This month we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Over the next several posts, we will look at different passages of Scripture relating to the purpose of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The first is Genesis 3, which is the account of humanity’s fall into sin through Adam’s transgression and the place where redemption and salvation became necessary. Prior to Genesis 3, we did not need a crucified and risen Savior because there was no sin. 

When sin entered the world, though, everything changed, and it required radical action from God if humanity was to be rescued from destruction and death. The only solution to the problem of sin was a crucified and risen Savior. 

The key verse in the passage is Genesis 3:15. God said to the serpent, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”

Here we have, what theologians call, the first Gospel proclamation. Immediately after Adam sinned, God promised there would be warfare between the offspring of the devil and the offspring of the woman, and the offspring of the woman would prevail. 

We know the offspring of the woman ultimately refers to Jesus Christ. One of the surest evidences of this fact is the battle Jesus waged against Satan throughout His earthly ministry, culminating with the cross. The crucifixion, then, was not merely a work of men against Jesus, but an epic battle between Satan and Jesus. Satan, the serpent of old, sought to crush Jesus but only bruised His heel. Jesus, though, on the cross and through the resurrection, crushed Satan’s head.

Let us look, then, at four problems caused by sin that are presented in Genesis 3 and consider why Jesus had to die and rise again to resolve them. 

First, when sin entered the world, humanity believed Satan’s lies.

Satan’s strategy in the garden was to distort the Word of God and to call God a liar. Eve believed this lie, and she was deceived disobeying God. Paul wrote in Romans 1:25 that mankind has “exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” When sin entered the world, humanity fell into deception, no longer believing God’s Word, but Satan, the father of lies. 

The good news of the gospel, though, is that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil – his lies and deceit! The world is hostile to God because people believe the devil’s lie that God is out to suppress, harm, oppress, and stifle humanity. At Calvary and the empty tomb, however, this lie is completely undone. 

When sin entered the world, all humanity fell into the devil’s deception; but Jesus died and rose again to overcome Satan’s lies.

In 2 Peter 1:4, Peter writes, “For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature.” Satan says, “God doesn’t want any rivals, so He is suppressing you.” God’s gospel promise, however, is that in the resurrection we will be made like Jesus in every way possible for a creature to be like his Creator. We will be perfectly conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29); and God in Christ will give us all things. When sin entered the world, all humanity fell into the devil’s deception; but Jesus died and rose again to overcome Satan’s lies.

Second, when sin entered the world, humanity became alienated from God.

When Adam and Eve sinned against God, shame entered into their experience, and intimacy with one another was broken. Adam’s first response to God was to hide out of guilt and fear. Adam also compounds his first transgression with the sin of lying about why he will not come before his Creator. Later, Adam blames God, saying Eve, whom God had created, was the source of the problem. This is how sinners always relate to God apart from Christ. Option one: Hide. Option two: Lie. Option three: Make excuses to shift blame.

God, however, didn’t accept any of Adam’s tactics. Instead, God promises to redeem Adam through Eve’s offspring by defeating and condemning the serpent. God promises reconciliation. How do we know God promises reconciliation? Because the offspring of Eve and her children are going to be enemies of Satan, not of God.

In 1 Peter 3:18, Peter writes, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.” We were alienated from and hostile toward God because of sin; but God gave His Son for us, and Jesus rose from the dead to end the hostility and bring us to Himself. 

Third, when sin entered the world, humanity incurred guilt before God for sin.

After Adam’s transgression, sin became a barrier between man and God. The problem sinners have with a holy God is not a psychological problem, or something internal we merely need to convince ourselves to get over. Rather, the problem is sin and the guilt we incur because of sin. God is so holy that He cannot even look upon evil.

Christ’s death and resurrection guarantees our future resurrection.

To reconcile us to God, Jesus had to deal with the problem of sin. He took our guilt and very sin upon Himself and paid its penalty so we could be reconciled to God.

In Galatians 3:13, Paul writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us – for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’”  The curse we deserve was borne by Jesus when He hung on the cross and dealt with our objective guilt before a holy God.

Finally, when sin entered the world, humanity became subject to death.

With guilt incurred because of sin and with alienation from the life of God came death. As Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” When Adam sinned, the entire human race was subjected to death.

But the curse doesn’t end with death; Jesus died and rose again to give eternal life! Incredibly, Adam somehow knew this was the meaning of God’s promise in Genesis 3:15. When God vowed to defeat Satan through a man, Adam knew it meant life for his posterity. That’s why after God pronounces the sentence of death on Adam and all humanity, Adam names his wife Eve “because she was the mother of all the living.” Even in the face of death, Adam had hope that God promised life. 

This is why we need a crucified and risen Savior. Sin created problems that human nature could not solve. Adam’s response was not to solve the sin problem, but to hide from it. The only one who can solve the problem of sin is God, and He has done so through His Son. Christ’s death and resurrection guarantees our future resurrection.

This month as we reflect on Jesus’ death and resurrection, we should remember what He accomplished for us. Consider how hopelessly condemned we were without Christ. Rejoice that He loved us and gave Himself for us, so we might have life and a real relationship with the Lord, that we might even know God Himself. This reality should cause us to live even more for Him who died and rose again on our behalf.

This article is part 2 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ. You can read part 1 here.

“Remember Jesus Christ, risen out of death, arising from the seed of David, according to my gospel” (2 Timothy 2:8).

In supplying the name of the one that we are to remember, he also supplies the reasons that forgetfulness in this matter is fatal. Paul supplies the name of the person who embodies the full range of truth and saving grace that counters the falsehoods, errors, and aggressive evil of fallen humanity. As he reminded the Corinthians, “As in Adam all die; even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). In the context of this letter to Timothy, Paul uses the combination “Christ Jesus” or “Jesus Christ” fourteen times. Two of these also employ the word “Lord” with the name “Jesus” and the office, “Christ.” Also, there are fifteen other uses of the word “Lord” to refer to Jesus Christ. The book is saturated with Jesus Christ, his lordship, his mercy, his purpose, his truthful word, his conquering of death, his promise of life, his salvation, his status as judge, and his personal presence with the believer. Paul aimed to make it impossible to forget either the person or the work of Jesus Christ. To forget is to deny; to deny is to give surety of an absence of grace.

Particularly Paul does not want us to forget the significance of the name and the title given to him. His name is Jesus. The angel told Joseph, calling him “son of David,” that the child with whom Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit was to be called “Jesus” (Matthew 1:20, 21). The significance of this designated name was related to the child’s office as Savior—“for he shall save his people from their sins.” The name means, “Jehovah is salvation.” 

For Joshua (the same name), his name was a testimony to the promise of Jehovah in giving to Israel the land of Abraham. It signified that Jehovah was strong, mighty, faithful, the only God, and would accomplish all his promises, both of blessing and of cursing. He would work through Joshua to fulfill these promises and establish the context where the people would respond to this miraculous deliverance and strikingly clear revelation. Some of the promises were unconditional and unilateral. No alterations among the Israelites could change the ability and determination of God to carry through. Others were conditional and were, in one sense, dependent on the faithfulness of the people (2 Kings 23:26, 27). 

The task of Joshua was typological; the task for Jesus was the substance and absolute. Joshua set the stage for the powerful display of divine purpose; Jesus embodied the mystery of godliness. Joshua testified of the power of God to save and called the people to follow him in serving the Lord (Joshua 24); Jesus did not merely testify to the power of God to save, but he possessed and executed his saving power by own righteous acts and perfect obedience. Not only like Joshua did he testify to the power of God to save, but he constituted the saving purpose of God. Though “Jesus” is his human name, it also is a testimony to his divine nature–”Jehovah is salvation.”

As “Christ,” the God-man Jesus is the anointed one. Every office and type established by anointing, the Christ culminated in himself. Did God give prophets to reveal and speak and write his word to his people? Jesus is the prophet promised through Moses, the “Word made flesh,” the Son through whom God “has spoken” (Deuteronomy 18:15, 18; John 1:14; Hebrews 1:2). Is he not the true Elisha, the God of supplication, anointed by Elijah (1 Kings 19: 16; Luke 1:17; 3:21, 22; Luke 23:34; John 1:29-34). Does the Lord not set forth the prophet as a special representative of his anointing? (1 Chronicles 16:22; Psalm 105:15). “Do not touch my anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm.” Does not Jesus claim that he is the fulfillment of the anointed prophet sent to preach good tidings to the poor, and proclaim liberty to the captives? (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18). 

He is Priest. As the priest was anointed to offer sacrifice (Leviticus 4:4, 5) and sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice. Christ, therefore, offered himself once-for-all putting an end to all of the typological sacrifices. Though not of the tribe of Levi, he received a special commission for this purpose (Hebrews 7:20; 8:6; 9:12, 24-26). So, Jesus Christ, having served as the anointed prophet, then completed his anointed work of priesthood, altar, and sacrifice. Nothing in the sacrificial system was left unfulfilled by him.

David was anointed king by Samuel (1 Samuel 16:13). In consequence of the Christ’s completed prophetic work and the perfection of his priesthood, he was given his seat at the right hand “of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3), fulfilling the promise to David of the forever king established by God. “And I will establish him in my house and in My kingdom forever; and his throne shall be established forever” (1 Chronicles 17:14). Jesus Christ alone, in all three of these offices can say, “I have been anointed with fresh oil” (Psalm 92:10).

Nothing else would matter if the next phrase were not vital to the way we are called upon to “Remember Jesus Christ.” Both the soteriological power and the apologetic coherence of the gospel would fall to the ground, no more to rise, without it. “Risen from the dead” denotes the conquering of the scheme of Satan to oppose the purpose of God in lifting up non-angelic creatures to a position higher than the angels—in fact, to share in some way with the glory of his Son. Jesus did not give aid to angels but was “made like his brethren,” made propitiation “for the sins of the people,” and “having purged our sins,” destroyed him that has the “power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14-17; 1:3). The wages of sin, the penalty of death for disobedience, unpropitiated through the ages, held as a threat by the Devil and verified by divine justice, lost its sting when Jesus “bore our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Jesus Christ, who bore those death-dealing sins, was “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Romans 6:4). This means that all the holy, righteous, and just attributes of God, the entire weightiness of God, were honored completely by Christ’s death and thus called for the granting of life to the successful sin-bearer. Death, therefore, no longer has any hold on Christ or his people and Satan’s tool of intimidation has been removed. The work of Christ and the verdict of the Father are communicated in power to the redeemed by the Spirit. “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). God, therefore, instead of being against us is for us. Why? Because he “spared not His own Son but delivered him up for us all.” Having given us Him, he freely gives us all that Christ has gained. None can now condemn for “it is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God.” On top of that he “makes intercession for us” (Romans 8:32-34).

Under the name of Christ, we already have looked briefly at the significance of the phrase, “out of a seed of David.” The anarthrous use of spermatos has the force of isolating the word to a specific person, Mary. Jesus was born, was conceived in and then came out of Mary, a seed of David. Luke 1:27 has the phrase, “out of the house of David,” a phrase to be applied both to Mary and Joseph. The seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15) was also the seed of David. He descended from David in his human nature and has a right to the throne. “He will be great,” the angel told Mary, “and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.” (Luke 1:32). How low the House had fallen that a teenage virgin was to bear the seed of David to the Messiah and his legal father would be a mere carpenter. Luke 2:4 again emphasizes that Joseph was “of the house and lineage of David” because the enrollment must take place legally according to the male of the household. When the angel addressed Joseph to inform him of the source of Mary’s impregnation, he said “Joseph, son of David” (Matthew  1:20). Jeremiah 30:9 predicts, “They shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king.” In Ezekiel we read, “And my servant David shall be king over them” (34:24; 37:24). Hosea predicts that after a time of devastation, Israel will “seek the Lord their God and David their king” (Hosea 3:5). This descent from David confirms the prophetic material concerning the Messiah, seals the reality of his humanity, and shows that the true “Man after God’s own heart” saves us, rules over us with lovingkindness until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.

Paul has given a thick distillation of biblical doctrine on the person of Christ in his paternal admonition to Timothy. For his preaching, his instruction of elders, and for his personal joy and assurance Paul instructed Timothy, and so instructs us, “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of a seed of David.”

This article is part 2 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ.

Join us at the 2024 National Founders Conference on January 18-20 as we consider what it means to “Remember Jesus Christ” under the teaching of Tom Ascol, Joel Beeke, Paul Washer, Phil Johnson, Conrad Mbewe and Travis Allen.

I once heard the late James Boice say, “We tend to overestimate what God will do in one year and greatly underestimate what he will do in twenty.” The truth of this statement was immediately apparent to me as I pondered some of the great works of God in history, like the Protestant Reformation and the modern Baptist missionary movement. But I have continued to grow in my appreciation of its profundity over the last few decades.
Today, November 13, 2022, marks the fortieth anniversary of the day that was the catalyst for the origin of what later became Founders Ministries. I remember that day well. A few weeks before, I received a letter from Ernie Reisinger, who was then serving as pastor of a church on the Southeast coast of Florida. Over the previous four years Ernie had been traveling to the six Southern Baptist seminaries to give away copies of James Pettigru Boyce’s Abstract of Systematic Theology to graduating students.
I enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1979. That next Spring, Ernie was on campus giving away Boyce’s book and I talked him into giving me one despite my first-year status. It was not difficult. Ernie loved to give away good books, especially whenever he sensed an eagerness to read them. Shortly after that, the seminary presidents disinvited him from coming back on their campuses to give away the Boyce book. The stated excuses were lame (“our students are busy preparing for final exams and do not have time to read your book”). A more plausible reason is that more and more students and graduates were actually reading Boyce’s Abstract and were being persuaded that the Bible does in fact teach that God is sovereign in salvation.
The rediscovery of the so-called “Doctrines of Grace” continued to spread and pastors were increasingly contacting Ernie asking for guidance and other resources. In response to this growing interest, he sent invitations to a few men asking us if we could meet with him in the Holiday Inn in Euless, Texas on Saturday, November 13, 1982. By that time I was in my third year as Assistant Pastor at Spring Valley Baptist Church in Dallas. Tom Nettles flew in from Memphis, where he had recently moved to teach at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. Fred Malone and Ben Mitchell, who planted Heritage Baptist Church outside of Ft. Worth, Texas were there. Bill Ascol, Assistant Pastor at Broadmoor Baptist in Shreveport and R.F. Gates, a vocational evangelist in that church joined us after lunch.
The morning was spent in prayer, reading Scripture, and singing. The burden of those prayers was for heavenly wisdom as we considered how best to steward the growing interest in God-centered theology among Baptists. After lunch, the idea of a conference was suggested and we began to work out principles that would govern such a conference. I recently reread minutes of those deliberations and was struck again at the Lord’s kindness in directing our plans.
We agreed that the motive for such a conference was “to glorify God, honor His gospel, and strengthen His churches.” This was to be done by providing encouragement “in historical, biblical, theological, practical and ecumenical studies.” We also adopted statements on the purpose and theological foundation of the conference.
The purpose is to be a balanced conference in respect to doctrine and devotion expressed in the doctrines of grace and their experimental application to the local church, particularly in the areas of worship and witness. This is to be accomplished through engaging a variety of speakers to present formal papers, sermons, expositions, and devotions, and through the recommendation and distribution of literature consistent with the nature of the conference.
The theological foundation of the conference will be the doctrines of grace: election, depravity, atonement, effectual calling and perseverance and specifically related truths. These subjects will be presented doctrinally, expositionally, homiletically and historically. Each conference will concentrate on the experimental and pastoral application of the respective doctrines.
The name we adopted was “The Southern Baptist Conference on the Faith of Our Founders.” Within a few years it was mercifully shortened to the “Founders Conference.” Though our context was Southern Baptist and all of the original board members were in SBC churches, our concerns, vision, and fellowship have from the outset been much broader than the SBC. This became more evident as other ministries began to arise from the annual conference (such as a quarterly theological journal, website, publication of books, and an online Study Center) and our name officially changed to “Founders Ministries.”
The first twenty years witnessed the initiation of all those additional ministries and they were born in the face of what was sometimes steep opposition—not only from the liberals and progressives within the Baptist and evangelical world but also from fellow conservatives, including at times even those who claim to share our confessional theology. In and through it all the Lord has faithfully guided our steps and helped us to stay true to our convictions. That is not to say that there have been no missteps but, by His grace, I can say that He has kept us on the path that we charted from the beginning to work for the recovery of the gospel and the reformation of local churches.
Much has been accomplished over the last forty years—far more than we could have anticipated that Saturday in Euless. But there is yet much, much more to do. I am convinced that the brightest and most useful days of Founders Ministries lay before us. No small part of that is due to the recent establishment of the Institute of Public Theology (IOPT). With a faculty that is second to none, a vision that timely and aggressive, and a need that is becoming more evident by the semester, IOPT is poised to serve future generations of churches by training men to be church leaders who not only understand the gospel fluently but also are unashamed of it and unafraid to proclaim and defend it in the public square.
Zecharaiah 4:10 warns against despising the day of small things. Seven largely obscure men meeting in a nondescript hotel room forty years ago fits that category. Yet, He has done more than any of us could have ever imagined.
Thank you for all who have partnered with us in this ministry over those years. Please continue to pray for the Lord’s blessings as we continue to work for the recovery of the gospel and the reformation of local churches. If you would like to be a part of what Founders Ministries and the Institute of Public Theology are doing, click this link for more information on a special opportunity for the month of November.

The 2023 Founders Conference will feature a special panel of Bill Ascol, Fred Malone, Tom Nettles, and Tom Ascol in recognition of God’s forty years of faithfulness to Founders.

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