Cross to Crown Blog

In case you missed the big banner at the top, my new book Exalted: Putting Jesus in His Place is now available. You can read a free preview here. You can buy it at the following locations. (For what it's worth, all royalties will be split between Cross to Crown Ministries and my church.)

Amazon (softcover or Kindle)

iBookstore (iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch)

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

For most of us, life brings seasons of happiness. Some things are just plain fun. My children have it so good that when something is not fun, they wonder what's wrong with the world. When high school gives way to college, we anticipate a great adventure followed by the start of a great career. Then comes love and marriage, then the baby carriage.

But what happens when we can't get into the college we want, when the perfect job persistently eludes, or when the honeymoon romance becomes full moon horror, or when parental utopia is interrupted by the rebel or the infirm? Suddenly, adults begin to wonder what's wrong with the world. It seems like Jesus isn't serving us very well. That, of course, is the problem. We rarely have the guts to say that Jesus exists to serve us, but the assumption lurks around our spleen at times.

The apostle Paul was a man who understood two vital truths: First, he understood that Jesus purchased him with His blood. That meant that Jesus owned Paul. He was Lord over Paul. He was the commander and Paul was the obeyer. Second, he understood both the greatness of his sin and greater grace of his Savior. Jesus gave His life to purchase Paul's. The only reasonable response for Paul was to give his life in thanksgiving, even to the point of giving up his life.

Acts 21:1-14 portrays this vividly. Everywhere Paul went, the people who loved him begged him to avoid going to Jerusalem. They knew that tremendous harm awaited him there. They loved this man who had devoted so much time teaching and exhorting them for the cause of Christ. They couldn't bear the thought of him suffering more. But he couldn't bear the thought of failing Christ in order to avoid pain. That is the difference between Paul and most of us.

As the great hymn declares, love for Jesus demands our soul, our life, our all. If we give it all to Him, then we will serve Him faithfully no matter what He calls us to sacrifice. We won't let fear or friends stop us. Because we love Him, we will follow Him all the way to the cross.

Last summer, my family took a tour of Hoover Dam. The sight was impressive. We were quickly struck by the level of design and engineering skill required to create it. Our tour guide pointed out the most significant elements of the structure and highlighted things we would not want to miss on such a short journey through the dam.

Yearly Bible-reading plans are wonderful tour guides for the Scripture. But just as we did not leave Hoover Dam as experts in hydrology, one does not gain a deep understanding of God's Word by staying at the surface. We need to dig in.

In addition to reading broadly, I encourage you to pick some portions of the Bible for 2012 and determine to own them by the end of the year. Notice I didn't say to buy other books (like commentaries) and own them. I mean study the Bible itself, by yourself, doing everything you can to understand what it teaches before turning to other helps.

If December finds you a newly formed expert in a few biblical books, you will look back on the year with a satisfied smile. More importantly, you will have grown in your love for the Son of God. That's an achievement worth pursuing.

The final chapter of my coming book is entitled Why Did I Write this Book? The four answers are:  

1. Because I needed to read it.
2. Because I couldn't keep it in.
3. Because Christ is life (Col. 3:4)
4. Because you and I must exalt Jesus as King.

The first two are unique to me. But the second pair are true for you and every other human being. Jesus is life. He is the reason for life. He is the purpose for life. He is the goal of life. He is the meaning of life. He is the reason for the snowflakes I see swirling outside my window. He is the meaning of the Don Quixote novel my wife is reading to my children in the other room. He is life, subjectively and objectively, inside and out, created and sustained. Therefore, all who live should live to worship Him.

None of this is new to a believer with any experience of turning Bible pages. But there is a world of difference between knowing it and knowing it. My hope is to help Christians grow in their knowledge of their Life.

Christmas is not a family holiday. Think about it. The birth of our Savior and King, the advent of the promised Messiah, the incarnation of God's Son . . . these are not family-centered truths. Jesus did not come to save "the family." He came to save His people, the Church.

It is a fitting blessing that Christmas falls on the Lord's Day this year. (Maybe we should move it permanently to Sunday.) What better way to celebrate our hope of salvation than by gathering together as His people and proclaiming His glory and praise? For those who have removed Christ from Christmas, only tradition, family, and sentimentalism form an adequate explanation for participating in the holiday season. But for those redeemed from the eternal flames of Hell, Christmas is not about any of those things. It's about Jesus.

Other pastors have asked whether FRAC (my congregation) is having a Christmas Day service. My answer is, "Of course!" Worshipping Christ together in His congregation is no intrusion on my "family time." It is my family time. Christmas celebrates salvation, peace with God, forgiveness, eternal hope, and the lordship of Christ. Where else would I want to be to celebrate those things than with my brothers and sisters in Christ?

{Part I of this series found here}

2. Christ took our punishment. All of it! The cross reminds us that Jesus suffered everything that needs to be suffered for our sins.

The Bible speaks of sin in terms of debt, crime, and enmity. Sins are debts against God which must be paid, crimes which must be punished, and enmity which must be reconciled. Here, simply, is how this imagery works.

Debt. In the Lord's Prayer, we pray "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." Disobedience is failure to keep our obligation as creatures to obey the Creator. This failure creates a debt that can never be paid. Think about it. If you had only committed one sin in your entire life, say when you were ten years old, and from that day forward you followed God's laws perfectly, you would still be a sinner. You would still have failed to do what you were obligated to do—to obey perfectly, without exception, for your entire life. One sin is failure. Your debt of that one sin would not be paid merely by keeping current for the rest of your life. You would still need to repay the debt of one sin. How can you do that? You can't. But Christ did.

Crime. How many laws does one have to break to become a law-breaker? Only one. If you have ever broken the speed limit or run a red light, you are a law-breaker (regardless of whether you got caught). And perfect compliance with state and federal traffic laws thereafter does not make you any less of a law-breaker. Likewise, when we sin, we commit a crime against God's laws. And if one transgresses His law one time and then keeps it perfectly for the rest of his life, he is still liable to punishment for the one offense. Of course, the truth is that we have all committed innumerable transgressions against His law. How will we escape punishment from an all-knowing and utterly righteous Judge? Only if we have a substitute. And we do. Jesus took the penalty in our place.

Enmity. From birth, our disposition is self-serving. We want to please ourselves above all. Therefore, we rebel against God’s rule. We fight against His right to command our thoughts and behaviors. We strive for independence and autonomy. We wage war against the Almighty. This is who we are by nature, children of God's holy wrath which will be justly poured out upon sinners. How can such hostile opponents become friends with God? Only if God's righteous indignation is somehow assuaged. It was, in Christ. Jesus became His Father's enemy (“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”) so that we could become His children (“You are His sons crying, ‘Abba Father’”). He secured total reconciliation between God and sinners.

So we see what the cross of Jesus accomplished for us: He paid our debts in full, He received the whole penalty our sins deserved, and He made perfect peace between us and God. And now, we don't have to be afraid of God. Our guilt is taken away, and He loves us. We can boldly enter His throne room and receive more grace to overcome our temptations. He is not angry with us. Because of Christ, He has accepted us and adopted us as His children. He wants to help us become righteous. He wants us to defeat sin. He wants us to succeed. He crucified His only Son so that He could forgive us and transform us.

If we want to learn how to fight sin, we first have to be sure of God's grace applied to us. Nowhere is the compassion of God demonstrated more clearly than in the cross of Christ.

Pondering the cross reminds a believing sinner of three vital truths which equip him to battle his flesh. We will consider the first today and the others in future posts.

1. We are sinners. The cross forces us to admit our failure to please God. If we were already fully obedient, there would have been no need for Christ to be crucified in our place. Our sin put Him there. We are sinners. Pretending that we’re not that bad only works against us. It's easier to fight sin when we admit there is sin to fight.

More specifically, we must admit there is real, actual wickedness to fight. Christians are typically quick to confess sin, but less quick to confess sins. It is easy, relieving even, to say, "I am not perfect." But it is very hard to say, "I am bitter and angry" or "I am selfish" or "I am not content with the job God has given me" or "I am really unkind when I speak to others" or "I would much rather watch a football game than study the Bible" or "My greatest desire is to have a lot of money" or "I would do anything to make someone like me" or "I just can't keep my eyes (or mind) off of that woman's body." But what is the point of trying to overcome evil if we don't identify what evil we are trying to overcome? A hunter can't aim at elk, but he can aim at that elk. Looking to the cross helps. When we consider the incomparable suffering the Savior experienced in our place, we must not be satisfied to think that He took sin in the abstract. No, He suffered for my hatred, my lust, my greed, my selfishness, my temper, my faithlessness, and all the rest of my actual offenses against God. Those sins and more continue to be the things that I need to overcome.

[WATCH: Are Christians Under the OT Law? (Acts 15:13-32)]

Unbiblical assumptions about the Law of Moses and the Ten Commandments.

The Bible nowhere teaches that the Ten Commandments are God's eternal moral law. Nor does it say that anyone other than the Jews were ever under them. The New Testament says explicitly that we are not under the Law (Romans 6:14), and it does not qualify the Law of Moses into categories such as civil, ceremonial, and moral. Theologians do that, but God does not.

Yet, because of presuppositions handed down for generations, many Christians believe that the Law of Moses remains sacrosanct and binding upon believers in the New Covenant. In this, they stand with the Jewish converts of the first century who sought to bring Christians under the Law of Moses at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15).

We shouldn't be completely surprised by the position of the Jews. For millennia they were God's chosen people, joined in a relationship inaugurated and defined by the Law of Moses. Almost the entire OT comprises the Jewish people under the Law. This combination of history and longstanding relationship made them slow to learn that Christ had fulfilled the Law (Matthew 5:17-20), taken the curse of the Law (Galatians 3:13), and abolished the Law (Ephesians 2:14-15; Galatians 3:19-25). But as the book of Acts and the rest of the NT unfolded, these truths emerged and took root.

According to the Apostles, the elders of Jerusalem, and the Holy Spirit, Gentile Christians are not under the Law of Moses.

The question put before the group of early Christian leaders who met in Jerusalem in Acts 15 was—Are Gentiles required to keep the Law of Moses to be saved? The answer was emphatically no. 

Paul and Barnabas had described all that God had done through their ministry in bringing scores of Gentiles to faith in Christ and in pouring out His Holy Spirit upon them. Before that, Peter had reminded the gathered leaders of how God had used him to preach to the Gentiles at Cornelius' house. There, without any concern for keeping the Law of Moses, God showed His acceptance of the Gentiles by giving to them His Spirit. The Law was completely left out of the equation. Following these two narratives, James the Just, the brother of Jesus, the future author of the NT epistle, quoted from the OT Prophet Amos a prediction of God's calling from the Gentiles a people for His own name just as He had done with the Jews in generations past. James concluded that Amos agreed with Peter that Gentiles would be included in God's restoration of the family of David. There would no longer be a distinction between Jews and Gentiles.

James then made a leadership decision. He recommended that the Gentiles not be "troubled" with the Law of Moses. The only requirement he would put on the Gentile believers would be that they avoid the pagan practices that Jews find so offensive—temple worship, temple prostitution, and temple food. There were Jews everywhere, and these idolatrous rituals would cause friction between the Gentile believers and the Jews, whether believing or unbelieving. Everyone agreed with this conclusion, and they decided to send a letter stating their decision, along with some of the leaders to express these things to the Gentile believers in Antioch. When the brothers there heard the decision, they were filled with joy.

Now, don't miss what happened here. The apostles, elders, and other church leaders, along with the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28) determined that Gentile Christians would not be "burdened" with anything from the Law of Moses. They did not say, "Certainly, you don't have to obey the Law to be saved, but you do have to obey it to be sanctified." They laid no burden on the brothers except instruction to keep away from pagan religious participation. And the rationale for that exception was not grounded in the Law itself, but in those living throughout the land who still cling to the Law. The Law of Moses no longer defined God's people nor legislated their righteousness before Him.

Our Law is the Law of Christ (not the Law of Moses).

Does this mean that the Gentiles were law-less? Absolutely not! The apostle Paul would go on to affirm that he was not under the Law of Moses, but he was under the Law of Christ (1 Corinthians 9:20-21). This calls to mind Jesus' own words in the Great Commission when He instructed the apostles to teach the nations to obey all thatHe commanded. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. All men everywhere are called to obey Jesus (not Moses). He is our Law-giver, our Commander, our Sovereign.

The highest priority of Christ's law is love, love for Him and love for others. So, Christian, how is your obedience? Do you love Him? Do you labor to love Him with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind? Do you have sections of your desires, your thoughts, and your actions that are not expressions of love for Him? Do you love others as much as you love yourself?

Among Christians, one of the best known passages on how to please God is Romans 12:1-2:

Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (NASB)

Imploring the Roman congregation to give their very lives to God, the apostle spends Chapter 12 and the next few chapters instructing Christians to—hate evil and love good, refrain from taking personal vengeance, submit to the government, pay taxes, bear with other Christians who have differing beliefs, and so on. The call is urgent. Sin must be overcome. The children of a holy God must become holy as He is holy. They must please Him by fighting against the forms and patterns of the sinful society in which they live. That is the appeal of Paul throughout the remainder of this magnificent epistle. Consequently, if you want to know how to please God, Romans Chapter 12 (and following) would seem like a good place to begin.

But Paul did not begin the letter to the Romans there. Why? Why did he write eleven chapters before issuing the call to obedience? What took him so long to get to the commands? Is it simply a matter of priority? Does he believe that the deep truths of the first eleven chapters are more important than personal righteousness, so he focused there first? I don't believe so. Although the gospel is always Paul's supreme concern, I doubt that he would be comfortable describing holiness as a "secondary issue."

The answer lies in the phrase, "by the mercies of God." The little word by expresses a means through which something is accomplished. How are we to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God? Through the means of His mercies, the prodigious, wonderful, glorious, gospel-mercies which occupy the previous eleven chapters. To simply command good works without first immersing people in the grace of God's love and forgiveness is to set them up for certain failure. Righteous living will only come as a response to the love and kindness of God. As the apostle John said, we love because He first loved us. While it is true that a certain level of outward conformity can be enforced by threat of punishment, a genuine, heart-felt, zealous passion for godliness comes only from those sinners who know the extent of God’s forgiveness.