“And Isaac said to his father Abraham, ’My father!’ And he said ‘Here am I, my son.’ He said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for burnt offering?’ Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together.”
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
We discussed last week Jesus, the Lamb of God, who came out of eternity and into our time-space so we can leave our time-space and enter into His eternity.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth and became the Son of Man. He was both man and God. He became God’s Lamb so that He could become God’s Shepherd. This is both beautiful and profound.
God put Himself sinlessly into our fallen state so that He may righteously redeem and justify a new kingdom of mankind. Adam is the head of our natural temporal state and we are all born into sin through him. When we enter into 2 Corinthians 5:17 as a believer, we are born a second time into the second Adam, Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians 15:45. The first birth is a natural birth and the second birth is a spiritual birth, 1 Corinthians 15:42ff, “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”
We are spiritually dead in Adam. We are spiritually alive in Christ. In
Adam we are naturally hostile to God and we shun spiritual things. Yet, while in Adam and hostile to God, Christ died for us and reconciled us back to God.
This is the argument Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 15 and in Romans 5 but notice this astounding announcement in verse 10 of Romans 5:
“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life”
To understand the impact of this verse we must go to the Greek. The preposition “by” in the Greek is the word “in” (εν). It should read, “shall be saved in his life.” The importance of this correction is huge. Lloyd-Jones’ spends a whole chapter in his commentary on this one preposition. In it he quotes R.N. Darby’s personal translation as, “in (the power of)”. In other words, we shall continuously be saved in the power of His life. The Greek verb here is in the future indicative passive voice. I suspect the translators used “by” to reflect the use of the passive voice which means the subject, “we who are being saved”, is being acted upon by “His life”. This could be argued as a reason for using “by” instead of “in” but it is at the expense of the actual word Paul uses which is “in”.
Paul’s argument is if God was willing to die for the ungodly, how much more would He also save or shepherd them since he has reconciled them into His righteousness. We should also point out that the “by” in verse nine of Romans 5 is also “in” (εν) and should read, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved IN him from the wrath of God”
In Romans chapters 3 and 4 Paul argues God is righteous and that His righteousness is extended to us through faith. This gift is based upon God’s love and is ours simply by believing His promises. We are justified by faith and we told this justifying faith provides grace to live and walk in Christ’s righteousness. We have been made righteous by His own workmanship in Christ so that we can walk in Him, Ephesians 2:10. Paul tells the Galatians, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit”, Gal. 5:25kj.
Enter the Lamb and the Shepherd. Jesus is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He is the pure sacrifice paying for our sinfulness. God’s purchase price for our sin is death, which He Himself paid. This is the essence of redemption, being bought back from sin and restored into fellowship by faith as a purchased possession.
The resurrection of Jesus shows His absolute authority and power over death. He offers the power of resurrection life in us. It is of primary importance to focus on His life as the power and source of our righteousness. His life is not administrated by us as an external backup resource. The normal Christian life is actually His active life alive in us, Galatians 2:20. It is not enough that we have justified judicial standing; we also have grace to live Christ’s righteousness through His resurrection power. This is also fundamental to the gospel message.
He became God’s lamb so that he could be our Shepherd. Look at how God shepherded the Thessalonians. Paul had spent three weeks ministering in the synagogue before he was chased out of town, Acts 17:1ff. Several months later Timothy and Silas joined Paul in Corinth reporting on Thessalonica. During this short period of time, Thessalonica had learned the doctrines of the gospel. First Thessalonians is the first letter in the New Testament written by Paul and written to answer the question about saints who died before the rapture, the removal of the church from the earth.
The second letter to the Thessalonians was written a short time later because the church was being taught they were in the tribulation period because of their suffering. So Paul deals with the second coming of Christ (not the rapture) to set up His Kingdom on earth in the second letter.
Paul was able to boast of this new church and how well they were growing in faith and the increasing love one for each other, 2 Thess. 1:3-4. A false letter had been sent to the church bearing Paul’s name teaching them contrary to what Paul had already taught. Paul affirms a post-tribulation teaching to them and admonishes that “not all have faith”, and then continues,
“But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one”. 2 Thessalonians 3:3.
Notice Paul is saying the Lord (Shepherd) is who will establish and guard you. And then Paul continues in verse 5,
“May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.” 2 Thessalonians 3:5.
There is a mystery that has been hidden for ages and generations, Paul tells us in Colossians 1:24ff, which is “Christ in you”! The riches of this eternal glory are now available to you and me if we are in Christ. John put it this way in 1 John 4:17b, “as He is so are we in this world”. Paul told the Corinthians, “But we have the mind of Christ”, 1 Corinthians 2:16b. We are God’s temple and His Spirit dwells in us, 1 Cor. 3:16.
Jesus came as the Lamb and then as Shepherd so that we might have life and have it more abundantly. The sheep described in John 10 are the fold of Israel but in verse 16 we read, “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” The other sheep are the gentiles, you and I. We are being described in this whole 10th chapter of John.
“To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he call his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.”
The gatekeeper in this passage is the Holy Spirit. He is wooing us out of our self-dependence into faith. We hear His voice but we are so self-reliant we have a habit of not listening. It is very easy for us to harden our hearts to his voice when the demands of this world are so intense. Jesus warns all the churches in Revelation chapters three and four with same warning, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches”. Those who are in Christ are those who have an ear to hear!
“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance of life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.”
Everything is from God and nothing is from us.