The Fullness of Christ: From Active Obedience to Imputed Righteousness

• Active Obedience of Christ [00:04:03 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor introduces the theological distinction between active and passive obedience, noting that Christ's work is best viewed through the dominant category of obedience rather than just propitiation or sacrifice.
• Christ's Human Nature and Consciousness [00:10:38 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues that Jesus possessed a human mind and will, growing in wisdom and understanding of His mission, distinct from His divine omniscience, yet united in one person.
• The Temptation in the Wilderness [00:16:35 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor analyzes the temptation narratives, highlighting how Jesus resisted Satan's suggestions to use His divine power for self-preservation, thereby fulfilling His role as the obedient covenant mediator.
• The Temptations of Jesus [00:19:13 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor analyzes Satan's temptation to use divine power for self-preservation, arguing that Jesus refused to function as a servant to Himself, choosing instead to serve the Father's will through faith.
• Peter's Rebuke and the Cross [00:23:45 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts Peter's desire for a crown without a cross with Jesus' mission, noting that Peter's suggestion to avoid death was recognized by Jesus as a satanic voice.
• The Lord's Supper and Covenant [00:28:15 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor defines a covenant as a solemn, binding relationship with blessings and obligations, identifying Jesus' blood as the seal of the new covenant fulfilling Jeremiah 31.
• The Covenant of Redemption [00:31:07 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor describes Jesus' eternal agreement with the Father to accomplish the work of redemption, culminating in the cry 'It is finished' (Tetelestai).
• Imputed Righteousness and Wrath [00:35:21 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor explains the theological mechanism of the atonement: Jesus, who knew no sin, had our lawlessness reckoned to Him, absorbing God's wrath, so that His obedience is reckoned to us.

• Sermon Illustration [00:04:26 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor recounts a conversation with Sinclair Ferguson, who identified reading John Murray's essay on the obedience of Christ as a revelatory moment that shaped his theological worldview.
• Sermon Illustration [00:10:03 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a humorous anecdote about his 12-year-old son, Ben, describing him as growing like a weed and eating everything, to contextualize the age of Jesus in the temple narrative.
• Sermon Illustration [00:14:19 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor cites 'Mrs. Beatty's Rules of Social Behavior for Living in Southern States,' which forbids calling one's mother 'woman,' to highlight the cultural shock of Jesus' response to Mary at the wedding in Cana.
• Sermon Illustration [00:20:19 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses a modern analogy of attending a function where 'dinner' is just cheese and biscuits, comparing the hunger of Jesus after forty days of fasting to illustrate the physical temptation Satan exploited.
• Sermon Illustration [00:20:19 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses an analogy of attending a function expecting dinner but only finding hors d'oeuvres to illustrate Jesus' extreme hunger after forty days of fasting, highlighting the temptation to turn stones into bread.
• Sermon Illustration [00:21:34 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor references modern internet culture and 'temple jumpers' (bungee jumping without cords) to illustrate the temptation to perform spectacular signs to prove identity, contrasting it with Jesus' call to live by faith.
• Sermon Illustration [00:25:04 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor characterizes the Apostle Paul as a 'type A' difficult man to work with, contrasting him with Peter, whom he suggests we recognize in ourselves due to his emotional and impulsive nature.
• Sermon Illustration [00:33:51 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses a humorous analogy of a student submitting a last-minute, stream-of-consciousness paper at 11:59 PM to contrast with the completeness and perfection of Jesus' work 'It is finished.'
• Sermon Illustration [00:39:29 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor references a famous telegram sent by Gresham Machen to John Murray in 1937: 'Thank God for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.'

• Pastoral Charge [00:03:03 ▶️ 📄]
  > To be reconciled to God
• Pastoral Charge [00:28:15 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor instructs the congregation to focus on the cup during the Lord's Supper.

[00:00:08] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:00:08] Well, good morning, and thank you for that warm and mellifluous introduction. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and I'm going to read from verse Verse 11, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 at verse 11, this is the Word of God.
[00:00:42] Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.
[00:00:59] But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.
[00:01:07] We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart.
[00:01:24] For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.
[00:01:30] If we are in our right mind, it is for you.
[00:01:35] For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died.
[00:01:49] And He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who for their sake died and was raised.
[00:02:03] From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.
[00:02:10] Even though once we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard Him thus no longer.
[00:02:16] Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
[00:02:25] The old has passed away, behold, the new has come.
[00:02:31] All this is from God who, through Christ, reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
[00:02:40] That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
[00:02:58] Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.
[00:03:03] God, making His appeal through us, we implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
[00:03:16] For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Now, my brief, in the brief time that I have available in this first
[00:03:50] session, is to speak about the active work of Christ. We were here yesterday afternoon. Dr.
[00:04:03] Dr. Sproul began to speak of problems that he sees and foresees in Christology today, and along the way, but halfway through that address, he turned to the distinction between the active and passive obedience of Christ.
[00:04:26] I was walking down Lady Street in Columbia, South Carolina about fifteen months ago with my good friend Sinclair Ferguson.
[00:04:42] He was about to retire, go off to Scotland, play golf or whatever it is he's doing there.
[00:04:51] So I asked him, we'd had lunch together and we were walking up Lady Street towards the offices of the church, and I said to him, Sinclair, you know if you were asked the question, What memorable moments theologically have you had in the course of your life?
[00:05:11] We have moments when we grasp something.
[00:05:15] It comes to us in almost a revelatory manner, an epistemology, a worldview, a gestalt, something that shapes the way you view something.
[00:05:32] forever after. You always view it through that lens." I really wasn't expecting him to answer in the way that he did, but he answered immediately and without any kind of equivocation.
[00:05:46] And he said, well, I remember back in 1372, I remember reading Professor John Murray's famous essay on the obedience of Christ. He said, I'd never really thought of the work of Christ in terms of obedience. I'd thought of it in terms of propitiation or reconciliation or redemption or
[00:06:17] sacrifice or substitution or satisfaction. Those were categories, but I'd never really thought of it in terms of the category as a dominant manner of viewing what it is that Jesus did, the category of obedience. So, let me walk you through the life of Christ in just a few
[00:06:49] minutes. This is the first session. Your coffee hasn't kicked in yet, perhaps, so I don't want get too deep in this session, so let's walk through the gospel. I want to look at 5, 6,
[00:07:07] maybe 7, depends how much time we'll get here. I want to look at various moments in the life of Christ that reflect something of this category of obedience, the whole life of Christ being one act of obedience. Let's begin with that incident in Luke chapter 2 and verses 41 through
[00:07:37] 52, and you don't have to turn to these passages, but Luke chapter 2 beginning at verse 41, it's the incident when Jesus is twelve years old. There's been a celebration of Passover, Mary and and Joseph and the family. Joseph is still alive. She mentions Joseph in the narrative,
[00:08:01] so he's still alive at this point. And they've come down. They've probably come down in a caravan with perhaps hundreds of others. One imagines that. Passover was one of those events where where Jews were expected to schlep it all the way to Jerusalem. And if you lived in Galilee,
[00:08:24] if you lived in Nazareth as they did, it would have been a journey of several days. It would be safer, certainly, to go in a large entourage. There's no jet blue or bus or anything. They're
[00:08:40] going to walk. Some of them might have brought a donkey or something, but more than likely, they walked, and now they're heading home. And you remember the incident. Jesus is missing.
[00:08:53] He's been missing for three days, three days in a Jewish reckoning. Perhaps we can kind of narrow that down to a day and a half, perhaps for thirty-six hours according to Jewish reckoning from sundown to sunup, three days. A whole day and a night and maybe some more has gone by,
[00:09:19] and Mary and Joseph have not seen nor seemingly asked, where's Jesus? So they have to schlep it all the way back to Jerusalem. It's not clear to me how far they'd gone. Well, they'd gone a
[00:09:37] day and a half's journey at least. So now it will be three days by the time they actually find him, and maybe a little more, and he's in the temple. And you remember his… Mary chastises him,
[00:09:55] don't you know that your father and I have been worried about you? We've been looking for you.
[00:10:03] He's 12 years old. You have a 12-year-old? Yes, Ben. He's 12? Ben, Dr. Nichols' oldest son, I think he's 12. He's about here, somewhere, growing like a weed, eating everything and as thin as a rake. Well, this is the passage that says Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in
[00:10:38] favor with God and with men. He was a human being. In the Incarnation, He took on flesh and blood. He was a human being with a human body and a human mind and a human will and
[00:10:50] human psychology, a human way of thinking and a human way of growing. And yet, He's in the temple and He says to His mother, why are you looking for Me? What? Why are you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house?" Staggering from a
[00:11:18] twelve-year-old. You know, if it was our twelve-year-old, we probably would have a response to that. But already in the mind and consciousness of Jesus, there is a sense, an overwhelming sense that He has come to be engaged in ministry for His Father. There's
[00:11:50] a sense of His identity. There's a sense of His purpose. There's a sense of His mission.
[00:11:55] He is a sent one. And even in the mind and consciousness, I know He's God, and I know terms of His divine nature. He is omniscient, but we're not talking about His divine nature.
[00:12:12] We're talking about His human nature, and there's no mingling of these two natures.
[00:12:18] They're held in hyper-static union, but their identity is held also in a kind of individualism.
[00:12:32] And even at twelve, he has this consciousness, saying, I'm in my Father's house. I'm doing my Father's work. There's a sense of purpose and mission. He has a work to do, a mission to perform. And Luke adds the comment, of course,
[00:12:50] it's a comment after the fact, that He grew. From that time, He grew in wisdom and in stature.
[00:13:00] He grew in wisdom. He grew in His understanding of His own identity. He grew in His understanding of His mission and purpose, as the Spirit enabled Him, as He read the Old Testament Scriptures and
[00:13:16] plundered them and memorized them and saw things in the written Word of God and must have said to Himself by the help of the Holy Spirit, this is about Me. This is My mission. This is My work.
[00:13:34] Or go to John chapter 4, the wedding in Cana of Galilee. And Mary has been, his mother has been invited, and therefore the family, there's no mention of Joseph by this time. The disciples are there too. It's probably a relative of Mary's. It's in Cana of Galilee. And you remember what
[00:14:01] has happened. The wine has run out at a wedding, a kind of social faux pas, and Mary comes to Jesus, and she says to Him, the wine has run out. And do you remember His response?
[00:14:19] Woman, what has this to do with me? Now, I've ministered in the South, in Mississippi and in South Carolina. I've ministered in the South now for 18 years, and I was given a book, Mrs. Beatty's Rules of Social Behavior for Living in Southern States. And on page one,
[00:14:44] there were instructions as to what you would say in reference to your mother.
[00:14:51] And there it was in black and white on page one of Mrs. Beatty's Rules for Behavior for Living in the southern states, it says in black and white, you will never call your mother woman.
[00:15:10] Prospective students to Reformation Bible College don't even think it. You will not survive.
[00:15:21] Now, you might say, well, this must be something cultural. You can delve into the first century culture. Maybe this is how children spoke to their mother and called them woman. No, it is not.
[00:15:33] What is this? And what it is, is a consciousness on the part of Jesus that He is the seed of the woman. I firmly believe that, that He sees His identity here as the seed of the woman in the
[00:16:03] narrative of Genesis 3. He is that seed, and in a sense, she is that woman. He sees Himself as someone who has come with a purpose, a redemptive purpose and mission and task to obey. Or skip down
[00:16:27] to the incident with the so-called temptation narratives in Matthew 4 or Luke chapter 4.
[00:16:35] Let's take the Matthew order just for now. After the baptism, after the public declaration of His task as the covenant mediator, as He undergoes that water ordeal of judgment in John's baptism, which was a baptism of repentance. It wasn't Christian baptism. It was a baptism
[00:17:01] of repentance, and he undergoes that baptism, and immediately the Spirit drives him into the wilderness. Remember, he's tempted three times, first of all about stones being turned into bread, then he's taken to the holy city and to the pinnacle and told to jump off into
[00:17:26] the valley below, and angels will come, and Satan cites from the 91st Psalm that he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up lest you dash your feet
[00:17:45] against a stone. And then he's taken to a high mountain, you remember, and Satan says to him, all these kingdoms in all their glory will be Yours if you just bow down and worship Me.
[00:18:03] And of course, with each one, what does Jesus do? He cites Scripture. He, in fact, cites from Deuteronomy. He cites from Deuteronomy 6 and Deuteronomy 8, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. You shall
[00:18:24] not put the Lord your God to the test. You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve." You know, in the nineteenth century, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, during the downgrade controversy, or controversy, Spurgeon and the downgrade was about the authorship
[00:18:48] of the Pentateuch, the authorship of the first five books of the Old Testament, and particularly the book of Deuteronomy and so on, and Spurgeon made a quip. It was Satan getting his own back on the book of Deuteronomy because of the way Jesus had implied it in the temptation narratives.
[00:19:13] Do you remember what Satan says to Jesus in those temptations, if you are the Son of God? Actually, I think Hadas Vos has it right here. It's not so much if you are the Son of God, but since you are the Son of God. Satan isn't doubting the identity of
[00:19:33] Jesus. He's taking it for granted. Why would he do that? Because he doesn't look like the Son of God. He's been fasting for forty days. He's hungry. His flesh and soul are declaring that he doesn't
[00:19:57] look like the Son of God. So you know what Satan says to him? Look, why don't you use your Son of God-ness just a little? Just use it a little and turn these. You're hungry.
[00:20:19] You ever gone to a function where there's hors d'oeuvres and you actually thought it was going to be dinner? Dr. Nichols, it said dinner on the schedule yesterday. Dinner isn't cheese and biscuits, and your stomach is growling. That's because you've just missed one meal. But he
[00:20:42] been fasting for forty days since you are the Son of God. Why don't you use it for your advantage?
[00:20:49] You just turn a few of these stones into bread. It would not be a problem." Except the moment that he would do that, he would no longer be functioning as the Lord's servant because he hadn't come to serve himself. He had come to serve his Father's will.
[00:21:13] Oh my, do you imagine how tempting those were to Him?
[00:21:23] Why don't you, why don't you, you know, you don't look like the Son of God and look around you, people aren't saying that you're the Son of God, so why don't you jump from the
[00:21:33] temple?
[00:21:34] You know, the church is drunk with a desire for temple jumpers.
[00:21:41] The Internet is full of people who are going gaga over temple jumpers.
[00:21:48] one jump, one bungee jump without a cord, and angels will come flying in. That would be a YouTube trender, wouldn't it? Except the moment that He would do that, just to bring some assurance to Himself as to His identity. He must live every single moment of His day in faith. Yes,
[00:22:26] in absolute faith and dependence on the declaratory word of His mother as to the way in which He was born that would set apart His identity. As He read through the Old Testament Scriptures, He must believe those Scriptures, because the moment that He moves away from being like
[00:22:50] us, He was tempted in every point like as we are. And every single one of these temptations was a temptation to move away from that. And He had come to be obedient, to be obedient and not
[00:23:12] to use His Son of God-ness, not to use His divine nature to support His human nature in some way.
[00:23:26] I'll go to Matthew 16, to Caesarea Philippi. College folk were here on, whenever that was, Thursday morning at the chapel, and turning point in the Gospel of Matthew, remember, question Jesus gives to His disciples, who do men say that I am? And all the various answers
[00:23:45] that He was John the Baptist, come back from the dead, that He was Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets, and then to Peter, who do you say that I am? And Peter says, you are the Christ,
[00:23:55] the Son of the living God. Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven, and I say to you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will
[00:24:07] build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And then he begins to speak openly that he must needs go to Jerusalem, and there be handed over to the scribes and the
[00:24:25] elders and the Pharisees and so on, and be crucified. And then Peter, Peter says, glasses, cotton socks. I love Peter. You know, Paul is type A. He always has an opinion, and he's always right about everything. Paul was a difficult man to work with, for sure.
[00:25:04] He was God's man for God's time, but he was a difficult man to live with. John Mark found that out. Thank God for Barnabas. Peter, we recognize Peter in ourselves, don't we? Peter says, you know,
[00:25:28] he uses those two words that kind of go in the same sentence, Lord, never. Lord, you are my sovereign Lord, but you're mistaken here. This cannot be right, what you're saying. This is not going to happen to you. You don't need to be crucified. And you remember Jesus' response.
[00:25:56] It was sudden and instantaneous and almost cutting. Get thee behind me, Satan. Don't you think, don't you sense that Peter has touched a raw nerve in Jesus? The very idea that he could gain a crown without a cross, without obedience, without obedience to the end.
[00:26:32] Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, took the form of a servant. He
[00:26:46] was in the form of God, and He took the form of a servant. He was morphe theou, and He became morphe doulu, form of a servant, in fashion as a man, became obedient unto death. Actually,
[00:27:04] the Greeks suggest he became obedient right up to the point of death. This suggestion from Peter that he didn't have to die touched a raw nerve just for a millisecond as that shoots through his brain. Perhaps he could avert that by doing what Satan had suggested,
[00:27:41] use your son of Godness. That's why he says to Peter, get behind me, Satan, because he recognized in that suggestion the voice of Satan, because he had come to be the obedient servant, or go to the Lord's Supper. Go to the cup word in the Lord's Supper.
[00:28:15] Likewise, after supper, he took the cup and blessed it and said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. All of you drink of it.
[00:28:36] This cup is the new covenant. He's thinking of Jeremiah 31, I think, the promise of the new covenant, he sees himself as the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31 here. What is a covenant? What is a covenant? What's a covenant? Well, a bond in blood sovereignly administered. Thank
[00:29:05] you, Palmer. Actually, I prefer a less, a more general description of a covenant. A solemn, binding relationship in which there are blessings and obligations. That's a covenant, like a marriage. A solemn, binding relationship in which there are blessings and obligations.
[00:29:42] obligations, O-B-L-I-G-A-T-I-O-N-S, obligations, duty, a sense of ought as a response to the grace that God has shown to us. Jesus is saying here, as He takes the sign and seal of the covenant, of the new covenant, bread and wine. And he says about the wine, symbolic, so obviously and
[00:30:29] ocularly symbolic of His shed blood, His cup is the new covenant in my blood. Shed, shed in death.
[00:30:45] He had come to fulfill the terms of the covenant, which had obligations and duty and obedience.
[00:31:07] Take a high priestly prayer, John 17 and verse 4, I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work You gave Me to do.
[00:31:19] I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work You gave Me to do.
[00:31:26] This is Jesus summarizing. I often think, how did John remember the high priestly prayer? Was he taking notes? Was he listening in? Did he say afterwards, you know, this prayer was phenomenal.
[00:31:42] I've got to write this down. And as Jesus withdraws and communes with His heavenly Father, He's conscious of a work that the Father has given to Him. I think He's penetrating into the into the mists of eternity. I think he's thinking of a covenant relationship that he has
[00:32:06] as the second person of the Trinity with the first person of the Trinity, the covenant of redemption in which he made a solemn and binding oath. Who will go? And Jesus said, I will, like Frodo, remember? I know you're thinking of it. Who will go? And there's a
[00:32:40] little voice, and it says, I will go, though I know not the way. And Jesus says, I will go.
[00:32:52] And now as He comes to the threshold of the completion of His life as before Him, within the next few hours, He will be arrested and tried and handed over and crucified, white, dead and buried. I have finished the work that you gave me to do. I've accomplished it.
[00:33:23] Oh, think of that word from the cross in John 19 and verse 30, Tedelestai, it is finished. You know, it's not like, you know, you're writing a paper, last minute stream of consciousness, five minutes to midnight, deadline is midnight.
[00:33:51] it. You send it off, 1159, and it reads like a stream of consciousness. I know what stream of consciousness papers read like. They have no beginning, middle, or end. Their journey is to nowhere. They always accomplish what they set out to do because they set out to
[00:34:14] do nothing. Finished, you say. No. Jesus is saying the work that the Father had given Him to do was now complete. It was done. These passages, we could have looked at many more.
[00:34:39] These passages are just little insights, little windows to the consciousness that lay on the mind and spirit and soul of Jesus that He was a man with a mission, a man with a task, a category of obedience. God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, made under the law.
[00:35:15] Paul is drawing all of that together now, and he's saying Jesus was made under the law.
[00:35:21] He came to fulfill Torah in all of its minutiae, so that our passage that we were looking at in 2 Corinthians 5.21, God made Him to be sin. The Father made Him to be sin for us who knew
[00:35:43] no sin. He knew no sin. What is sin? Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. Sin, according to the Apostle John, is lawlessness. Let's take that as a
[00:35:56] definition. He knew no sin. He never once transgressed God's law in thought, word, or perfect. He was obedient. And 2 Corinthians 5 is trying to answer the question, how is it? Well, look at 2 Corinthians 5, just for a second here. In verse 19, God, in God, God was reconciling the
[00:36:35] world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. How is it that God does not count trespasses against us, because He counted trespass against His Son. That's why. He looks on us, and what does He see? The righteousness of God. God made Him to be sin who knew no sin,
[00:37:04] that we might be reckoned the righteousness of God. And by the righteousness of God here, I take this to mean the perfect integrity of obedience to God's holy law rather than some concept of covenant faithfulness. In the benediction of Aaron, the Lord bless you and
[00:37:45] keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. But that's not what Jesus heard. As our sins,
[00:38:11] our transgressions, our lawlessness, our disobedience, our lack of obedience was reckoned to Him, the unmitigated wrath of God came down upon Him. The unmitigated, the unmitigated wrath of God came down upon him. The Lord curse you and drive you away and refuse to smile upon you
[00:38:46] and give you hell. His obedience reckoned to us. Our disobedience reckoned to Him so that in Christ, in union and fellowship with Christ. You and I are reckoned law keepers, covenant keepers.
[00:39:29] In 1937, January the 1st, Gresham Machen, just before he died, sent a telegram to Professor John Murray, a very famous telegram in which he wrote those words, thank God for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it. No hope without it.
[00:39:57] Father, we thank You. Thank You for the active obedience of Christ, that as the last Adam, the second man, He fulfilled the covenant of works, rendering complete and absolute obedience to Your holy law in all of its detail.
[00:40:23] We thank You that in Christ that obedience is reckoned to our account so that the debt that we owed to You has stamped on it, paid in full, that we owe You nothing now.
[00:40:43] So, Father, we thank You.
[00:40:46] We ask that You would write these things upon our hearts for Jesus' sake.
[00:40:50] Amen.