Tag: gospel

The Fullness of God and the End of an Era

Lauren ShafferLeave a comment

I was recently asked by a middle schooler, “Why did the Bible stop being written?”

Simply put, because Jesus was enough. All scripture leading up to the Jesus’ incarnation looked forward to that day. God’s people lived in hope for the coming messiah, being guided and prepared by God’s Word and acts to receive Jesus, who, “being by nature bodiless and existing as the Word, by the love for humankind and the goodness of his own Father he appeared to us in a human body for our salvation.”1

The Gospels give us witness of his incarnation, of the fullness of God in Jesus enfleshed, culminating in the ultimate act for salvation: death of the righteous one for the lost, and resurrection– proof of death, of sin, being conquered. The risen Christ revealed at last the fullness of God’s name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, that the Spirit might come to comfort, guide, and grow to maturity the people of God who await the final coming of Christ in the Day of the Lord.

So the Gospels bear this witness, and the rest of the New Testament applies what Christ did and said to the life of the church. The NT writers take what Christ said and did, test it by the text of the Old Testament, find that it is good, learn more of what had been revealed in ages past as it pointed to Jesus, and teach the church how then we might live as those whose hope has come in Christ. These writings are labeled scripture due to the author’s status as Apostle, their faithfulness to and consistency with the rest of scripture, their faithfulness to Jesus, and by their works “hav[ing] considerable value for church life and ministry.”2 To a large extent, we trust the brothers and sisters before us who were nearer to the writings themselves, to have been guided by the Holy Spirit to discern the Word from twaddle.

The mark of the age of the church is evangelism and growth. The scriptures are sufficient for God’s people to know and worship him in spirit and in truth, because it is centered on Jesus Christ. With a well-founded, deep-rooted faith, we gather as the body for the preaching of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, to confess our faith, to pray, to sing, to encourage one another in the Lord. Scripture ceased to be written because God is revealed truthfully and sufficiently (though never comprehensively) in Jesus, and his Word we have is powerful to prepare the world for his return.

 

  1. Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation.
  2. McDonald, Lee Martin, The Biblical Canon, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 401.

The Way of Life

Lauren ShafferLeave a comment

“If it is true, that a perfect righteousness is set before us in the Law, it follows, that the complete observance of it is perfect righteousness in the sight of God.”

-John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion II.7.iii

How might we come to assume that righteousness is malleable or shifted according to time and place? What can be learned from scripture but the consistency of the character and will of God throughout scripture, throughout time, a driving force undergirding redemption? That God is who he is, he wills righteousness and goodness of his creatures, and works to bring them to that beautiful state in communion with himself is clear. Thus, if the ideal of righteousness itself is changed, all is lost, or at least confused. Therefore it is Biblically necessary that our word for Christ’s impact on the moral law be ‘fulfillment’ or ‘culmination.’ If then, the righteousness desired by God of man has been presented from the beginning, was made unattainable by the reign of sin, then Christ is the way made to the age-old goal. This way is the new covenant; this way is the fulfillment of the old law.

How, though? Christ fulfills the law through obedience to it and is its fulfillment in his being. He himself does not sin, thus even as human he avoided being under the condemnation of the law (for only those who trespass the law fall under its condemnation). If then, those who are united to Christ are united to him in his death, and resurrection, then the benefits of that victory are theirs. The death Christ died thus was not a debt demanded of him, and so could be for others, as a propitiation for their transgression of the law. His resurrection for them is life new now, fully realized later.

What is this new life now? A Christian, one reconciled to God by being united to Christ, is no longer “under the law” for in fact their appropriate debt to the law for failure to uphold it has been paid through Christ. The righteousness in which they are able to live is a righteousness achieved in Christ’s obedience to the law. Their new life is one free to continue in obedience to the law by faith, which is righteousness, now freely able to do so by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the will of God for his creation, come to fruition: that his people live in faithful obedience to his will, reconciled to himself.

Thus, then, shall we live.