rest, wouldn’t you? You would relax for the first time and sleep well at night. You would say, “I am not worried when I see a police officer anymore. I am not thinking he is after me. He is just walking down the street, looking for criminals, and I am all right. I have earned rest of mind; I have entered into my rest. Not mine, but the rest of another.” That is exactly what the Bible teaches here.

The Christian’s rest is based upon the work of another. It is not his own work, for that he could never do. It is the work of another, who is capable of earning that rest, capable of procuring it. The Christian is not capable; nobody is capable. You and I cannot deal with the matter of holiness outraged. We cannot deal with a matter of justice violated. We cannot take care of question of sins committed and a moral debt… The debt we already owe is so great that it would send us into hell. So now we have to pay that before we can rest. We owe a debt we cannot pay, not to a government but to God Almighty, to the eternal God…

I believe the Bible is clear in stating that we cannot pay our own debt… What happens then? There is someone who comes and lays down His life, the just for the unjust, who pays the debt that He did not owe and includes in that debt all of our debts. He propitiates for violated holiness; He atones for justice that is broken. He does all of this. He is capable of it…

We either have to satisfy God’s holiness, satisfy His violated justice and pay the moral debt, or we have to have somebody do it for us. The book of Hebrews declares that somebody did it for us. The eternal Son did that work.

Many people do not want this kind of rest. They want another kind… Many people are anxious to do meritorious deeds… We want to go out and do something big. When we come to think of God and the things of carnal world, we want to do virtuous deeds. We want to be known as a virtuous person…

I heard a Methodist bishop once say that he had found, as a pastor, that 70 percent of his parishioners were not ready for heaven. They had to cram for the examination at the last minute before they felt free to get in. They were not resting in what Christ has done. They were vaguely hoping about what they might do or had done. Somebody heard the bishop and said, “Bishop, are you not a bit rough there when you said 70 percent? Is that right?”

He said, “I am telling you the truth. It’s 70 percent.” Then he said, “I counted them. Only about 30 percent of my parishioners were ready to go.”

More than two-thirds of those who went to church for a lifetime, sang the hymns of Zion, heard the Scriptures read, listened to prayers and engaged in them and heard great preaching (for there were great preachers in those days). But when they came to die, they had not entered into rest. They could not go without fear.

I want God to lead me to a place where there is no fear in dying because I am resting in God, resting in what Jesus Christ has done for me. God did His work and entered into His rest. His Son Jesus Christ did another work, and we enter into that rest. Let us see that we do it.

When I rest wholly and completely in Jesus Christ and His finished work, faith leaps up and alleviates from me the frantic labor of trying to make it. I rest perfectly and securely in the labor of Jesus Christ.”

— A.W. Tozer, A Disruptive Faith: Expect God to Interrupt Your Life

“Cleave to Jesus Christ in affection and love all your days” – Christopher Love

“11. Cleave to Jesus Christ in affection and love all your days.
Why do children love their parents by instinct of nature? Because they have their life from them. Here let grace incline your hearts. You have a life from Christ; O love Christ! You have a glorified life from Christ, O glorify Christ! It is reported of the elephant that because it lacks one bone in its back if the creature falls it can never rise again but must there languish and die. A sleeping elephant fell down and could not rise, but lay there endeavoring for life to get up and could not. A traveler upon the way seeing this had compassion upon the creature and put to his strength and helped him up. The elephant, by the instinct of nature, to requite the man for his kindness, followed the man to his dying day, and historians say that when this man died the elephant lay upon his master’s grave and there died where his master died. This elephant resembles fallen Adam, and all us fallen in Adam. We so fell that the fall broke all our bones. We could never rise by our own strength. Now Jesus Christ, the good Samaritan, came by and, seeing us broken by our fall, put forth His helping hand and raised us from a state of death to a condition of life. If the elephant would requite the man for his kindness, O how should you requite your Savior, when you would have fallen into hell had not He put forth His helping hand! O cleave to Christ, and love that Christ who is the author and cause of so glorious a life!”

– Christopher Love, The Works of Christopher Love: Volume 1