May 11
6
“I go to prepare a place for you!”
The following is from Spurgeon’s sermon,
“Jesus Affirmed to Be Alive” #2016. Acts 25:18-19
That pierced hand has taken hold of eternal bliss on the behalf of those
for whom He shed His blood.
Jesus is now in Heaven making preparation for our coming. What has to be done to make
Heaven ready I am sure I do not know, though I have often tried to guess.
Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you!”
Heaven, when we get there, will prove to be the perfect place for us. It has taken Jesus all
these years to make it ready for us. He that with a word made earth fit for created man,
did not with a word make Heaven fit for His children, but went to Heaven Himself to see
everything set in order for them.
I think I hear Him say, “This will not do for My Beloved. There is something more needed. These fruits are not quite mellow enough, these flowers are not full bloom enough for My Beloved, whom I desire to entertain to the utmost of their capacity.”
Jesus now lives to keep Heaven for us and make it in all respects ready for us.
“I go to prepare a place for you!”
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O Christ He is the fountain,
The deep sweet well of love.
The ‘streams’ on earth I’ve tasted,
More deep I’ll drink above.
There to an ocean’s fullness,
His mercy does expand,
And glory, glory dwelleth,
In Immanuel’s land.
O I am my Beloved’s,
And my Beloved is mine.
He brings a poor vile sinner,
Into His house of wine.
I stand upon His merit,
I know no other stand.
Not e’en where glory dwelleth,
In Immanuel’s land.
The bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear Bridegroom’s face.
I will not gaze at glory,
But on the King of grace.
Not at the crown He giveth,
But on His pierced hands,
The Lamb is all the glory
Of Immanuel’s land!
(author unknown)
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Will Believers Be Called Into Judgment For Their Sins?
“If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities,
O Lord, who shall stand?”
Psalm 130:3
The question is often raised, “Will believers be called into judgment for their sins; or will God judge his elect for their sins and failures, committed after they were saved, and expose them in the day of judgment?”
The only reason that question is ever raised is because many try to retain threats and fears like those associated with the Roman doctrine of purgatory, by which they hope to hold over God’s saints the whip and terror of the law.
Let me be emphatically clear. There is absolutely no sense in which those who trust the Lord Jesus Christ shall ever be made to pay for their sins. Here are seven reasons why that statement must be so.
1. Our sins were imputed to Christ. They cannot and shall not be imputed to us again (Rom. 4:8). God declares that he sees no sin in his people (Num. 23:21; Jer. 50:20). If he did, we could not stand before him.
2. Christ paid our debt to God’s law and justice (Gal. 3:13). Justice cannot demand that the same debt be paid twice, by our Surety and by us. God will never require us to pay.
3. God who has blotted out our transgressions will never write them against us again (Isa. 43:25). Because he has blotted them out of the record book, he does not and cannot remember them. Law cannot remember a crime that is not on the books.
4. He who covered our sins will never uncover them. As the blood of the paschal lamb sprinkled on the mercy-seat ceremonially covered the sins of Israel, represented in the broken law within the ark, so the blood of Christ completely covers (by atonement) our sins from the eye of omniscient justice (Rom. 5:10-11).
5. The perfect righteousness of Christ has been imputed to us. We are now made to be the very righteousness of God in him. Just as our sins became his by imputation, his righteousness is ours by imputation (2 Cor. 5:21).
6. On the day of judgment, God’s elect are never represented as having done any evil, but only good (Matt. 25:31-40). Christ’s perfect obedience is ours. His righteousness is ours. We shall be justly rewarded with eternal life because in him we deserve it (Heb. 9:12).
7. The day of judgment will be a day of glory and bliss for Christ and his people, not a day of mourning and sorrow. It will be a marriage supper, not a marriage split. Christ will glory in his Church (Eph. 5:25-27; Jude 24-25). The triune God will display the glory of his grace in us (Eph. 2:7). We will glory in our God (Rev. 19:6-7). Don Fortner.
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We will be like Him!
(Octavius Winslow, “Eternal Glorification”)
“We know that when He comes we will be like Him,
for we will see Him as He really is.” 1 John 3:2
Perfect holiness is the eternal glory of the saints!
The very utterance of the thought seems to awaken music in the soul. Seeing Christ as He is, and knowing Him as we are known—we also shall be like Him.
Oh, what a conception! What a thought!
No more elements of evil working like leaven in the soul.
No more traces and fetters of corruption.
No more evil heart of unbelief, perpetually departing from God.
No more desperate depravity.
No more sin warring within.
No more temptation assailing from without.
All is perfect holiness now!
The outline of the Divine image is complete, for the believer has awakened in the finished
likeness of his Lord!
Extirpate all sin—and you have erased all sorrow!
Complete the grace—and you have perfected the glory!
You then have chased all sadness from the heart, and have dried all tears from the eye.
That glory will be the glory of unsullied purity.
Nothing of sin remains but its recollection; and that
recollection but heightens our conception of the
preciousness of the blood—that shall have effaced
every stain, and of the greatness and sovereignty
of that grace—which shall have brought us there.
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John 5:24 24“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and (A)believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and (B)does not come into judgment, but has (C)passed out of death into life.
In John 5:24, the real genius is in the verb “aspects”:
“the one who is hearing Me and is believing in Him who sent me has eternal life, and is not come into judgment, but has crossed over out of death into life.” The Greek tenses were more “aspect” oriented than “time” oriented. When we say in English, “he ate” , we refer to a past time action; “he eats”—present time action; and “he will eat”—a future time event, all “time” oriented. The Greeks spoke not in “time,” as much as in “aspect” or “vividness of portrayal.” Think of it in this way: you are looking at a canvas with a beautiful picture; the edges are painted with light green and light blue water colors, barely visible; then there are some characters closer to the middle, painted with dark yellow and dark blue colors; and the main scene in the middle painted in bright red—actually a vast amount of dark red paint is splattered in the middle. That’s aspect. The Greek writers used certain verbs to paint the background information, and certain stronger tenses to highlight the slightly more important aspects, and certain strongest tenses to highlight the most significant characters/events. In John 5:24, both “is hearing” and “is believing” are the outer edges of the canvas with light green and light blue outlines (present participles). The verbs “has eternal life” and “is not come into judgment” are slightly more important, vivid, dark yellow and dark blue colored characters (present tenses). But, the verb “has crossed over out of death into life” are brightly colored red, burgundy, and neon red colors splattered in the middle of the canvas to bring all attention to it (perfect tense). By this construction, John is saying, “WE HAVE ALREADY CROSSED OVER from death into Life.” Thus, the judgment (I take it as “all inclusive—both process and result”) fades into the outer edges of the canvas in slightly colored events. “Believe,” something Arminians pride in, become smudged out water color, dripping off the canvas. It’s a beautiful verse. Andrew Spurgeon
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The word krisis can either refer to the process (where a judge is deciding on a case, which we would call “judgment”) or result (which we would call “condemnation”). However, the word krima only refers to the process, a judgment call, and katakrisis (where the preposition kata is added to the verb; kata preposition usually means “under”) only refers to “condemnation,” the result (or almost, “a judgment of ‘thumbs down’”). Thus, in John 5:24 and Rom 5:16 we have krisis & krima = the process of judgment, and in Rom 5:16 we also have the result, “condemnation,” listed. Thus, for example, I would translate Rom 5:16: “The gift is unlike the results of him who sinned: whereas the righteous judgment call (krima) of the transgressor led to condemnation (katakrima) of many, the gift became righteousness for many out of their trespasses.” Andrew Spurgeon