John Murray on the Active and Passive Obedience of Christ.

John Murray in his excellent book Redemption - Accomplished and Applied speaks on active and passive obedience:

"The truth expressed rests upon the recognition that the law of God has both penal sanctions and positive demands. It demands not only the full discharge of its precepts but also the inflication of penalty for all infractions and shortcomings. It is this twofold demand of the law of God which is taken into account when we speak of the active and passive obedience of Christ. Christ as the vicar of his people came under the curse and condemnation due to sin and he also fulfulled the law of God in all its positive requirements. In other words, he took care of the guilt of sin and perfectly fulfilled the demands of righteousness. He perfectly met both the penal and the preceptive requirements of God's law. The passive obedience refers to the former and the active obedience to the latter."

I can recall my first reading of this, and the realization of the fullness of Christ's salvation of his people! The active obedience of Jesus refers to his life of obedience to God and the entire law. His passive obedience refers his death on the cross (as in passion). I wad struck by the reality that Christ has fulfilled all that is required of us. He's fulfilled it all! This quote states that the law has two parts, the first are the 'positive demands': the law states what God requires of us. We are utterly unable to fulfill these commands in our corrupted nature, yet they are still required of us because God is both holy and just. The second part of the law is the 'penal sanctions', that is, the punishment we are to receive if we do not fulfill the demands of the law. We've already stated that we do not, even can not, fulfill what the law demands, thus we are deserving of the punishment. Jesus has fulfilled this as well.

The first part of the law Jesus satisfies in his active obedience, the second part in his passive. And God the Father accounts both of these to those who are in Christ.

What a full salvation our Triune God has given us. What a glorious Savior Jesus is. I pray that my heart will be moved by the fullness of this salvation, and that my affections will be upon Jesus because of his great salvation.

Singleness and Sweet Providence

It is well known to those who are dear to my heart that I yearn to be a wife and a mother. I am often frustrated by the stage of life that I am currently in. I desire to have a godly husband, but said man is not pursuing me. And what can I do? Sometimes it feels like nothing. Nothing. Sitting. Waiting. Becoming more and more frustrated. Where is hope? Is there hope? Oh my soul, rest. For your Father is sovereign! And he is good!

John Piper, in a sermon that has been beneficial and paradigm shaping, says, "A Christian woman does not put her hope in her looks. She puts her hope in the promises of God... She looks away from the troubles and miseries and obstacles of life that seem to make the future bleak, and she focues her attention on the soverign power and love of God who rules in heaven and does on earth whatever he pleases. She knows her Bible, and she knows her theology of the sovereignty of God, and she knows his promise that he will be with her and help her strengthen her no matter what. This is the deep, unshakable root of Christian womanhood. And Peter makes it explicit in verse 5. He is not talking about just any women. He is talking about women with unshahakable biblical roots in the sovereign good of God- holy women who hope in God."

Father, root my heart in the sweet truth of your sovereignty and your goodness!

Why can we have hope, dear women of God,

• When we yearn for a godly husband.
• While we wait to bear children.
• When our husband is not who we thought he was.
• When our friends desert us.
• When our bodies break down.
• When the children we have yearned for so desperately cause us far more pain than we think we can bear.

Do we have hope? Is there somewhere to turn?
Yes. Far more hope than we could have imagined. A safer rock than we could have wished. For we have God who is both sovereign and who is good.

He is sovereign. All things are in his control. Not a thing happens apart from his plan. It will often not look how we have desired, but God is working all things for His glory, and we find our highest happiness in the glory of God.


He is good. How do we know so? We look to the cross of Christ, and there we see that God has given up his only Son so that we may be justified, sanctified, adopted, glorified. He is the Father who gives us bread when we ask for bread, and not a stone. And we objectively know so when we look to the cross.


He alone will satisfy, and only fully in eternity. I continually forget this, that there will be no point in this life when I will be fully satisfied. There will be points of great joy - but those will only serve to point me to the fleeting pleasures of this life and to yearn for heaven. And God is kind, and allows us to experience satisfaction in Him and joy in creation in this life. Yet that deep yearning at the core of who I am will not be filled before I see my Lord. That is because He alone will fill that deepest desire. There are times when I am led to deep sadness knowing that I will likely carry 60 more years of yearning. Yet I can rejoice knowing that there will be a day, and there will be all of eternity, when I will be satisfied!

Someone tell me I am sufficient! What Justification has to do with Pride and Freely Loving Others

I see it when I'm disappointed that I didn't get a run in. I see it when I fall short of someone's expectations. I see it when I don't get the attention I want. I see it when no one tells me how beautiful I am that day.

I am yearning for someone to say that I am sufficient - nay, more than sufficient. I am yearning for someone to declare that I am excellent in all of my attributes (saying it out loud is painful). And I bet you are as well.

Surely this yearning shows itself in different ways. Yet from my short human experience, and my interactions with others, I am convinced that we are all, some silently and some aloud, crying out for this.

This desire, of course, affects our relationships. I can't freely love you as I ought (to see what I mean by loving you as I ought - check out my post on His glory, the Cross, and My Affections). I can't love you simply because I am caught up in receiving from you what I need, that is, the affirmation that I am sufficient. I am too busy thinking of what I can say or do to please you. Or, if I know that I do not meet your standards, I am distracted by that reality, heading down the pathway to despair. I am not in a state of mind that desires your good.

So what does justification have to do with this? Justification is the forensic declaration by God the Father that I am righteous. This is not because I am actually righteous, but because he sees my sins as having been placed on Jesus on the cross, and Christ's righteousness on me (a beautiful doctrine called Double Imputation). The article of justification is paradigm shifting, and here is one of the ways: In the reality of justification, I realize first that I do not measure up to the standard that God the Father has set before me. I fail. I do not measure up, I cannot measure up. I am condemned. Take a moment to let that blow sink in. It's heavy, but it's true, and against the reality of our depravity the brightness of justification shines. The second thing I am shown is that Jesus measured up for me! Christ did two very important things: He died on the cross for our sins. In doing so, he took the sins of the elect upon himself, and he absorbed the whole wrath of God (2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 3:25). This is referred to as the passive obedience of Jesus. He also lived a perfect life of obedience to the law in place of his elect (Matthew 5:17). This is known as the active obedience of Jesus. If we are in Christ, God the Father sees us as having perfectly fulfilled the law. His wrath is no longer upon us. God the Father, the only one who sees and knows reality, yea- the one who declares what reality is, has declared that in Christ we are seen as righteous in His sight - He declares that we have met his standard in Christ. There is no other standard to which we must rise.

Practically, this means that in interacting with a dear friend, or a stranger for that matter, I no longer have to try to impress them in order to try to achieve their favor. I already have the favor of God the Father upon me because he sees the righteousness of Christ upon me. I am free to seek your needs, and to love you as I ought. I am free to live for your good and no longer selfishly for my own.

How far I am from actually living in light of this truth. Praise God for his sanctifying work in his children. An excellent little book called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness written by Timothy Keller has been the source of most of these thoughts. I highly recommend it.


Sources: The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller

His Glory, the Cross, and My Affections

I've begun reading an intriguing book by John Piper called God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (right after devouring the last two books of the Hunger Games... well-rounded, right?). In recent I've been praying for several things, two of which are for my passion to be for the glory of God, and for my affections to be upon Jesus, seeking this sanctification as I meditate on the cross of Jesus Christ.

This book has been shaping me in these areas, and for that, I'm excited. As I see areas where sanctification is greatly needed, I find rest in the truth that I am justified based on what Jesus has done.

The recent realization of my personal lack of zeal for the glory of God arose while reading another book (Gospel by J.D. Greear)> I considered my reasoning to rejecting sin, and saw that it was far too often based on fear of man (what others think) or fear of what I would think of myself, rather than on dishonoring God (understanding that ultimately I cannot take the glory from God, but that in some way, he is dishonored when I do not glorify him). Ultimately, the glory of God is revealed on the cross, where his attributes are on full, lovely display. His love in giving his Son and the Son dying for us, His wrath against sin poured out upon Jesus, His holiness shown in his wrath towards sin. Oh, we may look at the cross and see that he is such a lovely God. Yes, he is such a beautiful God. And he is a God who is passionate about his glory! He will not give it to another (Isaiah 42:8; Isaiah 48:11)! Okay... there's more. It's just so good. His glory is at the same time good for his people! So his people benefit and rejoice when God is glorified. That's where we find happiness! What?! His glory, and our good!

Oh, my affections. I yearn for the day when they are aright. That day will come. When my heart will be easily affected by what it should be affected by (paraphrase from J. Edwards). Right now, I cry during in a movie, but I yawn during a sermon. Ouch. I'm grateful that the process of sanctification includes my emotions. My specific prayer has been that the Spirit of God would imprint the gospel deeper into my soul, and that by so doing, my affections would be upon Jesus Christ who has borne the whole wrath of God in my place! And it is very clear that over the past five years (five years!) he has been increasingly doing so. As I look on the cross, I see Jesus who took all of my sin on the cross and all the wrath of God, and I see the God-man who lived a life of perfect obedience to the law that I am required to live but cannot. Yet, because the corrupted nature of humanity is to hate God, I need the grace of God to make me love Him. And he has been doing it!

The cross turns my affections upon Jesus, and it displays the glory of God in all of it's splendor. Here are a few quotes from Piper in his book.

"The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted." Jonathan Edwards The End for Which God Created the World

"The end of the creation is that the creation might glorify [God]. Now what is glorifying God, but a rejoicing at that glory he has displayed?" "The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted." Jonathan Edwards

"...If God's glory is the only all-satisfying reality in the universe, then to try to do good for people, without aiming to show them the glory of God and ignte in them a delight in God, would be like treating fever with cold packs when you have penicillin." John Piper God's Passion for His Glory.

What joy we have as children of God to rejoice in His glory for now and eternity!

Kill Sin

"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again, death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace."

Romans 6


Do we take sin seriously? I know I don't I recently read a blog post that described our attitude towards sin like our thoughts towards a bad haircut. We're slightly irritated by it, but we wait it out, hoping it will get better (which, by the way, sin left alone does not naturally get better). John Piper talks about how he hears Christians murmuring about our shortcomings, but sees so little warfare. I felt very clearly the complacency that these two saints were talking about as I examined my own view towards sin.

I see my sin, I talk about it with trusted friends, I would like it to not be there, it often disgusts me, and I yearn for the day when it will be gone. But as far as destroying it in my life today, right now, for this I do not strive.

For me, this is mostly because it's hard to fight sin. Sometimes you just don't want to fight. Here's an example of my laziness in fighting sin: I've found that one of the most helpful things for me in fighting sin is to think on Scripture. Something so simple. Yet, it takes work to focus and direct my thoughts towards the Word of God. It's so much easier to allow my mind to wander wherever it would like. But my thoughts cannot be freely roaming wherever they desire, for they will roam into worry and anxiety, into lust and idolatry, and into bitterness towards those I love. No, my thoughts must be corralled towards Scripture. And what joy I have at the end of the day when the Lord has graciously allowed me to look to his Word throughout the day! Yet, I still find myself resisting this. It is not easy to make war on sin, but it is oh, so worth it.


I. Already righteous in His sight
Dear Christians, we have so much hope! The Father has already declared that we are righteous in his sight! We don't have to strive to kill sin so that he accepts us. We're united to Christ, and Christ was perfect in our place. Christ died for our sins. The Father does not deal with us according to our works, but rather, according to the finished, perfect work of Jesus!

Please, please understand (and as I write this, I'm asking the Holy Spirit to please allow me to understand), that we cannot grow in holiness unless we truly understand that we need not earn an ounce of the Father's favor - it's already upon us because of Jesus! Further, if we want to grow in Christ-likeness  we must be going deeper and deeper into the glories of the gospel. As we understand the gospel more and more, we will be conformed more into the image of Jesus.


II. Not righteous in function

"Simil Justus Epecator" was the way in which Martin Luther spoke of Christians. This phrase means that Christians are both simultaneously Saints and Sinners. In this life, we are free from the bondage of sin, yet, we are not in a state in which we can live perfectly. Oh, one day we will be made like Christ and will be completely free from sinning. Practically, that means that we are called to make war on sin in our lives now. To not take sin lightly, to not simply view it as a 'bad haircut'. No, sin is destructive to our souls, and dishonoring to the God who has created and redeemed us. I'm learning, by the sweet grace of God, that I must do whatever I can (in biblical means!) to destroy sin in my life and my heart, while fully resting in the reality that I'm declared righteous and that Jesus has already won the war.

By the grace of God, may we grow in destroying sin in our lives while clinging to the perfect Savior as our great hope.

How the Gospel Allows me to Repent

Repentance is hard on me. It's probably hard on you as well. I don't like admitting that my heart is wicked. I don't like confessing that I sinned at a specific point in time in a specific thought or deed. I don't like coming to terms with who I am. Repentance has to be rooted properly, however. Because in the grand scheme of things (and in the little scheme of things), repentance isn't actually about me. Deep breath. It isn't actually about me. Okay, let's say it one more time, just to make sure we (I) really get it. It isn't actually about it. It's about God. The triune God who has revealed himself to humanity when he could have just left us here to die in our sins. It's about confessing that we as humanity, and I individually, in a very specific moment in time, have fallen short of his glory. It's confessing that what he has said about us is true. We fall short (Rom. 6:23). It's confessing that his glory and his standard is far higher than what I can reach (though I'm required to). It's about Jesus, in confessing that he is my only righteousness before the Father. That I can't pay for that sin (or my sin nature), and that I cannot live a perfect life. Jesus has done it. He has payed for that sin and my sin nature. He has lived a perfect life in my place. Hallelujah for the work of Jesus! Praise the Father that he does not deal with my according to my work, but according to the work of the Son. It's about him. It involves me, but it isn't about me.

I. Declared Righteous Apart From My Own Works
Because I am declared righteous before the Father based upon the work of Jesus in his death and life, I am able to look into the depths o my heart, deal with sin, recognize the root, and deal with it appropriately. My justification, and thus favor, before the Father based on Jesus, give me the necessary freedom to see, and then deal with the absolute wickedness that is my heart.

II.Treasuring Christ by Meditating Upon his Gospel
When I sin, I recognize that I am (1) ungrateful to God, and (2) not treasuring Christ, but rather sin. (Blows my mind that hearts treasure sin rather than Christ. Yet, that is what my very own heart does all the time).

The deepest issue here is that I don't get the gospel.

If I truly understood that Jesus was born to this earth, lived a life of perfect obedience to the law that I am required to live but cannot, died in my place, taking my sin and the Father's wrath against that sin, rose, and ascended at the right hand of the Father where he is now interceding on my behalf... if I understood this in my mind and in my heart, I would overflow with gratefulness, and my heart would treasure Christ aboundingly as it should! A true understanding of the gospel allows me to genuinely repent of sin and sins.

John Owen has stated that, "Holiness is nothing but the imprinting, writing, and realizing of the gospel on our souls."

The Purpose of the Law, the Wickedness of the Human Heart, and the Beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ

"Wherefore the work of Satan is, so to hold men that they come not to know their misery, but that they presume that they can do all things which are enjoined. But the work of Moses the legislator is the contrary, even that by the law he might discover to man his misery, in order that he might prepare him, thus bruised and confounded with the knowledge of himself, for grace, and might send him to Christ to be saved."

Martin Luther