The Gospel Coalition

“It ought to be the primary goal of every Christian to put aside confidence in works and grow stronger in the belief that we are saved by faith alone.  Through this faith the Christian should increase in knowledge not of works but of Christ Jesus and the benefits of his death and resurrection.”

Martin Luther, The Freedom of the Christian (Minneapolis, 2008), page 55.

“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”  James 4:8

How can we draw near to God in 2012?  Let me propose two ways, consistent with the gospel.  They are not heroic.  They only require faith and honesty.

One, at those very places in our lives where we are the most sinful, the most defeated, let’s face it and admit it.  Whatever view we take of Romans 7, surely every one of us can say, “I do not understand my own actions” (Romans 7:15).  And beyond admitting the impasse which we thought that, by now, we’d have grown past, let’s trust God to love us at that very point in our existence.  It is his way.  God loves grace into us (Owen, Works, II:342).  Let’s open up.  If Jesus is a wonderful Savior in every way except where we are the most hypocritical, then he is no Savior for us.  But the truth is, he draws near to broken sinners who own up.  What if we saw, in our very sins, the nearness of God awaiting us with greater mercy than we have ever known before?

Two, let’s confess our sins to one another and pray for one another.  No one grows in isolation.  We grow in safe community.  Sadly, such an experience is rare in our churches.  It should be common among us gospel people.  It should be our lifestyle.  We should be obvious, even scandalous, as friends of sinners.  But so often, someone must break the ice.  I see no revival in our future without a new culture of confession.  Personally, I have found a good way to measure my own honesty is the level of my embarrassment.  If I’m not embarrassed by my confession, I’m still holding out.  But it is freeing to come clean with a brother or sister and receive the ministry of prayer (James 5:16).  What if in 2012 we were, to one another, unshockable friends, down on our knees together, not judging one another but praying for one another?  Surely God’s nearness would be there.

“We are justified freely, for Christ’s sake, by faith, without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works.  To the age-old question, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ the confessional answer is shocking: ‘Nothing!  Just be still; shut up and listen for once in your life to what God the Almighty, creator and redeemer, is saying to his world and to you in the death and resurrection of his Son!  Listen and believe!’”

Gerhard O. Forde, Justification by Faith (Philadelphia, 1983), page 22.

“‘Immanuel, God with us.’  It is hell’s terror.  Satan trembles at the sound of it. . . . Let him come to you suddenly, and do you but whisper that word, ‘God with us,’ back he falls, confounded and confused. . . . ‘God with us’ is the laborer’s strength.  How could he preach the gospel, how could he bend his knees in prayer, how could the missionary go into foreign lands, how could the martyr stand at the stake, how could the confessor own his Master, how could men labor if that one word were taken away? . . . ‘God with us’ is eternity’s sonnet, heaven’s hallelujah, the shout of the glorified, the song of the redeemed, the chorus of the angels, the everlasting oratorio of the great orchestra of the sky. . . .

Feast, Christians, feast; you have a right to feast. . . . But in your feasting, think of the Man in Bethlehem.  Let him have a place in your hearts, give him the glory, think of the virgin who conceived him, but think most of all of the Man born, the Child given.

I finish by again saying, A happy Christmas to you all!”

C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the Old Testament (London, n.d.), III:430.

In dulci jubilo [with sweet joy]
Let us our homage show
Our heart’s joy reclineth
In praesepio [in a stable]
And like a bright star shineth
Matris in gremio [in a mother's lap]
Alpha es et O! [you are Alpha and Omega]

O Jesu parvule [O baby Jesus]
I yearn for Thee alway
Listen to my ditty
O puer optime [O best boy]
Have pity on me, pity
O princeps gloriae [O Prince of glory]
Trahe me post te! [draw me after you!]

O Patris caritas! [O love of the Father]
O Nati lenitas! [O gentleness of the One born]
Deeply were we stained
Per nostra crimina [through our offenses]
But Thou hast for us gained
Coelorum gaudia [the joys of heaven]
Oh, that we were there!

Ubi sunt gaudia [where are joys?]
If that they be not there?
There are angels singing
Nova cantica [new songs]
And there the bells are ringing
In Regis curia [in the King's court]
Oh, that we were there!

“A Saviour not quite God is a bridge broken at the farther end, Bishop Handley Moule once wrote; while a Saviour – and an Exemplar – not quite man is a bridge broken at the nearer end, as F. F. Bruce has remarked.  How Jesus could be both truly man and truly God is the mystery of the Incarnation; but nothing and no one else would suffice.”

Norman Anderson, The Mystery of the Incarnation (Downers Grove, 1978), page 154.  Italics original.

“The supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us . . . lies not in the Good Friday message of atonement, nor in the Easter message of resurrection, but in the Christmas message of incarnation.  The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man – that the second person of the Godhead became the ‘second man’ (1 Cor. 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that He took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as He was human.

Here are two mysteries for the price of one ­- the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus.  It is here, the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie.  ’The Word was made flesh’ (John 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.  And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality.  The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets.”

J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, 1973), pages 45-46.