Title: The Cross and Obedience
cross and obedience
“For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).
I. Text Commentary
The text explains how sin entered through the one man, Adam, and how that sin entered into righteousness through the one man, Jesus Christ. Here we discover the principle of representation. When God first created Adam, he made a covenant with him. The first is the labor command to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue and rule the earth, and the religious command not to eat the forbidden fruit. This religious mandate was given to remind us that there is an unbridgeable gap between the Creator and creation, and to see if humans will fear and obey God. He said that if Adam obeyed this command well, he would enjoy peace and blessing with God, but if he did not, he would surely die. This death was not only the death of the body but also the death of the soul. This command was not given to Adam individually, but was given as the head representing all mankind. That is why the Bible says that through one man's disobedience many were made sinners.
There was another person who had such a representation, and it was Jesus who came in a human body. That is why the Bible calls Adam the first Adam and Jesus the second Adam. Just as sin was brought in by Adam by the principle of representation, so the righteousness of God was brought in by Christ. When Jesus Christ was crucified, not just one person, Jesus, was crucified on the cross, but He accomplished righteousness by embracing and crucifying as their representative all those whom He chose to save in all generations.
II. Righteousness of Salvation: Obedience of Christ
We are saved through Jesus Christ because He Himself accomplished the righteousness of salvation. This righteousness of salvation was accomplished through the obedience of Christ. When we speak of Christ's merits, we only speak of His death on the cross, but strictly speaking, the death of Christ Jesus is based on the background of a greater obedience of Christ. The principle that runs throughout the life of Christ Jesus is obedience.
Even before Jesus came to this world in a human body, He was God. Even when he was God, he was determined to come into this world in a human body in obedience to God the Father as a Son. After that, Jesus' life was a life of poverty, suffering, misery and persecution, but through all these lives, Jesus completely surrendered himself to God. The incident of suffering on the cross was a part of the obedience that ran through the entire life of Jesus. The righteousness of salvation achieved by Jesus is not only through his death on the cross, but also through total obedience throughout his life.
III. Characteristics of Christ's Obedience
Christ's obedience had several characteristics.
A. The holiness of obedience
The obedience of Jesus Christ was not only the obedience of outward acts, but also the obedience of complete unity accompanied by obedience with the whole heart from the inside. All circumstances, hardships, persecutions, and trials given to Jesus contributed to perfecting the obedience of Jesus Christ inside and out. He showed obedience. The entire life of Jesus was devoted to the integrity of obedience. Because of that, he was able to accomplish the righteousness of our salvation.
B. Graduality of Obedience
The Bible says in many places that Jesus Christ also learned about obedience, and that he learned obedience through suffering and became perfect. It was the obedience that Jesus learned while he was on this earth. Jesus was the all-knowing God, but when He became incarnated, He hid the divinity in Him under His humanity and chose to know what He did not know. “He was in the form of God in the beginning, but did not consider equality with God to be robbery, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6-7). He wanted to learn obedience through suffering like a human. The gradual nature of obedience learned through suffering should not be understood as being sanctified because the saved believer still retains the sinful nature. Because Jesus was without sin, there was no disobedience. However, the fact that Jesus learned obedience through suffering and became perfect means that he was burned with a sense of calling to obey God and do the Father's will even more fiery in the midst of all trials and tribulations, intense trials and sufferings that came during the life of Jesus. should be interpreted as
C. Extremeness of Obedience
It is the ultimate in obedience that Jesus bore the wrath of God by forsaking Himself on the cross. Obedience is holistic obedience, through gradual obedience, eventually reaching the ultimate in obedience. Although Jesus willingly suffered God's fiery wrath poured out on sinners and suffered God's punishment, he did not deviate at all from the heart of the offerer, the heart of the priest, and the heart of the sacrifice. it was extreme. What did you want to accomplish for us through this self-sacrificing obedience? We learn two obedience and purpose here.
IV. Two Obedience and Purpose
A. Two obedience
According to Jesus, obedience is divided into two types of obedience. There are two types of obedience in the passive sense and obedience in the active sense. If the whole process of Jesus Christ being born under the law, keeping all the requirements of the law, and receiving punishment according to the law is called passive obedience, the punishment in all sufferings when he sacrificed himself before God is active obedience. Strictly speaking, however, it should not be called passive obedience, but qualified obedience, because none of the sufferings and obedience of Jesus suffered reluctance.
Such obedience eventually leads to punitive obedience, and this punitive obedience is the culmination of Jesus' obedience. It means to sacrifice oneself for the wrath of punishment. It was not the cross that he carried reluctantly, but the obedience that he gave with the expectation that we would be reconciled to God even if we joyfully took up His cross for us and received wrath from God.
B. Purpose of Obedience: Substitute punishment
This obedience had a purpose, but instead of punishment. When Jesus died carrying all the punishment we deserved, the suffering suffered by Jesus, but the effect of the punishment extends to all of us. This is a substitute punishment. It refers to the punishment that Jesus embraced all of us and died on the cross as the representative of sinners, not as the innocent. This is also referred to as a punishment of implicit substitution. He embraced the sinners himself, bore them as his sins and suffered the punishment, so that through the punishment of suffering and death, we became the sufferers of the same punishment. He implicitly embraced us and died for the substitutionary punishment to die for us, so the purpose of Christ's obedience was this substitutionary punishment.
V. Our pride, the cross
Therefore, we must realize that our pride is only in the cross. Because there is nothing righteous in us, and although we have sinned, we cannot escape from this sin on our own, so Jesus took the punishment for us instead. He obeyed because of our sins and gave His life to save us. We cannot boast of ourselves because we know that this is all by the grace of God. 2009-04-07