The Great Work of the Gospel-8
The Great Work of the Gospel by John Ensor
Chapter 8 The Great Work Enjoyed: Living Under the Influence of Grace
Study and overview by Marc
In this chapter John Ensor helps us to see how the grace of God leads us to a life of joy filled worship and sanctification. He quotes one of my favorite preachers and writers, John Piper...
"God's quest to be glorified and our quest to be satisfied reach their goal in this one experience: our delight in god overflows in praise. for God, praise is the sweet echo of his own excellence in the hearts of his people. For us, praise is the summit of satisfaction that comes from living in fellowship with God."
"Where peace with God is established, pleasure in God erupts."
..."So in our case the fatal blow against our enmity with god has been given. His just anger is fully vented; the just penalty is fully paid; the righteous requirements of the law are fully met in Christ. Our guilt and shame are fully purged, the desire for sin is mortally wounded, God's love is unrestrained, and the spirit of Christ is dwelling in us as a down payment of heaven itself. An open invitation to petition him has been granted. The hope of glory has been given. "Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory" (Revelation 19:7). "For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy" (Psalm 92:4)."
We read about how God's saving grace leads us to worship Him and desire to please Him as we trust Him to change us for the rest of our lives. He teaches about sanctification and the ongoing process of it through sin and hard times. We should always have a desire to obey God. Along this line he talks also about brotherly accountability, repentance and prayer.
He compares sheep and swine to explain how believers deal with sin by saying that when sheep get in the mud and mire they see that it is not good and bleat out for help, pigs get in it and love it wanting to stay there. Sheep will get covered in mud, but they will get clean. As believers we need help with battling sins from God and from His people. Who do I have in my life that is ready to point out the mud in my life and talk to me about it? Who will help, with the grace of God, to get me back on track?
I think there is a great lack of sin confessing among many believers along with weak accountability. I am not speaking of slamming each other, I mean that we need to have people in our lives that will lovingly speak redemptive words and bold words to us so that we can see Jesus for who He is. We need help seeing that Jesus is better than sin. In battling sin, I do not think it is enough to just go to church, have a small group, and do a devotion. We need to have people that will ask us questions, people that we can confess sin to, people that are committed to our good and God's glory. This type of relationship is valuable and enjoyable. To get junk out and the table and begin burning it up with help is freeing! Why do we feel more willing to be trash collectors? are we afraid of what others will think of us? That we mess up? That we are not perfect? We need to help the world and other believers see that we are not perfect by trusting in God as we confess our waywardness. However, there is a time and place for certain confessions, we need to find others that we can trust with these things for our good and God's glory.
John also writes about having joy in great times of hardship and pain.
"We experience joy not as sunshine but as a ballast keeping our ship afloat throughout the raging storms of life."
When we are saved from our sins and set free to love Jesus we should do just that, love Jesus. We need His Word, His Spirit, and other believers to help us live a life of faith and love. This is a life of joy! Not just being set free from sin but being set free to joy in God.
The Great Work of the Gospel-7
The Great Work of the Gospel by John Ensor
Chapter 7 The Great Work Experienced: Fighting for a Clean Conscience
Study and overview by Marc
"The washing away of shame and guilt is properly the experience of God's Great Work that accompanies our faith in Christ."
Ensor explains the difference of shame and guilt debunking modern day psychology. One of the Great Works of the Gospel is that are shame and guilt is washed away, Jesus carried them, we are completely forgiven for every sin and cleansed of the shame and guilt. In doing so, Christ brings us peace of mind and heart with God, we are no longer enemies of God.
We are also able to approach God through prayer because Jesus has opened up the gate, Jesus is the gate! We can do so because of what Jesus did in forgiving our sin and washing our conscience clean.
"When my conscience condemns and blocks the way to God, I must be ready to stand on the truth of the gospel and contend for my faith.
By faith, I look to the heavens and shout, "Oh Happy day!"
Conscience shouts back, "I object."
I reply, "On what basis?"
Conscience says, "You did such-and such. How can you possibly think God does not see it?"
I admit, "I will not deny the facts, and God knows the tears that have been shed over it. But I
ask, "Was it or was it not a sin for which Christ died?"Conscience demurs, "Well, yes."
My faith takes the offensive, "If yes, was it or was it not paid in full?"
Conscience pauses, "I withdraw the objection."
Faith presses further, "And should you not also rejoice with me?"
Conscience is awestruck by the all-sufficiency of the cross.
And faith says, then let us draw near to God and say, "Thank You, Father, for paying for that awful sin my conscience has just brought to mind. I rejoice all the more deeply in your loving-kindness.""
John then compares shame and guilt to dandelions; they never seem to go away. It is a fight of faith believing in God's promises and the work of Christ. This persistence of shame and quilt is due to persistent unbelief. He attacks very clearly the thought that God punishes us when we do wrong with His wrath showing that Jesus has paid it all in full. He also shares about discipline and how these are not the same.
For any readers that may feel like they will let God forgive them of the their sins but do not feel like they can forgive themselves he gently but boldly shows the pride and self-exaltation of thinking our justice is greater than God's.
He then make a distinction of past sin and shame before being born-again and sin and shame that we experience now due to present unbelief. He shows how we should be ashamed of sin, mourn over it relying on God and the works of Jesus.
This is not double talk. When we sin, we will be convicted by the Holy Spirit. We should be ashamed and repent and desire to never walk in that way again as we repent and trust God for His saving grace in Jesus. But soon following will be condemnation pointing out our sins and telling us that we are unworthy and should die and suffer forever. That is when we agree, but reminding Mr. Condemnation that that is only half the gospel...Jesus saves is the other half. Shane and Shane sing about this in the song Embracing Accusation.
We are to hate our sin that "demeans God's glory and hurts others". This is part of maturing and growing in our faith. This helps us to change by grace.
Ensor lists out some help in dealing with sin we commit as believers, he adds much more than these few sentences...
Allow a season of sorrow for sin.
Rest in the truth of the gospel.
Restore what is restorable.
Remember that God forgets. (This is in a cognitive sense, God is omniscient...he does not hold it against us any longer)
Endure Hardship as God's discipline, not damnation
Bear scars graciously
"The washing away of shame and guilt is properly the experience of God's Great Work that accompanies our faith in Christ. We cleanse our conscience by relishing the sufficiency of Christ and the cross and running like children to our Heavenly Father."
So, do I fight for a clean conscience trusting that all my sin is paid in full? Do I wrestle with current sins, or do I ignore them with weak and cheap theology. Grace is there, but the bible is clear on the process of repentance for us and the process of sanctification. Am I becoming more like Jesus? Do I want God to show me where I am in sin or do I want to be calloused and remain weak and defeated?
The Great Work of the Gospel-6
The Great Work of the Gospel by John Ensor
Chapter 6 The Great Work Justified: Grasping the Truth of the Cross
Study and overview by Marc
For our sake he made him to be sin who know no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21
This chapter is about what happened on the cross. We are reminded, or learn for the first time, of the depth of the cross, and the wisdom of God in ordaining it, and the love of Jesus for taking it on.
He answers the question, “Why do we call good Friday good?” acknowledging certain questions that arise about the love and justice of God ordaining the death of Jesus on the cross.
“Why is it called Good Friday? It is called Good Friday because, on the cross, God glorified himself by demonstrating his wrath against guilty sinners and by manifesting his love for them at the same time. It is called Good Friday because on the cross we see the justice of God maintained and the mercy of God obtained. It is called Good Friday because this is the work of God, when grasped by faith, that transforms our guilt over sin into a gladness toward God and causes us to live resolutely to the praise of his glory!”
He continues on with answering the question, “why did Christ have to suffer the cross?” by citing Isaiah 53:4-6 and a few other scriptures. Ensor shows us that to remain biblical, we must embrace substitutionary punishment/atonement. Many people will overlook and twist this doctrine and replace it with what they feel comfortable with. But, God has shown us that “he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). In other words, God poured out his “just and irrevocable wrath against sin and sinners” on Jesus. It was planned.
Ensor brings up many illustrations that we use to try to show the love of a father allowing his son to die for others and other greater good scenarios.
I see what he is saying and these scenarios fall short to show what was going on within the Holy Trinity. There was a plan, an agreement, and Jesus willingly laid his life down at the feet of His Father as God poured out His fiery wrath. Jesus died for sinners knowingly, willingly, and joyfully. He was not stuck on a bridge to be crushed at his father’s decision to save his son or hundreds of passengers on a train. These stories mean well, but they are not representing an accurate picture.
Ensor believes that an incorrect view of what Jesus did on the cross, being our substitute, causes many to never deal correctly with guilt, anxiety and other vices. They are powerless in their faith.
“Could it be that a shallow understanding of the cross is like an inoculation shot? It prevents us from getting the real thing--a full-blown case of sin-uprooting, praise-inspiring, life-altering faith in Christ based on the radical implications of his death on the cross.”
He moves onward to write about the validation of Jesus death through the resurrection and the importance of it. Then he turns to living by faith and how we live by faith and why God wants everything to flow through faith. He explains the importance of God’s grace coming to us by faith alone and living in grace by faith alone, not by works.
Many men and women will look to lazy believers and want to push them towards doing good works instead of pushing them to the cross to see Jesus and His accomplished work. It is when we fall in love with Jesus and see His work accomplished and experience it applied that we will work and work hard praising God for the gift of faith to believe His promises.
How has the atonement changed my life? How does knowing that Jesus really died for all of my sin...every single one of them, affect my life? Do I live as one who is forgiven much? Or do I live as one working much for forgiveness? Do I live a life of faith that was secured by Jesus through His death and resurrection?
The Great Work of the Gospel-4
The Great Work of the Gospel by John Ensor
Chapter 4 The Great Work Promised: Putting Our Hope in God
Study and overview by Marc
After thinking about the exceding sinfulness of our sin and the just punishment we deserves it is great to begin thinking about the promises of God and hope.
"Note then the kindness and the severity of God." Romans 11:22
"God's response to our guilt is not somewhere between wrath and kindness, and it is not one or the other. His response is extreme wrath and extreme kindness."
This chapter is about hope because God has offered this hope from the beginning of sin. John makes a great distinction between "godly grief" and "worldly grief". He says based off 2 Corinthians 7:10:
"The difference is that one leads to repentance and renewal while the other leads to hopelessness and death."
When we think about our sin and don't have hope we will live in despair, this will tear away at the soul and leave us with spiritual death in the end. Godly grief, however, puts that despair on God and His promises living with faith in them bringing hope for forgiveness.
He teaches that biblical hope is not for universal forgiveness--the thought that everyone is forgiven and will be with God in Heaven-- and uses many scriptures and bible stories to back up his view. He then shares the story of John Newton and how his life was greatly changed from being a mocker of God and obscene sinner to a saint that put his hope in Christ alone. His life could have been of hopeless despair and eternal death, but he placed his hope in God.
The remainder of the chapter he deals with "God having a heart to forgive", "Willing two things at once", "whom does God forgive?", and "God has a miracle planned". These segments of the chapter are well thought out and help the reader to grasp hard things.
"Having grieved us over our sin, God works to draw us to his loving-kindness. We experience this grace as putting our hope in God and trusting that he has a way planned to forgive our sins and restore our broken relationship with him, without devaluing his righteousness."
So this chapter does not reveal to us Jesus and the cross but shows us the progression from sin, wrath, and then to despair or hope. Many people of the Old Testament knew that their sins were going to be forgiven and they believed God...they just did not know exactly how God would do this and remain just or how He would do it altogether.
Do I see that there are many around me that do not have hope, that they are dying in their souls as they try to make things right on their own. Will I bring hope to the hopeless? Will I help people to see the need for hope or will I allow them to think that all is well, just do good, go to church, write a commitment on a card, serve the homeless, and so many other good things that don't save or make one hope in God for forgiveness? In other words, will I help people to put their hope in the promises of God or their own works that lead to death?
