Justice demanded that David’s sin be punished, and it was punished in the sacrificial crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Jesus bore David’s sin and condemnation so that David could be forgiven. The wickedness of all who confess their sins and believe in Jesus Christ is forgiven. “His blood makes the foulest clean.”

The author of a large part of the Bible did some desperately wicked things.
I’m talking about David, Israel’s greatest general and king, and author of at least seventy-three of the Psalms.
God’s justice demands that sin be punished.
It is about 1000 BC, and David has been king for some time. His realm is expansive, his rule is secure, and his armies are off campaigning.
We find him strolling on his rooftop (2 Sam. 11). The sun sets over Jerusalem. The scent of smoke and evening meals fills the air.
David sees a woman bathing on her rooftop, a very beautiful woman. He makes inquiries.
She is Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of David’s greatest soldiers—a friend and brother-in-arms. Uriah is away with the army.
David orders Bathsheba to be brought to his chambers…
Weeks later she sends him a note: “I am pregnant.”
David attempts a coverup. He calls Uriah back to Jerusalem for “news from the frontline.” He then sends him home to his wife Bathsheba with a gift.
But there’s no way that Uriah will enjoy an evening with his wife while the Ark of the Covenant and his brothers-in-arms are out in the field. Uriah sleeps outside.
Frustrated, David tries again. This time he gets Uriah drunk before sending him home to his wife.
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The incarnation is of all-crucial importance in both doctrine and discipleship. Jesus did come in the flesh. The first Christmas happened truly and really. This babe in a manger is truly the God-Man, the Savior of His people. And so Ignatius can say, “I do not place my hopes in one who died for me in appearance, but in reality.”

“Stop your ears!” That is one of my favorite lines from one of the earliest church fathers, Ignatius. Ignatius was Bishop of Antioch, where the followers of Christ were first called Christians. He was martyred for his faith sometime around 110.
Ignatius left us a rich legacy, not only in the testimony of his martyrdom, but also in the testimony of his bold writings against the heretics of his day. The biggest battle Ignatius and the church faced in that first generation after the apostles had everything to do with the event we celebrate at Christmas.
The false teachers, known as the Docetists, declared that Jesus had not really come in the flesh, that He was not fully human. They denied the doctrine of the incarnation. They falsely claimed that Jesus only appeared to be flesh. The Greek word for appear is dokew, hence the heresy of Docetism.
So what did Ignatius have to say about all this? In one of his letters he delivers that great line: “Stop your ears!” Don’t even listen to the heretics. Jesus did not appear to be born of flesh, He did not appear to be the Word made flesh. He was really and truly flesh.
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Worship in this life that is shaped by our covenant relationship with God through the gospel, the spiritual realities of heavenly worship, sanctifies us into a pure church who live in light of that relationship as we wait for our blessed hope. By reenacting what we are in Christ, Christian worshipers become what we are.

Though during this present age kingdom and cultus (God’s worshiping community) are separated, God intends one day to join them together under the rule of his Anointed One. The question for us is, of course, where we currently fit in this plan of God for a holy theocracy, a perfect union of kingdom and cultus under the kingly rule and priestly ministry of the Second Adam.
The book of Hebrews addresses both kingdom and cultus in this present age. First, the author quotes God’s declaration in Psalm 8 that he intends for man to exercise regal dominion over all the earth; however, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Heb 2:8). The First Adam failed, and still all things are not yet in subjection to the son of man. But, “because of the suffering of death,” Jesus is “crowned with glory and honor” (Heb 2:9)—he has earned the right to rule; Christ is, as Psalm 110 states, presently seated at the Father’s right hand until the Father makes his enemies his footstool. The perfect eternal kingdom has been promised and already ensured, but it is not yet a consummated reality. Christ sovereignly rules over all creation as the Son of God, and Christ presently rules over his redeemed people, but the consummation of his rule over all things on earth as the Son of Man will happen when he comes again, when “the kingdom of this world”—that is, the common grace kingdom—“will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev 11:15).
In other words, if we want to look to the Old Testament for an analogy to our present situation as Christians in this age, we are more like the sojourning patriarchs and the exiled Hebrews than either the Edenic or Mosaic holy theocracies. And, of course, this is exactly how the New Testament portrays us. Peter specifically calls us “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11). “Our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul tells us (Phil 3:20); we are “citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph 2:19). Like Abraham on his pilgrimage or Daniel in Babylon, Christians participate in the common grace aspects of the earthly kingdoms in which we dwell, but we “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb 11:16); we long for the heavenly Jerusalem above our highest joy (Ps 137:6). And that heavenly Jerusalem will one day descend to the earth, uniting kingdom and cultus as was God’s intention from the beginning.
Yet Hebrews also reveals to us the nature of our worship in this age as well. The author proclaims at the end of chapter 12,
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb 12:22–24)
This is the heavenly palace/temple Isaiah and John envisioned, the place where God himself sits enthroned, surrounded by heavenly beings.” To this higher kingdom where God reigns Christian worshipers come to the reality, to the true worship of heaven itself. Paul describes this reality for Christians in Ephesians 2:6 when he states that God has “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Christ is seated in heaven as the king/priest, and since we are in him by faith, we are with him there. And he tells us how just a few verses later in Ephesians 2:18: “For through [Christ] we . . . have access in one Spirit to the Father.” We have access to the Father because in one Spirit through Christ, we are actually there, in the presence of God in heaven.
Pure Worship
This biblical understanding situates us in this present age as dual citizens. As members of the human race we are citizens of common grace earthly kingdoms, and so we participate as such. But ultimately we are a called out cultic community with “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for [us], who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet 1:4–5). Consequently, as Peter goes on to say, “as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. . . . Conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers” (1 Pet 1:15, 17–18).
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