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following message was delivered at
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structure may appear to vary from accepted English conventions. This is due primarily to the techniques
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intent and prayer that the Holy Spirit will use this transcription to
strengthen and encourage the true Church of Jesus Christ.
Who Chose Whom?
Copyright 1997
by
John MacArthur Jr.
All rights reserved.
What a privilege and honor it is this morning to address you again from the
Word of God on such a marvelous theme as the doctrine of election. Churches
today are struggling through a severe identity crisis. Many churches, many
church leaders and pastors are trying to figure out what style to follow, what
mode to follow. Trendy new options compete with ancient ones. They capture the
commitment of churches, and leaders, and believers. And there is in the midst
of this is a sad and, I think, needless confusion with regard to the character
of the church, usually based on some notion that somehow culture creates the
church, culture informs ministry, style produces spirituality, things like
that.
As
we think about settling the matter of the churches identity, I really believe
we have to go back to the heart of that identity which is bound up in the
eternal decree of God with regard to the Church, namely the doctrine of
election.
This
doctrine is at one and the same time, essential to understanding the church, and
largely resented by the church, and therein lies part of the problem. I don’t
think it’s wrong to assume that most people, who call themselves believers, do
not accept the doctrine of sovereign election, and this fact alone skews
severely their ecclesiology. So what we’re talking about here is not something
esoteric, but what we’re talking about in this discussion is something
completely endemic to the character and nature of the church, which informs how
we do ministry.
The
pervasive notion of skeptics and enemies of this doctrine is that the doctrine
of election is unfair and we’ve all heard that. But that of course is when you
measure it by some feeble, fallen, human judgment. God is not to be measured by
any human standard. Psalm 50:21 says, “You thought that I was altogether like
you.” What a foolish idea that is. We remember the words of the Apostle
When
we talk about fairness in the matter of the doctrine of election we immediately
have to set aside all human considerations and talk about the nature of God and
What is Divine Justice?
Simply stated it is an essential attribute of God whereby He infinitely and
perfectly just in Himself, of Himself, for Himself, from Himself, by Himself
and none other, does what He wants.
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As William Perkins said, many years ago, “We must not think that God
does a thing because it’s good and right, but rather is the thing good and
right because God wills it and works it.” God defines for us what
is justice, because God is by nature just and righteous, and what He
does reflects that nature. His own freewill and nothing else is behind His
justice, so whatever He wills, is just, and it is just, because He wills it,
not because it is just, and therefore He wills it. Now as we think about the
justice of God being representative of His character and not subject to fallen
assumptions, we begin to understand that God in the nature of His own sovereignty
defines everything that He does, as not only just, but perfect. The Creator
owes nothing to the creature, not even what He is graciously pleased to give.
So God does exactly what God chooses to do . . . that is what it means to be
God.
We
could talk a little bit about the idea, of course that salvation is not a
matter of justice . . . and aren’t we glad for that . . . but it is in a sense
because Jesus Christ had to pay the just price for sin, in order that grace
might be extended to us. But salvation, of course, is for all of us who are
fallen sinners, deserving of nothing but eternal damnation—really a matter, not
of justice, but of mercy and grace, which requires justice, but comes to us in
the form of mercy and pure grace.
Setting aside that discussion for the moment, simply
referring to it because it is commonly brought up. I want to do some things
this morning that I hope will make this doctrine real to you and powerful in
your life. First of all, I just want to touch lightly on the doctrine itself as
it is laid out in Scripture, and then I want to define it more deeply as to its
nature, in a way that I think has tremendous impact for us.
The
idea that God does what He wants, and that what He does is true and right
because He does it, is behind, of course, the understanding of everything in
the Scripture and certainly it is behind the doctrine of election. But we
cannot isolate the doctrine of election, from election of the church, in regard
to us from every other thing that God chooses to do. Because in the whole,
large picture, God elects everything that He does. Everything that God does, He does because He
chooses to do it and His choices are free from any influence outside Himself.
So the doctrine of election fits into this broader comprehension of a sovereign
God, by His own nature, doing whatever He chooses to do. That is the broadest
perspective.
When
you open the pages of the Bible you see that repeatedly, in the very act of
creation, God creates exactly what He wants to create in exactly the way He
wants to create it, allowing for the very things that occurred in human
history, in order that He might accomplish the redemptive plan, which He had
previously designed. Everything fits into the unfolding purpose of God.
He
chose, in the Old Testament, as you know, a nation,
This
is nothing new. Christ is called Christ, “mine elect.” The angels are “elect
angels.” God has chosen from the very beginning everything that fits into the
unfolding purposes—the uninfluenced purposes of His own sovereignty. When you
come to the New Testament then you are not surprised, that when His own “elect”
Redeemer arrives into this world and begins to carve out the unfolding plan of
redemption, that the New Testament outlines and the marvelous reality of the
Church, we shouldn’t be at all surprised that this is an “elect” body, because
that is consistent with the way that God has always operated. And so throughout
the New Testament you have references to the church as the “elect” . . .
repeatedly through the New Testament. “
And
have we any right to say to the potter, “You can’t make the pot the way you
want to make it?” We’d better put our hands over our mouths and be silent to
question God’s sovereign purposes. We read in the epistles, the expression of
election, in terms of a “call,” and after the study that I have made through
the years of the New Testament, I think it is accurate to say, and I think John
Murray has a section, if I remember on this, in one of his books . . . every
reference to the “call,” to a “calling,” in the epistles of the New Testament,
is in fact an “effectual call” of the elect to salvation. The church then is
called to be “elect.”
In
Ephesians, chapter one, “we were predestined in Him by His love, before the
foundation of the world, that we might be brought to faith in Christ.” In First
Thessalonians,
I
heard of a prominent preacher recently, who said that, “Calvinism, and in the
main, the doctrine of sovereign election and what flows out of it, is the
single greatest danger to the church today.” Now if you believe that, you have
a warped view of the church, to say nothing of missing the point on election.
That has tremendous implications for how you do ministry. If you don’t believe that
God is the Sovereign One who is determining who is being saved, then you must
believe it’s your job. I’d be out of the ministry if I was an Arminian. I don’t
want that responsibility.
In
Luke, chapter 4, verse seventeen, an interesting little incident occurred . . .
with tremendous impact, Jesus is speaking in the synagogue in
They
knew Joseph; they didn’t know anything about Joseph that could cause his son to
be so special, as they were noting this man to be. And then He did this . . .
He said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal
yourself; whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your home town as
well.’” Now that you have identified me as a very special person and you are
all speaking well . . . you’re going to want me to do some miracles here,
you’re going to want me to demonstrate my supernatural power. And He said, “Truly
I say to you, no prophet is welcome in His own home town.” And then He says
this, “But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days
of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great
famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but
only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon,
to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in
What
kind of an answer is that? What’s He saying to them? “God hasn’t determined for
Me to heal everybody. God will decide what widow gets
healed and God will decide what leper gets healed. It’s not up to you. It’s up
to Him. You may expect me to do in your town, what was done in
Well,
little has changed in some places. I suppose that, “so far, so good,” down
through verse 19, the real question was, would they
tolerate sovereign grace? Would they tolerate God’s selectivity? Respectable
worshipers of the synagogue even hated this truth. In Revelation 19:6, we are
told, The Lord God, omnipotent reigneth in Heaven and
earth . . . He is the controller and disposer of all creatures . . . is the
most High . . . He rules amid the armies of the Heavens and none can stay His
hand or say to Him, ‘What doest Thou?’ He is the Almighty who works all things
after the council of His will . . . He is the heavenly Potter who takes hold of
fallen humanity, and in His hands makes a lump of clay into something that
becomes a vessel unto honor, and another is a vessel unto dishonor. In short,
He is the decider and the determiner of every man’s destiny, the controller of
every detail in every individual’s life, which is another way of saying, “He is
God.”
Frankly
the only reason to believe in election is because it is found explicitly in
God’s Word. No man and no committee of men originated this doctrine. It’s like
the doctrine of eternal punishment, it conflicts with
the dictates of the carnal mind. It’s repugnant to the sentiments of the
unregenerate heart. And like the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the
miraculous birth of our Savior, the truth of election, because it has been
revealed by God, must be embraced with simple and unquestioning faith. If you
have a Bible and you believe it, you have no choice.
Even
the foreknowledge that Peter refers to is not to be confused with foresight,
thus making man sovereign, deserving of some credit for making a good choice, seeking
God on his own terms and making God some kind of a reactor who is in Heaven
saying, “Oh come on guys, please . . . you know I’d really like it to work out
this way.” The term “foreknowledge,” prognosis in the Greek, is used in
1 Peter 1:20, to refer to Christ and it refers to a
deliberate choice.
Well,
those are just some general preliminaries to what I really want to say, now you can start timing me. This part counts.
Where do we begin to understand, with reference to the Church, the
doctrine of election?
Let’s
begin in Matthew, in a very, very prominent and familiar place, Matthew 16:18, and I have so much to say, I am going to try to talk as
fast as I can and squeeze it in. Matthew 16:18, Jesus said this, starting in
the middle of the verse, “I will build My church and
the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.” There is a monumental statement, “I
will build My church . . . ” It’s a statement of
certainty, it’s a statement of intimacy. “My church,” it’s a statement of
invincibility. “The gates of Hades,” which is a Jewish euphemism for death, if
Hades is the abode of the dead, then the gate is how you get in there, and the
way you get into the abode of the dead is by dying, so it’s just a euphemism
for death, which of course is Satan’s greatest weapon. Jesus is saying, “I will
build My church and the worst that can be done to stop
it, the execution of my people, will not overpower it.” This is a very, very
straightforward promise. The immutable, sovereign, faithful, gracious,
omnipotent Lord of Heaven, whose Word can never return void, but always
accomplishes the purpose to which He sends it, whose plans always come to pass,
whose will is ultimately fulfilled, whose plan is in the end invincible, has
spoken and said, “I will build my church,” nothing can prevent that.
Now,
let’s look back a little bit. Go to Titus, chapter 1, and see how the whole
thing sort of started. Titus, chapter 1. Often we pass
over the introductory parts of
And
then he says this, my ministry, basically is divided into three categories.
First, my ministry unfolds,
1.
For the Faith of the Elect of God.
He’s talking here about the evangelistic emphasis of his ministry. He’s talking
about the matter of justification being the initial objective,
he is to bring the message of the Gospel in order that men might be justified
before God. And he simply says this, “I preach the Gospel so that the elect can
hear it and believe.” That’s exactly what he’s saying. I preach the Gospel so
the elect can hear it and believe. There is that emphasis in my ministry that
is directed at justification.
2.
The Emphasis on Sanctification
He
says, then secondly, I bring the knowledge of the truth which is according to
godliness. There is the ministry of evangelism and there is the ministry of
edification. I bring the Gospel to the elect so they can hear and believe, I bring the truth of God to those who believe so that they
can move toward godliness.
3. Glorification
Thirdly, verse 2. He also emphasizes the hope
of eternal life and therein lies the third emphasis in
his ministry and that is glorification, the ministry of glorification which
brings about immense encouragement in the face of difficulty in this life.
And
here are the three dimensions of salvation, justification, sanctification and
glorification. This is the salvific [Having the intention or power
to bring about salvation or redemption] character of his ministry and as an apostle of
Jesus Christ, he brought the whole counsel—God’s justifying work, His
sanctifying work, and His glorifying work. He said to those who heard him: the
Gospel of Christ with great clarity, so the elect could hear and believe, and
then those who believed, he taught the truth so they could become godly, and
then he showed them what was to come in the hope of eternal life, which gave
them great encouragement in the midst of difficulty.
He
emphasized those three familiar things. Justification, you are saved from the
penalty of sin. Sanctification, you are being saved from the power of sin.
Glorification, you will one day be saved from the presence of sin. This is the
fullness of salvation which was the heart and soul of his ministry. But I want
you to notice the key is at the end of verse two.
This
whole unfolding miracle of salvation comes from God who cannot lie and it says
at the end of verse two, “He promised it”, and this is the Greek, “before time
began.” He promised it before time began. Now when I read that the first time,
I sat back in my little chair and I thought to myself, “To whom?” Before time
began, to whom did He make that promise? Not to me, or any other human being
because we weren’t created. And I think the best understanding of Scripture
would probably put the creation of angels at approximately the same moment in
unfolding eternal history, if you can get a concept like that. Pre-time. The creation of angels . . . probably about that same time.
And it certainly wouldn’t have been promised to angels anyway, because there is
no redemption for angels, right? So, if they weren’t there, it couldn’t have
been promised to them, and if they were there, it wasn’t promised to them. And
that leaves us with the question, to whom did He make this promise?
2
Timothy, chapter one, introduces us to a dimension of it, I think, that helps
answer the question. The end of verse 8, God is referred to, and it says, “God
Who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our
works, but according to His own purpose and grace” . . . follow this . . . “which was granted us in Christ Jesus” . . .
and here is the exact same Greek phrase, “before time began.” To whom did God
make this promise? It’s an “inter-Trinitarian” promise. I believe, uniquely, it
involved a promise from the Father to the Son, from the Father to the Son. I’m treading on sacred ground,
as best I can understand it feebly, and I’ll try to support that in a moment
from the Gospel of John, let me just give you the picture.
In
the feeble understandings of the anthropomorphic ideas, there was a moment in
eternity where the Father determined to express His infinite and perfect love
to the Son, and we can understand that there is an inter-Trinitarian love, the
likes of which is incomprehensible and inscrutable to us. But this we know
about love . . . it gives. And at some eternal moment the Father desired to
express His perfect love for the Son, and the way He determined to express
that, was to give to the Son a redeemed humanity as a love gift. A redeemed humanity whose purpose would be, forever and ever,
throughout all the eons of eternity, to praise and glorify the Son and serve
Him perfectly.
That
was the Father’s love gift. To express His love, He wanted to give a redeemed
humanity. Evidently the angels wouldn’t suffice to be in Heaven praising the
Son, because there were characteristics of the Son, for which they could never
praise Him, because they had never fallen and they had never been redeemed. And
because it’s in the nature of God to be gracious, He must manifest that grace
and be exalted for it forever and ever and ever.
He
wanted to give a love gift to the Son and so He predetermined to do that. Not
only did He predetermine to do it, but He predetermined who would make up that
redeemed humanity and He wrote their names down in a book of life before the
world began. And He said this is the love gift I want to give to you, and they
will forever and ever and ever praise and glorify your name.
When
you get a glimpse into heaven, in the book of Revelation, what are they doing
up there? What are the saints saying up there? “Worthy is the lamb” . . . and I
think that’s just a glimpse of what’s going to go on up there forever. The
Father then determined to give a redeemed humanity as a love gift to the Son,
which means, if I can be so bold as to say it, you and I are somewhat
incidental to the real issue here.
Salvation
is primarily for the honor of the Son, not the honor of the sinner. The purpose
here is not to save you so you can have a happy life, that’s a by-product. The
purpose here is to save you so that you could praise the Son forever and ever
and ever. Just to further understand this, turn in the Gospel of John to what
has to be a most remarkable insight with few parallels into this very theme.
In
John chapter six, Jesus says this, (verse 37) “All that the Father,” what? “gives” who? Just
mark that in your mind. “All that the Father,” what? “gives
Me.” Now, that’s exactly what I’ve been saying. Every redeemed individual is a
part of an elect, redeemed humanity that is a gift from the Father to the Son.
“All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me.” Why?
I’ll tell you why. Verse 44. “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who has sent Me draws him.” So all that the Father gives are drawn. All who are drawn,
come. All who come, I receive and I’ll never turn one of them down. Why would
the Son turn down a love gift from the Father.
It’s
not because you’re so inherently desirable. It’s because you are a gift from
the Father to the Son. It is the infinite love of the Son for the Father, it is the perfect gratitude for the expression of
that love by the Father that opens the arms of the Son to embrace the gift.
“All that the Father gives shall come and all that come, I receive.”
And
there’s more. Verse 39. “This is the will of Him who
sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose none,
but raise him up on the last day.”
So
here’s how it works. The Father chooses, writes the names down in the Lamb’s
Book of Life, of who that redeemed humanity will be, to be given to the Son as
an expression of love, then in time the Father draws. When the Father draws,
the sinners come, when the sinners come, the Son receives them. When the Son
receives them, He keeps them and raises them the last day, to bring the plan to
fruition. He must do this, according to verse 38, “I’ve come down from Heaven,
not to do My own will, (not to fulfill some plan of My
own,) but the will of Him who sent Me.” “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I lose none, but raise them
up on the last day.”
Inherent
in this whole doctrine, you understand is the doctrine of the security of the
believer, the perseverance of the saints . . . right? . . . because
it’s all built into the plan. He holds His own that have been given to Him by
the Father. He has lost none of them and never will. He’ll bring them all the
way to resurrection. Why? Because they are love gifts from
the Father. They are precious, not so much inherently in who they are, but they are precious in the fact that they
are expressions of the Father’s perfect love to Him for the purpose of
glorifying and honoring and serving Him throughout all eternity. And the Son
will keep them. He’ll hold onto them. And if there is a circumstance that would
be more than they could
Go
to the seventeenth chapter of John. I think this is one of the most remarkable
components of this thing. Jesus is anticipating the cross and He realizes that
there is going to be a period of separation from God, expressed of course in
those provocative words, “My God, My God, why have You
forsaken Me?” And there are elements of that experience which He has never had
heretofore, and who is He concerned about? He can say on the cross, “Into Thy
hands I commit My Spirit.” He had no problem in trusting God with Himself.
In
John seventeen He entrusts, not Himself to God, but His own. After all He had
the responsibility to hold onto them and lose none of them and raise them up at
the last day, and now He’s going to go through some kind of deep water, the
likes of which He has not heretofore experienced and He is concerned about what
could happen to them in the interval in which He might not be able to attend to
them.
Look
at verse nine. He’s praying for them, for His own who are in the world. Verse
seven, we’ll start at verse seven, “Now they have come to know that everything
Thou hast given Me is from Thee; for the words which
Thou gavest Me I have given to them; they received
them and truly understood that I came forth from Thee, and they believed that
Thou did send Me.” These are My own because of faith .
. . now verse nine . . . “I ask on their
behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world . . . ,” I’m not concerned about
them, isn’t that an amazing statement? They’re not mine! “But I ask on behalf
of those whom Thou hast given Me.” There’s that same
concept. “ . . . for they are Thine.”
. . . .and You gave them to Me and I’m not going to
lose them. But I’m going to go through something here and I don’t know what’s
going to happen to them when I’m not, even for a moment, there to hold them.
Verse
eleven. “I’m no more in the world; yet they themselves are in the world . . .
I’m leaving . . . they are going to be here and I come to Thee Holy Father” . .
. and here is the main request of this whole chapter . . . “keep them in Thy
name.” Is that an incredible statement?
“Lord, I can’t hold them for whatever moment, I’m going to be
Verse 15. Was Jesus anticipating a window of opportunity for
Satan? Verse 15. “I do not ask Thee to take them out
of the world, but to keep them from . . . what? . . . the
evil one.” Isn’t it incredible to realize that if you were out of the care of
God for a moment you could be catapulted into perdition? In verse 24, “Father,
I desire that they also . . . here it is again . . . whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I Am, in order that they may behold My
glory.” You see that’s the point!
“I
want them to be able to behold My glory! I want them
to worship Me and serve Me and honor Me, which Thou
hast given Me.” Why did He give them to the Son . . . verse 24, end of the
verse . . . “For Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world.” There’s the whole
key. The Father’s perfect love for the Son. The Father
determines to give the Son a redeemed humanity. The Father gives the Son the
redeemed humanity, and says “hold onto them.” The Son has a moment in which He
fears they won’t have His attention and says, “Oh, Father just guard them for
that moment. You gave them to Me. They’re precious to Me because they’re your love gift.”
Do
you understand that this doctrine of election is WAY beyond us? WAY out of our
capabilities to comprehend. We are all caught up in inter-Trinitarian
expressions of love that are unfathomable.
Now,
there’s more, Romans 8 . . . Romans 8:29 “For whom He foreknew” . . . there’s
that idea of foreordination . . . “For
whom He foreknew, He also predestined. And He predestined them to become
conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the prototokos
[firstborn] among many brethren.
This
is mind-boggling, this is just incredible. Two things I want to point out in
verse 29 among the many things that could be addressed, we were predestined to
be conformed to the image of His Son. Now listen to this, when God predestined
us by His elective purpose, He didn’t predestine us to the beginning of our
salvation, He predestined us to the end of it. Okay? It doesn’t say He
predestined them to be justified. It says He predestined them to be conformed
to the image of His Son, and when is that going to happen? When we see Him, 1
John says, and we are like Him. That’s going to happen at the glorious
manifestation of the sons of God, that’s going to happen, Philippians 3:20 and
21, “when this vile body is gone and we receive a body like unto His body” . .
. right?
So
here is the other component, not only is God saving a pre-chosen, redeemed
humanity who will forever and ever and ever praise and glorify the Son and
serve Him and honor Him, but, listen to this, they will be made like Him. And
the supreme compliment is imitation . . . right? So Christ then becomes the
Chief One, the prototokos among many who are
made like Him. What does that mean?
Look,
as much as glorified humanity can be like incarnate deity, we’ll be like Christ
and He will not be ashamed to call us brothers. When we get to Heaven . . .
This
is the elective purpose of God and nobody’s going to fall through the cracks.
In the one moment of all of redemptive history, where there might have been a
potential for the evil one to intercept the plan, the Son, when He passed out
of a moment’s responsibility, turned us over to the care of the Father. The
plan will come to pass.
There’s
a remarkable conclusion to this. In 1 Corinthians 15 . . . in 1 Corinthians 15,
this is indeed some grand language . . . 1 Corinthians 15:27 “There is coming a
time, in the future, when the last enemy is abolished,” verse 26, “death, when
Christ will reign, because all the enemies will be under His feet,” verse 25.
Verse 27, “there’s a time coming when He will have put all things in subjection
under His feet,” the King of the Universe will take His rightful throne, He
will unroll the scroll, the title deed to the earth and He will take back the
universe that is His and everything is put into subjection, and all the
redeemed humanity are gathered into glory and all the redeemed humanity are
made like Jesus Christ, and all of them are there in the fullness of the glory
. . . and verse 28 . . . “and when all of that is done, then the Son, Himself,
also, will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him that God may
be all in all.” You say, “What is that saying?”
What’s
that saying . . . is that when the whole love gift of the redeemed humanity has
been given to Jesus Christ, then Jesus Christ takes that redeemed humanity and
including Himself, and gives it all back to the Father as a reciprocal
expression of the same infinite love.
You
can’t take the doctrine of election as if it were some little piece of
something and stick it over in a corner and debate whether it’s true or not.
This is the whole of redemptive history. It’s at the heart of all of it and do
you understand, that understanding is at the heart of
what the church is. That informs how I treat other believers, doesn’t it? No
wonder Jesus said you’d better be careful never to lead another believer, one
of my children into sin, you’d be better off dead! Do you understand who you
are dealing with? That informs evangelism, that
defines for me, my task.
Now,
there’s one component that I haven’t brought up, but I need to. Jesus played a
role in this whole thing, didn’t He? The Father had to get to the point where
He said to the Son, “in order to make this happen, I have to ask you to do
something. You need to go into the world and be the offering for their sins.”
And when He said in John 6, He came into the world to do the Father’s will, He
wasn’t saying, “this is Thursday and I’ve got three appointments that He’s set
for me.” What He was saying is “I came to die”.
Do
you understand how precious the Church is? It’s precious because it’s a love
gift from the Father to the Son, secondly, it’s
precious because of what it cost the Son to receive the gift. How precious is
it? Two verses and I’m going to close with this, two verses explain how
precious it is. Second Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ,” . . . it’s so gracious of Him to do this, in partnership in the
Father’s plan . . . “that though He was rich, yet for your sake, He became
poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” He was rich. How rich,
well, how rich is God? Boundlessly rich, infinitely rich, yet for your sakes,
that you might become rich . . . now you can’t equivocate here . . . He was
rich, spiritually with the riches of God and He did something in order that you
might become spiritually rich with the riches of God. Same
riches. And what did He do? He became what? Poor.
In
reading
The
poverty being spoken of here is not earthly economics. It is a divestiture of
His prerogatives as deity. We’re not talking about the fact that He didn’t have
much money, the fact of the matter is, if that was the saving issue, then He
should have been poorer than He was. After all He was raised in a family that
had their own home, that father had his own business, He certainly wasn’t a
beggar, He traveled with a group of men that didn’t have a lot, but that was
because they were itinerate preachers, before that time they all had a trade.
Jesus probably had learned His father’s trade and would have been an
outstanding carpenter, obviously. He was no beggar.
The
issue here is not economic conditions. The gospel can no more be equated with
financial poverty on Jesus part than it can be equated with His pain on the
cross. Those are incidental. Such matters may tug at the heart of human emotion
and elicit some sympathy, but have nothing to do with salvation. The poverty
here, is the poverty of the kenosis [The relinquishment of the form of God by Jesus taking
on the form of man and suffering death] . . . the poverty defined in Philippians 2, “He
thought it not something to hold onto to be equal with God, but voluntarily
stripped Himself of that and took upon Himself the form of a servant, and was
found in fashion as a man even to the point of death.”
How
poor? One other verse . . . 2 Corinthians 5. This
verse is, this is just so rich and I may be treading on someone else’s theme
here a little bit, but I can’t resist this. 2 Corinthians
Can
I just briefly take you through . . . He, being God, “made Him who knew no sin”
. . . who’s that? . . . you don’t have a lot of options, frankly. “He made Him who
knew no sin . . . He made Him who knew no sin,” the Greek says, “sin.”
What
does that mean? You ever think about that? What does it mean? I was reading
some material and listening to some tapes by some of the “Word-Faith” quote,
unquote, teachers. This is what they espoused. On the cross, they said, Jesus
became a sinner AND He needed to go to Hell for three days to have His sins
expiated through punishment after which God released Him to the resurrection.
Is that what it means that He became sin? Somebody will say, “Well that’s
ignorant.” It’s more than ignorant, it’s blasphemous.
Do
you understand that hanging on the cross He was as spotless,
and sinless and perfect as ever before or ever since? He wasn’t guilty of
anything. If He was guilty of anything He couldn’t have died for us. He was the
spotless lamb of God without blemish. Hanging on that
cross, He was not a sinner. You say, “Well in what sense was He made sin?” One simple sense. And if you grasp this you’re going to
grasp the whole point, I think.
On
the cross Jesus was guilty of nothing, but God treated Jesus as if He had
committed personally every sin, ever committed by every person who would ever
believe. Do you grasp that? God treated Him personally as if He had
committed every sin ever committed by every person who would ever believe,
though in fact, He committed none of them. That’s what substitution means. And
then God exploded the full fury of His wrath against all the sins of all who
will ever believe, against Jesus, and exhausted His wrath on Him. He was no
sinner. God treated Him as if He was.
And the other side? In order that . . . He did
it on our behalf . . . in order that we might become the righteousness of God
in Him. Listen to this. People say, “Well, why did Jesus have to live all those
years? Why didn’t He just come into the world and die?” Because
He needed to live a perfect life. He needed to fulfill all
righteousness. Why? So that His life could be imputed to us.
I’ve got news for you, you’re not righteous. Do you understand that? You’re not
righteous. The people sitting around you know that. People living in your house
know that, we all know that. You’re not righteous. Are you ready for this? On
the cross, Jesus wasn’t a sinner . . . God treated Him as if He was, and you’re
not righteous, but He treats you as if you are. Are you ready for this? On the
cross, He treated Jesus as if He lived your life, so that He could treat you as
if you had lived His. That’s imputation, that’s substitution. And Jesus came
and became that poor, to exchange His life for yours in order to fulfill the
elective plan of God. That He might do the will of God perfectly and in the end
give back to God, the very love gift that the Father had given to Him. Let us
pray.
Father,
we contemplate this great, immense doctrine. It is pride crushing. It is God
exalting. It is joy producing. It is privilege granting. It is holiness
promoting. It is strength giving. And, oh, God, the only thing that remains is
that we would look at our own lives, as Peter said, and make our calling and
election sure. To that end we pray for every soul here, for your glory and
honor. Amen.
Added to the John MacArthur Collection located at:
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