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“Shall I Not Drink the Cup?”: God’s Wrath and His Will
What was Jesus referring to when He asked Peter in the garden of Gethsemane, “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” We might be prone to think that the “cup” He mentioned symbolized the physical suffering Christ would meet on the cross—but, as Alistair Begg points out in his sermon “Shall I Not Drink the Cup?,” He probably had something even more momentous in mind:
In the agony of the garden, you remember, Jesus says, “Father, if you are willing, let this cup pass from me.” Now, the cup to which he refers is a symbol of God’s judgment. It is the cup of his wrath. You would need to just take your concordance and work on this on your own to build up a picture of this from the Old Testament. Let me cross-reference just two places—one, straightforwardly, in Psalm 75. And in the midst of that psalm, in verse 8, the psalmist says,
For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup
with foaming wine, well mixed
and he pours out from it,
and all the wicked of the earth
shall drain it down to [its] dregs
—that God, in exercising his judgment on wickedness, will pour out the cup of his wrath.
You have it elsewhere, but let me just give one other, and that would be in Isaiah and in chapter 51. And the prophet says,
Wake yourself, wake yourself,
stand up, O Jerusalem,
you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord
the cup of his wrath,
who have drunk to the dregs
the bowl, the cup of staggering.
There is none to guide her
among all the sons she has borne;
there is none to take her by the hand
among all the sons she has brought up.
These two things have happened to you—
who will console you?—
devastation and destruction, famine and sword;
who will comfort you?
Your sons have fainted;
they lie at the head of every street
like an antelope in a net;
they are full of the wrath of the Lord,
the rebuke of your God.
So the cup that is being referenced here by Jesus is that cup. It is the cup of God’s wrath. So when we think about Jesus in the garden saying, “Father, if it is possible for this cup to pass from me,” we’ve immediately gone wrong if we think what he is saying is simply “I don’t want to have to face the ignominy of this” or “I don’t like the idea of my friends and myself being separated from me” and so on—“I am afraid of the physicality of it,” if you like. All of that may be true, but that is not the issue. Because the cup that he doesn’t want to drink is the cup poured out by the Father on all the wickedness and ungodliness of humanity. Jesus didn’t want to drink that cup. If you said, “What is Jesus’ will?” Jesus’ will was “I don’t want to drink that cup.” How do we know that? Because he said it. He said it.
What Is Partitive Exegesis? How the Church Has Read Scripture on Christ
“You just had to be there!”
We fall back on this excuse when words fail to capture the precise reality of an experience—often a comedic interaction or visual beauty. The reality is that reality itself is often hard to describe. We do our best to describe it with words, but we’ve all experienced the frustration of falling short.
This is especially true when we use our words to describe God. Herman Bavinck asks, “The moment we dare to speak about God the question arises: How can we?”[1] The same question can be asked of the person of Christ: When we dare to speak about the One who is both infinite God and finite man, how can we?
Scripture tells us Jesus slept, ate, walked, and learned new things. But it also tells us He created the universe, sustains it, and is omniscient. You can see the dilemma—how do we accurately describe Jesus when He has these seemingly contradictory categories?
We can navigate this difficulty through a practice known as partitive exegesis. Partitive exegesis presupposes that Christ’s two natures are unified in His person without confusion, change, division, or separation. Therefore, we must recognize and maintain the distinction between Christ’s two natures when we read the Bible.[2] While that may sound complicated, this practice arises from Scripture itself—it is an inspired way of describing the reality of the incarnation.
A Biblical Pattern
As we read through the New Testament, we see passages variously emphasize attributes of both Christ’s humanity and His divinity. Consider these five ways that the Bible makes statements about Christ.
1. When Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” the person is the subject, but the attribute (eternality) is only appropriate for the divine nature (John 8:58).
2. When Jesus said, “I thirst,” the person is the subject, but thirst is only appropriate for the human nature (John 19:28).
3. Titles like “Redeemer” or “King” are applied to Christ and is appropriate for both natures (Psalm 10:16; Luke 1:32–33).
So far, so good. But Scripture also contains more complicated statements about Christ.
4. Some things are ascribed to Christ that are appropriate to the human nature but predicated on Christ as divine. In Revelation 1:17–18, Christ identifies Himself as “the first and the last” (a divine title), then He says He “was dead” (something only possible for a human). A human quality (death) is applied to the person even though the Son as God is emphasized in this passage.
5. On the other hand, some things are ascribed to Christ that are appropriate to the divine nature but predicated on Christ as human. John 6:62 refers to “the Son of Man ascending to where He was before.” “Son of Man” emphasizes Christ’s humanity, but ascending to “where He was before” can only be truly said of Christ as divine.[3]
In each of these instances, Scripture applies a property true of one or both natures to the person. It is our job as interpreters to discern which attributes are appropriate for each nature.
While some people may object that we read too strong of a distinction between the natures, the Bible itself uses this logic as well. Romans 1:3 says that Christ “was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh.” Christ is not descended from David according to the divinity. This is logically obvious, but Paul makes it verbally explicit. [4]
Partitive exegesis is an attempt to apply this same inspired logic to every biblical statement about Christ. Some things are true of Christ according to His humanity and some things are true of Christ according to His divinity.
This way of thinking was worked out in the early church. As Chalcedon states, “The distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person.” Because the two natures are unified in the person of Christ, anything said of either nature is true of the person (“concurring in one Person”) while remaining untrue of the other nature (“the property of each nature being preserved”).
Yet, some confusion may arise in light of examples 4–5 above. How do we interpret those verses that apply the property of one nature to the other?
The Communication of Properties
The properties of both natures are predicated on the person. However, because both natures are united in the one person, Scripture seemingly attributes properties of one nature to the other. This biblical way of speaking has become known as the “communication of idioms” or “communication of properties.”
This is described in the 1689 London Baptist Confession, 8.7: “Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture, attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.”
Consider these verses:
Acts 20:28, “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.”
1 Corinthians 2:8, “The wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”
Zechariah 12:10, [Yahweh says] “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.”
In each example, something human (blood, crucifixion, and death) is predicated of divinity (God, the Lord of Glory, and Yahweh). Does God, who is spirit (John 4:24) have blood? Can the Lord, who has life in Himself (John 5:26), be crucified? Can Yahweh be “pierced?”
The only way any of these statements can be true is if they refer to a single person who is both God and man. Concerning biblical passages like the ones listed above, Theodore Beza explains,
In the first place, these statements are made by means of the communication of individual properties, which truly does not exist. For if it were really true—that is, if the properties of the divine nature in actual fact belonged to the human nature, or vice versa—there would be no union, but a confusion. But it is put like this so that the unity of the person might be understood.[5]
When Beza says the statements like those from Acts 20:28 are not “really true,” he means that they are attributed verbally instead of ontologically. It is not that God has blood, but the person who is God has blood as a man. Therefore, it is appropriate because of the unity of the person to say “God has blood.” John Calvin explains, “It very frequently happens, on account of the unity of the Person of Christ, that what properly belongs to one nature is applied to another.”
How can both statements be true? How can Jesus be in heaven and with His disciples? The only possible answer to these questions is that He is both God and man. God is omnipresent (1 Kings 8:27; Psalm 139:7–10; Jer. 23:24) and this did not change when the Son assumed a human nature. This must be the case because it is impossible for God to change (Mal. 3:6; Jas. 1:17).[6]
Calvin gives us the Chalcedonian key here: The communication of properties is possible “on account of the unity of the Person of Christ.” And as Beza notes above, this close unity of the two natures in the one person teaches us about the person of Christ. We know that the natures are unified in the person by the very fact that both are predicated of Him—even to the point of verbally applying properties of one nature to the other.
A Test Case: Divine Presence and Human Distance
What does partitive exegesis look like in practice? We can use the divine attribute of omnipresence as a test case. On the one hand, Christ made it clear to His disciples that He was leaving them: “It is to your advantage that I go away” (John 15:7; see Acts 1:9–11). On the other hand, Christ makes statements that indicate His continuing presence with the disciples after His ascension: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
God is omnipresent and this did not change when the Son assumed a human nature.
The Son lost nothing in the incarnation, but instead assumed a human nature. As it pertains to His presence, He did not lose omnipresence, but assumed locality as a man. His infinite being was veiled in a finite location, but not fully contained in it. So, although Christ is truly a man and localized in one place as such, He is simultaneously the omnipresent God.
This mind-bending reality was helpfully articulated in the period of the Reformation. The belief that Christ is omnipresent as God yet localized as man has come to be known as the extra Calvinisticum. This title is somewhat misleading because Calvin did not invent the doctrine. It is simply associated with his name because of how it played into the Reformation debates over the Lord’s Table.
Positively, the extra Calvinisticum teaches that God the Son retains all his divine attributes, specifically omnipresence. Negatively, (because of the positive point) the extra Calvinisticum teaches that God the Son is not contained within the human nature which he assumed.[7] Calvin poetically articulates this position,
For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein. Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.[8]
The Genevan Reformer carefully avoids two errors here. First, he refuses to divide the person of Christ. The Son who fills all things is the same person who was born of a virgin. Second, he refuses to blend Christ’s two natures—humanity is not omnipresent and divinity is not contained locally.
Do you see how partitive exegesis helps us answer the question of how Christ is both personally present with us but also in heaven? It faithfully harmonizes texts like Matthew 28:20 and Acts 1:9–11. Those verses that indicate omnipresence refer to Christ by His divinity and those that indicate local movement or limitation refer to Christ by His humanity.
Why We Need Partitive Exegesis
Concerning the time of His return, Jesus says in Matthew 24:36, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” This verse tells us that the Son is ignorant of something (the time of His return).
Based on everything we’ve seen above, how should we interpret this statement? Is ignorance appropriate to Christ’s divinity, humanity, or both? We know that God is omniscient (1 John 3:20), so ignorance cannot be true of divinity. Therefore, it must be true of Christ according to His humanity.
Some will object that this interpretation neuters the force of Matthew 24:36, but this conclusion is not necessary. Christ’s statement is still true—the One who is God is ignorant of something as a man. Understanding that Christ’s ignorance is only possible for Him as a man in no way undermines the meaning of this verse. In fact, it should cause us to marvel at the fact that Christ is both ignorant and omniscient!
Furthermore, we frequently interpret the Bible this way without even realizing it. We don’t read a passage about Jesus getting hungry (Mark 11:12) and assume that God suddenly has a digestive system. Instead, we know that hunger indicates the genuine humanity of the Son. Likewise, when we read that Jesus upholds the universe (Col. 1:17), we don’t assume that He is doing so with human hands.
Whatever is said of either nature is true of the person, but what is said of one nature is not necessarily true of the other nature. So when Scripture makes a statement about Christ, we have to ask ourselves, “Is this statement true of both natures or just one?” Then, “If it is true of only one nature, which one?”
The One who is God suffered on the cross as a man. The One who is man upheld the universe while it happened.
If we do not interpret Scriptures concerning Christ correctly—in light of the reality they describe—we end up with a God who thirsts, sleeps, suffers, submits, and lacks knowledge. We also end up with a man who is omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. If we fail to retain the properties of each nature to themselves, we blend them and start on the short road to heresy. In fact, this is exactly how certain heretics have interpreted Matthew 24:36.[9]
Did My Sovereign Die?
Partitive exegesis is a way of making explicit what many Christians do intuitively. If you’ve ever sung Isaac Watt’s hymn “Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed,” you’re familiar with partitive language. The opening lines state,
Alas! and did my Savior bleed,
And did my Sovereign die!
The third verse goes even further:
Well might the sun in darkness hide,
And shut its glories in,
When God, the mighty maker, died
For his own creature’s sin.
Did God die? Yes—as a man! God the Son suffered, bled, and died on the cross as a real human while retaining full divinity. Cyril of Alexandria embraces this reality: “To the same one we attribute both the divine and human characteristics, and we also say that to the same one belongs the birth and the suffering on the cross since he appropriated everything that belonged to his own flesh, while ever remaining impassible in the nature of the Godhead.”[10]
The One who is God suffered on the cross as a man. The One who is man upheld the universe while it happened. The one undivided person is the same in both cases. And instead of simplifying this mystery, we should be compelled by it to adore Christ more. This great mystery of God the Son in two natures should cause us to continue singing with Watts,
Was it for crimes that I have done,
he groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! Grace unknown!
And love beyond degree![11]
[1] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2, God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 30. Emphasis added.
[2] I am borrowing terminology from Jamieson and Wittman here: “Partitive exegesis discerns the precise referent and scope of scriptural statements about Christ. Since Scripture proclaims a single Christ who is both divine and human, partitive exegesis recognizes and maintains a distinction between Christ’s divine and human natures.” R.B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman, Biblical Reasoning (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022), 155.
[3] This list is adapted from John F. Walvoord, Jesus Christ Our Lord (Chicago: Moody Press, 1969), 117–118.
[4] R.B. Jamieson and Tyler Wittman explain, “Why does Paul specify that Jesus’s human lineage is from the seed of David? Because that is not the only lineage he has. Jesus is not only David’s son but also God’s Son. So, even though Paul’s partitive qualifier [i.e., ‘according to the flesh’] only faces one direction, we can fittingly paraphrase Paul’s partition with a Chalcedonian parallelism. In Romans 1:3, Jesus is God’s Son as regards his divinity, and David’s son as regards his humanity.” Jamieson and Wittman, Biblical Reasoning, 157.
[5] Theodore Beza, A Clear and Simple Treatise on the Lord’s Supper, trans. David C. Noe (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2016), 67.
[6] Some people have interpreted Paul’s claim that the Son “emptied Himself” in Philippians 2:7 to mean that He “set aside” or “gave up” certain divine attributes in the incarnation. Thankfully, Paul explains what “emptied Himself” means in the very next phrase. He writes that the Son “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” For a complete explanation of Philippians 2:6–8, see Mike Riccardi’s article “Veiled in Flesh the Godhead See: A Study of the Kenosis of Christ” in The Master’s Seminary Journal 30/1 (Spring 2019): 103–127 and Stephen J. Wellum, God the Son Incarnate (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 174–179.
[7] Paul Helm offers a succinct definition of extra Calvinisticum: “This is the view that in the Incarnation God the Son retained divine properties such as immensity and omnipresence and that therefore Christ was not physically confined within the limits of a human.” Richard Muller explains further, “The Reformed argued that the Word is fully united to but never totally contained within the human nature and therefore, even in the incarnation, is to be conceived of as beyond or outside of (extra) the human nature.” Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 58 and Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 116.
[8] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), II.13.4.
[9] See, for instance, the Socinian John Biddle, A Brief History of the Unitarians (1691), 4.
[10] Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, trans. John Anthony McGuckin (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladamir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 133.
[11] Some of the material in this post was originally posted here and here.
What If She Won’t Follow? To Men with Egalitarian Wives
Four decades ago, when I got married, I asked to have the words “and to obey” removed from my wedding vows: “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey . . .” As a female executive and partner in an advertising agency, my egalitarian instincts ran deep. I was a Christian, and I also wholeheartedly believed a woman could and should hold any position a man might if she were able. It hadn’t occurred to me that some callings might have been designed by God for men and others for women. It felt normal to be part of a church with women in pastoral and other leadership positions. Submitting as a woman seemed like an old-fashioned idea.
Today, however, I joyfully embrace the biblical vision of sexual complementarity. I am living proof that a wife can change from being offended at the very word submit to celebrating the beauty of God’s plan for men and women, husbands and wives. I want to offer my story as an encouragement to men whose wives have not yet seen the beauty and the kindness of the Lord in assigning them the calling to follow and support a godly man.
So, what happened? And how did my husband help me to change?
Revolution by Revelation
In embracing biblical femininity, I clearly did not take my cues from our society. The world we live in today has moved radically to deny the differences between men and women. It scoffs at the idea that God might have created men for greater authority and responsibility and accountability. Even some evangelicals deny male headship.
The mainline Protestant church I attended certainly did. We had women in leadership at every level. Yet by God’s grace, that’s where my change began.
The church appointed me as the lay leader of the congregation, the highest role a layperson could hold, and they chose me over — wait for it — my own husband. Our pastor had put my husband’s name before the committee, and when an objection was raised against him, they selected me.
This appointment cast a dark shadow over our marriage. Both my husband and I felt something was deeply wrong. Eventually, we left that egalitarian church (and all the controversy that boiled in that denomination) and found a wonderful church that preached through the Bible line by line. My husband and I fell in love with Scripture, including God’s good design for men and women. And my understanding changed as I grew to see God’s good plan.
This new church was led by a team of good, kind, godly men. These pastors believed God. They believed he had designed men and women differently and had assigned men primary leadership responsibility. They knew their Bibles and demonstrated godly character. They led, taught, shepherded, and counseled courageously. There was a palpable sense of God’s power that seemed to flow through the obedience of these men. Under their care, I felt such a tremendous sense of relief. My husband did too.
Our souls flourished. Our church life flourished. Our marriage flourished. And 26 years later, God’s design continues to feel more and more right.
The Man of My Change
In telling my story of change, my particular burden is to encourage godly men whose wives are still captured by the siren song of feminism. The call for women to claim their “rights” and not be denied the opportunity to use their gifts any way they desire is loud and alluring. The propaganda hides the pride at the root of this demand. Like Eve, some women believe the lie that God (through men) has denied her something she is entitled to. Did God really say . . . ? In misunderstanding, women have missed the beautiful, privileged calling God has assigned to us.
God was kind to take my husband and me along the road to understanding and embracing his plan together, but I know that is not true for everyone. To faithful husbands with wives who won’t follow, I say there is hope. Do not lose heart. I was once a woman like your wife, and God used my husband to help change me. So, allow me to share five things I saw God doing in my husband that helped me to embrace my biblical calling.
1. He walked more closely with Jesus.
Even more than your calling as husband, you are first a man of God. God calls you to be transformed day by day as you walk with Christ (1 John 2:6; Ephesians 5:1–2). When this is your aim, Christ will help you lead with his strength. The teaching we were receiving in our new church inspired my husband to spend more time in the word, to be more involved in friendships with other godly men, and, gradually, to be more convicted by and repentant of his own sin. When we were praying together, he would often confess in ways that melted my heart. I could see God’s hand working in him, and it touched me deeply.
What does Paul pray unceasingly for the Colossian church? That they “may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:9–10). This is what God wants for all Christians: walk well, bear fruit, know God. If you are faithful in this, you will bless your marriage and be an example for your wife.
2. He became a more godly man.
You may be tempted to focus on changing your wife, but only God can change her heart. God can use you, however. A good place to begin is by being the kind of man your wife will respect.
“Like Eve, some women believe the lie that God (through men) has denied her something she is entitled to.”
If you “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:1–2); if you are “tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32); if your love is patient and kind, if it doesn’t boast, if it isn’t arrogant or rude, if you don’t insist on your own way, and if you are not irritable or resentful (1 Corinthians 13:4–5); if you keep your word, letting your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no (James 5:12); if you strive to display these qualities and bear the fruit of the Spirit, you will create a climate in your home that God may use to soften the heart of your wife. I saw more of all of these qualities emerging in my husband as we grew in right understanding of God’s word. (It also doesn’t hurt that my husband has a great sense of humor and can apply it to his own faults and in his correction of me.)
Of course, God calls your wife to embrace these qualities too, but don’t worry about her for now. Are you striving to be a godly man? If so, wait and see what God will do. My husband’s example still blesses me and stirs in me a desire to be a better woman.
3. He heartily embraced God’s call to husbands.
In God’s kindness, the first Sunday school class my husband and I attended in our new church was on Ephesians 5:22–33. That class deeply convicted my husband about his responsibility to strive to present me before Christ without spot or wrinkle.
What did Ephesians 5:26 tell him to do? Wash her in the word! He has been washing me in the word nearly every morning since. Are you washing your wife in the word? Are you reading Scripture together and talking about what you see? Are you eager to tell her something you read in the Bible that encouraged you and might encourage her? Are you bathing her with gospel truth when she is discouraged? Do you want to cherish and nourish her as much as you cherish and nourish yourself? Are you in a church that preaches God’s word faithfully, even the most challenging portions?
If your wife embraces egalitarianism, immersing yourself and her in God’s word may help her see God as loving and trustworthy and his plans as glorious — including his plans for husbands and wives.
4. He showed patience.
We all struggle with patience, that difficult fruit of the Spirit, but trusting God’s timing is so good. Does your desire for your wife accord with God’s plan? Then trust that he is working, even when you can’t see it happening. We were in that egalitarian church for eighteen years, and I served as lay leader for several years, and you know what? God was working throughout that whole time. I am still naturally strong-willed and sometimes struggle with speaking before carefully thinking and praying, and most of the time my husband remains patient. I am so grateful!
“With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone” (Proverbs 25:15). If patience can persuade a ruler, then it can certainly persuade a mistaken wife.
5. He prayed for me.
One of the ways God has transformed my heart is by revealing more and more of the incredible power of prayer. My husband prays with me and for me nearly every day in our devotional time. Nearly every day, he thanks God for the gift of being married to me! Do you pray fully confident that God hears and has the power to change your wife’s heart? Dear reader, pray scriptural truth boldly for yourself and your wife. Pray for God to help you be the man and husband he calls you to be. Pray for God to bless your wife and cause her faith to flourish.
More privately, pray for God to help your wife’s love for Christ and her respect for you to grow. Pray for God to soften your wife’s heart so she can see his beautiful plan for men and women. Pray for God to strengthen your faith and help you believe he can do all these things and more. Because he can.
God’s plans for men and women are truly glorious. Husbands and wives will never be satisfied until we align our will with God’s and live the way he intended. Husbands, lead your wives in a way that displays the glorious plan of God. This is his will for you and your marriage. Do your part with joy and faith, and leave the results to him. If your wife doesn’t change, remain godly and faithful anyway. No matter what your wife chooses to do, God’s will for you remains.
And do not give up. “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12).
Blessed Satisfaction: The Sin-Slaying, Soul-Staggering Glory of Christ
J.I. Packer wrote,
[John Owen] is by common consent not the most versatile, but the greatest among Puritan theologians. For solidity, profundity, massiveness and majesty in exhibiting from Scripture God’s ways with sinful mankind there is no one to touch him. (A Quest for Godliness, 81)
In an age of giants, he overtopped them all. (191)
The first volume of Owen’s collected works contains three major essays on the glory of Christ, which is my theme in this message. He wrote A Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ, Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, Meditations and Discourses Concerning the Glory of Christ, Applied. No other works have increased my understanding and admiration of the glory of Christ more than these, with the possible exception of Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “The Excellency of Christ.”
So, as we focus together on the glory of Christ, the music playing in the background of my mind will be the music of John Owen. And every now and then, I’ll let you hear some of its remarkable strains.
Seeing Glory, Being Glorious
I share Owen’s conviction that the more clearly we see and savor the glory of Christ, the more freedom we will enjoy from the power of temptation. He based this largely on 2 Corinthians 3:18: “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” Owen said,
Herein would I live [in beholding the glory of Christ], hereon would I dwell in my thoughts and affections, to the withering and consumption of all the painted beauties of this world, unto the crucifying all things here below, until they become unto me a dead and deformed thing, no way meet for affectionate embraces. (The Works of John Owen, 1:291)
In other words, the path of holiness is achieved by having such clear views of the superior beauties of Christ that lesser sinful attractions wither and die. Owen was always combining the highest views of Christ with practical holiness. “No man,” he said, “can by faith take a real view of [Christ’s] glory, but virtue will proceed from it in a transforming power to change him into the same image” (Works, 1:292).
I have a picture in my mind of the glory of Christ like the sun at the center of the solar system of your life. The massive sun — 333,000 times the mass of the earth — holds all the planets in orbit, even little Pluto, which is 3.6 billion miles away. And so it is with the glory of Christ in your life. All the planets of your life — your sexuality and desires, your commitments and beliefs, your aspirations and dreams, your attitudes and convictions, your habits and disciplines, your solitude and relationships, your labor and leisure, your thinking and feeling — are held in proper orbit by the greatness and gravity and blazing brightness of the glory of Christ at the center of your life. And if he ceases to be the bright, blazing, satisfying beauty at the center of your life, the planets will fly into confusion, a hundred things will be out of control, and sooner or later they will crash into destruction.
We were made to know and enjoy Christ as he really is. We were created to comprehend — as much as a creature can — the glory of Christ. And this comprehending, this knowing, is not the knowing of disinterested awareness, but the knowing of admiration and wonder and awe and intimacy and ecstasy and embrace.
“If there is anything worthy of praise anywhere in the universe, it is summed up supremely in Jesus Christ.”
We were made to see and savor, with everlasting satisfaction, the glory of Christ. Jesus prayed for this in John 17:24: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” Owen said, “Such a manifestation of his glory unto his disciples doth the Lord Christ here desire, as might fill them with blessed satisfaction for evermore” (Works, 1:286). We were made for this “blessed satisfaction.” It is precisely the power of this superior satisfaction in the glory of Christ that severs the root of sin.
Immensity of Christ’s Glory
My prayer for this conference, and for all of you one by one, is that you will see and savor the glory of Christ — married or single, male or female, old or young, devastated by disordered desires or walking in a measure of holiness — that all of you will behold and embrace the glory of Christ as the blazing sun at the center of your life, and that the planets of all your desires will orbit in their proper place. Oh, that the risen, living Christ would come to us (even now) by his Spirit and through his word and reveal to us his glory!
The glory of his deity, equal with God the Father in all his attributes — the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his nature, infinite, boundless in all his excellencies
The glory of his eternality that makes the mind of man explode with the unsearchable thought that Christ never had a beginning, but simply always was — sheer, absolute reality while all the universe is fragile, contingent, like a shadow by comparison to his all-defining, ever-existing substance
The glory of his never-changing constancy in all his virtues and all his character and all his commitments — the same yesterday, today, and forever
The glory of his knowledge that makes the Library of Congress and the British Library look like little matchboxes, and makes all the information on the Internet look like a little 1940s farmers’ almanac, and makes quantum physics seem like a first-grade reader
The glory of his wisdom that has never been perplexed by any complication and can never be counseled by the wisest of men
The glory of his authority over heaven and earth and hell, without whose permission no man and no demon can move one inch — who changes times and seasons, removes kings and sets up kings, who does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, so none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”
The glory of his providence, without which not a single bird falls to the ground in the farthest reaches of the Amazon forest, or a single hair of any head turns black or white
The glory of his word that moment by moment upholds the universe and holds in being all the molecules and atoms and subatomic particles we have never yet dreamed of
The glory of his power to walk on water, cleanse lepers, heal the lame, open the eyes of the blind, cause the deaf to hear and storms to cease and the dead to rise — with a single word, or even a thought
The glory of his purity never to sin or to have one millisecond of a bad attitude or an evil, lustful thought
The glory of his trustworthiness never to break his word or let one promise fall to the ground
The glory of his justice to render in due time all moral accounts in the universe, settled either on the cross or in hell
The glory of his patience to endure our dullness decade after decade and to hold back his final judgment on this world, that many might repent
The glory of his sovereign, servant obedience to keep his Father’s commandments perfectly and then embrace the excruciating pain of the cross willingly
The glory of his meekness and lowliness and tenderness that will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick
The glory of his wrath that will one day explode against this world with such fierceness that people will call out for the rocks and the mountains to crush them rather than face the wrath of the Lamb
The glory of his grace that gives life to spiritually dead rebels and awakens faith in hell-bound haters of God and justifies the ungodly with his own righteousness
The glory of his love that willingly dies for us even while we were sinners, and frees us for the ever-increasing joy of making much of him forever
The glory of his own inexhaustible gladness in the fellowship of the Trinity, the infinite power and energy that gave rise to all the universe and will one day be the inheritance of every struggling saint, when he says, “Enter into the joy of your master.”
Knowing the Incomprehensible Christ
If he should grant us to know him like this, it would be but the outskirts of his glory. Time would fail to speak of the glory of his severity, invincibility, dignity, simplicity, complexity, resoluteness, calmness, depth, and courage. If there is anything admirable, if there is anything worthy of praise anywhere in the universe, it is summed up supremely in Jesus Christ. He is supremely glorious in every admirable way over everything:
Over galaxies and endless reaches of space
Over the earth, from the top of Mount Everest (29,000 feet up) to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean (36,000 feet down into the Mariana Trench)
Over all plants and animals, from the peaceful blue whale to the microscopic killer viruses
Over all weather and movements of the earth: hurricanes, tornadoes, monsoons, earthquakes, avalanches, floods, snow, rain, sleet
Over all chemical processes that heal and destroy: cancer, AIDS, malaria, flu, and all the workings of antibiotics and a thousand healing medicines.
Over all countries and all governments and all armies
Over the Taliban and Al Qaeda and ISIS and Hamas and Hezbollah and all terrorists and kidnappings and suicide bombings and mass murders
Over Putin, Zelensky, Trump, Xi Jinping, and Netanyahu
Over all nuclear threats from Iran or Russia or North Korea or America
Over all politics and elections
Over all media and news and entertainment and sports and leisure
Over all education and universities and scholarship and science and research
Over all business and finance and industry and manufacturing and transportation
Over all the Internet and information systems and artificial intelligence
And though it may not seem so now, it is only a matter of time until he is revealed from heaven in flaming fire to give relief to those who trust him and righteous vengeance on those who don’t.
Ask, Seek, Knock, Behold
Oh, that the almighty God would help us see and savor the glory of his Son. Give yourself to this. Study this. Cultivate this passion. Eat and drink and sleep this quest to know the glory of Christ. Pray for God to show you these things in his word. Owen said that the main motive for contending for the Scriptures and resisting those who would take them from us is “that they would take from us the only glass wherein we may behold the glory of Christ” (Works, 1:316). Swim in the ocean of the Bible every day. And with all you’re getting — whatever it takes — get the all-satisfying glory of Christ at the center of your life.
“The deepest cure to our pitiful addictions is to be staggered by the infinite, all-satisfying glory of Christ.”
This is the blazing sun at the center of your solar system, holding the planet of mental health, family life, vocation, ministry, and sexuality in sacred orbit. This is the ballast at the bottom of your little boat, keeping it from being capsized by the waves of temptation. This is the foundation that holds up the building of your life. Without this — without knowing and embracing the glory of Christ — the planets fly apart, the waves overwhelm, and the building will one day fall.
Obstacles to Our Enjoyment
So, what stands in the way? What is the main obstacle to seeing the glory of Christ, with a deeply satisfying and life-transforming sight of that glory? The biblical answer to that question is this: the absolutely just and holy wrath of God. We cannot know Christ in our sin because the wrath of God rests on us in our sin. What we deserve in our fallen sinfulness is not the knowledge of Christ’s glory but the judgment of God’s wrath. And since we are cut off from the knowledge of Christ by the wrath of God, we are cut off from the holiness without which we will not see the Lord. God doesn’t owe us holiness; he owes us punishment. Therefore, we are hopelessly depraved and hopelessly condemned.
Except for one thing: the good news that Christ has become for us the curse to bear God’s wrath and the righteousness to meet God’s demand. This is the heart of the gospel. And it is the apex of the glory of Christ. Without it, there is no hope to escape God’s wrath and no hope to know Christ’s glory. But here it is for everyone who believes. Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” Romans 8:3 says, “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.” Colossians 2:14 says, “[God canceled] the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”
Of this saving work of Christ, Owen said, “An unseen glory accompanied him in all that he did, in all that he suffered. Unseen it was unto the eyes of the world, but not in his who alone can judge of it” (Works, 1:338). “For him, who was Lord of all universally, thus to submit himself to universal obedience, carrieth along with it an evidence of glorious grace” (Works, 1:339).
What could be more glorious than God himself in Christ enduring the condemnation of divine wrath, so that now every thought of God and every act of God toward us in Christ is designed for our eternal happiness! “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
And what is the greatest gift purchased by the glorious sufferings of Christ? The best gift is not the imputed righteousness of Christ. The best gift is not the forgiveness of sins. The best gift is not eternal life. The best gift is the everlasting, all-satisfying seeing and savoring of the glory of Christ himself. The glory of the cross achieved the enjoyment of the glory of Christ. Christ was the price, and Christ was the prize.
Souls Enlarged and Sanctified
To close, I want to circle back to where we began and recall the connection Owen made between seeing the glory of Christ and practical holiness. He said that the reason Jesus prayed for us in John 17:24 that we would see his glory is because this sight would “fill them with blessed satisfaction forevermore” (Works, 1:286). The reason that is so is because the human soul was made to see Christ, to know Christ, to love Christ, to enjoy Christ, and to be enlarged by the greatness of the glory of Christ. Without this, our souls shrink. And little souls make little lusts have great power. The soul, as it were, contracts or expands to encompass the magnitude or minuteness of its treasure. The human soul was made to see and savor the glory of Christ. Nothing else is big enough to enlarge the soul as God intended and make little lusts lose their power.
I know that vast, starry skies seen from a mountaintop in Utah, and four layers of moving clouds on a seemingly endless plain in Montana, and standing on the edge of a mile-deep drop in the Grand Canyon can all have a wonderfully supplementary role in enlarging the soul with the glory of creation. But nothing can take the place of the glory of Christ. As Jonathan Edwards said, if you embrace all creation with goodwill, but not Christ, you are infinitely parochial. Our hearts were made to be enlarged by Christ, and all creation cannot replace his glory.
My conviction is — and I think I learn it from Owen — that one of the main reasons the world and the church are awash in lust and pornography (by men and women) is that our lives are disconnected from the infinite, soul-staggering grandeur for which we were made: the glory of Christ. Inside and outside the church, modern culture is drowning in a sea of triviality, pettiness, banality, and silliness. It is inevitable that the human heart, which was made to be staggered with the glory of Christ but instead is drowning in a sea of banal entertainment, will reach for the best natural buzz that life can give: sex.
Therefore, the deepest cure to our pitiful addictions is to be staggered by the infinite, everlasting, unchanging, all-satisfying glory of Christ. This is what it means to know him. Christ has purchased this gift for us at the cost of his life. Therefore, I say with Hosea, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3).
Vital Signs for the Body of Christ
In medicine, certain vital signs—breath in the lungs, a pulse felt on the wrist, movement in the eyes—show that a person is alive. The same is true in the church, spiritually speaking: If a local body is truly alive, a few indicators will make it easy to tell. Where these vital signs are present in a congregation, they prove that Jesus Christ is in fact the head of that body.
The Unique Christian Contribution to Politics
The relationship of the Christian to the political process is one of those issues that arises time and again and cycle after cycle. It is one of those issues that often generates more heat than light and that brings about more division than unity. Yet I would like to think we can agree that there is one unique contribution that Christians alone can and must make to the process.
Christians can vote and perhaps should vote, but the same is true of everyone—there’s nothing unique to the Christian when it comes to the responsibility of citizenship in a democratic nation. Christians can lobby, but people of any faith or any conviction can lobby. Christians can march, demonstrate, and picket, but so can atheists, Muslims, and Hindus. None of these things is wrong—in fact, each of them has its place and can often be the good and right course of action. But none of them is unique.
Yet there is one key contribution that Christians alone can make to politics: prayer. While I’ll grant that people of any faith can pray and perhaps even do pray for the political process, only Christians can pray and be heard. Only Christians pray to the actual God who actually exists and who actually oversees and intervenes in the affairs of men. Only Christians have the privilege and even the right (through the reconciling work of Christ Jesus) to have an audience with the true and living God. Only Christians delight the heart of the Father when we speak to him. Only Christians can approach and plead with the God of whom it is rightly said, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).
A church may express its belief that its members ought to make their Christian convictions known in the way they vote. A pastor may recommend to his congregants that they consider weighing some policies more substantially than others as they evaluate the various parties or representatives. A church may help its people get registered to vote or instead choose to remain silent about such things. There are many matters that are neither demanded nor forbidden in the Bible and in these each church must follow its own convictions.
Voting, lobbying, and campaigning may make a difference to a nation, but we can be absolutely certain that prayer will make a difference to a nation.Share
But to be faithful to God, a church must pray. To honor Scripture, a church must pray. To express love to the country and its citizens, a church must pray. It must pray because it alone has the ear of the Almighty and it alone has been commanded to make “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings … for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:1–2). If we are to honor the Emperor (1 Peter 2:17) surely we ought also to pray that God would grant an Emperor who acts honorably. Voting, lobbying, and campaigning may make a difference to a nation, but we can be absolutely certain that prayer will make a difference to a nation.
We pray because prayer is expected of us and commanded of us. We pray because our prayers are heard. We pray because our prayers are effective. We pray most simply and most sublimely because God invites us to pray. And this, Christian, is our one unique contribution.
A La Carte (March 19)
Logos users, all the deals from March Matchups are now available. You can also grab MacArthur’s commentary on Philemon for free, then scroll down further on that page to find more deals.
Over at Westminster Books, you can get a deal on a very good book I reviewed just last week: Disrupted Journey.
Today’s Kindle deals include a book on fighting for your marriage, a guide to the Psalms, and a book to prepare your family for Easter.
If you’ve ever had to grapple with intrusive thoughts, you’ll benefit from reading Crystal Kershaw’s article. “God’s Word teaches us to take our thoughts captive to Christ, but most of us don’t know how. This specific type of spiritual warfare is not a frequent sermon topic. Yet many of the battles we fight take place in the echo chamber of our internal dialogue, so it should be.”
I’ve read many articles on praying Scripture but I especially appreciated this one.
We want to bless you and your spouse with FREE Marriage Getaway for pastors—a 3-day, all-inclusive getaway for pastoral couples at one of Focus on the Family’s beautiful retreat centers. This is your chance to step away, refresh your relationship, and return to ministry strengthened and renewed for God’s Kingdom work! (Sponsored)
“I am a middle-aged woman with adult children who has an undergraduate degree in music but has also homeschooled her children and cleaned other people’s houses for a living. So why am I going to seminary? And why now?” Meredith Beatty explains what led her there.
This article draws lessons from a key historical figure who had to make a very difficult decision. “The past is certainly different in many ways from the present, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We still have good reason today to question our own motives, consider God’s providential use of suffering, and prioritize loyalty to Christ and his church.”
“There are many folks who love prayer. They don’t just value prayer as a concept; they actually pray. Deeply. They believe it really does something. They feel intimately connected to God, and as a result, their lives are marked by a gentleness, increasing maturity, and relational quality that many of us are seeking. What do they know that we don’t?”
Kirsten Black talks about those times when God’s good gifts don’t seem so good.
…it takes a church to raise a child because it is in the church that our children find a whole community of adults who love them, who have a deep concern for them, and who are eager to see them come to faith and grow in godly character.
Preparing for ministry is a process that takes time. Like the best bread, you may have all the right ingredients, but you need time to rise. Trying to speed up the process will only ruin the final product.
—Brad Wheeler
A Divided Nation Then Thoughts on Ecumenical Councils
Mr. Matthew Bellisario is still planning, as far as I know, to come on the Dividing Line this Thursday. Hopefully he has already benefited from the detailed resource list (posted here). There are, however, some additional resources that may be helpful. These are video clips taken from some (two, I believe) of Dr. White’s previous public, moderated debates on the