Know your God. How can Christians recover genuine heart religion and move past ‘box-checking’ Consumerism?
By Jay Wegter
Adapted from the book, Grace and Glory by Geehardus Vos, note pg. numbers.
The people of God have had the glory of God restored to them. For this glory was forfeited due to original sin (Rom 3:23). The redeemed possess God as their chief delight. God, so to speak, puts Himself in the service of man in terms of this – who He is, all about Him is made to serve our delight. God is ‘all in’ in the matter of giving Himself— God the Son is eternally joined to human nature in the Person of Christ (Ps 110:4). Restored humans go to God for pleasure, for He is the feast and Sabbath of the soul. God giving Himself is the joy of the Holy Trinity. Redemption is the path to that Trinitarian joy (pp. 2-6) (see the Upper Room Discourse, John chapters 13-17).
We must know the value of trauma in the conviction of sin. In terms of being broken for our sin, conviction brings devastation (we’re crushed over our sin), destitution (a staggering realization of the complete absence of merit), and desperation (recognition that only God’s initiative can bring repair). These Spirit-engendered postures of soul precede redemption—which is the path to delight in God (see Isaiah chapter six and the paradigm for this in Isaiah’s experience). The saved soul’s response to the three-fold conviction is: Christ was crushed in my place, He is my righteousness, He sought me when I was His enemy. There is an infinite difference between having a god belonging to one’s religion, and knowing the one true God who has brought you into His covenant, “I will be your God and you will be My people.” God’s unilateral covenant is the condition necessary for mutual possession (Heb 8:8-12) (pp. 7-9).
God’s antecedent love precedes and evokes our love (1 Jn 4:19). God’s particular love of His own comes with certain demands; our heart is to be an unshared temple for His presence (Eph 3:17). Single-minded affection for God is what it means to be possessed by God (1 Cor 6:19-20). Rival objects of worship can be subtle in their disguises. Idolatrous worship enters as self-preoccupation in religious garb. It finds entrance at the gate of self-improvement through a pantheon of ideals agreed upon as uplifting and beneficial to human flourishing (pp. 13, 15). But a dogmatic adherence to the externals of religion, or religious forms, may prove to be the error of worshipping one’s religion instead of God! This counterfeit slips in the back door in the context of religion existing for the betterment of the creature. In this trap, God is treated as an indispensable ‘partner’ to success. He is patronized as an influential helper. Countless pastors have become seduced by this ear-tickling error (pp. 16-17) (2 Tim 4:1-4).
God gives Himself within the private sanctuary of the heart. And as we continually receive the gift of Himself, we grow like Him (Eph 1:4). This gift of conformity to Him is an indispensable part of the gift of Himself, and it is the essence of heart religion (Rom 8:29-30). Conformity to Him is indispensable to eternal enjoyment of Him. Spiritual adultery consists of this: not knowing how to know God, and not caring that one does not know how to know God. Attraction to the world is the default response of the natural man’s worshipping heart. It is a great mystery how finite creatures can receive and possess God (pp. 20-24). Note the mutuality of mutual possession set forth in The Upper Room Discourse, John 13-17.
Repentance involves taking God’s side against our own sin, for all sin is against God. Sin is against who God is in His own Person, no wonder He takes our sin personally. There is trauma in conviction of sin. Vos refers to it as ‘the pain of moral truth’—God is so right, and we are so wrong. The shock of conviction of sin is like the mortally wounded stag with an arrow deep in its chest, it goes into the deepest part of the forest to bleed alone.
We need to be holy for God’s sake (1 Pet 1:13-19). Do church members understand this? The restored holy image of God through Christ is for His glory and for His pleasure (pp. 36-41). How shall we understand the beatitude that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be satisfied? (Mt 5:6). Hunger for righteousness is a passion for God Himself. God answers their desire for righteousness with the substantive hope of becoming like their Savior—He will meet and fulfill that desire which He Himself has planted (Rom 8:29-30). This kind of hunger and thirst is only awakened by divine grace. Perfect righteousness satisfies and must be provided by God. This is the gift of the evangel in which God’s righteousness is revealed and then is given as a gift through Christ to those who believe (Rom 1:16-17; 3:25-26; 10:4; 2 Cor 5:21).
God does not change mourning into joy, sin into pardon, nor guilt and condemnation into peace by the mere fiat of His will. No, there must be the absolute satisfaction of His righteous demands through the Substitute He has appointed. Christ’s human nature is an altar of incense of pure consecration to the Father (Heb 9:14). Christ offered up body and soul on our behalf (Heb 10:10-14). God takes satisfaction that through the work of Christ we are made like His Son. When we awake in the resurrection, we will awake in the image of our Lord. We will have endless satisfaction in God in being made like our Lord—a sharing in His communicable attributes (pp. 42-43).
The effectual call is a creative work of God (2 Cor 4:6; 5:17). Our lostness required a seeker (Lu 19:10). The Law of God searches us and reveals our lost condition of darkness, alienation, chaos, and wandering (Rom 3:19-20). ‘Lost’ in this context means not having normal relations with God. Jesus reverses the lostness of His elect. For God in Christ brings the belonging of adoption, He restores the desperateness of our lost contact. To die in a state of lostness is to be given up to eternal destruction (pp. 53, 56-59).
As in the Psalms, appointments with Christ will include many appointments within the dungeon of soul, where reside the vermin of remorse, accusation, regret, shame, terror, fear, guilt, bosom sins, dread, disillusionment, memory of defilement. But He is the great Comforter, and Physician of the soul (Lu 5:31)—keep bringing your case to Him. As we go through life, like Mary weeping outside of the tomb, we will shed tears at the ‘grave’ of lost earthly hopes (Jn 20:11). But our Savior extends His hand; He grants a higher joy. God did not take from us. In her sorrow, Mary only wanted to recover the ‘dead’ body of Jesus. She could not have dreamed of the life of glory to come that began in the garden as she spoke with her resurrected Lord (pp. 72-73).
To the heart and mind yet to be awakened, the cross is but a stigma of weakness and foolishness (1 Cor 1:18-31). The Jews wanted signs and miracles, but the vanishing inferior splendor under Moses was a veiled glory (2 Cor 3:7-13ff.), and it was preparatory for the greater glory of the new covenant (see Romans 5:20-21, the law exposing sin). To the called, Christ procures a God-approved justifying righteousness. The gospel brings men face to face with the glory of Christ (2 Cor 4:6). The glory of Christ is joined to His work of satisfaction which is the cause of our pardon and peace (pp. 89-91, 94-96).
Christ’s glory is the ‘equipment’ He earned by His obedience. He is exalted and equipped with supernatural power, glory, and splendor (Phil 2:9-11). Thus, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him (Heb 7:24-28). God solves the paradoxes of all paradoxes: the totally depraved and helpless (Rom 5:6) who believe are now righteous in God’s judgment. Our Lord’ bloody death and suffering and humiliation are divinely formulated into ‘medicine’ to heal the sin sick. He became a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45). Christ so fully coopts the ministry of the Spirit (2 Cor 3:18), He is said to be the Spirit (see also, Romans 8:9). So fully does the Holy Spirit apply the benefits of Christ’s work, and manifest Christ’s presence that our Lord can say “I will come to you” (He does so in the Person of the Holy Spirit, John 14:18) (pp. 98-99, 105, 117-119).
Vos issues a warning about a quasi-form of Christianity that will be devoid
of focus on eternity. Religion will be reduced to usefulness in the present.
Heaven is the normal goal of redemption. Only redemption from sin reveals to
us the essence of who God is in His justice and mercy, and what it is for God to be
God in His sovereign bestowal of grace (Rom 9:15). Thus, what redemption
reveals about God includes the content of what it means to worship God and to
possess God (pp. 121-122).
In His vicarious work, by His obedience, Christ was the perfect believer and disciple, the author, leader, and perfector of faith (Heb 12:2). As such Christ is our living hope (1 Pet 1:3-5). Hope is spiritual health, for hope is a very reliable barometer of an eternal value system. Hope cannot flourish if the mind and the heart are fixed on temporal things; for hope is an eternal value system in action.
No small part of the world’s enmity toward believers arises from the fact that we have eternal hope, and conversely, those who are of the world are fixated on earthly things (pp. 137, 146-147).
God desires our communion, but it always begins in this way: conviction of sin, condescension of God, invitation into covenant. Love to God is a disinterested or non-mercenary love that is characterized by a desire to be near God. This face to face or close contact is not as common in Christianity as you would think. What is more common is believers contenting themselves with the indirect contact of Christian service. This is exacerbated by sermons unpacking more knowledge of our duties, but not proclaiming the knowledge of God Himself. From the Psalms and from Hebrews 10:19-25, we see that cultivating a devotional life of abiding is what logically carries directly into public ministry (pp. 176-180).
In His eternal love for us, God gave Himself to us in Christ. We must be careful not to reduce or commodify the gift of Himself into spiritual ‘things’ or even into spiritual blessings. As Piper titled one of his books, God is the Gospel— in other words, the gospel gives us God. Our response to God’s love is the consecration of ourselves to Him. God’s love is so great, it can only be satisfied in giving Himself. Do your fellow church members know how and why God gives Himself? (pp. 212-214). God’s highest glory is truly our highest good, for the two fully meet in
Christ. To be affected by this at all evicts remnants of the Edenic lie from our hearts. For the Edenic lie suggested that God’s glory and our good were antagonistic to one another. With the incredibly good tidings of the gospel comes the promise of deliverance from sin and the warning not to practice our former sins. Sin alienates from God. It activates the enslaving ‘death meter’ (Rom 6:20-23), and as it says in James 1:15, when sin is fully conceived, it brings death, cutting men off from God who is the source of all light, life, love, and blessedness (pp. 216-217).
God sets aside His law for no one. There can be no talk of favor to sinners unless His law is fully satisfied. God saves by propitiation, and not by leniency (Rom 3:24-26). God does not grant eternal life under any other condition than the perfect keeping of the law (Rom 10:1-4; 1 Cor 1:30). Original sin plunged humanity into a hopeless state, a kind of cul-de-sac with no way out in terms of a human answer. The solution could not be found in fallen man. God solves the riddle through His Son and the angels marvel at the solution (Eph 3:9-11; 1 Pet 1:12). Wonder of wonders, creatures locked in sin and death are made alive in Christ.
The sinner’s solidarity with Adam is replaced with solidarity with Christ, the Last Adam. Christ became the sphere in which our redemption is accomplished (Col 2:9-15).
God could not make us alive, or pardon us, or justify us by the mere fiat of His will. Justice had to be fully met. It was this satisfaction of divine justice through our Substitute that planted eternal life in us. But do not imagine that our spiritual life has experienced a jump start, and now our soul life is running on its own. We have been made alive in Christ through union with Him, He is the sphere in which life is imparted to us and maintained (Col 2:9-15). God the Son made flesh has the equipment to give us life; He possessed it before He gave it, for He is the Creator of it (pp. 224-229) (Jn 6:47-51).
Certainty about the condition and destiny of your soul is found only in Christ (Col 2:1-4; Heb 6:11-20). There is profound significance in the fact that truth is a divine Person who loves, dies, rises, and redeems (Jn 1:1-5; 8:35, 45-46; 14:6). Physically and spiritually our moment-to-moment life is sustained solely by Him (Heb 1:3). This is why Scripture says that our life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3). We draw our life blood from Him so that we are rooted and grounded in love (Eph 3:17-19). As we walk with Him our self-consciousness and self-concern gradually recede and He becomes more glorious as our majestic source Person. This is the very opposite of what Luther critiqued and exposed as Rome’s Theology of glory. In that man-centered system, religion is the field of play or grid iron for man’s moral achievement. That is a Christless construction (p. 231).
God is not a magnificent category but is supreme reality from whom all
else derives its significance and meaning (Eph 1:9-11). Isaiah’s preaching was
conditioned by pure altar fire which was kept constantly burning. He was struck
by the awful realization of divine justice, the very nature of God’s inexorable
claims upon His creatures. Isaiah rejoiced in God’s exclusive activity in saving His
people. And he understood well why only faith may appropriate the blessings of
salvation. As in Isaiah’s experience, our devastation is met by His condescension.
For God’s marvelous condescension redounds in overflowing grace coming from
His divine purpose. In Christ’s willing humiliation, He spans the infinite gap
between self-existent holy God and defiled creature of dust. The Spirit prepares
the sinner by granting a contrite heart that is ready to receive God’s presence (pp.
259-262).
Within the sinner’s devastation over his transgressions are the following marks of having been awakened by the Spirit of God: 1) amazement at the perfections of Yahweh. 2) a staggering realization of our finitude and imperfection.
- a radical humbling by the awareness of divine transcendence. 4) the change of fear and dread into reverence and adoration. 5) a blessed self-surrender to the purpose of our created existence, that being the timeless glory of God (p. 264). God’s judgment of sin flows from His holiness which vindicates His justice. This theme permeated Isaiah’s preaching, for the prophet beheld the moral majesty of God (Is 6). Isaiah’s experience is a kind of paradigm of coming to terms with God’s holiness: 1) Isaiah is stunned by Yahweh’s infinite perfection. 2) The perception of divine purity exposes the uncleanness of the sinful creature. 3) Isaiah’s conscience is crushed over his vast disharmony with God’s infinite holiness. This excites dread, for God has the infinite power to act. No created power in the universe may be compared to His power (Is 8:13; Mt 10:28). Isaiah perceiving his ruin could say along with us, “morally I deserved to be carried to the incinerator.” This step, moral self-criticism is how contrition begins. That sentiment, “I deserved to be swept away” precedes wonder at divine mercy.
- Amazement, consecration, and overflowing gratitude at God’s initiative in cleansing him (pp. 270-271). In this brief study, we’ve seen that theology is the love of God and the study of God. A holy person has a supreme desire and passion for divine glory. For it was God’s glory that provided Christ as the gift for sinners. True spirituality consists of our responsiveness to God who sought us in Christ (pp. 273-274).