Nick Batzig, Author at Refcast

Praying in Jesus’ Name

By Nick Batzig — 5 months ago

Mere intellectual knowledge that Jesus is the only Mediator and the One who fulfills the covenant promises is insufficient for us to receive the promised blessings—we need to exercise personal faith in Christ as the object of the blessings. God has chosen to make faith the instrument of union with Christ. This affects our invocation of the name of Jesus in our prayers to God.

Certain practices have become so familiar among Christians that believers can be in danger of thoughtlessly performing them. We are all prone to simply going through the motions in our Christian lives. For instance, how often have we prayed the Lord’s Prayer without reflecting on the petitions that we are presenting to God? How often have we recited the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed without giving due consideration to the truths that we are confessing? We can easily go through the liturgical motions in a worship service without focusing on what we are doing before God. Similarly, it is altogether possible for believers to close their prayer with the words “in Jesus’ name” or “in Christ’s name” or “for Christ’s sake” as a sort of mindless mantra.
This raises the important question, Why should believers pray to God “in Jesus’ name”? If we are going to employ the name of Jesus in a conscientious way at the end of our prayers, a proper amount of theological reflection is required. Ultimately, we pray in Jesus’ name because He is the only Mediator between God and man, He fulfills all the covenant promises of God, and He is the object of our faith in God. Consider the following.
The Only Mediator
During His earthly ministry, Christ taught His disciples how they should approach God in prayer. He said: “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13–14). “Whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you” (16:23). Jesus teaches us to do so because He is the exclusive Mediator between God and man. As Thomas Boston explained:
In whose name are we to pray? In the name of Jesus Christ, and of no other, neither saint nor angel, John 14:13. “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, says he, that will I do.” We must go to the Father, not in the name of any of the courtiers, Col. 2:18 but in the name of his Son, the only Mediator.
Read More

.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{align-content:start;}:where(.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap) > .wp-block-kadence-column{justify-content:start;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);row-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);padding-top:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);padding-bottom:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd{background-color:#dddddd;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-layout-overlay{opacity:0.30;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}
.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Post Views: 59

4 Important Things to Remember If You Are a Doubting Believer

By Nick Batzig — 5 months ago

Though he had doubts, John wasted no time in seeking to quench them. He sent some of his disciples to Jesus to ask him about his ministry. The example of John teaches us to distinguish between doubt and unbelieving skepticism. John had made the largest and most confident confessions about the identity of Jesus. Then, in a moment of weakness, he sent disciples to Jesus to ask him, “Are you the coming One, or do we look for another?”Jesus honored John for the way in which he had faithfully prepared the way for his Messianic ministry, by responding to John’s question.

Fifteen to twenty years ago, prominent figures in the missional movement began saying things like, “Our churches have to be safe places for doubters,” or “You should feel like you can come to our church with all of your doubts.” I always felt somewhat uncomfortable whenever I heard these statements—not because I think that our churches shouldn’t be safe place for people to express doubts, but because it seemed as if many were confusing the idea of doubt with the idea of unbelieving skepticism.
It is important to recognize that Scripture does not identity doubt with unbelieving skepticism. In fact, the most serious believers may have prolonged periods in which they struggle with doubt—a fact that the Gospel writers unfold in the account of John the Baptist’s doubts about the identity of Jesus while in prison.
During his earthly ministry, Jesus made the shocking assertion, “Among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist.” Christ praised John as having been “the burning and shining lamp” (John 5:35)—as one who poured himself out for the spiritual well-being of others. John’s ministry was marked by his selfless motivation to see Jesus exalted: “He must increase; I must decrease” (John 3:30). John likened himself to the friend of the bridegroom, who, upon hearing the voice of Christ, rejoiced that the Bridegroom had come (John 3:29).
John had the unique privilege of standing and pointing to the Redeemer in the flesh and declaring, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). John joyfully encouraged his own disciples to leave him in order to follow after Jesus, when Christ began his ministry. John was content to exist for the glory and exaltation of Jesus (John 1:35-37). However, after Herod had locked John up in prison as retribution for rebuking him for his sexual immorality (Luke 3:19-20), John began to have doubts.
Here are four important things to remember if you are a doubting believer.
1. Even John the Baptist Began to Have Doubts
There are two possible explanations for these doubts. Either John was struggling with the suffering that he was enduring and couldn’t square it with the prophecies of the Messiah that he read about in the Old Testament prophets; or John was doubting the identity of Jesus because he wasn’t fulfilling John’s Old Testament expectation that the Messiah would come bringing salvation and judgment.
John knew the prophet Isaiah had predicted that when Messiah came he would come “to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isa. 61:1) This was, in fact, part of Jesus’ first sermon preached in the synagogue in Nazareth about himself (Luke 4:16-21). But now John was in prison for his testimony to Christ, and Jesus was even then delivering John from his imprisonment.
Believers may begin to doubt Jesus’ identity and God’s promises on account of his or her circumstances in life and inability to square those circumstances with what Scripture teaches. This is often a cause for doubts to arise in the hearts of even the most mature believers. So much of the Christian life is learning to walk through circumstances in which God has placed us when they seem contrary to what God has promised us in his word. We go back to the word to be strengthened in faith, even when we can’t square our circumstances with God’s promises.
2. John Remembered God’s Promises in Scripture
John also knew that the Old Testament prophets made clear that “the Day of the Lord” (yom Yahweh) would bring both judgment and salvation.
Read More

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Post Views: 57

4 Important Aspects of the Noahic Covenant in Redemptive History

By Nick Batzig — 5 months ago

Every time we see the rainbow we should remember God’s covenant faithfulness in sending the Redeemer to save a people for himself. Just as God had placed a rainbow in the sky to show his steadfast covenant fidelity, so there is a rainbow around the throne of Jesus Christ in glory (Rev. 4:3). We, like Noah, are beneficiaries of the mercy established in the Noahic Covenant in Jesus Christ.

The Noahic covenant was the first covenantal administration after God’s initial covenant promise to redeem and restore humanity (Gen. 3:15). It is also the first time that the word בְּרִית (Berith, translated Covenant) is used in the Scripture (Gen. 6:18). What has not been frequently observed, however, is how the Noahic covenant falls squarely in the realm of redemptive history.
Consider the following ways in which Noah and the Noahic covenant play a part in redemptive history:
1. The Redemptive Role of Noah as a Type of Christ
Noah was a type of Christ. He was a typical second Adam, a typical redeemer, and a typical rest giver. Like Adam, God gave Noah similar instructions with regard to being fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth and subduing it. He was not the second Adam but was a type of the second Adam who pointed to Christ.
Jesus is the second and last (eschatological) Adam who redeems his people and fulfills the creation mandates. Noah was a typical redeemer. Everyone with Noah on the ark was saved. Everyone in Christ is saved. Noah was not “the Redeemer.” He was a typical redeemer, providing typical redemption for all those who descended from him. Jesus came to redeem all those he represented spiritually.
Noah was a typical rest-giver. Noah’s name meant ‘rest.’ His father had named him ‘Rest,’ saying, “This one will give us rest from the ground which the Lord had cursed.” Noah only gives typical rest, as the remainder of the Bible bears witness to the ongoing need for redemptive rest.
Jesus is the one who finally and fully gives rest to the people of God and to the creation that was brought under the curse at the fall. He is the one who said, “Come unto me and I will give you rest for your souls.” He is the one who takes the curse on himself when he wears the crown of thorns—the symbol of the curse on the ground.
2. The Redemptive Foreshadowing of the New Creation
The book of Revelation tells us that the “new heavens and the new earth” will be the new Temple where God dwells fully and permanently with the redeemed. Noah and all of creation were together in the ark, as in a typical temple. This was foreshadowing the new creation-temple. Interestingly, the ark and Solomon’s Temple had three levels. It seems that the biblical data substantiates that the ark was a temple where God dwelt with his creation.
Noah also led the way into a typical new creation when he and his family stepped off of the ark and into a world that had been typically cleansed of pollution. Jesus brought about the new creation through his death and resurrection.
Noah knew that the flood had not really made “all things new,” because he sacrificed when he stepped off of the ark. The flood waters could never cleanse the evil out of the heart of man. God had destroyed the earth with a flood because “every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).
God promised never to destroy the earth with a flood again because “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21).
Read More

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Post Views: 64

Why Is Baptism a Means of Grace?

By Nick Batzig — 5 months ago

Many refer to baptism as “an outward sign of an inward profession of faith.” While professing believers and their children certainly receive baptism as a mark of discipleship (Matt. 28:18–20; 1 Cor. 7:14) in obedience to Jesus, the covenant sign is not first and foremost pointing to something we have done. Rather, it is the sign that points to what God has promised to do in Christ by the Spirit. Coming to a settled understanding of this is vital if we are to understand how baptism functions as a means of grace.

A Christian family once approached the late Dr. John Gerstner and asked him to baptize their newborn child. As the time approached for the ceremony, the mother of the child asked if they could hold off until she could get the baby a white gown for the service. Gerstner asked the mother what the significance of the white gown was. The mother replied, “To symbolize the baby’s innocence.” Gerstner replied, “If the baby is innocent, then why are we baptizing him?” This anecdote captures something of the widespread confusion about the nature of baptism.
Many view baptism as a mere religious and ceremonial formality. Others invest far too much efficacy to the outward act of baptism, suggesting that it imparts saving grace to every recipient. The truth is that baptism is both a simple act and a complex act. It is simple in that it is a ceremonial washing in the name of the triune God, instituted by the Lord Jesus to be a mark of discipleship. It is complex regarding the precise meaning of its nature, its subjects, and its efficacy. To come to a right understanding of how baptism works in the lives of God’s people, we first need to consider the nature of the act of baptism.
Baptism, like its old covenant counterpart, circumcision, is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace (Rom. 4:11), pointing to the promise of the credited righteousness of God by faith in Christ. It is a sign insomuch as it points beyond itself to the promised regeneration of the Holy Spirit and cleansing by the blood of Christ. It is a seal by which God affirms the truth of this promise to professing believers and their children. Christian baptism is a divinely appointed sign and seal of God’s covenant promises. This, in turn, makes baptism a means of grace.
When considering baptism as a means of grace, we must first recognize it to be a divine act. The triune God applies this sign and seal to His people in the new covenant. Many erroneously view baptism, first and foremost, as a sign of something they have done (i.e., a sign of the act of their own profession of personal faith in Christ).
Read More

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Post Views: 74

Praying in Jesus’ Name

By Nick Batzig — 6 months ago

Looking to Christ by faith in His name means trusting in Him to supply what He has secured. We pray in Christ’s name as an act of faith in Him as the only Mediator and the fulfiller of the covenant promises.

Post Views: 115

How Jesus Brings Peace

By Nick Batzig — 9 months ago

Cosmic, consummative worldwide peace is entirely dependent on Jesus’ death on the cross. The effects of creaturely reconciliation are felt for all of eternity on account of His saving works. The vertical reconciliation of fallen men to God is foundational to the horizontal reconciliation of man to man. The former necessarily accomplishes and secures the latter.

A number of years ago, our church decided to include a section for “prayer requests” on a visitor card that we handed to first-time visitors. Needless to say, after numerous visitors took a cue from the world of celebrity award shows and wrote “pray for world peace,” we decided to discontinue that section of the card. It was obviously not because we do not desire world peace. Rather, we sensed that out of a sense of obligation, people were simply grasping for what they believed to be the greatest of needs. After all, it’s hard to top “world peace” as the greatest need for which one could intercede on behalf of humanity.
Quite significantly, the Scriptures have much to say about world peace. World peace belongs squarely within the realm of the horizontal dimension of the cross. One of the great implications of the substitutionary, atoning, propitiatory, Satan-conquering, fallen world-overcoming, new creation-securing work of Christ crucified is that of the reconciliation of a people out of every tongue, tribe, and nation. The cross brings about peace between differing people groups who once lived in hostility toward one another.
When Jesus reconciles His people to God through His death on the cross, He reconciles His people to one another. Jesus came into the world to redeem a people for Himself out of every tongue, tribe, people, and nation. In Ephesians 2:14–16, the Apostle gave us what is perhaps the clearest statement about the horizontal dimension of the reconciliatory work of Christ crucified when he wrote:
He himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility . . . that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
The “both” and “the two” to which Paul refers in this passage are the Jews and the gentiles. No greater division existed in all of human history than that which stood between these two people groups. It was a division established by God Himself when He called and separated the theocratic old covenant church to Himself. God gave Israel a litany of laws that functioned as something of a wall of division to keep the idolatrous influences of the gentiles far away from His people. For instance, the dietary laws of the Old Testament served to represent these two groups. Israel was represented by the foods that God deemed “clean” and the gentiles were represented by the foods that God deemed “unclean.” One of the purposes of this division in redemptive history was to keep God’s people from having meals with the people of idolatrous nations. It would be very hard for you to engage in idolatrous practices if you couldn’t even have a meal with those who worshiped other gods. When Jesus came, He fulfilled all of the ceremonial laws that God had given to Israel in the old covenant so that there was no more need for them in the form in which they had been given (Mark 7:15; Acts 10:9–16; 11:4–17). Jesus came to fulfill the ceremonial laws that separated Israel from the nations. They were the shadows; He is the substance. This showed that he had come to break down the middle wall of separation between Jews and gentiles.
Read More
Related Posts:

Post Views: 174

Hell to Pay: What Truly Happened to Jesus on the Cross?

By Nick Batzig — 12 months ago

If Jesus wasn’t truly condemned on the cross, then we are not truly justified before God. If Jesus did not objectively suffer the equivalent of hell in his body and soul, then there will be hell for us to pay. Praise God that there was hell to pay for Jesus when “in my place, condemned he stood….Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

Eighteen years ago, I heard a sermon on Matthew 27:46—Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” At one point, the minister who was preaching this message said, “Jesus wasn’t really forsaken; he just felt forsaken by his Father in his soul.” I remember sensing anger welling up within me at those words. I thought to myself, “That’s a denial of the Gospel. If Jesus wasn’t really forsaken, then I have no grounds to believe that I will never be forsaken.”
Sadly, I have subsequently come to discover that there are quite a number of Protestant theologians who have shied away from asserting that Jesus was really and truly forsaken by his Father when he hung on the cross. Nevertheless, I want to explain what we lose if Jesus wasn’t, in fact, forsaken by God when he stood in our place.
What truly happened to Jesus on the cross?
Thomas Brooks, the seventeenth century English Puritan theologian, explained why we must never downplay what truly happened to Christ on the cross. He insisted,

The more we ascribe to Christ’s suffering, the less remains of ours; the more painfully that he suffered, the more fully are we redeemed; the greater his sorrow was, the greater our solace; his dissolution is our consolation, his cross our comfort; his annoy our endless joy; his distress in soul our release, his calamity our comfort; his misery our mercy, his adversity our felicity, his hell our heaven.[1]

Brooks then proceeded to explain exactly what happened to Jesus at Calvary, when he said,

Christ did actually undergo and suffer the wrath of God, and the fearful effects thereof, in the punishments threatened in the law. As he became a debtor, and was so accounted, even so he became payment thereof; he was made a sacrifice for sin, and bare to the full all that ever divine justice did or could require, even the uttermost extent of the curse of the law of God. He must thus undergo the curse, because he had taken upon him our sin. The justice of the most high God, revealed in the law, looks upon the Lord Jesus as a sinner, because he hath undertaken for us, and seizes upon him accordingly, pouring down on his head the whole curse, and all those dreadful punishments which are threatened in it against sin.[2]

Jesus experienced “an objective God-forsakenness” at Calvary.
Herman Bavinck, in his Reformed Dogmatics, stated the importance of understanding that Jesus did not merely undergo the feeling of forsakenness on the cross. Rather, Jesus experienced “an objective God-forsakenness” at Calvary. He insisted,

In the cry of Jesus we are dealing not with a subjective but with an objective God-forsakenness: He did not feel alone but had in fact been forsaken by God. His feeling was not an illusion, not based on a false view of his situation, but corresponded with reality.[3]

Check Your Spirit before Doing These 4 Things

By Nick Batzig — 1 year ago

The Bible is replete with warnings about jealousy, envy, and hatred that are manifested in gossip, slander, and division. A heart that is silently harboring any of these sinful motives will necessarily overflow with sinful words and responses, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45) The Gospel is the cure for this. When we realize how sinful we are and of how much Christ has forgiven us, we will be quick to pray for others and guard against speaking evil of them.

One of the things that disturbs me most in life is having to drive down a backwoods road in Southeast Georgia behind a truck (and it’s always a truck!) going 20 miles under the speed limit with black smoke pouring out of the tail pipe. It’s not simply the fact that I know that the carbon monoxide is knocking a few hours or days off my life. Neither is it merely the fact that I can’t pass him on this particular stretch of road. What bothers me as much or more than both of those things is that it would literally take two minutes for the driver to check the dipstick to see if there was oil in his car, and it would take 30 minutes to change the oil.
Add to that the fact that it wouldn’t even take an entire minute for him to look at the speedometer, and in the rearview mirror, to see if he was selfishly holding someone up. Yet, as I confess my frustration, I find an analogy for my own life. Too often I find that I am the driver of the truck with the black smoke billowing out of my spirit. What I need more than anything is to pull over and do a spirit-check.
There’s an account in the Gospels in which Jesus has just sent the disciples into a city of Samaria in order to receive him while he was on his way to the cross. When the city rejected Christ, James and John come back with black smoke billowing out of their hearts. Luke tells us:
When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them.And they went on to another village. (Luke 9:51-56)
Though James and John had reached back into the Scriptures in order to justify their response, Jesus rebuked them. It is actually quite possible for us to be actively engaged in gospel ministry and yet have a heart that is contrary to the gospel. It is possible for us to care about justice and yet have a bitter and vitriolic spirit. It is possible for someone to care about holiness while having a heart that is silently (or vocally) delighting in the fall of a brother or sister in Christ. The same brothers whom Jesus rebukes for wanting the destruction of others rather than the salvation of others will, in due time, reveal that they were also using Jesus to get to the top (Mark 10:37). If two of the choicest apostles of Jesus could need “a spirit-check,” I certainly need to pull over before I say, write, or do just about anything.
It’s interesting that in the account of Luke 9:51-56, James and John have not actually said or done anything to hurt someone. It is what they say to Jesus that reveals what spirit was in them. As the old saying goes, “the matter of the heart is the heart of the matter” or, as Proverbs reminds us, “Above all things keep the heart, for out of it flows the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23).
There are so many applications of this principle that even the world itself is not big enough to contain all the volumes that would have to be written. Here are four basic categories of application that I believe will help all believers:
1. Before You Draw Conclusions about Someone, Based on Something That They Have Said or Done, Check Your Spirit
I have many times taken something that someone has said and read it in the worst possible light.
Read More
Related Posts:

Post Views: 189

Who Is Our Enemy?

By Nick Batzig — 1 year ago

God has not left us ignorant of the sphere of warfare or of the enemy himself. Much biblical revelation from the first promise of Christ’s victory over the evil one (Genesis 3:15) is taken up with a revelation about the nature of spiritual warfare.

What impact would it have had on the church in our late-modern, scientific day and age if the author(s) of the Apostles’ Creed had included a statement about the reality of angelic activity and spiritual warfare in the Christian life? I envision such a statement as reading like this: “I believe in principalities and powers, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places with whom we wrestle; I believe that Christ has conquered them by His death on the cross; I believe that I need the armor of God to overcome them in my warfare with them throughout the time of my sojourn here.” I desperately wish that this was a part of our weekly confession of faith, because in many theologically informed congregations where holiness, wrath, righteousness, justice, sin, grace, mercy, and forgiveness are unashamedly proclaimed, there is sometimes a noticeable lack of teaching about the reality of spiritual warfare in the believer’s life.
Though many ministers, in our day, have given inadequate attention to a biblical exposition of spiritual warfare, this was not always the case in the church. Among the Puritan ministers in seventeenth-century England, there was no such shortage of works on spiritual warfare. The more well-known works include Thomas Brooks’ Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices, William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armor, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christopher Love’s The Christian’s Combat, and Richard Gilpin’s Demonologia Sacra.
What accounts, then, for the disparity of emphasis among seventeenth-century Protestant pastors and pastors in more theologically minded churches in our day? First, many mature Christians rightly seek to avoid giving the sense that we are not responsible for our own sin. Far too many professing believers have dismissed their responsibility by functionally blaming Satan for their sin. In the epistle to the Romans, there is only one reference to Satan (Rom. 16:20), whereas there are fifty-seven references to sin. Our sin is a major theme of biblical revelation. We must keep in proportion what God keeps in proportion in His Word.
Second, it is all too common for believers to overreact to the unbiblical teaching they endured in churches in which the leadership approached the subject of spiritual warfare as something more akin to New Age, science fiction gnosticism than faithful biblical exposition. A wrong view of spiritual warfare leads to a wrong view of the Christian life. Nevertheless, the New Testament does include an abundance of teaching about the reality of spiritual warfare. The most full-orbed treatment comes at the end of Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus in his exposition of the armor of God (Eph. 6:10–20).
The Battlefield
At the opening of the letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul reminds believers in the church that God has already blessed them “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (1:3; emphasis added). At the close of the letter, he reminds them that the entirety of the Christian life is one in which they will be engaged in hand-to-hand combat “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (6:12; emphasis added). “The heavenly places” is shorthand for the heavenly origin of the Christian life. It is also shorthand for the spiritual realm in which we fight against spiritual hosts of evil. The great Dutch theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper once captured the essence of this spiritual sphere when he wrote:
If once the curtain were pulled back, and the spiritual world behind it came to view, it would expose to our spiritual vision a struggle so intense, so convulsive, sweeping everything within its range, that the fiercest battle ever fought on earth would seem, by comparison, a mere game. Not here, but up there—that is where the real conflict is waged. Our earthly struggle drones in its backlash.1
Read More
Related Posts:

Post Views: 197

How Was the Passover a Sign of the Covenant?

By Nick Batzig — 1 year ago

The unfolding of the history of redemption reveals how the Passover was a sign of God’s gracious covenant, in which He would provide the greater exodus from sin, Satan, and death by the sacrificial death of Christ. Believers confidently confess that “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7).

Of all the Old Testament images that foreshadow Jesus, the Passover lamb was perhaps the clearest in foreshadowing Jesus’ saving work at Calvary. According to God’s own appointment, God promised to remove His judgment from His people when He saw the substitutionary blood of a spotless lamb painted on the doorposts of the Israelites’ homes in Egypt. The Passover was a sign of God’s covenant with His people in the Old Testament, indicating the way in which He would one day satisfy His wrath through the sacrifice of Christ.
After sin entered the world, Scripture immediately tells us that Abel gave an animal sacrifice to offer acceptable worship to the Lord (Gen. 4:4). The infinitely holy God only accepts as righteous those who come to Him by faith in the promised Redeemer, who would Himself be the atoning sacrifice for sin (Heb. 11:4). The blood of the substitutionary sacrifice is an essential element of Christian doctrine and practice. As the writer of Hebrews explains, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb. 9:22). The blood of the God-appointed sacrifice typified the substitution of one party for another in the execution of God’s judgment. If “the wages of sin is death,” then only a substitutionary death can deliver a sinner from the righteous judgment of God (Rom. 6:23). This principle was signified clearly in the details surrounding the institution of the Passover lamb. Like its bloody counterpart, circumcision, the Passover lamb was an old covenant sacrament—a sign and seal of God’s gracious dealing with His people through atonement.
The Passover served as a sign of God’s covenant promise of redemption in Christ. The Lord gave instructions about the Passover at the time of the exodus that pointed to various aspects of the redemption that He would provide in Christ (Ex. 12; 1 Cor. 5:7). The Passover was instituted at the time of the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn. The Lord had graciously distinguished between Israel and Egypt with the first nine plagues. However, there was no distinction in this tenth and most terrible plague. If the Israelites did not follow the Lord’s instructions regarding the Passover, they would be subject to the same judgment as the Egyptians. This indicated that Israel, no less than Egypt, deserved God’s wrath and judgment because of their sin.
Read More
Related Posts: