12 Ways We See Christ’s Infinite Wisdom
Christ is fully equipped and qualified to do all that He has purposed for His people. There is nothing required for the work which He does not have. David Dickson imagines a poor soul asking, “Christ may be able to do all I need; but is He willing to employ His wisdom and strength for me?” He answers that Christ not only has wisdom and strength, but He will deal prudently. He foresees all the impediments in His way, anything that could mar the work of salvation. There is no wound His soldiers get that He has no cure for. There is no adversary He does not know how to defeat. In a word, everything from eternity to eternity is managed prudently. Dickson is expounding and applying Isaiah 52:13 “Behold, my servant shall deal prudently” and in the course of doing this he brings out the way in which Christ applies His wisdom. There are twelve ways this is identified in the following updated extract (Dickson’s fifteen ways have been summarised into twelve).
1. Christ Deals with God’s Justice Wisely
The justice of God must lose nothing, before we are reconciled or get heaven, a just God must be satisfied. Our prudent Lord answers, “If these people cannot get to heaven until justice is satisfied, behold I am come to satisfy it.” And yet the Lord’s mercy will have as great a place as it pleases; for He deals so prudently that He makes mercy and justice kiss each other. Mercy runs like a river, and justice is satisfied — is not that prudent dealing?
2. Christ Deals with God’s Law Wisely
The law says, “I will take satisfaction from Christ for past sins; but what obedience will I have for the future? Will those whom Christ has redeemed, be permitted to break me in the future?” Prudent Christ answers, “What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, for sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us.” Before the law could only get punishment for its being broken, now, it gets full obedience by Christ. Christ did not come to abolish but to fulfil the law; He came only to abolish the cursing part of it, but to establish the obeying part of it. Here is prudent dealing.
3. Christ Conquers Satan Wisely
In comes Satan the jailer and death with him; he flies at Christ to get Him overthrown. But prudent Christ destroyed him who had the power of death by the means of death. He overcomes him who had the power of death, and says, he will be the death of death.
So death lies down in the grave and all his own die and lie down with him. Satan thinks to have Christ held in this way. But He could not be held by the sorrows of death. He rises and breaks an opening with Him through death. Like Samson, He takes away the gates and bars of death and has left death neither door nor lock to hold us in. Here is prudence.
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The Secret of Contentment
When we begin to “count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:8), and when we “do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31), we experience contentment even with “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities” (2 Cor. 12:10). It is in our weakness that God’s grace and power shine brightest (vv. 9-10).
One of the most difficult things for people to do is to cease striving and rest. Yet striving after the things the human heart craves, like significance, security, and success, has not brought people contentment. Instead, people are frustrated, hate their jobs, despair of life itself, and grieve their failures and losses. The Preacher, whose words are recorded in the book of Ecclesiastes, is no stranger to such emotions. He could not stand to think that after working so hard he would have to leave it to another person to enjoy, not knowing whether that person would be wise or foolish with the assets he had worked so hard to attain (Ecc. 2:18-23). The fact that we cannot control the outcome of our endeavors, particularly after we have died, drives us crazy.
How do we learn the contentment that David learned when he testified, “O LORD, my heart is not lifted up” and “I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother” (Ps. 131:2)? David gives us the answer, “hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore” (v. 3). The Preacher gets at the same thing when he points us to God in Ecclesiastes 2:24-26.
The key to finding enjoyment in our work, as well as in eating and drinking, is to recognize that these are gifts “from the hand of God” (Ecc. 2:24). There is no enjoyment of these things apart from Him. Only the believer who is walking in His ways, pleasing Him in all that He does and says, receives the gifts of wisdom, knowledge and joy that gives work, food and drink meaning. In contrast, the unbeliever, who has also been given business to do by God, will experience hatred, despair, sorrow, frustration, and discontentment. Significantly, God uses the work of unbelievers to bless His people (2:26).
Psalm 1 characterizes these two kinds of people, the believer and the unbeliever, as the righteous and the wicked.
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The King of Love is My Shepherd
Written by James E. Bruce |
Thursday, November 24, 2022
Christ the king makes us his people (“in subduing us to himself”); he exercises authority over us (“in ruling”), and he protects us (in “defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies”). Though the exercise of Christ’s kingly office can be said to be judicial in some respect, because he does conquer his enemies (which serves as a kind of punishment), the focus on Christ’s kingship is intimate and familial. More than impartial judgment, we see special love.God’s special love for his people rather than for everyone fits awkwardly with the spirit of the age. Christians may underplay the exclusivity of divine love for fear of running athwart the following contemporary consensus: God should love everyone, or he should love no one at all.
Indeed, some who call themselves Christians have abandoned the idea of exclusive love altogether, embracing wholeheartedly the maxim that God must love all if he is to love some. But that’s a rejection of the Christian view of the relationship of God to his people, not a modification of it. Jesus teaches his disciples to pray to “Our Father,” and Jesus himself prays, “I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours” (John 17:9b).
This biblical emphasis on exclusive love — regularly elided in Christian conversation about God’s relationship to the world — cannot be avoided. In what follows, we will explore God’s kingship as a way to consider God’s relationship to the world.
God is the King
First, God is king. Psalm 47 speaks of God as “our King” — that is, the king of his own people — and also as “the King of all the earth” — that is, the king of everything. God is a king in a way mere mortal monarchs can only dream. Kings and queens have their own subjects, but not anyone else’s. God is different: His dominion knows no bounds.
God is not the universe’s democratically elected leader, selected according to rules acceptable to rational contractors. God is everyone’s king. He is king over his people, and he is also king over those who are not his people; he is king over his friends, and he is king over his enemies, too.
God rules what he owns, and he owns what he has made — and he has made everything that has been made. “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1). Why? “For he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers” (Psalm 24:2). He made it. He owns it. He is king.
The King is a Judge
God isn’t just a king. He’s a good king. Not every king is good. After all, Ahab was a king, too — but a wicked one. So what makes God a good king? A good king is a just king. And God is a just king! If the goodness of God’s kingship requires impartial judgment that looks to desert, then the exercise of God’s kingship will resemble a judge. And God the king is certainly a judge. Indeed, Abraham calls him “the Judge of all the earth” (Genesis 18:25; cf. Isaiah 33:22).
A just king judges well. Indeed, 2 Samuel 8:15 praises David’s reign over all Israel using judicial language: “And David administered justice and equity to all his people.” No wonder: God executes justice impartially (Deuteronomy 10:17–18), and human judges should be like him. They should not be “partial to the poor or defer to the great” (Leviticus 19:15; cf. Exodus 23:3,6). So justice in judgment — for a judge and for a king — is impartial and looks to desert.
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The Weight of Culture and Our Strange New World
Just a small sampling of recent headlines reveals what a disorienting cultural moment this is: Man wins a women’s swimming championship, Supreme Court nominee refuses to define the word woman, Biden administration endorses gender reassignment surgery for minors. Back in 2020, theologian and historian Dr. Carl Trueman provided a full account of how something that was unthinkable a generation ago became unquestionable today. The dramatic shifts in how we think about gender and sexuality are among the fruits (not roots) of a much deeper shift in how we think about the human person.
Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self described the origin story of what has been called “the cultural identity crisis.” Centuries ago, thinkers, writers, and activists began to rethink, redefine, and over-sexualize the concept of self. By describing this process, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self felt like a long-overdue answer key for our cultural moment. Weighing in at over 400 pages, it is the definitive account of the thinkers, ideas, expressions, and consequences of the sexual revolution.
Thankfully, Dr. Trueman also heard the many pleas for a less academic approach to these essential concepts, one that works out the same essential analysis but for those Christians dealing with the everyday chaos of the culture he so aptly describes. The new and much slimmer version is called Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution.
In it, Trueman tells the story of the development and propagation of ideas that sparked a revolution in how Western people think about themselves and others. Eventually, these ideas transformed how we think about sex and the human body, about social institutions like the family and the role of the state, and about meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.
