http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15096736/christ-loved-himself-in-loving-the-church
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.
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Reversing Romans 1: A Glimpse of the Godward Life
The late R.C. Sproul was fond of inverting a particular biblical passage in order to bring home a theological truth. For instance, in seeking to press upon his hearers the horrors of God’s wrath, Sproul would turn to the Aaronic blessing:
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24–26)
Sproul turns the blessing inside out, transforming it into a curse:
May the Lord curse you and abandon you. May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace.May the Lord turn his back upon you and remove his peace from you forever.
His point in doing so was to press home the reality of God’s judgment and the wonders of Christ’s cross, modifying the familiar words so that we marvel at God’s grace in sending Christ to bear the curse in our place. Years ago, inspired by Sproul’s example, I engaged in my own inversion, this time transforming the Bible’s most detailed description of human rebellion into a vision for the Godward life.
The Godless Life
In Romans 1:18–32, Paul paints a picture of the consequences of human idolatry and ingratitude on human life and culture — the wages of a godless life. God’s wrath is revealed against our ungodliness, by which we suppress the truth of his sovereignty, power, and nature. In refusing to honor and thank God, who gives us every good gift, our minds fall into vanity and our hearts are darkened. Our rebellious folly is manifested clearly in the dark exchange that we make — trading away the glory of the immortal God for created things.
As a result of this foundational rebellion and false worship, God gives us over to impurity, lies, dishonorable passions, and a debased mind. The result extends to every area of human life. The individual is corrupted in mind and heart, in thinking and willing. The effects of rebellion extend from the inner man to the outer man, from the soul to the body. Our sexuality is corrupted, as sinful desires reign and ungodly passions distort the relationships between men and women.
From there, our corporate life is affected. “They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Romans 1:29–31). Family, friends, and society are all twisted by our debased minds as loving fellowship and community are torn apart and reoriented by our shared rebellion.
The Godward Life
So then, if this is a horrifying picture of human rebellion and ungodliness, what might the opposite be? Could an inverted Romans 1 give us a renewed vision for the Godward life?
The pleasure of God is revealed from heaven upon all godliness and righteousness of men, who by their righteousness celebrate the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. For because they know God, they honor him as God and give thanks to him, and they become fruitful in their thinking, and their humble hearts are enlightened. Having become fools for Christ, they have thereby become wise, and are receiving the glory of the immortal God and seeing that glory reflected in mortal man, birds, animals, and creeping things.
Therefore, God restored them in the desires of their hearts for purity, to the honoring of their bodies among themselves, because they gladly received the truth about God instead of lies and worshiped and served the Creator, who is blessed forever, rather than the creature. Amen.
For this reason, God renews their desires and delights and passions. For the women glory in the masculinity of men, and the men likewise revel in the femininity of women, and husbands and wives are consumed with passion for each other, men and women honoring the marriage bed and receiving among themselves the due reward for their obedience.
And since they see fit to acknowledge God, God reorients their renewed minds to do what ought to be done. They are filled with all manner of righteousness, goodness, contentment, benevolence. They are full of gratitude for other people’s gifts, brotherly love, peace, truth-telling, magnanimity. They are edifiers, encouragers, lovers of God, courteous, meek, humble, inventors of good, obedient to parents, wise, steadfast, compassionate, merciful. Because they know God’s decree that those who practice such things will receive eternal life, they not only do them but give hearty approval to those who practice them.
By turning the chapter on its head, we discover a fundamentally different vision for human life — one that begins, not with God’s wrath, but with his pleasure.
Going Godward Together
As we together turn our lives, ambitions, and worship Godward, we celebrate the truth, rather than suppress it. God’s revelation in creation and conscience and the Scriptures is the same, but now it leads us to heartfelt worship and gratitude to God through Christ. Such worship includes renewed and fruitful minds and humble and enlightened hearts, as we wisely and gladly receive the glory of God in and through the things that he has made.
Worship and thanksgiving spill forth from our souls to our bodies, as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1). This worship and gratitude reorient our sexual lives so that our renewed desires lead us into marriages, families, and fruitfulness. Rather than a war between the sexes, in which we despise, reject, and scorn each other, men marvel at the glory of women, and women admire and rejoice in the strength of men, as our families live beneath the blessing of God.
And then our reordered desires spill over the banks of our families and flood every aspect of our social lives, forming communities and cultures united by deep love for God and others. God’s law is our delight. Evil gives way to goodness, covetousness to contentment, and malice to benevolence. We cast off fellowship-killing envy and instead give thanks to God for his blessings to others. Strife ceases and peace reigns. We put off malicious lies and instead speak the truth with magnanimous hearts. Instead of using words to tear down and destroy, we build up and encourage. Insolent pride turns to meekness and humility. By God’s pleasure and grace, “foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless” becomes “wise, steadfast, compassionate, and merciful.”
This is the way of life that God has set before us — the Godward life — and it was not without great cost. God himself, in the person of his Son, took our flesh and dwelled among us, and gave himself for us, to turn the curse inside out and make it a blessing. And he plants this seed in every regenerate heart through the new birth, as we see and savor the goodness and grace of Christ. And as he pours out his grace upon us, this glorious vision multiplies in churches and homes and communities around the world, for his glory and our joy.
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Why Does God Choose the Foolish?
Audio Transcript
Good Monday. Today’s question on the table asks why God chose the foolish things of the world and not the wise and powerful. Why not use the wealthiest innovators, the smartest geniuses, the most articulate orators, the world’s greatest athletes and most recognizable movie stars to spread his gospel around the world? Why does God prefer to choose and use the weak in his mission?
The question comes from a podcast listener by the name of Euclid, who lives in the Philippines. “Hello, Pastor John. I have given my life to the Great Commission and desire to share the gospel to all nations. In 1 Corinthians 1:27, it says that ‘God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.’ Here’s my question. Why didn’t God save all the worldly-wise to proclaim the gospel to the whole world? Wouldn’t that have made a faster and greater impact in world evangelization than simply choosing a bunch of foolish people to do his work?”
Well, praise God that he chooses and uses foolish people.
The first answer I’d say is that the impact of all those wise people — all those smart people, those intellectual people, those gifted people — might have been faster and might have been outwardly greater, but it wouldn’t have been Christianity. If the Son of God had come into the world as a warrior or a philosopher to impact the world with his power and his intelligence, the impact would have been quicker and more outwardly impressive, but it wouldn’t have been Christianity.
Centrality of the Cross
We can hardly overestimate the importance of the decision God made in heaven — indeed, before the foundation of the world — that he would redeem and define a people through the weakest and most despicable death imaginable: the slaughtering by crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It was a scandal, a stumbling block, an absolute foolishness, a shame, an utter indignity, and that is how we are saved. That is how the gospel triumphs.
The entire first three chapters of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians are written to clarify for them — and for us — that Christianity will not be defined by or spread by the excellence of human oratory or the impressiveness of human intellect. Those two focuses were the pride in Corinth: the great oratory and the great intellect. And evidently the Corinthian church was quite enamored by these things. They were boasting by saying, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas” (1 Corinthians 1:12).
They were finding borrowed boasting, borrowed celebrity, borrowed praise by lining up behind the teacher that they thought would be superior in oratory or intellect. Paul devoted three chapters to showing why this is not the meaning of Christianity, nor is it the way forward for Christianity.
Problem with Human Wisdom
When Paul heard that they were saying, “I follow Paul” (1 Corinthians 1:12), he cried out, “Was Paul crucified for you?” (1 Corinthians 1:13). He couldn’t believe that they were turning the message of Christ crucified into a matter of boasting in his skills. Then three verses later, he says, “Christ . . . [sent] me . . . to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Corinthians 1:17).
Those were the two issues: human eloquence and human intellect. Oratory, erudition, cleverness with words, sharpness of brainpower — these were the great focuses of admiration and pride in Corinth. Paul said, in effect, “Oratory and intellect might get bigger crowds, might get bigger acclaim, might have a quicker impact on the public, but it wouldn’t be Christianity.” It would, in fact, be a denial of Christ and an emptying of the cross, because the cross of Christ means the end of boasting in human achievements.
“God’s wisdom decided that human wisdom would not be the way of salvation.”
It means the replacing of that kind of boasting with Christ-exalting, childlike trust in a Redeemer because of how desperately needy and sinful we are. The cross of Christ isn’t just Christ’s death. It’s our death. I am crucified with Christ, crucified to the self-salvation and self-exaltation of pride. Then in 1 Corinthians 1:18, Paul says, “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
God’s Wisdom
Three verses later, in that amazing verse, he tells us why human wisdom, human intellect, reason, and what we are by nature alone cannot find ultimate wisdom in God or salvation. Here’s what he says: “For since, in the wisdom of God [that’s the key phrase], the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21).
God’s wisdom decided that human wisdom would not be the way of salvation. Rather, faith in divine foolishness would be the way of salvation. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). The point to emphasize for our friend Euclid in the Philippines is that it never looks like that.
The foolishness of God is wiser than men, but it doesn’t look like it. It looks like foolishness. The weakness of God is stronger than men, but it doesn’t look like it. It looks like weakness. That’s Christianity. This is the way the gospel advances in the world. Paul says it again in 1 Corinthians 2:1: “I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come . . . with lofty speech or wisdom.” There it is again: lofty speech, skillful, impressive Greek eloquence or wisdom, or philosophical impressiveness.
God’s Gospel Strategy
“Why, Paul?” That’s what Euclid is asking. “Why not use lofty speech and human intellect?” First Corinthians 2:5 gives the answer: “So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” Now, Euclid began by quoting 1 Corinthians 1:27 and asking, “Why didn’t God save all the worldly-wise to proclaim the gospel to the whole world? Wouldn’t that have made a faster and greater impact in world evangelization?”
So, let’s end where Euclid began, because that paragraph gives two clear answers to the question, “Why wouldn’t God do it that way?” Here’s what he says:
Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. (1 Corinthians 1:26–28)
“God’s aim in world evangelization is to put an end to human pride, and to make Jesus the focus of all human praise.”
Here’s his first answer: “so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:29). And then he continues: “And because of him [because of God] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” And here’s the second answer: “so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:30–31).
So, why not spread the gospel among the nations faster and with greater impact through wise, powerful, noble-born people? Two answers:
so that no human might boast in the presence of God
so that those who boast would boast only in the LordGod’s aim in world evangelization is to put an end to human pride, and to make Jesus the focus of all human praise. His ways are not our ways. We just need to settle it. His ways are not our ways. Christ crucified defines everything.
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Did Jesus Need the Spirit? Pondering the Power of the God-Man
How did Jesus walk on water? How did he feed five thousand with five loaves and two fish? How did he raise Lazarus from the dead?
Unless we have been carefully taught, many Christians would be quick to say simply, Because he is God! And he truly is. But is that how the New Testament answers these questions? If we follow the emphasis of the Gospels, we might say that what Jesus’s miracles show is that he is God, but how he, as man, performs these wonders, is not quite as simple as we may assume.
In particular, what are we to say about the many texts that testify to the Holy Spirit’s presence in the human life of Christ? Did Christ, in his humanity, actually need the Holy Spirit if he performed such signs simply by virtue of his divinity?
When we recognize the surprisingly recurrent theme of the divine Spirit’s relationship to the divine Son in his humanity, we might understand Jesus (and the Gospels) better, and freshly marvel at what grace Christ offers us in the gift of his Spirit.
Jesus and the Spirit
First, let’s rehearse the string of biblical texts that lead us to what is often called a “Spirit Christology” — which is simply a term for recognizing the critical part played by the person and work of the Spirit in the person and work of Christ.
Sinclair Ferguson observes three distinct “stages” in the life of Christ, through which we might acknowledge the Spirit’s relationship to the Son (The Holy Spirit, 38–56). Those stages are as follows, with key texts.
1. Conception, Birth, and Growth
As we know from some of our favorite Advent readings, the Holy Spirit is present and pronounced in the angelic announcements to both Mary and Joseph. How will it be, asks Mary, that I, a virgin, will conceive and bear a son? “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). So too in Matthew’s account about Joseph, the Spirit both frames the report and is explicit in the angelic announcement (Matthew 1:18, 20).
Yet the Spirit is not only present, and explicit, at the conception and birth of Christ, but also specifically prophesied by Isaiah, seven centuries prior, as “resting upon” the coming Anointed One: “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:2).
“God’s word notes again and again the power of the Spirit as Christ’s inseparable companion.”
Now in Jesus of Nazareth, the long-promised shoot from the stump of Jesse has come (Isaiah 11:1), and “the Spirit of wisdom and understanding” upon him is seen even as early as age 12 as Jesus listens in the temple to the teachers and asks them questions. “All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished” (Luke 2:47–48).
Even in childhood, as Jesus “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52), he was not on his own but had the Spirit as his “inseparable companion,” as the great Cappadocian theologian Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379) captured it so memorably.
2. Baptism, Temptations, and Ministry
Isaiah’s prophesied anointing with the Spirit comes to the fore again at the outset of Jesus’s public ministry, beginning with his baptism. The forerunner, John the Baptist, tells of a coming Spirit-baptism that John’s water-baptism anticipated (Luke 3:16). But first, before baptizing others in the Spirit, Jesus himself will be the preeminent Man of the Spirit. When Jesus “had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased’” (Luke 3:21–22; also Matthew 3:16).
Here at the outset of his public ministry, the Spirit descends on him with new fullness for his unique calling, and the voice from heaven first connects the Anointed of Psalm 2 with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 42. The Servant — and Son — not only enjoys God’s full favor, but he is also the one of whom it is said, “I have put my Spirit upon him” (Isaiah 42:1).
Freshly endowed with (“full of”) the Spirit, Jesus then goes to the wilderness. Not only is he “led by the Spirit” (Luke 4:1; Matthew 4:1) into the wilderness, but as Mark reports, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mark 1:12), not as a retreat but as an advance in war, to encounter the enemy and beginning taking back territory.
Once Christ has returned, victorious in his wilderness test — in the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:14) — he comes to Galilee and to his hometown of Nazareth. In the synagogue, they hand him in the scroll of Isaiah, and what does he read, as the first public act after his baptism? He begins with Isaiah 61:1: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . .” (Luke 4:18).
Jesus’s ministry then unfolds in the subsequent pages as by the Spirit he proclaims good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18–19; Isaiah 61:1–2). Jesus will testify that it is “by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons” (Matthew 12:28). By the Spirit, he teaches with unusual authority. Fully man, he is fully dependent on his Father — having come not to do his own will but the will of him who sent him (John 6:38). And as Peter one day will summarize his life, in telling his story to Gentiles, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38).
In the words of John 3:34, and Isaac Ambrose (1604–1664), Jesus “received the Spirit out of measure; there was in him as much as possibly could be in a creature, and more than in all other creatures whatsoever” (Looking unto Jesus, 280).
3. Death, Resurrection, and Ascension
Significant as the testimony is about the Spirit’s work in Jesus’s childhood and ministry, we might expect that when he comes to die, and rise, and ascend, we would hear about the Spirit here too. Indeed we do. According to Hebrews 9:14, Jesus offered himself for sins at the cross “through the eternal Spirit.” As he set his face like flint toward Jerusalem, mounted the donkey on Palm Sunday, confronted scribes and Pharisees, and prayed with “loud cries and tears” in Gethsemane (Hebrews 5:7), Jesus was anointed, sustained, and strengthened by the Spirit to the end. And beyond.
In his resurrection, Jesus was “vindicated by the Spirit” (1 Timothy 3:16). As Paul writes in Romans 1:4, Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” And promising a coming of, and baptizing with, the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5, 8), Jesus ascended to heaven (Acts 1:9), to be glorified at God’s right hand, where he then would pour out the Spirit on those who believe (John 7:37–39; Acts 2:2–4, 17, 33). Amazingly, then, Peter would preach, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Now, to receive Christ is to receive the Spirit, and vice versa.
In fact, the Holy Spirit has become such an “inseparable companion” for Christ that we find a striking identification of Jesus and the Spirit in the letters of Paul (1 Corinthians 15:45; 2 Corinthians 3:17–18). Not only is the Holy Spirit now “the Spirit of Jesus” (Philippians 1:19; also Acts 16:7), but the glorified Christ and the poured-out Spirit can be spoken of interchangeably, as in Romans 8:9–11: Christians “have the Spirit of Christ,” and in the Spirit, “Christ is in you.”
Jesus Did Not Cheat
Now back to our original question: How did Jesus walk on water, multiply loaves, and raise the dead? The New Testament witness to the Spirit as Christ’s “inseparable companion” and source of divine power is too pronounced to ignore. Jesus, the God-man, apparently needed the Spirit. The terms of the incarnation, in honoring the fullness of humanity, were that the second person of the Trinity did not immediately provide divine power and help to the human Christ. Rather, he did so mediately through the Spirit. It was the great Puritan theologian John Owen (1616–1683) who perhaps first ventured the formulation that now has stood for almost four centuries: “The only singular immediate act of the person of the Son on the human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with himself” (The Works of John Owen, 3:160).
“Jesus, the God-man, apparently needed the Spirit.”
In other words, the eternal Son’s only direct act on his human nature was uniting that humanity to himself in the incarnation. “Every other act upon Christ’s human nature,” writes Mark Jones, “was from the Holy Spirit. Christ performed miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit, not immediately by his own divine power” (The Prayers of Jesus, 23). As Jones comments elsewhere, “Christ’s obedience in our place had to be real obedience. He did not cheat by relying on his own divine nature while he acted as the second Adam” (Puritan Theology, 343). The Holy Spirit has accompanied, supplied, and carried the Son in his human nature from conception to childhood to ministry, to the cross and resurrection, and now in his glory, fully endowed as the Man of the Spirit at God’s right hand.
Spirit of Christ in Us
Why make a point of what some might perceive as a technicality? Why note, as Kyle Claunch does, this “marked contrast” between the New Testament emphasis and “the tendency of post-biblical authors, who appeal to the deity of Jesus as the explanation for the extraordinary features of his life and ministry”?
For one, a Spirit Christology demonstrates the genuine humanness of Christ, which is vital not only for our imitation of his life, but even more for his perfect human life to count savingly and uniquely in the place of us sinners. Also, observing the critical place of the Holy Spirit with respect to the humanity of Christ helps us understand the Bible. From Isaiah, to the Gospels and Acts, and the Epistles, God’s word notes again and again, as we’ve seen, the power of the Spirit as Christ’s inseparable companion. If we want to know and understand God’s word, we will not want to read a phrase like “by the Spirit” as white noise but with meaning.
Finally, a Spirit Christology shows us, in a secondary sense, what is possible in us by the same Spirit who dwells in us — not mainly in terms of being the Spirit’s channel for displays of extraordinary power (though we might grow to be expectant of more than we have), but most significantly in terms of holiness and spiritual joy. Jesus was and is unique. The power of the Spirit in his human life pointed to his uniqueness as God. Still, the same Spirit who empowered Jesus’s earthly life, and sacrificial death, and triumphant resurrection, has been given to us today as “the Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7). He not only works on us, and through us, but dwells in us (Romans 8:9, 11; 2 Timothy 1:14). He has been given to us (Luke 11:13; John 7:38–39; Acts 5:32; 15:8; 1 Thessalonians 4:8). We have received him (John 20:22; Acts 2:38; 8:15, 17, 19; 10:47; 19:2; Romans 5:5; 8:15; 1 Corinthians 2:12; 2 Corinthians 5:5; 1 John 3:24), to glorify the Son (John 16:14).
The very power of God himself, in his Spirit, has come to make himself at home in some real degree, and to increasing effect, in us. We are his temple, both individually and collectively (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19), and a day is coming when we, like Christ, will reign in glory, fully endowed with the Spirit, to enjoy life, and God in Christ, beyond what we’ve even imagined so far.