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Tag Archives: Christ

A Blessing For Those in Christ

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While the work of Christ becoming a curse is certainly sufficient for all mankind, it is by no mean effective for all mankind. Not everyone who is born into the human race experiences God’s blessing. In fact, because we are all born with a nature so sinful and corrupt, we are all under the wrath and condemnation of God until we come to faith in Christ.  In 2 Corinthians 4:4-6 Paul writes:

“The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

When we first had faith in Christ is when the Holy Spirit first opened our eyes and we saw the glory of God in the face of Christ and said, “YES! I want you, Jesus!” Christ carried on him the full weight of our sin. When God looked on Christ as he hung on the cross he saw our sin, and in all righteousness, God condemned our sin in Christ. As Paul says in Romans 8:3-4:

“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Christ became a curse for us by taking on our sin. But this is not all that happened. Christ did not only take our sin, at the cross, we also take Christ’s righteousness. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21:

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

At the cross, two transactions took place. Christ took on our sin and we took on Christ’s righteousness. Because of this, Christ has already given us everything we need to be fully accepted by God. In Christ is the only place God may look upon sinful men with benevolent kindness. In Christ is the only place that God may make his face to shine upon us and we, in turn, experience the benefits of those blessings.

Christ: Our Curse and Our Blessing

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As New Covenant believers, the promises of blessing and cursing find their fulfillment for us in Christ. In Galatians chapter three, Paul applies Deuteronomy twenty-eight to the Galatian church:

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree,’ so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

As disobedient sinners, the righteous judgment and cursing of God is what we rightly deserve. It is what justice demands of our sin. But because Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, Christ became cursed for us, the full wrath and judgment of God was poured out on Christ instead of on us, the demand of justice was satisfied in Christ. He became cursed of God in our place, so that we might enjoy the blessing of God.

Tomorrow, we will look at the blessings of God that we enjoy, but for now, we know that at the very least, through his work on the cross, Christ has secured God’s kindness and graciousness toward those who have faith in him. Now, because of Christ, God can look toward us; he does not have to hide his holy face from our sin. God can look toward us, and when he does, he can smile upon us. God can look on us with a pleasing satisfaction and joyful contentedness because, by faith, Christ became our curse and the source of our blessing.

Humilty: A Goal for Our Identity

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I’m not humble. Few of us actually are. But the crazy thing about the gospel is that when God looks at us through Christ, he sees us as perfectly humble. In Philippians 2 Pauls says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Christ is the ultimate model of humility. He was God, yet became a human. We are human, and we strive our hardest to be a god, to be worshiped and adored by others. But Christ, who was God, did not come demanding to be served and worshiped (even though he had every right to). Christ came to serve and give the glory he deserved to his Father. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.” If we perceive ourselves to be the lowest, then we can look up and see and serve everyone.

As Christ himself said, “He who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The Cost of Discipleship

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer, perhaps best known for his writings on discipleship, once wrote, ““Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of ”"forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

So often we want discipleship without the cross. We want to grow more like Christ without the sufferings of Christ. We want to grow more like Christ without actually being more like Christ. We want God to wave his magic wand or snap his fingers and be instantly transformed into the perfect picture of holiness, all the time forgetting that holiness comes through struggle, persecution, suffering, and difficulty.

On the other hand, we want the cross without discipleship. We want the comfort of the gospel without its call. Jesus said “Whoever would be my disciple must take up his cross daily and follow me.” By nature, we want to live our lives in the cheap grace of comfort and not the costly grace of denying self. The cross does indeed comfort us, but it also calls us, to live our life in the same self-sacrificing love that was displayed through Christ at the cross. The cost of discipleship is everything in us, but the reward of the cross is everything in Christ.

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