Cross-centered life

The Imitation of Christ

Tony Reinke Christus exemplar, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life

“Always, when the Scriptures exhort the believer to be as Christ, they point to the act of his love in the atonement for sin. This may seem strange since this act is his alone and we can and may recognize him as Mediator in this act alone, but the fact remains that the entire New Testament is in agreement on this point. This required conformity to an exclusive act of love would be a contradictory demand if it were a conformity to a law illustrated in the life of Christ: but it is possible nonetheless, and makes good sense, when it presupposes and flows from the Atonement. … The imitation of Christ could never be part of the Good News, or the Evangel of Grace, were it a Via Dolorosa whose goal was God’s grace; but because it receives its impetus from the revelation of God’s antecedent grace, a grace unapplied for and unsolicited, therefore it is a wonderfully enriching evangelical truth.”

—G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification (Eerdmans, 1952), pages 149–150.

Good News, Doubled

Tony Reinke Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, John Piper, Sanctification

Jesus died on the cross to atone for the guilt of our sin before a holy God. This is amazingly good news. But the cross of Christ also liberates us from our enslavement to sin’s power. Peter captures this when he writes, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).

On one hand we rejoice in our legal justification before God. On the other hand we rejoice that we have been liberated from the tyranny of sin, liberated to obey, liberated to pursue godliness, liberated to holiness. This is good news. Or is it?

In a 1994 sermon, John Piper asked:

Does this feel like good news to you? Or does it feel like the good news of the cross is being given with one hand and taken away with the other. Does it feel like good news that the message of the cross on the one hand is a lifting of guilt and on the other hand is a laying on of burden? …

There are many people today who feel the first work of the cross as liberating good news and who feel the second as burdensome bad news. For them, the grace of the cross is one thing: liberation from guilt and shame. And when they hear that the grace of the cross is not just liberation from the guilt of sin, but is also liberation from the power of sin, it doesn’t feel as good. …

Yet, he writes,

the design of the cross to liberate from the enslaving power of sin as well as the guilt of sin does not diminish the good news; it doubles it.

Plugged In

Tony Reinke Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, J.I. Packer, Union with Christ

Another gem from the writings of Dr. J.I. Packer. This one is from his book Growing in Christ (Crossway, 1996), page 120:

God’s eternal Son became Jesus the Christ by incarnation; to put away our sins he tasted death by crucifixion; he resumed bodily life for all eternity by resurrection; and he reentered heaven’s glory by ascension. This is the Christ-event. It is truly historical, for it happened in Palestine 2,000 years ago. Equally true, however, it is trans-historical, in the sense of not being bounded by space and time as other events are: it can touch and involve in itself any person at any time anywhere. Faith in Jesus occasions that involving touch, so that in terms of rock-bottom reality every believer has actually died and risen, and now lives and reigns, with Jesus and through Jesus. This is the new creation aspect of our link with Jesus. …. The way to express it is that in the Jesus to whom we go in faith the power of the whole Christ-event resides, and that in saving us he not only sets us right with God, but also, so to speak, plugs us in to his own dying, rising, and reigning. Thus we live in joyful fellowship with him, knowing ourselves justified by faith through his death, and finding therewith freedom from sin’s tyranny and foretastes of heaven on earth through the transforming power within us that his dying and rising exerts. This is an over-short statement of an overwhelming truth.

The magnitude of Christ’s work is mind-numbing. And the thought that I am now “plugged in” to his completed work causes me to marvel at God’s grace!

Accustomed grace, how stale the sound

Tony Reinke BR > Reformation Trust, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Grace, Sinclair Ferguson

From Sinclair Ferguson’s latest By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Me (Reformation Trust, 2010), page xiv:

“A chief reason for the weakness of the Christian church in the West, for the poverty of our witness and any lack of vitality in our worship, probably lies here: we sing about ‘amazing grace’ and speak of ‘amazing grace,’ but far too often it has ceased to amaze us. Sadly, we might more truthfully sing of ‘accustomed grace.’ We have lost the joy and energy that are experienced when grace seems truly amazing.”

God, be merciful to me, a Pharisee!

Tony Reinke Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Gospel, John Piper

Did Paul preach the gospel of Jesus? That was the question Dr John Piper sought to address last night at T4G in a message that became one of my personal conference highlights. The sermon manuscript and audio (forthcoming) can be found here. At one point Piper connected the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9–14 (his main text) and Paul’s words in Philippians 3:4–9. It’s quite interesting to read the two accounts together:

Jesus (Luke 18:9–12):

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

Paul (Philippians 3:4–6):

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Jesus (Luke 18:13–14):

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Paul (Philippians 3:7–9):

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

Paul preached the gospel of Jesus–and it was this gospel that changed his life forever.