The Glorious Deeds of Christ

An Event of Love

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

The astonishing event of the resurrection of Jesus is essentially an event of love: the Father’s love in handing over his Son for the salvation of the world; the Son’s love in abandoning himself to the Father’s will for us all; the Spirit’s love in raising Jesus from the dead in his transfigured body. And there is more: the Father’s love which ‘newly embraces’ the Son, enfolding him in glory; the Son’s love returning to the Father in the power of the Spirit, robed in our transfigured humanity.

Pope Benedict XVI, “Christ Cures Humanity’s Festering Wounds,” Easter Address, March 23, 2008, Zenit: The World as Seen Through Rome website, available from; http://www.zenit.org/article-22147?l=english.

The Eternal God

From eternity to eternity I am God. No one can snatch anyone out of my hand. No one can undo what I have done.

Is 43:13 (NLT)

By definition God belongs to eternity, not to time, and so is intrinsically immortal. The last Archbishop of Canterbury but one, Dr. Ramsey, appeared not to realize this when, to my amazement, at the end of a performance of Godspell, he rose to his feet and shouted, ‘Long live God,’ which, as I reflected at the time, was like shouting ‘Carry on eternity’ or ‘Keep going infinity.’ The incident made a deep impression on my mind because it illustrated the basic difficulty I met with when I was editor of Punch [magazine]: that the eminent so often say and do things which are infinitely more ridiculous than anything you can invent for them. That might not sound to you like a terrible difficulty but it is, believe me, the main headache of the editor of an ostensibly humorous paper. You go to great trouble to invent a ridiculous Archbishop of Canterbury and give him ridiculous lines to say and then suddenly he rises in his seat at the theater and shouts out ‘Long live God.’ And you’re defeated, you’re broken.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), 13.

HT: Raymond Ortlund

Adopted Into God’s Family by Jesus’ Resurrection

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Eph. 1:5 (NLT)

We are adopted into God’s family through the resurrection of Christ from the dead in which he paid all our obligations to sin, the law, and the devil, in whose family we once lived. Our old status lies in his tomb. A new status is ours through his resurrection.

Sinclair Ferguson, Children of the Living God (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989), 4.

HT: Of First Importance

Do We Remain King?

And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again

2 Cor 15:5 (KJV)

In every Christian’s heart there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne till he puts himself on the cross; if he refuses the cross he remains on the throne. Perhaps this is at the bottom of the backsliding and worldliness among gospel believers today. We want to be saved but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king within the little kingdom of Mansoul and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a Caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.

A. W. Tozer, Quotable Tozer, Volume One, ed. Harry Verploegh (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 1994), 50.

“How Marvelous the Power of the Cross”

And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” He said this to indicate how he was going to die.

John 12:32-33 (NLT)

How marvelous the power of the cross; how great beyond all telling the glory of the passion: here is the judgment-seat of the Lord, the condemnation of the world, the supremacy of Christ crucified (1 Cor. 2:2).

Lord, you drew all things to yourself so that the devotion of all peoples everywhere might celebrate, in a sacrament made perfect and visible, what was carried out in the one temple of Judea under obscure foreshadowings.

Now there is a more distinguished order of Levites, a greater dignity for the rank of elders, a more sacred anointing for the priesthood, because your cross is the source of all blessings, the cause of all graces. Through the cross the faithful receive strength from weakness, glory from dishonor, life from death. The different sacrifices of animals are no more: the one offering of your body and blood is the fulfillment of all the different sacrificial offerings, for you are the true Lamb of God: you take away the sins of the world. In yourself you bring to perfection all mysteries, so that, as there is one sacrifice in place of all other sacrificial offerings, there is also one kingdom gathered from all peoples.

Dearly beloved, let us then acknowledge what Saint Paul, the teacher of the nations, acknowledged so exultantly: This is a saying worthy of trust, worthy of complete acceptance: Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15).

God’s compassion for us is all the more wonderful because Christ died, not for the righteous or the holy but for the wicked and the sinful, and, though the divine nature could not be touched by the sting of death, he took to himself, through his birth as one of us, something he could offer on our behalf. The power of his death once confronted our death. In the words of Hosea the prophet: Death, I shall be your death; grave, I shall swallow you up (Hosea 13:14). By dying he submitted to the laws of the underworld; by rising again he destroyed them. He did away with the everlasting character of death so as to make death a thing of time, not of eternity. As all die in Adam, so all will be brought to life in Christ (1 Cor. 15:22-26).

St. Leo the Great, Sermon LIX (On the Passion, VIII.: on Wednesday in Holy Week.)

HT: Universalis