Puritan Reformed Conference – Friday, August 23, 2013

 

Ian Hamilton BA, BD, MPHIL, DD. Graduate of Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Edinburgh University, and Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (GPTS). He is a Trustee of Banner of Truth and a Board member of GPTS and London Theological Seminary. He is an Adjunct Professor at GPTS and the author of The Erosion of Calvinist Orthodoxy: Drifting from the Truth in Confessional Scottish Churches, The Letters of John, John Calvin’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture, and The Faith Shaped Life (forthcoming in May). Serves as minister of Cambridge Presbyterian Church, England and formerly in Loudoun Church of Scotland, Ayrshire. He and his wife, Joan, have four children and one granddaughter.

 

 

 

Isaiah 50:4-6; Romans 8:28-30

God purposefully and passionately wills to beautify his children. Our Lord Jesus Chrst gave himself up for his church nit merely to rescue his people from sin and satan and hell but that he might present it to himself pure and spotless. It is God’s passionate purpose to beautify his children.

God’s ultimate purpose does not concern the beautifying of his children but the glorifying of his son. God’s ultimate purpose (Romans 8) is to conform his people to the likeness of his son in order that HE might be the firstborn among many brethren.

The great gospel of God in Jesus Christ has come to us not ultimately terminate on us, but on His Son, whom He would have enthroned in the heavens.

We live in a day of narcissist. We think that the gospel is all about us. The gospel is about our great Savior Jesus Christ. God’s first priority does not terminate on us, but on Jesus.

Jesus Christ is the essence, the epitome, the ultimate paradigm of the beauty which God has purposed to conform us to. Jesus alone is altogether lovely.

The Savior’s beauty is preeminently moral and spiritual and not physical. The beauty of which shows through the humanity of Jesus is the moral beauty of God.

We are to be analogues of Jesus Christ: “little Christ’s” in our fallenness and in our redeemed humanity.

The elect of God are to look like the ultimate One Elect of God: Colossians 3:12

Are we being conformed to this pattern of beauty that brings glory to God? How often the elect of God do not remotely look like this.

How does God beautify his children – conform us to the image of his son?

Negatively: There is no one experience no matter how deeply profound or transformative that beautifies God’s children. We must run from every “second blessing” theology. We need to guard against this false thinking that there are second blessings that will bring us into deeper conformity to Jesus Christ. We are called to GROW in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Christ’s growth was from perfection to perfection. Our growth is from imperfection to creaturely analogical perfection, but will not be attained this side of glory.

Conformity to Jesus Christ doesn’t just happen. The primary reality of conformity to Jesus is that we grow up almost imperceptibly. (Philippians 2 – “I press on – this one thing I do”). The dominating impulse in the apostle’s life was this relentless resolve to be a “this one thing I do” man. A relentless pursuer of the upward call of Jesus Christ, which is nothing less than conformity to Jesus Christ. Peter exhorts us to “give all diligence to add to our faith;” Paul says to “work out our salvation.”

Positively: God beautifies his children supremely, if not only, by the ordinary means of grace.

Why “supremely but not only”? For the simple reason that God works all things together for the good of those who love him. God presses all things into His service as means of grace to His people. The preaching and hearing of God’s word, the sacraments, corporate and private prayer.

Growth in grace is not tied to those formally ordained moments when the means of grace are opened up to us. God bends the cosmos to the beautifying of His children in sovereignly ordained moments where “all things” are pressed into God’s service to conform us to the image of His son.

God can use the kind words of his people to bless and beautify his children (Ambrose was kind to Augustine)

Every incident and circumstance of life can be a means of grace in the wise providence of God.

God’s principle means for maturing and nourishing and beautifying his children rests in what we call the ordinary means of grace.

The Context in Which the Ordinary Means of Grace are Ministered to Us

The principle context is the fellowship of the people of God. We need to be reminded of the importance of the church. We must resist being influenced by the individualism of our day. The default of the Christian life is “we and ours” – corporate and covenantal.

The church is the primary context in which the means of grace work in the gathered elect. God has gifted the church uniquely for the transmission of grace: Ephesians 4

We don’t appreciate how easily we can become infected by the age in which we live.

John Calvin on the church as mother of the elect.

Do we give to the church the place it ought to have in our lives? The reason many Christians struggle so much is because they are not committed heart and soul to the church.

The need of our lives is to be grounded every day of our lives in the basics of the gospel. You’re never as far along as you think you are.

Corporate, covenantal thinking is being lost. Reformation Christianity not only magnified justifying grace, it also labored to set justifying righteousness in its corporate and covenantal context. How we worship God covenantal is more important than salvation. If you don’t worship as God has decreed and ordained, your doctrine of salvation will be lost.

The Ordinary Means of Grace

1. The Beautifying Ministry of The Word Preached.

The word made visible in the sacraments. The word voiced in Spirit inspired prayer that the Spirit uses to make us more like our Lord Jesus Christ. What the HS first produced in Jesus Christ He comes in his new covenant ministry to reproduce in the people of Jesus. We need to appreciate first the sanctifying ministry of the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ through the Word.

Jesus was sanctified by the Spirit from his mother’s womb, but he also INCREASED in wisdom and favor with God and man and learned obedience. How?

He did that by living under the word of God. Isaiah 50

As the Lord’s servant he was taught morning by morning when Yahweh opened his ear to hear. Because he is bein taught the word of the Lord, he is able to speak a word in season to him that as weary. Our covenant head in our frail flesh needed the Lord to open his ear to hear. The Word was absolutely instrumental in developing his sanctification. So when tempted in the wilderness, He plunders Deuteronomy – to armour his mind and heart against the assaults of the enemy.

How did Jesus acquire this knowledge of the word of God? Was it immediately and indelibly impressed upon his DNA in the womb? If so, then his humanity is not my humanity. He took on our human nature. He learned the word of God. No shortcuts. His mind and heart became saturated with the word of God. “Morning by morning he awakeneth mine ear.”

How does this apply to the people of God:

John 17:17
Truth has no adequate efficiency to sanctify by itself, it has adequate adaptation to be the means of grace in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 119:18

The Psalmist’s faith, even as a believer he needs the Lord to open his eyes.

The Psalmist’s humility, his divine giftedness is no assurance that he is able to understand the word of God.

The Bible isn’t enough without the Holy Spirit. 1 Cor 2:9-12

2. The Beautifying Ministry of the Sacraments:

John Calvin on the Sacraments: to sustain the weakness of our faith, the divine accommodation to our sinful weakness.

3. The Beautifying Ministry of Prayer

The most Christlike Christians are the most prayerful Christians. You become like the people you live with.

Samuel Rutherford was a man of prayer and therefore he could preach the way he did.

4. The Beautifying Ministry of Church Discipline