[Sunday School] Who Do We Become Partakers of Redemption? (WSC 29)

Let us begin.

Lord, thank you for this morning.

Thank you for bringing us here together to study your word.

Thank you for the precious gift that is our union with Christ.

Help us, Lord, this morning as we think about what it means to be beneficiaries of that union, to partake of the redemption that He accomplished for us on the cross.

Help us, Lord, encourage us, strengthen us.

Show us how the Word can take deeper and firmer root in our hearts and in our souls, so that we might go forth and do it.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Alright, so for the past several weeks, we took the last two weeks off, right?

But before that, we had been talking about the person and work of the Redeemer.

We talked about his hypostatic union, his full divinity and full humanity of one person.

We talked about his threefold office, his prophet, priest, and king.

We talked about the atonement, his humiliation, his exaltation.

And for the next several weeks, we will be talking about the application of redemption.

So, redemption, a single word.

Let's just think for a little bit about that word.

What does it mean to be, or sorry, to redeem something?

Save it.

Make it new.

Reconstruct.

Save, make it new, restore, reconstruct.

Is it raining?

Alright.

Congratulations to everybody who just walked in the room.

I are a punch-up model.

Not that I frequent punch-ups at all.

So I know all the whole pump punch-up culture.

And there is a punch-up mentioned in Magician's Nephew, but Uncle Andrew had a pond bunch of stuff to um finance his lifestyle.

Finance that you take something of value, you put it in, and it's held as it's held by the pawn guy.

Yeah.

And he gives you cash, and then when you go and pay it back, that's re you get your thing back.

Is that how it works, Ruby?

That's how it works.

Okay.

That's redemption.

That actually is.

That is redemption.

I'm just giving you an example.

He's a big fan of a big fan of pawn stars.

My husband has pomp stars on all the time, and he's watching British ones.

Ruby's on to it.

You know, speaking from her cache of weapons and used guitars.

To redeem is to buy, right?

To buy something back.

You know, we'll often use it in terms of like you redeem tickets or you redeem tokens, you redeem a voucher.

In the ancient world, redemption had to do with the buying back of slaves.

And to be redeemed is to be bought back.

So, but thinking a little bit more, redemption, just um more uh popularly, the word redemption, how do we use that today?

What do people generally mean when they talk about redemption?

Dennis?

I think more often than not, we can transit something with flemish or fall, and then making.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's uh any anyone else?

Anything else?

I remember that night anymore when you used to get green stamps, and you can take the green stamps and redeem for gifts.

Yeah.

I think it lets sports lose a bunch, and if you wanna use a remaining, I redeemed myself over phone.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's that's a in sports or in movies, right?

You think about a movie with a redemptive art where you know some character seems lost at the beginning and they have to experience something, and then you know, cue the montage, or they're training in the gym or whatever, and then you know they come back and in the end they win something, they do something heroic.

The bad guy or the loser becomes the good guy or the winner.

It's a redemptive art, redemption.

That's one way in which our popular culture thinks about redemption.

And you can hear how it's inflected with biblical truth.

Because that's what's going on in redemption.

We have been sold into slavery and we are bought back by the blood of Christ.

Because of our sin, we became losers.

We became villains and bad guys.

But because of what Jesus did, we actually become heroes in the story underneath the great hero.

Alright, so.

We're one of the avengers.

Yes, we're one of the avengers.

We're not the reading, we're the same.

So redemption.

You know, to just think about it conceptually a little bit, it contains three components.

The redeemer as the one who pays, the redeem as the ones who are bought back, and the redemption itself, which is the act by which the redeemer redeems the redeemed.

In a biblical perspective, redemption is centered in a particular act, and the benefits of that act extend backward and forward throughout redemptive history.

And today's question deals with the application of those redemptive benefits.

It's question 29 of the catechism.

How are we made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ?

We are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ by the effectual application of it to us by the Holy Spirit, by his Holy Spirit.

So we'll take that piece by piece, and first we'll talk about partaking.

We are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ.

What does it mean to partake of something?

To get a pizza.

Mm-hmm.

Is that right?

We tend to think of it in terms of like drinking or eating or something like that.

Biblically speaking, to partake is to get a piece of something, right?

Or to have a share in it.

The word is a form of the word koinemia, which is the word for communion or partnership.

We partake in redemption in that we have a share in redemption.

And we come to have that share in redemption by first having a share in Christ Himself.

So if you have a Bible, turn it to Ephesians 1.

We'll look at verses 3 through 14.

And if you've been around me for long enough, then you've been through this exercise before, but it's an exercise that bears repeating.

I'm going to ask one of you to read Ephesians 1, 3 through 14.

And while that person is reading, I want everyone who's listening, every time you hear the words in Christ or through Christ or with Christ, raise your hand.

Alright, we understand the assignment?

Okay.

Who wants to read it then?

Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ.

As a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth, in him we have a plan and inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

So that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him we're sealed and the promise with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance, until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

Amen.

What's that?

That is splendid.

We raised our hands quite a bit, didn't we?

So the Father has blessed us in Christ, He's chosen us in Christ, He's predestined us for adoption through Christ.

He's redeemed and forgiven us in Christ.

Yeah, right, exactly.

He set forth his plan in Christ, the plan to unite all things in Christ.

In Christ we've obtained our inheritance.

In Christ we believe and place our hope.

So, you know, you look at that great display of redemption, and you see that it is all in Christ, with Christ, through Christ, for Christ, for from him and to him and through him are all things.

So the sun is at the very center of this.

And that points us to this beautiful reality of our union with Christ.

John Murray, he wrote a book on the Ordo Salutis, which we'll talk a little bit.

It's the handoff that you have.

If you didn't get one, there's some by the door.

The Ordo Salutis is the order of salvation, kind of the way that God takes it and working us through the redemptive process.

And Murray says that union is the umbrella over that whole order of salvation.

Redemption is comprehended under our union with Christ.

It's the superlative gift in which all the other gifts and graces are contained.

So just that, right?

Just that insight.

Apply that to how you think about salvation and redemption.

What difference do you think it makes?

How does it impact the way you think about your redemption?

The union?

It's personal, it's intimate.

When we were talking about partakers, it was almost like though, with redemption, I feel this way, it's almost like a snatching, right?

It isn't, I sense a violence to it, right?

Not where here's the blood of Christ, now give me.

It's more like, nah, he's mine, right?

So for me, it's a the union is intimacy.

It's my salvation.

It isn't just, and one of the things that strikes me too is when you read the gospels, Jesus healed people directly.

He didn't just throw out his healing amongst the crowd and then go take a nap, right?

It was an intimate one every one.

And that really strikes me, where it isn't just some far-off, you know.

So forgive me for it's not very passionate.

That's great.

As you should be.

Thank you.

Jeff.

Yeah, it's a view from being from being in Adam and the Holy Spirit makes us in Christ through the gospel.

And we're united.

Father sees us as he sees Christ.

The union of being one with we realize our dependence on Christ.

Because everything about our salvation is dependent on what he has done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's personal is the word, right?

Personal, relational, intimate, not transactional.

Jesus is not the salvation dispenser.

You just drop in the coin of your faith and he lets out all the redemptive goodies.

If you're going to have the benefits of redemption, you must have Christ.

He's first and foremost.

You have him.

And in him you have all of the benefits of redemption.

So it's not just a giving of the redemptive goodies.

It's an actual giving of God Himself.

So that changes the image of redemption somewhat from one of like mere clemency, right?

Where you get forgiven, you can go free.

It includes that, of course, but it's forgiveness and its adoption.

It's clemency and its embrace.

God doesn't just give us a get-out-of jail free card.

Again, he gives us himself.

Jesus experiences a union with flesh in itself and as such when he takes upon himself in the incarnation human flesh.

But we also experience a personal union.

The eternal Son of God steps down out of heaven and he puts on a skin suit.

And even that doesn't do justice to the intimacy with which he actually took a body to himself.

To have it forever.

The dust of earth rests on the throne of heaven forever.

So that we can be united with him.

So that's, you know, that's that's the core of redemption, biblically speaking.

But like we said, that redemption centers upon a historical act, something that Jesus did in order to secure the benefits of redemption.

And so we are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ.

Purchased in the past tense, in the sense that our redemption has been bought, it has been paid for, it has been accomplished, it is finished, like Jesus said on the cross.

So that language of purchase and redemption, it gets back to what we were talking about a little while ago, about to redeem is to buy back.

Galatians 3 13.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

So there's this idea of purchasing from.

So if you've got a rich family member or a rich cousin or whatever, they could come and buy you back.

And so when they buy you back out of slavery, you have freedom from slavery.

But also, you know, they're buying you out of a situation and back into another situation, the situation of freedom.

So purchased from slavery to freedom.

Now think about, let's let's think about a little bit.

When we think about redemption as purchase, what did Jesus buy us back from?

And what did Jesus buy us to?

Does that make sense?

Understand what I'm asking here?

Brandon.

So we're saved from the wrath of God.

Well we're saved from the whole corrupt and corrupting me of the flesh, the world of the devil, the world I forget the right word.

The world of the flesh of the devil.

That whole that whole rotten, corrupting moral uh nasal nation.

Um yeah, so I see, and I got this from G.K.

Chesterton, God made human beings originally, he made Adam and Eve originally perfect.

Perfect.

You know, that's what my ancestry is.

Perfection, perfect human being.

It's not my ancestry.

If you're son of that or daughter of Adam or son of Adam, daughter of Eve, to get the lingo right here, um you were made perfect.

But what has sin done to you?

It has so corrupted you that you are now aligning with anti-God and Anti-Christ.

Right, James?

Yeah, review all over 2 Peter 1-4, by which he has granted us, granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

And I am not only going to be restored to that original, you know, Father Adam, Mother Eve, being in perfection with God.

I'm he doesn't do the same thing twice, right?

So I am going to be made even better than that by the by having the likeness of Christ imprinted in me.

So that I would be as much like Jesus as my little ruby self can be one day.

My little package.

Isn't that cool?

That's a beautiful Ruby, that's for sure.

Very well polished.

But it's true for all of us.

It's true for all of us.

We're little packages waiting for the completion.

Right now we have down payment.

So we're dead in our sins and trespasses.

We are hopelessly corrupt, talking about apart from God's grace.

We are under the wrath of God due to us for being under the curse of God.

We are enslaved, we're bound for hell.

That's that's that's our story apart from grace.

Jesus buys us back from all of that.

He redeems us from the curse, he redeems us from sin, he redeems us from Satan, he redeems us from our trajectory to hell, all of it.

He sets us free from all of that.

He purchases our redemption from all of that.

And he buys us to blessing.

We're no longer cursed, we're blessed.

He purchases us to new life in him.

He purchases us to a life in the spirit, like Brennan was saying, where we now have new regenerated hearts, hearts of flesh, in which the spirit dwells.

And the spirit, God writes his law upon our hearts, and the spirit helps us to desire to actually keep that law and to walk in light of it, to confess and repent when we fall short, but then to get back up again and keep moving forward.

I mean, that's Jesus paid the price to make that happen, to make that possible.

That's that's what he accomplished, Brennan.

Where does the use of the word vigiation add things into the context of version of two?

Is there any is there any sort of nuance with the use of the word propitiation?

It's the very heart of it.

Uh we did a class on atonement uh back when we did Christology in here, and I think we might have done it, talked about these things a couple weeks ago.

So forgive me if this is repetitive.

But propitiation is a Greek translation of uh, or it's an English translation of the Greek word Hilisterion, which translates the language.

For the mercy seat from Leviticus 16 and 17, having to do with the Day of Atonement ritual.

And what happened in the atonement was Jesus paying the price to purchase his people.

A particular people, a definite people.

And the price that was paid was his own blood.

So he propitiated the wrath of God by paying his own blood to make that sacrifice of atonement.

Alright, so that's the concepts are just tightly linked there.

Georgia?

I was just thinking this is a little slide bar.

I've been thinking about that word partake.

And another thing that we have is when we partake, we are different.

We're not we become different.

Kind of like putting cream in the coffee.

It makes a new mixture which cannot be separated.

Because we're with Christ, he's with us, or you know, I I guess it I think of just the security that we have in Christ.

Yeah.

When he redeems us.

Yeah.

To partake of Christ, it's it's an all-or-nothing deal.

So you don't get just a little bit of it.

You can't just have a piece of him.

You'll have the whole Christ or have no Christ at all.

And that's how scripture talks about it.

And the great, you know, that's you know, that can sound like an ultimatum, but for people who put their faith in Christ, that's that's wonderful.

Because at no point, I mean, you might feel down on yourself and think, well, I'm a real, I'm a real weak Christian.

I'm not like these other people.

You know, maybe some of those benefits aren't for me.

Or maybe, you know, Jesus tolerates me, but you know, whatever.

If you're in Christ, you have the whole Christ.

There's no more or less, there's no JV Christians versus varsity Christians, versus freshman Christians who ride the short bus to church.

That was me.

I played freshman soccer, I rode the short bus to every game.

Yeah, you will have the whole Christ or you'll have none at all.

So if you have Jesus, if your faith is in Christ, yes, be assured, be encouraged that you have the whole Christ, not just a toenail or whatever.

Alright, we've talked about the purchase.

Now let's talk about the application.

We are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ by the effectual application of it to us by his Holy Spirit.

Alright, it's not just an application, it's an effectual application.

What does that mean?

It doesn't fail.

It always works.

It always works.

It obtains the desired effect.

It obtains the desired effect.

Alright.

He just has a one-up y on that.

That's what we're doing, not somebody one-up hit.

That's right.

So redemption is something purchased by Christ and applied to us.

In the same way a nurse applies a bandage to a wound, the Spirit applies the benefits of Christ's redemption to our mortally wounded souls.

Effectually.

Note the direction of agency there.

Humans are not stocks and blocks, right?

We need to make decisions and all of that.

We affirm that biblically.

And yet the application of redemption is not contingent upon our approval.

We don't apply the benefits to ourselves.

God applies the benefits to us.

Now think about different ways in which people conceptualize redemption.

Think about, you know, we talked about some of them, right?

We talked about the redemptive art that you might read in a book or see in the movies or see in sports, or think about other faith traditions, even other forms of Christianity.

What other uh, what I just said about the spirit effectually applying to the benefits of redemption to us, God giving it, and not being contingent on our approval.

How does that sit with other views of redemption in the world?

Brennan?

Well, I just had a couple weeks ago with someone that we were working whose um dedicated to his church was on the church of Christ.

Yeah, I I didn't know that about Church of Christ, because Church of Christ are credo Baptists.

Um that's interesting.

Yeah, there's a a section of the Church of Christ.

I don't know about the whole, but there's a cult split off of the Church of Christ that believes that you're not baptized, you know, yeah.

Yeah, so that that's that's interesting.

But even for a Lutheran at least, Lutherans would believe that you could lose your salvation.

Right?

So the effect the application of the benefits of redemption in some sense are contingent upon you know whether we approve.

Right, Ruby?

You were you went to a Lutheran church for a while.

I went to the Lutheran church for a while, but um quite a few years actually, and the pastor at that time was more evangelical than Lutheran.

Okay.

If you know, if you know what I mean, he he preached Christ and him crucified.

Yeah.

The pastor they have now is very Lutheran.

I don't hear me, he got I got a sweet text message, but they won't be back, and I was like because he's he's turned the congregation towards something very ritualistic.

And it's like the temptation, and Louis says this is the temptation to have Jesus and something else is so strong enough.

And it shows up in all kinds of way Jesus and environmentalism, Jesus and feminism, Jesus and you've got to do this to get baptized away.

Um dump three times backwards, forwards, and yeah, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, it's it's and it's not that those things aren't important, but when they they become the brazen servant, basically.

Which you can see how they're good and important at the time, but then what does happen to them.

Yeah.

So here are a few things to think about in terms of different ways that people conceptualize redemption.

Some are naturalistic, uh, a kind of moralism, right?

I redeem myself by living a good life.

This is a lot of what you see in sports and movies and stuff.

Like I start doing the right stuff and then I turn myself around and I am redeemed.

You see a version of that in politics and activism.

I redeem myself by redeeming my culture.

I've become a rabid environmentalist and I get certain things done in the world around me, and I build a better community, and that's how I redeem myself, that's how I redeem my community, or we redeem it together.

There are some that are pseudo-Christian, which are moralistic, but just using Christian imagery.

Redemption is being so captivated by the idea or the image of a resurrected and ascended Christ that you live in a manner that conforms to his sacrificial life.

This is basically the view of redemption of the mainline Protestant churches, where we've got Jesus, we've got the Bible, we like the stories in it to some extent, we like the idea of a risen and ascended Savior, but everybody knows that people don't come back from the dead, right?

We know that's just a story.

But it's a good story, and we want to live our lives by it.

And if we live our lives by it, then we will be redeemed.

That's something you find in kind of pseudo-Christian, more progressive and liberal theological Christian churches.

And Christianity itself, and people that we would affirm as brothers and sisters, at least for the most part, of the Catholic Church.

God redeems me by way of my faith working itself out through love.

There's a kind of participatory understanding there where God makes the first move, and then I have to respond, and then God makes another move where he gives me more grace, and then I cooperate with the grace, and eventually I make myself worthy of redemption.

You find similar things in more Arminian forms of evangelical theology, where everything comes down to you and your decision, how you respond to the grace of God.

It's a lot of striking similarities.

But the thing we're talking about, the thing that our catechism teaches, the thing that our tradition teaches, is that Jesus died to purchase my redemption, and the Holy Spirit effectually applies to my soul the benefits that he secured at the cross.

So it's not about me redeeming myself, it's not about us redeeming ourselves, it's not about transforming our community, although that something like that might follow from redemption in the gospel.

It's about what Jesus did for me and what the Spirit is continually applying to my benefits, often in spite of me, not contingent upon my approval or my acceptance.

Yes, we have to confess our faith.

Yes, we have to walk by faith.

All of those things are true.

I'm not talking about a kind of quietism here.

What I'm saying is that the biblical reality is that if I profess my faith and if I walk in step with the gospel, that's not me.

That's Christ working within me, giving me a new heart and giving me the lips to speak.

Kenny, could you touch on because it was impactful in our men's uh Heidelberg study about um Pedobaptism that that points to God?

I don't know.

Jeff, was that you that said that?

I know, but God didn't repeat that.

It's really it's really it can you repeat that, Jeff?

Which part?

Whereas where with Pato baptism, it's God, your point towards God and not receive.

Well the sacraments, the sacraments point to a covenant with grace, they point to what God has done for us, including Pedobaptism.

That's why we see it as a right, but God commanded us to do the point of his covenant.

That's a simple point away from us towards God's grace.

That's what it was.

Take my seat and teach it.

That's what it was.

Yeah, pointing pointing to Christ.

They're the gospel for the eyes, the gospel for the face, and the gospel for the ears are preached.

They hold on with the preaching, the gospel to point to God.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks, Brother.

So the Spirit effectually applies the benefits of redemption to us.

And we think about the application.

So if we look at Ephesians 1, something we see, if you were here when I preached this in the evening service, you'll know this, and I've taught this in class before.

But something on the basis of Ephesians 1, you see that the Father appoints salvation, the Son accomplishes salvation, the Spirit applies salvation.

It's a good way to think about the Trinitarian economy, plan of redemption.

Or uh, yeah, think of the plan or the outworking of redemption.

So when we think about the accomplishment of redemption, we're thinking about the historical process, right?

And the term for that is, you know, the Latin term is Historia Salutis, or the history of salvation.

And for that you look at the Bible.

You look at creation, fall, redemption, consummation.

You look at the story of Adam and Eve, and then Abraham, and then Israel, and the monarchy, and all of that, and you see how it kind of builds and develops in the events that took place culminating in the cross.

When we talk about the application of redemption, the Latin term is ordosolutis, or the order of salvation.

And in that, we're not looking so much at the working out of redemption over history.

We're looking at the working out of redemption in our personal history.

Sometimes it's temporal, sometimes it's logical, sometimes, and I'm talking about the thing on your sheet here that I handed out.

This is just an overview for today.

Over the next couple weeks, we're going to be looking at different aspects of this and unflushing or unpacking it a little bit more.

But this is the kind of process that happens with respect to the individual for our redemption.

It begins in eternity, right, with unconditional election, with foreknowledge, with predestination, where God looks down the corridors of time in a sense, and he says, that one, that one, that one.

And it's not as though, and the reason we call it unconditional is because God does not predicate, and we talked about some of this when we looked at question three, I think, of the catechism.

It's not as though God conditions his choice of this or that individual based on his foreknowledge that they would respond to the gospel.

That's a Molinist, Arminian kind of view of election.

He chooses, we respond.

If he doesn't choose, we don't respond.

It all begins with God.

It all begins with his sovereignty.

It all begins with his foreknowledge.

And foreknowledge is it's foreknowing, it's relational, it's it's it's God not just arbitrarily picking out random people from the fallen mass of humanity and going, saved, saved, saved, saved, saved.

It's him seeing you and knowing you and loving you even from the foundation of the world and predestining you to the whole sweep of redemption.

Next step, effectual calling.

This is something that happens in time.

Um there is such a thing as provenient grace in the sense that God works in people's lives.

And if you're chosen from the foundation of the world, God is orchestrating your life from the beginning.

All your days are written in his book before any one of them comes to pass.

That's Psalm 139.

And so the Spirit can be nudging you, the Spirit can be preparing you, the Spirit can even be convicting you in certain ways, but there comes a moment in your life, there comes a moment in your story when the light comes on.

Where he takes your heart of stone, gives you a heart of flesh, when he brings you from death to life, when he when he helps, when it clicks, right?

When it when, and sometimes that's easy to identify.

You know, sometimes it's you're in a church service, someone's preaching the gospel, and it's like you've heard it for the first time in your life right in that moment, and you give your life to Jesus.

For other people, it's you know, it's it's part of a slow burn, and it might be hard to identify when exactly it happened, but it happens.

In and through that, you know, I've been talking about effectual calling, but tied to that is regeneration, the giving of the new heart.

And the way that expresses itself is in conversion, faith and repentance, which are really two sides of the same coin.

To believe in Christ is to turn toward Christ, which is to turn from sin.

You understand what I'm saying there?

You can't half believe and half repent.

That's actually not turning to Christ.

It's a partial turning just from one sin to another sin.

And so that's a temporal moment.

Putting your faith in Christ, turning from your sin.

In the response to that, in and through that faith, we have justification, adoption, sanctification.

Our catechism puts those together as like the principal benefits of our union with Christ, and then we unpack them to talk about them.

You put your faith in Christ, you've repented of your sins, you're justified, which means you are made right in the sight of God, uh, just as if I had never sinned.

You are granted the alien righteousness of Christ, and you are made innocent before the throne of God.

You are adopted into God's family.

You are sanctified in the Holy Spirit.

That's a one and done kind of thing where He He plucks you out of the world and makes you holy, sets you apart as one of his, but it's also an ongoing thing where the Spirit continues to conform you to the image of Christ, looking forward to the day when you are fully glorified in the presence of Christ.

And in between that, sanctification and glorification is perseverance, the promise that God will not let you go.

Philippians 1:6, he is faithful to bring to completion that which he has begun in you.

Philippians 1:6

So God will preserve you.

It's not the same as once saved, always saved.

One saved, always saved is the idea that you go to a revival, you go to a rally, you say the sinner's prayer, and they give you your fire insurance card.

And that whatever your life looks like between then and death, you're good.

There's a craft sense in which that's kind of true.

But what the perseverance of the saints says is the saints will persevere.

If you put your faith in Christ, and that's a legitimate thing that happens, and it's not just you responding to the 472nd course of just as I am, then God will hold on to you.

The Spirit will bear fruit in you in keeping with repentance.

You will grow in Christ's likeness, and God will hold you until the very end.

That's what the perseverance of the saints is saying.

So that order of salvation, that's there's your overview of some of the things we're going to be talking about as we go throughout.

That's what it looks like for the Spirit to sovereignly administer the benefits of redemption to the elect.

So, by way of conclusion, and we got 10 minutes, so we got plenty of time to bat this around and wrestle with it.

How does this broader view of redemption, the view of redemption that we've been talking about today, how does it compare to maybe how you thought about redemption in the past?

Have we learned anything new today?

Well, I think sanctification, even within solid Christian traditions, even within folks within our own circles.

And uh that's that's our task, you know.

Everything else is modergistic sanctification over synergistic.

And uh reading from Murray and as well as Christian, uh is makes it pretty obvious that the work of sanctification of making us all that price is done solely by the indwelling of the Spirit.

And then when you talk about the perseverance of the saints or the preservation of the saints, that comparing it against one saint, that's always distracting me because Roman six speaks directly against that, right?

How much shall we know one saying that breaks me about idols?

So uh that's always worth lasting, but um yeah, I think from starting to finish, it's truly all about what Christ has done, and how therefore now we become partakers of all evidence.

Yeah, 1 Corinthians 1, 30 through 31.

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.

It's really interesting.

It doesn't say he gave us wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification.

It says he became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification.

So that goes hand in hand with what we were talking about with union with Christ earlier.

Uh we have these benefits in and through him.

And so the monarchism synergism, you know, monarchism means one working, synergism means both working.

Uh so what Brandon was referring to, some people believe that you know you're just Justified by faith, but you're sanctified by works.

God does everything in your justification, and then you take over for your sanctification, and he helps you out to some extent.

But what we saw right there is Jesus became sanctification for us.

Sanctification is in and through him.

We have the whole Christ.

We have sanctification in Christ.

So it's some are we active in our sanctification?

Yes and amen.

Absolutely.

But who's doing it?

Who's sanctifying us?

We're not sanctifying ourselves.

We can't do that.

God is sanctifying us.

Because he preordained those works.

He preordained our works.

Where does I mean this is the heart of the landing of God?

If you look at the conversion of Augustine, the conversion of Martin Luther, the conversion of C.S.

Lewis, you can see what you were just talking about happening over and over again.

They were one thing, you know, and then God comes into their lives and they become something else.

Augustine said it is no longer I.

And the woman was walking down the street and yells at him, Augustine, Augustine, it is I.

He said, but it is no longer I.

That's powerful.

And it happened to Lewis on a trip to the zoo, riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle with St.

Louis on their Facebook page, because I'm always thinking about that.

Web St.

Zoo.

Add him with a musician on L sex near a speaker.

That's correct.

The wind blows where it has its Jesus in John 3.

Yeah.

And there's something totally inexplicable in it.

Yeah.

And it puts grace at the foundation of all of it.

I mean, you know, Calvinists get a bad wrath, and sometimes we earn it.

Especially new Calvinists are insufferable.

But at the end of the day, we call them the doctrines of grace for a reason.

We don't get high on unconditional election and predestination and all that because they're interesting.

It's because when I peel redemption all the way back, it's not me, it's God.

It's God's choice.

There's nothing in my hands I bring the solely to the cross, I claim.

So, you know, it's at the at the end of the day, at the end of the chain, at the end of the story, it's God and his sovereign choice, his love, his grace, his mercy.

And that's, you know, that's that's a beautiful, wonderful thing that will melt you, but it also will stand you fast.

Because if he chose me, he's not going to unchoose me.

If he brought me in, he's not going to kick me out.

And if he's taken me into his hand, Jesus himself says it, I'm safe in his hand.

The one who's in me is greater than the one who's in the world.

Nobody can take me out of the Father's hand.

I'm his prized possession.

You're his prized possession.

And those, that's these doctrines of grace, they're not ultimately intellectual tidbits for us to protect just for the sake of our system, but they're biblical truths that protect in our hearts and minds the reality and the comprehensive nature of God's grace.

And I have found that the obedience to the law comes forth from love.

Because of everything we just discussed.

Our salvation by the Christ.

You want to obey.

It just springs forth naturally.

You want to do it.

Not in a mindset of, I gotta earn it, you know, Christ plus.

It's I want to because I love you and you've saved me.

So it just strings forth naturally as part of that process, that creation process.

And the law is the law is the character of God transcribed into human behaviors for human beings.

You think of that?

So I want to be, we beholding him are changed from glory to glory.

I want that character of God to shine out of me.

And I am not going to do it in a legalistic accounting, oh, I can check this box, I can check that box.

I'm going to look at Jesus.

I'm going to look at Jesus, and that character will be.

And then we will delight in the law.

David said, I delight in your law, in your statues.

Yeah.

Come on, man.

Yeah.

I can't do this anymore.

So a spirit, man.

Yeah.

Our tradition gives us a big bulk with our theology.

We look at the covenant of redemption to understand, to help us understand what's happening with the redemption.

It puts a lot of these disconnected parts together.

You can see the big picture in the happening Sar Lewis.

It's happening in the wider.

Just a great gift, better position to be all in C.

Yeah.

So Jeff's going to be teaching a class on covenant theology next quarter, and I encourage you all to attend.

Am I joking?

I don't know.

We'll see.

He's got that air in the headlights.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for this time.

Thank you for these brothers and sisters.

Thank you for the wisdom that Jesus is and has deposited in this church.

Lord, I thank you for that on a historical scale, for the embarrassment of riches we have in terms of deep and faithful reflection on your word.

But I also mean in terms of this room here this morning.

Lord, thank you for the way you raise up your church and that you sanctify individual believers and bring us together so that we can benefit from each other's gifts and graces.

Lord, I pray that you would continue to bless us through one another.

Even this morning, as we come to the gathered worship, Lord, be with every element of the worship service.

Help us to hear your word, help us to do your work, and so belong to your family.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you.