Strange Fire: The Fear of the Lord

In keeping with my post from yesterday on highlighting the great fact that the wrath of God was satisfied on the cross by Jesus Christ, R.C. Sproul takes us yet another step further in his article called Strange Fire. Here is an excerpt:

"One aspect of the modern church ... is that believers are no longer encouraged to have a healthy fear of God. We seem to assume that the fear of the Lord is something that belonged to the Old Testament period and is not to be a part of the life of the Christian. But fear of God involves not simply a trembling before His wrath, but a sense of reverence and awe because of His glorious holiness.
"Even though we are living on the finished side of the cross, the fear of the Lord is still the beginning of wisdom (Ps. 111:10a). God is still a consuming fire, a jealous God (Deut. 4:24). When we come into His presence, we are to come as children, as those who have been reconciled, but there is to be a godly fear inspired by respect for the One with whom we are dealing."

-R.C. Sproul, Strange Fire, Ligonier Ministries

The wrath of God was satisfied

The PC(USA), in updating their denominational hymnal, recently voted to exclude the contemporary hymn "In Christ Alone" because the original authors would not agree to let the denomination change  one line in the second stanza (Ref: http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-04/debating-hymns). The specific line is found in the title of this post: "The wrath of God was satisfied". The PC(USA) had wanted to change the line just after "Till on that cross as Jesus died" to "The love of God was magnified." This seemingly minute change struck me as awefully important and immensely subversive to the message of the Gospel truth.

As I've spoken to a number of men and women who will call themselves Christians, but who struggle with the institutional church and orthodox teaching, the problem of evil invariably surfaces as a sticking point or area of doubt. This is ironically often followed by an ensuing discussion of the topic of God's wrath and the concept of hell and eternal damnation&nbsp. "How can a good and loving God punish people made in His image?" they will ask. Such a question truly highlights the frailty of our reasoning, since the problem of evil and the doctrine of God's wrath are intricately woven together. The same person who in a previous moment demonstrates a sort of self-righteous indignation about why evil exists and what should be done about it, in the next sentence rejects our Father's gracious solution - the Good News - as revealed in His Son Jesus Christ.
It would seem that many of us, and I include myself in this number, suffer more from the fear of man than the fear of the Lord. I would rather tell someone who doesn't know Christ, or someone who is backsliding from the faith, that the cross is only about God's love and mercy. Unfortunately, such a half-truth misses perhaps the most important piece of the Gospel, which is precisely why it specifically had to be Jesus' death on the cross that atoned for our sins.

Cosmic treason against our holy, perfect Creator and life-giver is an infinitely and eternally serious act. If I believe that my disobedience and sin can be simply swept under the carpet and erased without being dealt with and paid for, then that is just unhelpful, cheap grace. It's tempting to offer people the cheap grace way out of sin and guilt. But the problem is that if we only hold out God's love in this way and forget what it cost Him, we won't understand the depth of His love and nature of His grace - unmerited favor. The gift of God - eternal life - cost Christ the bitter cup of death on the cross so that we might walk free. To try to erase the depth of what Christ endured for us on the cross by wiping out the wrath of God and the equivalent of eternal damnation, is to mischaracterize the Christian faith. To do so is to wrongly succomb to the fear of man and to deny a true and proper fear of God. Since I talk to a lot of people outside the church, I do actually find myself doing this at times, sorry to say. When I do, I'm withholding perhaps the most beautiful and important aspect of the Gospel Good News. So, today I'm reminded, confessing, repententing, and encouraging others not to succomb to fear of man.

Here are the lyrics to the wonderful hymn that brought this all to mind today:

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;For ev'ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow'r of Christ in me;
From life's first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow'r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow'r of Christ I'll stand.

"In Christ Alone"
Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2001 Kingsway Thankyou Music

The Great Commission: Is it Legalism?

Anthony Bradley writing for World Magazine's blog calls out the contemporary church movement that beckons comfortable middle class Christians to become more "missional" and even "radical" as a new form of legalism. In some respects, I agree with him 100%. I've been involved with previous churches where the just-out-of-seminary assistant pastor will come up with all of these programs and campaigns to motivate young and old to become active in helping out with the needy outside of the church. As with many well-intended church activities, it doesn't take long for good ideas to become misdirected or abused.

I know a man who is homeless, living in his car, who attends a church where I used to be a member. This particular church as been on the "reform-missional" "radical" tract for a few years. We took this man out for a meal and were trying to encourage him and see how we could pray for him, when he told us that when he asked for prayer for his relationship with Jesus Christ to grow a woman at the church said he needs to be more missional and radical. She said he should go work with the homeless like some of the people in her small group do.

Did you get that? A homeless man, in need of spiritual prayer and God's grace is told that he should get involved with the church's homeless ministry if he wanted his walk with God to grow. From my perspective, this example is a good illustration of what can go wrong in the "radical" movement. Our outreach and desire to minister to the poor cannot be seen as an ultimate thing or an end in itself. The worship of our glorious God in spirit and truth as we come together as the body of Christ is both our starting point and our trajectory for this type of ministry. If we don't see ourselves first as poor and needy, at the foot of the cross, it is not too long before our missional and radical motives turn into superiority complexes - or worse yet, God complexes. We may get a good feeling high from doing good and helping someone, but it doesn't honor the Lord.

Along with this, we have to always remember that mercy ministry begins with the household of God. Every Sunday, the Lord gathers His sheep into the fold. Sometimes, we don't have to go looking for the people who need our care. Often times they're standing right in front of us, waving their arms, saying "help me". In our blindness, we can actually miss the work God has already given us.

All of that said, I'm a big fan of cultivating a missional mindset and challenging myself not to get complacent wearing out a groove in the pew. Finding the right balance and proper amount of wisdom is journey for all of us, and I'm incredibly blessed that the church I'm in now is committed to doing all of these things in accordance with God's Word and not in human strenghth.

Getting Back in the Game + Resource Round Up

Getting Back into Blogging

After taking a break from the blog for a couple of months, I thought it was time to decide whether it would be best to shut things down or to get started back up. Well, after prayer and reflection, I've decided that I've got too much good stuff going on not to share some insights with anyone who might be interested.

So, going forward, I plan to write on a few of the following themes and topics:

First, Book Reviews. Since the beginning of 2013, I've read more than 20 books and have at least another 20 on the coffee table, waiting to be read. So, I'd like to share some of the incredibly helpful resources and accompanying insights gleaned.

In addition, our church has held or hosted several seminars and conferences since January: the Winter Bible Conference, the PresWIC Annual Women's Conference, our own Women's Retreat and the OneCry University Event for the University of Delaware campus ministries. Great teaching, awesome fellowship, and amazing worship was enjoyed by all who attended these events. If I can pass on even a speck of what I've learned from each of these, I'm sure it will help me and hopefully someone else...

Another thing I plan to do is a periodic round up of article links containing what I've found to be the most thought-provoking and helpful. The bottom of this post will kick things off.

And finally, I'd like to generate a few articles that address my own thinking about how the Church publicly interacts with some of our more pressing contemporary issues.

 To kick things off, below is a round up of some good articles that I've come across lately. I hope you'll enjoy them!

Resource Round Up

From HeadHeartHand: The Problem with Mental Illness David Murray looks at mental illness from both sides: the disease and the sin. The complex mix of physical, mental, and spiritual aspects that are intertwined are examined.

Tim Keller discusses one of the biggest obstacles to revival inside and outside of our churches in an Q&A session with The Gospel Coalition (his answer is probably not what you expect)

From The Aquila Report, T. David Gordon writes about The Politics of Rights and Ressentiment (no, that's not a typo :) Nietzsche introduced the French term to us - you'll have to read the article to find out how it all fits together. It's a very interesting and helpful way of looking at this issue. Enjoy.

Clearly, this IS The Most Important Message. Why do we often avoid it, miss it, or assume it? It's always great to be reminded (can anyone say Gospel Amnesia?).

Jim Hamilton at For His Renown challenges our contemporary Evangelical assumptions that The Song of Songs is primarily about human love in Intended Allegory. From his summary paragraph:
"The Song of Songs is a poetic summary and interpretation of the Bible’s big story: the descendant of David—king of Israel about whom the promises of 2 Samuel 7 were made .... who initiated the new covenant between himself and his bride, the church, and who will return for the grand consummation when the Bride herself, the new Jerusalem, will descend from heaven having the glory of God (Rev 21:9–11)."
Call me boring or a prude, but that sounds way, way more awesome, encouraging, comforting, fulfilling and powerful than the literalistic view that sees The Song of Songs as only about or primarily about human relationship.

The doctrine and reality of sanctification should be a great source of joy to us - not taken for granted. Great article from Rebecca VanDoodewaard!

Towards a More Informed Gender Debate by Bart Gingerich who graduated from Patrick Henry College and serves as a Research Assistant at the Institute on Religion and Democracy. These are his key points, but make sure you read his article, as he does a thorough and helpful job of building them out for us:
1. Make sure your historical picture is accurate.
2. Eschew Whiggery.
3. Beware the bandying of “Biblical.”
4. Look at how you view human society before asserting a position.
5. Avoid caricatures.

I guess that's a pretty good start. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to get some of my book reviews going next... Thanks for reading.

The Troubled State of the Christian Message

This is a very important and much needed article! One of the reasons why I've slacked up on blogging is because I've been so incredibly disillusioned with the quality of Christian blogging as of late, and as a result, I've entirely lack any motivation to be active in the blogosphere. Well, finally, I've found an article that hits the pulse of my disillusionment. I'm reprinting in full here, because everything is said so perfectly. Enjoy!

The Troubled State of Christian Preaching

What Giglio got right and the church often gets wrong.

 

by Mark Galli (Christianity Today)  1/21/2013
 

Photo courtesy of Passion Conferences

 

Today we celebrate the second inauguration of President Obama, but we do so without the benediction of pastor Louie Giglio. In the controversy that erupted after his selection to and withdrawal from that honor, it became clear again how much the gospel has been sidelined, not in the culture, but in the church.

Given the ubiquity and gravity of sex in our culture, it's not surprising that sexual ethics was at the center of the controversy. Giglio was initially invited by the President's inauguration committee in part because of his work against sexual trafficking, and then encouraged to withdraw because of his sermon condemning homosexual behavior. The national indignation, especially of those sympathetic to the LGBT community, about this sermon was matched by the indignation of many evangelicals at the pressure applied to Giglio to withdraw.

As these things go, the specter of "persecution" was raised. It nearly goes without saying—and yet it must be said again—that Giglio is not going to jail, let alone was he manhandled or murdered for his faith. We can continue to be grateful that we live in a nation where one of the worst things that can happen to a Christian for articulating a Christian ethic is that he is pressured to not pray at a national event.

What Is Our Gospel?

That being said, the incident raises the question about the exact nature of the gospel we have communicated to this culture. David Kinnaman's UnChristian signaled that many Christians have concluded the big problem is that the evangelical church has aligned itself on the wrong side of some social issues, or with social issues that have little or no cultural cachet—and thus they move to champion more popular social causes to win a hearing for the gospel. It would uncharitable and unfair to suggest that Giglio and his church have done this, but if other evangelicals are like me, it remains a temptation for any who have a heart to introduce Jesus to others.

Sometimes it works, as Giglio's invitation to pray suggests. But as a strategy, it will invariably backfire, no matter how much we try to hide our work on unpopular causes, as the fury against Giglio's 20-year-old sermon illustrates. The degree to which we employ this approach merely as a tactic to gain a hearing is the degree to which we will eventually be spurned by the very people we hope to attract.

In the long run, we cannot gain a hearing for the gospel through our admirable ethics or social justice because in the end, we are still sinners, with hearts, as the prophet Jeremiah put it, that remain desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9). When we do live well or accomplish a social good, we will be admired for our moral success, not because Jesus died to save a rebellious world. And when we fail to live up to our values—and we invariably will--well, we will look like every other sinner on the planet. Not much of a witness there, except to our humanity.

In the end, we cannot gain a hearing for the gospel because God has already done so in the preaching of the Cross—there is no more dramatic, arresting, attention getting "tactic" than that. Note the response to such preaching as describe by Paul in 1 Corinthians: some were scandalized, and others thought it foolishness, but for some, it was their very salvation. But in every case, the preaching of the cross made a hearing for itself.

In the end, we cannot gain a hearing for the gospel because God has already done so in the preaching of the Cross—there is no more dramatic, arresting, attention getting "tactic" than that.

Who Is First and Last?

Looking at how this message scandalized the ancient world opens a window into our preaching today. When the culture takes issue with the church today, it carps about our oppressive sexual ethics (especially our opposition to homosexual behavior) and our various prosperity gospels (from the most egregious health-and-wealth messages to the more subtle but equally dangerous sermons on how faith in Christ can improve your marriage, your business, and your self-esteem). And then there is the regular complaint about our self-righteousness—our incessant habit of pronouncing judgment on our culture, which is grounded in the assumption that sinners are found mostly in that culture, outside the church walls. Thus all the sermons about how we need to reform and stand against the culture, as if the "we" is in no need of fundamental reform, or that the Lord does not have a controversy with his people.

In the New Testament era, by contrast, the big problem was the scandal of the Cross. It's not hard to see why. Among the many things the Cross says is this: We're as dead as Jesus. He hangs there as the true human, the sign of all humanity, dead to the world, dead to the future, and especially dead to God, who it seems has forsaken us. The situation is so bad that only the sacrifice of Another—again Jesus, who hangs there as true God—can remedy it. For people like us, who imagine we're not so much dead as suffering a cold, and that if we take our vitamin C and will ourselves out of bed, we can make a go of it—well, this verdict can sound unnerving. Worse, to be told we can do nothing to revive ourselves, that we are left completely at the mercy of this Other—well, this doesn't sit well in any culture, let alone in a culture that prizes individual initiative and heroic effort.

It's interesting that our culture is rarely scandalized by this preaching of the Cross. That's probably because it is a rare theme of Christian preaching these days. Instead we have been smitten with practical preaching that helps people become successful in life and business, and with ethical preaching that tells people how to live better. This is done for the noblest of reasons—to show the gospel relevant to people's daily needs, but one can see where this has gotten us. When the Cross is preached, it is often preached in a way that falls on deaf ears. It's seen as a theme for theologians to wax eloquent about with strange words like propitiation and justification, or something comforting to guilt-ridden religious types—but meaningless to regular human beings.

Even when we try to make Jesus first, we end up inadvertently making ourselves first. Giglio noted his priorities when he said, "Clearly, speaking on this issue [homosexuality] has not been in the range of my priorities in the past fifteen years. Instead, my aim has been to call people to ultimate significance as we make much of Jesus Christ." Giglio is exactly right. Unfortunately, in a desire to reach the world for Christ, some inadvertently reverse Giglio's priorities and make much about our ultimate significance. Jesus becomes merely the means by which we feel better about our place in the universe. Need purpose and meaning? Follow Jesus, that will do the trick. In this subtle shift, we become the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega.

We tend to think that postmoderns have brought relativism down upon us, but it seems we Christians have been the culprits the more we make our message about meeting people's needs.

 

Need-driven preaching—even of the highest order, that is, our search for significance—communicates that Jesus is just another way to solve our problems. It is no wonder that the culture looks at us, pats us on the head, and says, "But we've found other, equally valid ways to solve our problems, thank you." We tend to think that postmoderns have brought relativism down upon us, but it seems, we Christians have been the culprits the more we make our message about meeting people's needs.

The most needful and difficult task of the church today is to again preach the message of the Cross, and to do so in a way that alarms, surprises, scandalizes, challenges, invigorates, and inspires a 21st century world. What that would look like exactly is hard to say; our theologians and pastors need to help us here. In the most general terms, it has to be about Christ first and last. It has to be about the Christ who came into the world not to improve generally good people, but to resurrect the dead, not to bolster our self-esteem but to forgive us, not to make people successful but to make them loving, not to win the culture but to establish a kingdom without end. Even more scandalously, the message of the Cross is about a universe saturated with grace, where nothing we have done or can do earns us the right to participate in this stunning new reality; all has been done for us. The best we can do is acknowledge the reality (faith) and begin to live as if it is reality (repent).

The current state of our preaching is driven by an admirable desire to show our age the relevance of the gospel. But our recent attempts have inadvertently turned that gospel into mere good advice—about sex, about social ethics, about how to live successfully. This either offends or bores our culture. A renewed focus on the Cross, articulated in a culturally intelligent way, is the only way forward. Some will be scandalized by it, others will call it foolishness, and yet some will cling to it as salvation. But at least everyone will be talking about that which is truly First and Last.

(Mark Galli is editor of Christianity Today.)

Top 15 Posts for 2012

Below are the Top 15 Posts of 2012 from this blog in order by traffic volume (# of unique views). Granted, I don't get a tremendous amount of traffic here (about 3000 visitors per month), but I still thought it would be interesting to see what is popular here.
Which one(s) did you like best or least? Feel free to comment.

15. Why We Don't Burn Down Things When Jesus is Mocked
14. Tragedy at Newtown from RZIM

13. Idols can't love you back 

12. Something Changed on the Internet

11. Should I Celebrate Christmas? 

10. Borrowed Light: Rend Your Hearts Not Your Garment
9. The Hunger Games: Appetite and Identity / Chick-fil A Redux
8. Killing Calvinism?

7. Loki vs. Jesus - The Avengers Movie vs. Our True Hope 

6. "you can see a black spider crawling up your white shirt" 

5. Gospel-Powered Humility -

4. How to Interact with Introverts -

3. In the Temple (the Glory of God) - Paige Benton Brown 

2. Welcome to the Christian Carnival
1. He is Risen!

Here are the highest volume posts (>1000 pageviews) from previous years, in order of popularity, that continue to draw visitors:

1. Caroling Chins, Taking Your Requests (2008)
2. The Christmas Gift Exchange (2011)
3. Tim Keller, John Meacham Discuss "Post-Christian"America (2009)
4. Scripture focus: Ephesians 2: 1-10 (2006)
5. Thanksgiving and Praise - Psalm 100 (2007)
6. Inception: Analogous to Life without Christ (2010)

The Day Heaven Kissed Earth

The Day Heaven Kissed Earth

by David Mathis 

Christmas is the day heaven kissed earth.

The Eternal Word, the golden son of heaven, humbly and willingly took up our comparatively lowly humanity, without ceasing to be God, and entered into the created realm, coming to earth as one of us.
And it wasn’t some kind of circus stunt, for mere show, but for our sake. The Great Move was all of grace and for our rescue. It is history’s climactic expression of love and favor.

Heaven kissed earth.

This way of talking about the incarnation comes from Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680), Puritan preacher, theologian, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and member of the Westminster Assembly. Goodwin described the wonder of what happened at that first Christmas like this: “Heaven and earth met and kissed one another, namely, God and man” (Works, 4:439).

Jesus Is No Superman

But don’t misunderstand this Great Kiss, and mistake the matchless God-man for someone from Krypton. Superman can’t hold a candle to the hypostatic union — that utterly unique uniting of two complete natures in Jesus’s one person.
Heaven’s sweet kissing of earth in the incarnation didn’t produce a third kind of being or some mixture between the divine and human. Jesus is no superhuman, not quite God and not quite man. Rather, he is fully both — wholly God and wholly man.

There is a tendency in our minds to think of Christ as a “superman.” That is, we fail to believe adequately that he is ‘very God of very God’ (autotheos — God of himself), equal in every way with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Viewing Christ as a sort of ‘superman’ also prevents us from appreciating his true humanity. (Mark Jones, Pocket Guide to Jesus, page 5)

The Uncomfortable Truth of Christmas

Superman would be more palatable to both the theologically liberal and to conservative tastes. The liberal typically feels discomfort with his full divinity, restless that this Jesus might justly claim to have all authority in heaven and on earth and rightly demand our allegiance and spoil our perceived autonomy.

Meanwhile, the evangelical uneasiness is often with his full humanity. Something sinister in us prefers our Jesus sanitized, fully God but kept at arm’s length from our earthiness. Laid in a manger, really? We’re prone to squirm because it speaks such a clear word about the direness of our condition, about how bad things really are for us apart from Immanuel, about the extent to which he had to go to, about the moral distance he had to travel to reach the muck of our planet and give us God’s redeeming kiss.

Jesus is more than a baby in the manger, but as prickly as it is, he’s nothing less. It’s uncomfortable to sinners to face so squarely the gravity of our situation apart from heaven’s rescue. But it’s also deeply comforting for sinners who have reckoned with the decisiveness and power of his salvation and given him their full embrace.

Christmas for Our Benefit

Christmas, then, is for our benefit. It’s no birthday party for a tribal deity, but the celebration of the king of the universe who has come to save us. “You shall call his name Jesus,” the angel says to Joseph, “for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). From its very beginning, the incarnation is about saving. Good Friday is always in view.

Christmas is God’s D-Day against our sin and against Satan himself. What a surprise strategy it was when God established his first beachhead against the Enemy in an animal feeding trough in the little town of Bethlehem. Christmas doesn’t merely mark the birth of our religious leader, but the saving of sinners who believe. It is ever on a trajectory toward Golgotha. It’s for good reason, in a song so seemingly sweet as “What Child Is This?” that we sing at Christmas,

Nails, spear shall pierce him through,
The cross be borne for me, for you.

The meaning of Christmas is not just that he is born among us, but that he has come to die for us. He has come to secure for us eternal saving benefits. But there’s more.

What’s Better Than His Benefits

The “good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10) is more than just his birth and life. And it’s more than just his death, and what saving means he obtains for us. The best news is who his saving gets us — namely, himself and his Father. “This is eternal life,” Jesus prays on the eve of his crucifixion, “that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Which is as relevant at Christmas as it is any day.

Pastor Mark Jones quotes Goodwin to this effect.

In Goodwin’s view, the benefits procured by Christ “are all far inferior to the gift of his person unto us, and much more the glory of his person itself. His person is of infinite more worth than they all can be of.” Therefore, God’s “chief end was not to bring Christ into the world for us, but us for Christ . . . and God contrived all things that do fall out, and even redemption itself, for the setting forth of Christ’s glory, more than our salvation.” (Pocket Guide to Jesus Christ, page 3)

Deeper than the Christmas narrative of his first coming, and the world-transforming Good Friday explanation about what his death accomplished, is the mindboggling truth that it’s ultimately we who came into the world for him — for his glory — rather than his coming for us. In the decisive Christmas tally, it is not finally his coming that makes much of us, but our creation and redemption that is designed to make much of him.

Fellow Puritan Stephen Charnock sees it the same way. There is “something in Christ more excellent and comely than the office of a Savior; the greatness of his person is more excellent, than the salvation procured by his death” (Jones, Pocket Guide, page 3).
The deepest significance of Christmas isn’t just that he came to save us, but that he is who he is. The Great Treasure isn’t what the magi bring, but the one hidden in a manger. He is the Pearl of Great Price given without money and without cost. The surpassing value of Christmas isn’t finally knowing ourselves saved, but knowing the Jesus who saves us.

Made for the God-man

The God-man in Christmas’s manger — two full natures in one unique person — is then one focal point for our worship. Only in this one God-man do we find, as Jonathan Edwards preached, the truest “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.” It is only this Jesus who is both Lion of Judah and Lamb who was slain. He is meekly incarnate infant in Bethlehem and triumphantly glorified Almighty God at his Father’s right hand. Only he is divinely and humanly tough and tender. Both God and man.

Because of this utterly unique union of God and man in one person, Jesus exhibits an unparalleled magnificence to the born-again human soul. No one person satisfies the complex longings of the human heart like the one God-man.

God has made the human heart in such a way that it will never be eternally content with that which is only human. Finitude can’t slake our thirst for the infinite. And yet, in our finite humanity, we were created for a point of correspondence with the divine. Yes, God was glorious long before he became man in Jesus, but we are human, and unincarnate deity doesn’t connect with us in the same way as the God who became human. The conception of a god who never became man will not satisfy the human soul like the God who did. The human soul was not just made for God, but for the God-man.

So Jesus is not just our substitute, but our eternal satisfaction. He not only satisfies just divine wrath against us, but satisfies the human soul forever. His resurrection is essential not only so that we can be joined to him for saving, but most importantly so that we can enjoy him with unsurpassed delight forever. Heaven’s kiss is the only one that will be eternally satisfying.

Jesus is not like the lifeguard at the beach who saves us for our friends and family, but whom we never see again. Jesus saves us for himself.

The deepest meaning of Christmas is not just that the God-man was born, and not just that he died, but that he ever lives to be our eternal joy. Jesus is Pleasures Forevermore at God’s right hand. We were made for him.

In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11)

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for John Piper and Desiring God, and elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. He and his wife Megan have twin sons (Carson and Coleman) and live in Minneapolis. David is editor of Thinking, Loving, Doing and Finish the Mission (most recently).