How the Cross of Christ evicts the Edenic Lie from the Heart of the Sinner or, How can Christianity restore Heart Religion and move true believers past
‘box-checking’ Consumerism?
By Jay Wegter
Adapted from the book, Grace and Glory by Geehardus Vos
pp. 2-3 -- The people of God have had the glory of God restored to them. For this glory was forfeited due to original sin. The redeemed possess God as their chief delight. p. 4 -- 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.
p. 5 – God is ‘all in’ in the matter of giving Himself—restored humans go to God for pleasure. He is the feast and Sabbath of the soul. In terms of being ‘all in’ God the Son is eternally joined to human nature in the Person of Christ.
p. 6 – God giving Himself is the joy of the Holy Trinity. Redemption is the path to that Trinitarian joy (see the Upper Room Discourse, John 13-17).
p. 7 – We must know the value of trauma in the conviction of sin. In terms of being broken for our sin, conviction brings devastation (crushed over sin), destitution (a staggering realization of the complete absence of merit), and desperation (a recognition that only God can bring repair). These postures of soul precede salvation and thus redemption—which is the path to delight in God (see Isaiah chapter six and the model or paradigm for this in Isaiah’s experience). p. 9 – There is an infinite difference between having a god which belongs 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 (I will be your God, and you will be My people).
p. 13 – God’s antecedent love (His love precedes and evokes our love, 1 Jn 4:19). His love produces reflexive love in us. 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.
p. 15 – Rival objects of worship are 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 (ideals agreed upon as beneficial and uplifting).
pp. 16-17 – A dogmatic adherence to the externals of religion may prove to be the error of worshipping one’s religion instead of God! This deadly 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. 20-22 – God gives Himself within the private sanctuary of the heart. As we continually receive the gift of Himself, we grow like Him. This gift of conformity to Him is an indispensable part of the gift of Himself, and it is the essence of heart religion. p. 23 – Spiritual adultery consists of this: not knowing how to know God, and not caring that one does not know how to know God. The attraction to the world and its idols is the default response of every natural man’s worshipping heart. p. 24 – It is a great mystery how finite creatures can receive and possess God (see the Upper Room Discourse, John 13-17 in which our Lord describes our relationship to Him as our relationship to God).
pp. 36-38 – Hunger for righteousness is a passion for God Himself. Repentance involves taking God’s side against our own sin, for all sin is against God. Sin is against who He 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 trauma of conviction of sin is like the mortally wounded stag with an arrow deep in its chest, it goes into the darkest part of the forest to bleed alone.
p. 39 – We need to be holy for God’s sake. Do church members understand this? The restored image of God through Christ is for His glory and for His pleasure.
pp. 40-41 – What of the beatitude that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be satisfied? (Mt 5:6). God answers their desire for righteousness with the substantive hope becoming like their Savior—He will meet, match, and fulfill that desire. 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 (Rom 1:16-17; 3:25-26). 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. pp. 42-43 – Christ’s human nature is an altar of incense of pure consecration says Vos. Christ offered up body and soul on our behalf. When we awake in the resurrection, we will awake in the image of our Lord. God takes satisfaction that we are made like His Son. We will have endless satisfaction in being made like our Lord—a sharing in His communicable attributes. p. 53 – The effectual call is a creative work of God (2 Cor 4:6; 5:17).
pp. 56-57 – Our lostness requires a seeker (Lu 19:10). The Law of God searches us and reveals our lost condition of darkness, alienation, chaos, and wandering. ‘Lost’ in this context means not having normal relations with God. pp. 58-59 – Jesus reverses the lostness of His elect. God in Christ brings adoption, He restores the desperateness of lost contact. To die in a state of lostness is to be given up to eternal destruction. p. 64 – Unconditional election is vital to grace. p. 72 – Appointments with Christ will include many appointments within the dungeon of soul, where reside the vermin of remorse, regret, shame, terror, bosom sins, dread, disillusionment, memory of defilement. But He is the great comforter, and Physician of the soul—keep bringing your case to Him.
pp. 72-73 – Like Mary weeping outside of the tomb, we will shed tears at the ‘grave’ of lost earthly hopes. But the hand of the Savior is extended; 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 as she spoke with her resurrected Lord. p. 84 – To the heart and mind yet to be awakened, the cross is but a stigma of weakness and foolishness (1 Cor 1:18-31).
pp. 89-91 – The vanishing inferior splendor under Moses, a veiled glory, was preparatory for the greater glory of the new covenant (see Romans 5:20-21, the law exposing sin). pp. 94-96 – To the called, Christ procures 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. 98-99 – 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). Therefore, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him (Heb 7:24-28). His bloody death and suffering and humiliation are the ‘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 will come to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit, John 14:18). p. 105 – Through the gospel God solves the paradoxes of all paradoxes: the totally depraved who believe are now righteous in God’s judgment.
pp. 117-119 – It is the essence of faith to crave assurance and certainty. At this point 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.
pp. 121-122 – Heaven is the normal goal of redemption. Only redemption from sin reveals to us the essence of who God is, and what it is for God to be God. What redemption reveals includes what it means to worship and possess God.
p. 137 – Christ the perfect believer and disciple, the author, leader, and perfector of faith. pp. 144-145 – 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. pp. 146-147 – 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 they are fixated on the temporal.
p. 176 – God desires our communion, but it always begins in this way: conviction of sin, condescension of God, invitation into covenant. pp. 178-180 – Love to God is a disinterested of 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 being busy in 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 carries directly into public ministry.
pp. 212-214 – 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. 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 church members know how God gives Himself? pp. 216-217 – God’s highest glory is truly our highest good. 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 warning not to practice our former sins. Sin alienates from God. It activates the death meter (Rom 6:20-23), and as it says in James 1:15, when it is fully conceived, it brings death, cutting men off from God who is the source of all light, life, love, and blessedness. p. 219 – True spirituality consists of our responsiveness to God who sought us in Christ. pp. 224-225 – 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). pp. 226-227 – 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 the Last Adam. Christ became the sphere in which our redemption is accomplished (Col 2:9-15). As mentioned earlier, 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 that planted eternal life in us. But do not imagine that our spiritual life has been jump started, and now our soul life is running on its own. pp. 228-229 – We have been made alive in Christ; He is the sphere in which life is imparted to us and maintained (Col 2:9-15). As eternal God made flesh, He has the equipment to give us life; He possessed it before He gave it. p. 231 – Certainty about the condition and destiny of your soul is found only in Christ. There is profound significance in the fact that truth is a divine Person. 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. 259 – 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.
pp. 260-262 – God’s marvelous condescension redounds in overflowing grace coming from His divine purpose. As in Isaiah’s experience, our devastation is met by His condescension. In Christ’s willing humiliation, He spans a gap that is infinite 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.
p. 264 – Vos notes that within the sinner’s devastation over his transgressions are the following marks of being awakened: 1) amazement at the perfections of Yahweh. 2) A staggering realization of our finitude and imperfection. 3) Blessed self-surrender to the purpose of our created existence, that purpose being the glory of God. 4) Smitten by divine transcendence, fear and dread change into reverence and adoration.
pp. 270-271 – 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. Isaiah’s experience recorded in Isaiah chapter 6 is a kind of paradigm: 1) He is stunned by Yahweh’s infinite perfection. 2) The perception of divine purity exposes the uncleanness of the sinful creature. 3) A conscious crushing over the vast disharmony with God’s infinite holiness. This excites dread, for He has the infinite power to act. And no created power in the universe may be compared to His power (Is 8:13; Mt 10:28). At the point of Isaiah perceiving his ruin, he could say along with us, “morally I deserved to be carried to the incinerator.” This step, known as moral self-criticism, is how contrition begins. I deserved to be swept away precedes amazement at divine mercy.
pp. 273-274 – Vos admonishes his readers to avoid discounting the contribution systematic truth makes to true spirituality. 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.