2 Corinthians 5-6; Genesis 2-3
Turn to Genesis 2 and 3, and after you found Genesis 2 and 3, stick a finger there and look for 2 Corinthians chapter 5. You may think that the Heidelberg Catechism is beating a dead horse about the mediator, but I think perhaps you’ll think otherwise after a little bit. Maybe you’ll think I’m beating a dead horse. Who knows? Those preachers are good at it.
So 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and 6, we’ll look at a few verses from there, but also Genesis 2 and 3. These are actually two passages you should be familiar with. And you do know you’re allowed to read your Bible at home, I hope. And you could go look at all these things later as well. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 is definitely a passage we ought to know. the first Adam and the second Adam. And then of course the story of Genesis chapter two and three.
All right, in Genesis chapter two, I want us to look at verse 15. It says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work and keep it. So he was to make it prosper and to protect it, including from snakes. That’s the keep word. The Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. That’s what God said.
Then the Lord God said, it’s not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. So out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every bird of heaven and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock, to all the birds of the heavens and to every beast. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs, closed up its place with flesh. The rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it lest you die.
But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and mind you not keeping the garden, and he ate.
Then the eyes of both were open and they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree and I ate.
And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.
So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beast of the field, on your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.
To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.
And to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Curse it as the ground because of you in pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return.
The man called his wife’s name Eve because she was the mother of all living And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife, garments of skins and clothe them.
Then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the garden from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man. And at the east of the Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
And then over to 2 Corinthians 5, over at verse 15, Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God and I hope is also known to your conscience. 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.
For if we are beside ourselves, that is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. 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.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.
All this from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 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. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain, for he says, in a favorable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.
We put no obstacle in anyone’s way so that no fault may be found with our ministry. But as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way. By great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, By truthful speech and the power of God with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left, through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise, we are treated as imposters and yet are true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and behold, we live, as punished yet not killed, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing everything,
We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians. Our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return, I speak as to children. Widen your hearts also. Amen.
This is God’s great and gracious word. When I was in seminary at the Charlotte Campus of Reformed Theological Seminary, I think it started in the 1990s, Our influence was from the Jackson campus, which started in the 60s during the sort of the peak of liberalism in the Southern Presbyterian Church. And so we would hear at the Charlotte campus new, we would hear the myths and the legends from those earlier days in Jackson, Mississippi and one of the legends which I think is true is that when R.C. Sproul taught systematic theology he would ask questions of students and he would get out a Zippo lighter and he would flick it and say be careful how you answer you may get burned at the stake and you can laugh at that and When we come to the doctrine of Jesus, we have to be very careful that our minds and our imaginations don’t get carried away because we might feel the heat of R.C. Sproul’s Zippo lighter.
The second Helvetic confession, different from Westminster, different from Heidelberg, different from bunch of the others, makes a really good statement that I thought we ought to hear tonight, because we are going to be thinking about the two natures of Jesus. And those two natures would be independent, yet there would be a union in some way. And you have to be careful, otherwise you fall into some of the heresies. So the second Helvetic confession says this,
two natures, the divine and the human nature. And we say that these two are so conjoined or united that they are not swallowed up, confounded or mingled together, but rather united or joined together in one person, the properties of each nature being safe and remaining still so that we do worship one Christ, our Lord, and not two. I say one true God and man is touching his divine nature, of the same substance with us and in all points tempted us like us yet without sin. Therefore we detest the heresy of Nestorius, the Nestorians, which makes two Christ of one and dissolves the union of the person. And so we do abominate the madness, I love that, of Eutychus and the monothelites and the monophysites who overthrow the propriety of the human nature. Therefore, we do not teach, this says, that the divine nature in Christ did suffer or that Christ, according to his human nature, is yet in the world and so in every place. For we do neither think or teach that the body of Christ ceased to be a true body after his glorifying or that it was deified and so deified that it put off its properties as touching body and soul and became altogether a divine nature and began to be one substance alone.
Therefore, we do not allow or receive the unwitty subtleties, and the intricate, obscure, and inconstant disputations of Schwenkfeld, whoever he was, and other, this is it, other such vain janglers about this matter, neither are we Schwenkfeldians. So hopefully you’ll leave tonight not being a schwingfeldian or a vain jangler.
We have to be careful when we think of the two natures of Jesus, his divinity and his humanity, and that somehow they are united, but they don’t mix. They don’t confuse and they don’t water down and all the rest. So let me ask you this question and just think I have a lighter up here. If God wanted to do so, could he have saved man any other way than the way he did? The answer is no, absolutely not. That is the beauty of the gospel, that the way of salvation is only that one way, and that one way God provided.
Satisfaction, as we looked at last week, was necessary. God had to be made satisfied for our sins. Satisfaction was necessary, and remember the two options. It can be done by ourselves, Or through a substitute. You’re a terrible human being, so it can’t be you. You’re sinful. So it had to be a substitute. And if it’s going to be a substitute, what kind of substitute? Well, could it be just anything? Could God have invented a creature and said, here goes the creature I specially made to save my people? Well, our minds could easily say, well, God can do anything he wants. And so, yeah, he could create a creature that could have done this. No, he couldn’t have because it would have, I mean, God can do anything, right? And then there’s the dumb question. Could God make a rock so big he couldn’t move it? That’s vain jangling, I think.
But what we looked at last week is the substitute had to be both God and man. And so tonight we want to think of the reasons for being both God and both man. And then how do we know it? Again, I will give you the quick little set of four dictionary words from the scriptures that help us understand our salvation. There’s expiation, there’s redemption, there’s reconciliation, and there’s propitiation. All of these words, expiation, redemption, reconciliation, and propitiation we find in the scriptures, even generally speaking in the more loose translations of the Bible, they still can be found. We find them in our hymns. We find them in our songs that speak of the particular work of Jesus. And it’s in these four things we find forgiveness. We find freedom from the law. We find our relationship that went wrong in the garden made right with God. And it’s in these things that we find a confidence to stand boldly before God’s throne.
In expiation or forgiveness, Christ’s death removed our sin and guilt. That’s a big problem. In redemption, Christ’s death ransomed us from the curse of the law and the punishment for sin. All that was met in Jesus. In reconciliation, Christ’s death made us right or restored our relationship with God. And then in propitiation, Christ’s death appeased. It placated it, it pushed away God’s wrath. And so we can stand before God knowing that he is no longer angry with us.
Well, tonight we want to think of the four little stanzas that pop up. They’re listed on your sheet if you’re peeking at them. And first we want to think about our mediator and deliverer must be a true and sinless man because the justice of God requires that the same human nature that has sinned should likewise make satisfaction for sin. But no one who is himself a sinner could satisfy for others. It is necessary that the substitute be a true and sinless man.
We’re, in a couple weeks, going to be thinking about the coming of Jesus. Our hymns will reflect it. Our Bible readings will push us to dwell on it. Perhaps a couple of our sermons in the month of December. Our lessons and carol service. All this will help us think of the coming of Jesus. you know, we, we’ve kind of watered it down. We, we got up, we, first of all, mix Jesus and Santa Claus because we live in America. Um, but the coming of Jesus, um, as much time as we spend on it in life and in the church, uh, is something we need to think a little harder about a little more particular about why did Jesus, uh, need to come? Why, why could God not, Why couldn’t God have created some sort of being that would have done the job just the same and the son of God could have stayed in heaven and just had a bird’s eye view like the angels?
Well, the very same nature had to be assumed that was going to be delivered. If God was going to deliver man and deliver man by a substitute, that substitute had to be a man. Man sinned and therefore man must die. We think of God’s warning, his covenant curse that he gave to Adam and Eve. In the day you eat of it, the fruit, you will surely die. We think of the passage from Romans. We all know the wages of sin is death. We think of without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. And so something has to die to put away God’s wrath, to be a substitute payment, whatever, for sin. And it had to be in the same nature. as Adam who sinned, as man who sins. Without death, there’s no remission of sins. And with no death of a man who the sins were laid upon, there would be no remission.
So why could God not have invented something, made something up? You know, he’s a pretty smart guy, made the world and everything in it, made ecosystems, you know, he made crawdads. You know, he made the bugs and the insects and all the little things that just work things out in creation by his providence. Why could not he have just made up some special creature? Well, it had to be the same nature. It had to be man.
But the justice of God, this is where we can’t get too fanciful with God. If we say, yes, he could do one thing, we got to remember the other parts about him. He can’t sweep sin under the rug. It has to be paid for. He can’t lay sin on something just because an object is needed, right? You go get one of those punching bags hanging in your garage. My neighbor kid’s dad had one and what is it? I’m so mad I need to go punch something, right? And so you take it out on the punching bag, right? Did the punching bag deserve to get punched? No. Well, yeah, probably because it’s your scapegoat. But can the punching bag pay for sins? No, it’s not just that the object was needed. It needed to be the exact right object. And so the justice of God required punishment in the same nature. And so the offspring of Eve had to be the redeemer. And that’s the wonderful thing we’ll get to in the final point. We find out this, the Holy Gospel that was proclaimed in paradise.
But the offspring of Adam, as promised to Eve, would be the very man, the very righteous one who would be our substitute. Why else did we need a true and sinless man? You read through the book of Hebrews and you find out lots of answers. We needed a faithful high priest who was made like us in every respect. Yet we needed one who was free from the stain of sin. We needed one who was personally righteous, but also who would endure our punishment. And then we needed one who would give us his spirit, his spirit to obey him, his will to obey, or his spirit to give us a will that would obey his law. And in Jesus, we have the perfect teacher of the law.
So man-sinned, we needed a true man, perfectly righteous man to be our redeemer. And so our mediator and deliverer had to be a true and sinless man Justice of God required it. It had to be the same nature.
Why do we make so much of the virgin birth? How is sin nature passed on? It’s passed on through the Father. And so when we understand that Jesus, our mediator, was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her yet without sin, uh, we realize, uh, that we have in Jesus, uh, one who, if he continued a life without sin would be our true and sinless man. That’s why it’s important for us to understand the temptation and the wilderness.
You know, generally speaking today, we come to the Bible and we say, Oh, Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. He was tempted with food. He was tempted with power and he was tempted with, I don’t know, a couple other things. And so we come up with a sermon that says three things you can do when you’re tempted. Okay. That is not the purpose of the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. The purpose of the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness is Adam stunk at being our first parent and we needed a second parent to do it right.
And so when we read that Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days, 40 nights, he was without food, angels were attending to him and the serpent slithered into the wilderness and started afflicting him. Yes, we can get a couple things out of that, that we have the spirit too, we have the word of God also, we have all the rest. But one of the things we are to see in that passage, the big thing we’re to see is that Jesus was passing the test. Where Adam failed in paradise with a helper, Jesus would pass in the wilderness with no one and he would be personally righteous and therefore the spotless lamb. What does it say at the end of that passage? It says Satan, after he bombarded him and couldn’t win, he sort of slithered off and left Jesus alone. But that was the great big test, the great big probation, if you will, on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, the second stanza speaks of our mediator and deliverer. He must be at the same time, true God, that he might sustain in his human nature the burden of God’s wrath, do so by the power of the Godhead, and so obtain for and restore us to righteousness and life. When the Lord Jesus met with the Father and the Spirit in eternity past and said, we’re going to make a people for ourself, we’re going to permit sin to come into the world, and then we’re going to send someone to be their redeemer. And so the covenant of redemption, the pactum salutis, we call it in Latin, was formed. And don’t you know Jesus knew right then and there, he knew for all eternity, he would be the one sent on the missionary journey. He would be the second person of the Trinity, the eternal son of God, who would be sent on a mission to seek and save the lost. And if he succeeded in his mission, he would save a people for himself, They would be gathered under his kingship, not only in the church, but in his everlasting kingdom, which will last forever.
And so our mediator and deliverer must be true God. It took his divinity, it took his power to uphold the human side, but also to give, what do we say, efficacy and um, efficacy and, uh, dignity to, uh, the office of the mediator. So the infinite wrath of God short in duration, uh, placed on Jesus at the cross needed the Godhead to sustain the human nature. Uh, does that, does that come clear to your minds?
You know, a lot of times we say Jesus died on the cross for our sins. And we sort of say it as if the act of death is what sort of did it all. Okay, the death an important aspect, the suffering an important aspect, but what’s really more important? It’s that he who knew no sin became sin for us. And he endured the hot, indignation, the hot wrath of Almighty God. He endured that for a brief time. Those who never come to faith will endure that forever in hell. But he endured it for a time, a short duration, long enough to pay for the sins, long enough to pay the price for sins. But that infinite wrath of God, short in duration, man needed the sustaining help of of the Godhead to sustain it.
Remember, it’s one thing to need a substitute. It’s one thing to make satisfaction. It’s another to realize you can’t do it. It’s another to know you need a substitute. And it’s another to know that just the human side of that substitute couldn’t do it himself. It took the Godhead to support and sustain under the wrath.
You know, we think of Jesus on the night he was betrayed when he went into the garden and his fellow disciples kept sleeping. Watch and pray, he said. They said, sleep and snore. And how many times did he go back? Could you not watch and pray? They’re just snoozing away. His friends were of no help. You know, sometimes we think if we just got enough friends, we can, you know, we can get through cancer with a support group. If we got enough money, you know, we can make it in life. There is no human resource that could get you through the hot anger and wrath of God. And so our substitute needed the Godhead to sustain him.
We say in our creeds, he descended into hell. We say in our creeds that the second person of the Trinity at some point in his suffering descended into hell. Some of you in the confession of faith classes, I think the ladies have gone through this a time or two. I don’t know if the guys class has. But you got to distinguish what we mean by descended in hell. Does the Bible speak of Jesus descending into hell? Uh, what is, what are our confessions and catechisms teach about it? And then what is meant in the creed? Well, in the creed, it simply means, um, he, he went to Hades that he was dead. He was dead for a time. He was under the power of death. That’s generally what our apostles creed mean. But if you read the Westminster, um, shorter catechism, I think it, it speaks of Jesus dying, going to the grave and being under the power of death for a time. So it sort of agrees with the creed. But you get our Heidelberg Catechism, which we’ll get to the question at some point in our study, and you get John Calvin, the French theologian. It helps us understand descended in hell to mean that when Jesus was on the cross, all hell broke loose on him for the sins that he bore in his body for those he came to save.
Can you imagine what that must have been like? And so Jesus, that night before he was betrayed, wasn’t just sweating perspiration. He was sweating blood. Maybe some of you, you know, you grew up in the house where if you did something wrong, you get a spanking. And if you knew one was coming, what did you do? Here I am, I’m ready. No, you hid. And if it was going to be a good one, you hid up in the barn or in the hayloft or somewhere they wouldn’t find you. And you were sure that you could endure for eternity and not be found.
but the Lord Jesus knew what was coming. Lord, if, if this cup could pass, let it be so. But he, remember, not your will, not my will, but yours be done. Remember what Satan offered. How did Satan offer Jesus to be the king of the kingdom? He said, if you’ll bow down to me, I’ll give it to you. But what was the God way of Jesus becoming the king of the kingdom? It was to suffer for those who were lost and to redeem them and to bring them into his everlasting kingdom. And so Satan was offering a short term way through. God was offering him the hard way and he knew it was the will. of God.
And so he was willing to suffer. He was willing to die. He was willing to be buried. He was willing to remain under death’s power. And it’s the wonder of the gospel to see the humiliation and the exaltation of Jesus. It’s the wonder of the gospel to know that God did come up with an exact way that did not spoil any of his divine attributes. did not mess with any of his holy characteristics, but it perfectly kept them all. It perfectly accomplished the need for salvation. And so Christ, after rising from the dead, is able to gather his church, give a spirit to his church, give the word to his church, be present in his church. bestow gifts to his church and become our righteousness and our life.
Those are the two things among others that we lost. We lost righteousness and we lost life. And in Jesus, we get them both. We come to the third stanza that speaks of the mediator who is at the same time, true God and true and sinless man is our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other person. There is no other name. What does the scripture say? There’s one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus. There is no other way of salvation except through Jesus. And second Corinthians speaks of Jesus or God made him our wisdom. God made him our righteousness. God made him our sanctification. God made him our redemption.
The redemption is the bought with a price idea. The sanctification is the set apart, the made holy idea. The righteousness is you were unrighteous. You were unholy. Now you are righteous in God’s sight and wisdom. Of course, we need for life and for godliness. Well, how do we know this? You know, you can ride down the highway and see a sign that says you’re a sinner. Repent. Hell is hot. You know, you can see a commercial on TV, his life kind of stinking for you. Pray this prayer, call this toll free number, you know, and God bless all those efforts. It’s better than those of us who do nothing, right? So yay them.
But we have to hear the Holy Gospel. We have to hear the particulars of who God is, what God requires, what he has provided for us, how we have apostatized, turned from it, and how even in his loving kindness, though we have done all that we have done, though Israel has done all they’ve done, he still seeks and saves the lost.
Well, when is this first gospel made known? Is it when John the Baptist comes preaching, repent, the kingdom is near? Is it in Paul’s great Romans epistle? Is it in the book of Revelation at the very end? Or can we go all the way back to the very beginning of the Bible and find the gospel?
And our catechism says, God first revealed the gospel, the holy gospel in paradise. Genesis chapter 3, 15, when God tells Eve, you’re going to have a baby, that’s Jesus. And this little snake over here is going to have babies and the two babies are going to fight. And they’re going to fight and they’re going to fight and they’re going to fight. One is going to be a heel nipper. And the other is going to be a head crusher. And the head crusher is Jesus. The kneel hipper is Jesus or is Satan.
And you see all through the scriptures, a lot of heel nipping. Say you read the story of Herod who wants to kill baby Jesus. He’s the heel nipper. You think about Goliath who wants to take out God’s anointed, wants to thwart the kingdom of Israel. That’s the heel nipping. And you can read through all the scriptures. You know, you can read about Jezebel wanting to knock off Elijah. You can read about, was it Naboth’s vineyard? And you can read all those stories and you can see the seed versus the seed battle.
And ultimately that battle culminates in the cross. where God declares victory over sin and over death and over darkness. Satan is chained. One day he will be utterly cast out, cast away. Until then, we have to contend with him and he’s limited, but we still contend with him.
But we find in the gospel, in the early part of the scriptures and all the way through the patriarchs and through the prophets and through the sacrifices and through the shadows of the Old Testament, and the ceremonies, but we find it ultimately fulfilled in the sun.
If you haven’t read the book of Hebrews in a while, sit down and read it in one sitting. Maybe it’ll take you 40, 50 minutes. That’s at least two good cups of coffee. And I know you got the time, right? Cause there’s nothing like coffee and Bible, but read through the book of Hebrews and you will see these wonderful things.
I think of John, the forerunner of the Messiah. And what did John say when he saw Jesus coming toward him to be baptized? And I think of what he said in light of all we’ve just talked about both tonight and last week. Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
These particulars are rich and important and they do indeed matter. So do behold and think on the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And let’s pause and give him thanks.
Father, we thank you for the chance to think on the particulars of our Savior Jesus, the God-man. Our salvation is full, it is rich, and it is free. It’s nothing we could have designed. It’s nothing we could ever dream of or dream up. But it comes from your heart. It comes from your love. It comes from the Trinitarian fellowship. of sharing in the goodness and love of God with creatures, and we are thankful that it is we who have received it.
Lord, we count ourselves very blessed to have reconciliation, to have redemption, to have forgiveness, and to have a standing where we can boldly be in your presence. Help us to ponder these things and to glory in them, we pray in Christ’s great and gracious name, amen.
we want to.