What kind of a “thing” is the gospel?

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Pastor Foley

In math, if you get the first step wrong in an equation, the whole equation will be wrong. It is the same in the Christian life. If you get the first step of the Christian life wrong, all of the other steps will be wrong. So it is important to get the first step right.

Before becoming Paul the Great Apostle, Paul was Saul the Great Pharisee. And we see in Acts 9, that he was on the way to persecute Christians when a bright light knocked him off his horse and a voice said to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me.” Saul answered, “Who are you, Lord?”

Saul had probably memorized most of the Old Testament. He was faultless according to the law (Philippians 4:6). But because he got the first step wrong, he is here at step one, asking God “Who are you, Lord?” By the grace of God, Saul was granted the humility to be able to start again at the first step.

Martin Luther also had the experience of having to begin again. He was ordained as a priest in 1507. He was extremely serious about his faith. He fasted frequently and prayed for hours. He confessed his sins often. He taught theology at a university and chaired the theology department. And then the Lord showed Luther through Paul’s letter to the Romans that Luther had gotten the first step wrong. Luther later wrote: “To make progress in the Christian life means to begin again.”

For both Paul and Luther, they didn’t focus on beginning again in order to sin less or increase personal holiness. Instead, they began again by recalibrating to a proper understanding of the gospel.

The way forward for the church is to begin again by re-examining what our understanding of the gospel is. Not only what the content of the gospel is but, even more fundamentally, what kind of a “thing” the gospel is in the first place.

So, what kind of a “thing” is the gospel?

The gospel is the name for the specific message given by God to the Son of God, Jesus Christ, to proclaim to the people of God, Israel. Jesus was the first preacher of the gospel. He commissioned his disciples to preach the gospel to the whole world exactly as he preached it in both content and method.

This understanding of what the gospel is is not a new idea, nor should it be considered controversial. Scripture is clear that God sends His Son to bring a message:

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” (Hebrews 1:1-2)

 “how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard,” (Hebrews 2:3)

 We see in the gospels how Jesus is described as proclaiming the “gospel of God”:

 “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15)

 “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.” (John 12:49)

 Paul claimed to be an apostle of “the gospel of God” and claimed that there is no other gospel:

 “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,” (Romans 1:1)

 “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” (Romans 1:6-8)

Scripture is clear that the gospel is a message entrusted by God to Christ to give to his disciples. We are not given the right to adjust, reformulate, or update the gospel message. We are specifically denied that right. This not only applies to what we say, but how we say it (i.e. the method of proclaiming the gospel).

In Luke 10, Jesus commissions the disciples to go to the places where he is about to go. And he tells the disciples “Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.” (Luke 10:3-4)

Jesus laid out the method which the disciples consistently followed when they went out to preach the gospel throughout the New Testament. The gospel is never to be proclaimed from any position considered desirable or advantageous from a human perspective. It is to be proclaimed by lambs to wolves. Messengers of the gospel are to go out with nothing to give other than the gospel.

Messengers of the gospel are not to “greet anyone on the road”. Preaching the gospel is not about friendship evangelism.

The place where they are to stay is the first place that does not throw them out, and their wages are the food and lodging the hosts of such a house give them.

“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house.” (Luke 10:5-7)

They are not to rent the house, set up a mission center, and host short-term mission groups for tours. They are to immediately proclaim the gospel to the people in the town. And, if they are rejected, they are to announce to the town that its residents are in trouble and then move on to the next town.

“But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’” (Luke 10:10-11)

In 1 Corinthians 2, we see that this method of preaching the gospel from a position of weakness continued on to the mission of the gentiles as well.

“And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (Luke 10:3-5)

This method was not peculiar to Jesus and Paul. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4 that this method was the common experience of all the apostles.

“For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.” (1 Corinthians 4:9-13)

The reason why Jesus sent the apostles to preach the gospel in this way is because it is the way that the Father sent Jesus to preach the gospel. Christ tells those who want to be Christ followers these things:

“As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57-62)

 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26)

So, if Christianity is a math equation, the first step is to get the content and method of preaching the gospel right. That is, to know what the gospel is and how it must be preached. We are not permitted to change the content of the gospel nor the method which it is proclaimed. That method is the method of human weakness.

 To be very clear, you are called to leave behind all earthly ties in service of a message.

You may be asking yourself, “What does that mean? Should I quit my job? Forsake my family? Leave my parents alone in their old age?”

 Interestingly, those are the same kinds of questions which people ask throughout the New Testament. And Jesus is clear that we should remove anything in our lives that stops us from following him.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” (Matthew 5:29-30)

This doesn’t mean that Jesus is against us having jobs and families. But it does mean that Jesus expects that when we are forced to choose between our calling as servants of the word and our worldly responsibilities that we will always choose our calling as servants of the word even if it means being thrown out of our job, thrown out of our families, or losing our material possessions.

We hired a young woman for a job at VOMK one year ago. She had been using her talents in the world and making a lot of money. But she told us that she felt it was meaningless and that the Lord was giving her the opportunity to use her talents for him. But then, right before she was scheduled to start work, she sent us a short text message saying that she had decided not to accept the job because her parents felt it was too dangerous.

That is an example of a wrong choice.

Another woman worked at VOMK for about a year. Then her father died. Her mother said, “Now you need to come and take of me. I am lonely.” So the woman quit and went to take care of her mother.

That is an example of a wrong choice.

Paul talks to the Corinthians about what to do if you are married to a nonbeliever. He says

“To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you[b] to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?”

He is not saying that if you have an unbelieving spouse that you are excused from your role as a servant of the Lord. Paul is not saying that you have permission not to talk about Jesus in front of your unbelieving spouse and children. Christians are never excused from our role as servants of the word. This is true in public, in your family, with your children, and certainly your spouse.

In the same way, if you have a home and many material possessions, the counsel of the New Testament is this: Hold on to your role as a messenger of the gospel tightly and hold on to your material possessions loosely, removing anything from your life that prevents you from proclaiming the gospel in human weakness.

Do you own a dog? When a dog gets sick, the way that you get a dog to take pills is to wrap the pills in meat because dogs love to eat meat.

Today, Christian workers think of the gospel as a pill that must be wrapped up in meat in order to get people to accept it. The meat that they wrap the gospel in is things this world finds desirable like food, money, relationships, security, comfort, wealth, physical attractiveness.

But the gospel is not a pill and people are not dogs. The desires of this world cannot be used to make the gospel of God more appealing.

“Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” (John 6:56)

The word of the Lord which has been given to us in the gospel of God is real food. And the gospel can only be proclaimed in human weakness and believed in human weakness.

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The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Is it the same for us?

Posted on July 9, 2025 by tdillmuth

And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58)

In verse 58, Jesus identifies himself to the first follower as the “Son of Man.” He said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Only one person in the Gospels ever referred to Jesus as the Son of Man and that one person is Jesus himself! In fact, it was his favorite designation for himself. This is used over 80 times in the Gospels alone.

The Jews who heard Jesus referring to himself as the Son of Man would inevitably think back to Daniel 7. In Daniel 7, Daniel receives a vision from the Lord that seems very “Revelation like.”

He sees the Ancient of Days sitting on the throne. His clothing was white as snow, his hair was like pure wool, and his throne was fiery flames.

And in verses 13-14, one like a son of man came with clouds was presented to the Ancient of Days. Verse 14 says,

And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

The most explicit connection Jesus made between himself and the Son of Man in Daniel 7 was right before his own crucifixion. In Matthew 26:63, Caiaphas the high priest said, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” In verse 64 Jesus replied to him by saying,

You have said so, But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.

Caiaphas and the other priests understood that Jesus was claiming divinity and was connecting himself to Daniel 7. Caiaphas tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy”, and the other priests said, “He deserves death.”

Son of Man = Servant

In Luke 9:58, we don’t see the Son of Man coming on the clouds, we see him with nowhere to lay his head. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus connects the Son of Man to rejection, suffering, death and resurrection. We see this in Luke 9, just a few verses before our passage. In Luke 9:22 he tells his disciples,

The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

And in Luke 9:44, he says,

Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.

This is very different from the Son of Man as seen in Daniel 7.

The mother of the sons of Zebedee learned this in Matthew 20. She asked Jesus for her sons to sit at his left hand and at his right hand in the kingdom. She was likely thinking of Daniel 7 where the Son of Man reigned from heaven with all dominion and authority!

But after this request, Jesus spoke to the disciples and said,

Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

In this passage, Jesus connected his disciples with the servanthood and suffering of the Son of Man.

Three Potential Followers

In Luke 9:57, the first follower of Jesus boldly said, “I will follow you wherever you go!” Jesus told him that “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”, with the implication that it would be the same for that follower as it was for Jesus. Just a few verses earlier, a Samaritan village did not welcome Jesus as he came through. And in Luke 8, the people of the Gerasenes kicked Jesus out of their village. Jesus let the man know that if happened to him (Jesus), it would also happen to his followers.

The third potential follower also proclaimed in verse 61, “I will follow you Lord”, but he added, “let me first say farewell to those at my home.”

It sounds like a reasonable request. Especially since we know that Elijah let Elisha say goodbye to his family in 1 Kings 19. But Jesus responded by saying in verse 62, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

And in fact, Jesus’ response can only be understood by knowing the story of Elijah and Elisha. When Elijah called Elisha, in 1 Kings 19:20, he asked Elijah if he could  “kiss my father and mother” goodbye before following him.

But Elisha did something interesting. He went back and killed the oxen and burned his plowing equipment. He then held a feast for all those around him with the meat that he cooked.

When Elisha said goodbye to his family, he was not trying to get his family’s permission. He didn’t ask his dad, “What do you think about this Elijah character?” He didn’t tell his mother, “I’ll make sure to visit you every weekend.” When Elisha said goodbye to his family, he was destroying his old way of life (killing the animals and burning the plowing equipment)!

In Luke 9:51, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem. Jesus journey to Jerusalem would involve suffering and it would end in death. To follow Jesus would not be easy. It required a complete dependence on Jesus for everything. It required a singular focus on “the kingdom of God.” It also meant that his followers would experience suffering and difficulties just like Jesus would.

Jesus responded to this potential disciple in this way, not because it was wrong to say “goodbye to your family”, but because he should say goodbye in the same way that Elisha said goodbye, “burn the plow and kill the animals.”

Right in the middle of these two followers, was the second man. Luke sets this man apart from the other two because Christ called this man to follow him (rather than the other way around).

He responded to Jesus’ call in verse 59, by saying, “Let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus responded in verse 60, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

There are many good theories as to what Jesus really meant when he responded this way. One commentator said that it’s likely this man’s father wasn’t dead yet. In the Middle East the phrase, “let me go and bury my father” is an idiom that means “it is necessary to care for my parents until the time that they die.”

This is certainly possible, but the truth is, we don’t really know. We aren’t given any other explanation or definitive clues as to the situation of this follower of Jesus.

Jesus answered this man and said, “let the dead bury their own dead.” This is a strange saying and hard for us to understand. Some people suggest that Jesus is saying “let the spiritually dead people bury their own physically dead.” While this is also possible, the truth is, we don’t exactly know if this is what Jesus meant.

But it’s possible to not understand if this man’s father was really dead and still understand this passage of scripture. It’s also possible to not completely understand what Jesus meant when he said, “let the dead bury their own dead” and still understand this passage of Scripture. Why? Because Christ’s main point, in verse 60 was, “you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Peter Krol compared Jesus’ words in verse 60 to an imaginary tea party that a young girl might have with her dolls. He said,

Somewhat like a modern father of a preschooler, late for a family gathering, telling his daughter to just leave her baby dolls to have their own tea party; we only need to get in the car! She would be missing the point if she began dissecting the question of whether dolls really have the ability to have their own tea parties without her.

The same is true in these verses. We don’t have to deeply analyze who the first and the second dead are. We just have to understand “go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

In fact, in Luke 4:43, Jesus said that his purpose was to “preach the good news of the kingdom of God”. And the pattern of Christ’s life is also the pattern of our life. Just as Christ proclaims the good news of the Kingdom of God, so we also proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God.

Come and Die

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said,

As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

This giving “our lives over to death” is what we call martyrdom. And it is actually a gift from God. And this gift was given to us at baptism. The Bible says that we were buried with Christ in our baptism. Martin Luther called this “the big death” and our physical death “the little death.”

White and Green martyrdom is us daily living out the fact that we were given the gift of “being dead in Christ.” This is the same idea when Jesus said in Matthew 16:24, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

Many modern-day Christians follow Christ for the benefits. They think, “If I follow Christ, maybe my family relationships will improve. If I follow Christ, maybe my business will be blessed. If I follow Christ, maybe I will be generally happier.”

But the starting point of following Christ is not earthly blessings, it is death. Elisha burned the yoke and killed the oxen. We are baptized into Christ’s death. And through baptism, we are given the Holy Spirit. But we aren’t given the Holy Spirit so we can live a blessed, happy and easy life. We are given the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel. The suffering that Christ experienced when he proclaimed the gospel is the same suffering that we experience when we proclaim the gospel.

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Trinity Sunday

Posted on June 24, 2025 by Pastor Foley

We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. (Romans 5:3-4)

In the gospel, God has been revealed to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and we are held accountable for proclaiming the gospel. Jesus requires us to preach the gospel, not to explain who God is. It is not that we understand God, but that He has been revealed to us.

Some pastors try to explain the Trinity using sources that are not in scripture. If there is something in the Bible that is not explained to us, we do not need to add information there or strive to explain what we feel is an omission.

Other pastors err on the other extreme. They claim that “Trinity” is an extrabiblical term and that the creeds were created during a time when Greek philosophy was infecting church thought.

Notice, however, that the creeds do not use the word “Trinity” either. They use the biblical words “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit”. We do not preach “the Trinity”. We preach “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”. We do not preach the creeds either. We preach the gospel. But the creeds contain the information from the scriptures which ensures that we preach the gospel according to the scripture.

Unprovenanced,6th-7th century AD, ink on pottery. Inscription: Creed of Nicea-Constantinople. “Nicene Creed on a potsherd” by Nick Thompson, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The creeds were actually formed throughout history as inoculations against heretics who were infecting the church with Greek philosophy. The church fathers carefully searched the scriptures to discern scriptural truth in such situations. The creeds specify what we can, and must, say about God and about the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit when we are preaching the gospel. The creeds did not originate from people trying to use Greek philosophy to explain God and the gospel, but from people trying to prevent the church from being affected by those who attempted to do so.

The creeds help us to discern what the scripture says–and doesn’t say–about God and the gospel. For example, the creeds help us to know that we cannot say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three gods. We cannot say that the Holy Spirit is merely the power of God and not fully God. Of course, these are simple examples of unorthodox teaching, but the creeds also help us to discern truth from the more subtle kinds of wrong teachings that are less glaringly unorthodox and which more easily make their way into the church.

For example, these days, some pastors will sometimes wrongly say, “On the cross, the Father poured out the Father’s wrath on the Son.” There is an inseparability of operations between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; they do everything together. There is not a division of labor within God. In order to divide labor, God would have to be divided. But God is one being and each fully God because God does not have parts.

“I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)

Because God does not have parts, the operations of God are inseparable. God’s work is indivisible because God is always working together. All God’s work is the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no rank within God and no varying levels of authority. They share one authority. And none of them came first. They do not have different wills. They share one will. And they are co-eternal.

However, the scripture and the creeds show that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct from each other in two ways.

The first way is their relationship. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. He is not created by the Father. I did not make my son, Trevor. I begat him. He is “of the same being”—human being—as I am. It is the same with God. Dogs beget dogs, cats beget cats, humans beget humans, and God begets God. The creed says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This means also that he is not created by the Father and the Son. He is fully God: poured out by the Father and the Son from their substance and being.

The second way the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct is the way that they act. The Father acts from himself. The Son acts from the Father. The Holy Spirit acts from the Father and the Son. But they do not act by themselves, and their actions are indivisible. They share a single will. If the Son and the Holy Spirit did not have a will, they would not be God.

So, if we ask, “Who created the world?” scripture says that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acted inseparably to create the world. We don’t say, “The Father decided to create and he told the Son and the Holy Spirit what to do,” because they share one will. The decision to create belongs to all of them.

Where Christians sometimes get confused is that although God has one will, when Christ becomes incarnate, because he becomes human, he also has a human will. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be fully human. He would just be God in a human shell.

So, Christ has two wills: He has a divine will which he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And he has his human will which is in full agreement with his divine will because he has no sin.

““Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”” (Luke 22:42)

It takes time for us to think like this, but it is important for us to get it right. But it is what God teaches us about Himself.

“It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.” (John 6:45)

So, the way we learn these things is not by going to seminary, but by being taught by God directly as we read the scripture.

The creeds help us from making scary mistakes as we read the scripture. They help us from saying things like, “The Father poured out his wrath on the Son”. Because God has one will, he has one wrath. It is the wrath of God against godliness.

On the cross, it is not the wrath of the Father which rests on the Son, but the wrath of God because the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always acting together. If we get this wrong, we will end up with a really bad picture of the Father. We will end up thinking that the Father is wrathful and the Son is merely a very small sacrifice for sin and we won’t know who the Spirit is.

The wrath of God is the wrath of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit against all ungodliness. The mercy of God is the mercy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They share the same love and mercy for creation and for saving us.

Understanding this helps us to understand Romans 5.

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

In the first four chapters of Romans, Paul does two things.

The first is that he makes clear who Jesus Christ is.

“regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 1:3-4)

Christ being our Lord means not only that Jesus was resurrected from the dead but that he was raised up to the highest heaven where he sits on the throne of God and rules creation together with His Father. So, Jesus is much more than a sacrifice for sin.

Jesus has triumphed over all of the powers which tried to rebel against God. So now they must all obey him. And, even when they try to rebel against him, they end up accomplishing his purpose. He is the all-powerful Lord of heaven and earth.

The second thing Paul makes clear in Romans 1-4 is humanity’s total moral collapse.

No one is good. No one seeks God. All humans have come under the complete domination of sin and death. We are all servants of sin, the death, and the devil. We are all soldiers fighting for them in the war against God.

As a result, all of us are under the wrath of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And God will soon execute judgment against all humans through his appointed agent: the Messiah, the Lord Jesus. He will dissolve the entire creation and he will condemn all people to the lake of fire.

So, when Paul writes in Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul is not saying that if we believe in Jesus in our heart we can gain personal peace. Paul is saying that Jesus has freed us from our slavery to sin, death, and satan. That is what peace means. It is not a feeling in our heart. It is a rescue from the destruction of God that is coming upon the present age.

When Paul says that this has brought us peace from God, don’t misread that is “peace with the Father.” It wasn’t the Father’s wrath which the Son bore. It was the wrath of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which was born by flesh-and-blood Messiah, Jesus, God’s appointed agent of His people Israel. Jesus bore that wrath bodily. The peace he has won for you is much greater than peace in your heart.

“through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:2)

Notice it does not say “we rejoice in the forgiveness of sins” or “we rejoice that we go to heaven when we die” it says something far greater. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Where we now stand, because of our baptism into the death of our Lord Jesus, is in Christ. Because we are in Christ, we are in God. And we will receive the full glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What Christ wins for us is the glory of the triune God.

Because the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have all things in common, what we receive by being in Christ is all things. We receive the throne of God itself.

“To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne.” (Romans 3:21).

This is why the Apostle Paul tells the Corinthians that their fights and factions are foolishness. He rebukes them:

“So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23)

When we hear this, we usually fall into one of two wrong ways of thinking.

First, we can think “Wow, I am in Christ, so my suffering is over and I will never face any more difficulties in my life.” Second, we can think, “Christ is Lord over heaven and earth, but he hasn’t gained victory over his enemies yet. He will do that one day.”

But Romans 5:3-5 refutes this:

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5)

Why would we rejoice in our sufferings? Because we have been made one with Christ in baptism, the pattern of Christ’s life is now the pattern of our life. Just as the Holy Spirit came on Christ to preach the gospel, so the Holy Spirit has come upon us to preach the gospel. So the suffering that Christ experienced when he proclaimed the gospel is the same suffering that we experience when we proclaim the gospel.

The time between Christ’s ascension and return is not needed in order for Christ to defeat his remaining enemies. Christ already defeated his enemies! But he offers mercy to those enemies who have rebelled against him. He wants them to repent and be saved.

Because we were once enemies of God, we should be quite happy that God has given us this time for repentance. If we didn’t have this time, we would be in the lake of fire with everyone else.

During this time, Christ puts his enemies to work to accomplish his purposes. Christ not only works through his disciples, but through His enemies. They no longer have the power to destroy or even delay of the work of God. They are like attack dogs on a short chain in the hand of the Lord Jesus. His enemies are still able to deceive, try to accomplish their plans, etc. But all of their plans only end up accomplishing Jesus’ will.

Because we know this, we boast when we suffer. We confidently face all suffering and opposition with no fear. When we truly know that Christ is Lord, we are no longer worried. No matter how bad things look, we know that Christ is accomplishing his purposes through everything. This produces perseverance in us, the perseverance produces character, and the character produces hope. And this hope does not disappoint.

In Romans 5:1-5, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all at work to accomplish this amazing salvation.

When Christ gives you his body and blood, he is giving you much more than forgiveness. He is giving you the certain hope of the glory of God. He is giving us an invitation to sit on the throne with him. At your life, in this time, all you see is suffering and difficulty. But, just like Abraham and Christ, we continue to hold firmly to the promise that he gave us. He has promised us the hope of the glory of God in Himself.

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