How did God make evil commit suicide at the cross?

By John Piper December 1, 2008

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

How did God make evil commit suicide at the cross?

(This question stems from the book Spectacular Sins.)

When Christ died he purchased for his people the forgiveness of all our sins. And he completed for us a life of perfect obedience, "unto death, even death on a cross," which could be counted as our obedience when we are united to him by faith. So the death of Jesus is the most ultimate act of love, the most ultimate act of salvation. It is the only way I can be saved from my sin and escape the wrath of God by having the curse removed from me.

So that moment in history, those hours of suffering on the cross are the apex of God's love, the apex of my salvation, the apex of my deliverance, the apex of my triumph over sin partially now and fully later.

Now, how did that happen?

It happened by sin. Sin made it happen. By definition, the murder of the Son of God is sin. And by definition the death of the Son of God is my deliverance from sin.

Sin killed itself when it killed Jesus. Sin committed suicide when it killed Jesus. At least the sin in my life. Hell will be the completion of the judgment of God on sin for those who don't welcome the forgiveness of Jesus. But Judas didn't just commit physical suicide. That's symbolic of the fact that the satanic influence upon him committed its own suicide.

Here's the remarkable thing: Satan knew that when he led Judas to betray Jesus he would be defeated by it. I think that for two reasons:

1) In the wilderness Satan was desperately trying to get the Son of God to take the route of the non-cross power move: "Use your power to get bread. Use your power to rule the world." And Jesus was saying, "I'm not going where you want me to go. Namely, I will not leave the Calvary road."

2) When Peter heard Jesus say, "I'm going to be delivered into the hands of the elders and the chief priests and they're going to kill me," Peter said, "No they're not! Not while I'm alive!" And Jesus' response to him was not, "Thank you for loving me so much." His response was, "Get behind me Satan!" meaning that the effort to keep Jesus from going to the cross is satanic.

Satan knew what Jesus was about to do. His first tactics were, "I've got to keep him from going to the cross!" But then he sent him to the cross. Why? It says, "Satan put it in the heart of Judas to destroy him." Satan made the final move on getting Jesus killed.

I think the answer is this: Satan is irrational, because sin is irrational. He had done his very best to divert Jesus from the cross, but he saw, "His face is set like flint to go to Jerusalem. I'm failing!" Therefore he decided, "I will make it as horrible as I can." And in doing that I think he knew he was despairing.

It's like a man who is about to commit suicide because he hates his wife who has made his life miserable. This is what almost all suicide is: it's the way of getting back at somebody. You basically either want to be pitied, or you want to really hurt someone ("I'm going to kill myself and show my parents how bad they were"). So you can just see a man moving right up to suicide and his last thought is, "This will really make them miserable." BANG!

I think that's the way Satan was working when he killed Jesus. He knew, "I'm done for. I don't know how long he'll let me maraud in the world to do as much damage as I can. But I'm going to the lake of fire in the end, and I'm just going to take as many people with me as I can, and make the death of the Son of God as horrible as I can."

So Satan committed suicide, and he knew it.

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FREE Resources: Shepherding a Child's Heart

Shepherding a Child's Heart Conference- Media

Biblical Parenting
Presents:Tedd Tripp
Author of
'Shepherding a Child's Heart'
'Instructing a Child's Heart'
'Shepherding a Child's Heart: Parent's Handbook'

Media from the Conference

Session 1: The Call to Formative Instruction

• Download the audio
• Download the video

Session 2: Giving Kids a Vision for God's Glory

• Download the audio
• Download the video

Session 3: Helping Kids Understand Authority

• Download the audio
• Download the video

Session 4: Helping Kids Understand the Heart

• Download the audio
• Download the video

Session 5: Overview of Corrective Discipline

• Downlod the audio
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Everyone wants to be a great parent—the biggest responsibility of parenthood is teaching your children to love Jesus with all of their heart, soul, and strength. For parents with children of any age, Dr. Tripp's insightful, biblical teaching provides perspectives and procedures for shepherding your child's heart into the paths of life.

"Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates."
Deuteronomy 6:5-9

About Dr. Tripp

In writing Shepherding A Child's Heart, Dr. Tripp drew on his 30+ years of experience as a pastor, counselor, school administrator, and father. He now also includes 10 years of insights from teaching this material in his conferences offered around the world. In addition to speaking at conferences, Dr. Tripp is the pastor of Grace Fellowship Church in Hazleton, PA.
The things your child does and says flow from the heart, and Dr. Tripp's Shepherding A Child's Heart conference is about how to speak to and engage with the heart of children.

"God is concerned with the heart - the well-spring of life"
Proverbs 4:23

"Parents tend to focus on the externals of behavior rather than the internal overflow of the heart. We tend to worry more about the "what" of behavior than the "why." Accordingly, most of us spend an enormous amount of energy in controlling and constraining behavior. To the degree and extent to which our focus is on behavior, we miss the heart."
Tedd Tripp, Senior Pastor
Grace Fellowship Church, Hazelton, PA

Saving Grace, how can we keep our selves pure?

By LAUREN F. WINNER

Published: May 19, 2006

Durham, N.C.

THE recent Harvard study that found teenagers' virginity pledges to be ineffective should come as a surprise to no one. Several studies had already come to that conclusion. If we are truly to help our teenagers adopt the countercultural sexual ethic of abstinence until marriage, Christians concerned about the rampant premarital sex in our communities need to rethink, rather than simply defend, young people's abstinence pledges.

It is awfully easy for Christians to blame our community's sexual sins on the mores of post-sexual revolution America — to criticize Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, to natter on about how "Grey's Anatomy" portrays sexual behavior that doesn't square with Christianity.

But perhaps it's more important that we reconsider how we talk about sex in the church. For although the church devotes an immense amount of energy to teaching about sexuality — just go to the Christian inspiration section of your nearest Barnes & Noble and compare the number of books about chastity to books that challenge, say, consumerism — many Christians still "struggle with" (in that euphemistic evangelical phrase) premarital sex, adultery and pornography.

So why is the church's approach to teaching chastity falling short? Consider the popular "True Love Waits" virginity pledge: "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship."

This pledge and others like it are well meaning but deeply flawed. For starters, there's something disturbing about the assumption that teenagers are passively waiting for their future mates and children, when the New Testament is quite clear that some Christians are called to lifelong celibacy. (Paul, for example, did not have a mate or children, and Dan Brown's fantasies notwithstanding, Jesus's only bride was the church.) Chastity is not merely about passive waiting; it is about actively conforming our bodies to the arc of the Gospel and receiving the Holy Spirit right now.

Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God's grace. Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it.

The pledges are also cast in highly individualistic terms: I promise that I won't do this or that. As the Methodist bishop William Willimon once wrote: "Decisions are fine. But decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived."

During our first year of marriage, my husband and I lived in a small apartment inside a church. On Tuesdays, Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon met downstairs. As I got to know some of the regulars, I began to wonder if there wasn't something the church could learn from the 12-step groups in our midst.

After all, what are 12-step groups but communities of people expecting transformation? People show up because they want to change, and they know that making a promise by themselves — I will stop drinking — won't cut it. Alcoholics Anonymous explicitly recognizes that transformation works best when a community comes alongside you and participates in your transformation.

Christians, like 12-step group attendees, are people who are committed to becoming, to use the Apostle Paul's phrase, new creatures. Living sexual lives that comport with the Gospel is one part of that.

Perhaps pledges for chastity need to be made not only by the individual teenager. Perhaps we also need pledges made by the teenager's whole Christian community: we pledge to support you in this difficult, countercultural choice; we pledge that the church is a place where you can lay bare your brokenness and sin, where you don't have to dissemble; we pledge to cheer you on when chastity seems unbearably difficult, and we pledge to speak God's forgiveness to you if you falter. No retooled pledge will guarantee teenagers' chastity, but words of grace and communal commitment are perhaps a firmer basis for sexual ethics than simple assertions that true love waits.

Lauren F. Winner is the author of "Girl Meets God" and "Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity."

Why are we not doing our job?

This post is something that I posted on July 6th, 2008, Just before I went on my first missions trip to Lisbon, NH. I hope that you are blessed by it.

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lisbon bound- thoughts of my heart

24 hours from now i will be in Lisbon, New Hampshire on my first missions trip. and Im pretty nervous about it, I don't really know what to expect, I don't even really know what's going on! it should be good though, everything seems to be coming together alright, i guess, it all seems like we aren't trying hard enough (but...will we ever really try hard enough to share Christ?) I'm really hoping that this will have an impact on my sister, she seems to be struggling with a lot lately, and i really hop that somehow God can work in her heart and bring her closer to Him. I've been trying to go on missions trips for years, but everytime something happened that kept me from being able to go overseas, probably because I wasn't ready. I'm apparently going to be doing the 7-8th grade VBS, which should be fun, I like junior high kids. ever notice the lack of caring in the Christian church? the lack of follow through with "commitments" made in front of congregations? It's really been eating me away lately, especially in my own life, looking at myself and seeing my hypocracy, then seeing people do the same thing. It kills you, really. Why don't people stay on course? what gets us off track? I know in my own life its straight up sin, giving into those temptations that we all say we shouldn't give in to, yet still do. We turn off the alarm that's goign off in our head when the time comes and just throw Christ to the side and spit on Him, His word, and Hid sacrifice. how many Christians sit under great Biblical teachers every sunday then still neglect their own marriage and family just to have an affair with someone? it's sad, I can tell you exactly why more people aren't coming to Christ, they don't believe us, they look at Christians and see our falacies and they're the exact same as theirs. They see "christian" teenagers that act as bad if not worse than their unsaved peers, and they see that we do not look any different than the world.
Matthew 5: 13&14-
13"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

14"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Salt and light, that's what we're called to be. we're told to take the light and show it to the world, this dark dreery, evil, terrifiying world. We are to show the light of Jesus Christ to them, WITHOUT US GETTING THE WORD OUT, PEOPLE ARE DYING AND GOING TO HELL!!! There are people all over the world that think that by living a decent life "sharing the gospel with my life" that somehow, people will look at them and say "well golly gee! they're nice! God MUST be real! and He MUST have paid the price for my fallacy!! I should believe in Him before I die and go to Hell! that would be TERRIBILE!!!" what a load of bullfeathers. if you think that people are going to look at you, a sinful, fallen, evil human being and somehow see the redemption that has been made available for them by a perfect, holy, righteous and just God, you my friend are full of yourself, and a coward. They cannot look at you and see God, because you are NOT God! You must tell them about God, and the sacrifice of His son for their sins. the Bible tells us that without God, nothing a man does is truly good in God's eyes, they cannot even think about Him and His sacrifice without the working of God, and yet we try to throw ourselves into the gospel like somehow we have something to add to it, and make it more "relevant" or better suited for the world that we're tryign to reach. You've got to be kidding me, you can't possibly add anything to the gospel and have it work better, the gospel works because of the power of God that created the Gospel.
Deuteronomy 13:32 - 32 See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.

there are other verses that talk about the penalties of adding or taking away from the word of God. The word of God is just that: the very words of God. let them speak for themself, let God do what God does and do not try to put yourself in the way to muddle things up, the world will not appreciate it. We as Christians are called to spread the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ alone, to the whole world. Jesus did not die to give you money, or to destroy sickness, or to make you happy, or to give you any earthly possessions. As a matter of fact if you look at the Bible and see what Jesus says about following Him, it is not a pretty picture.

Mark 8: 34-37
34Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35For whoever wants to save his life^[c] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."

are you prepared to do that? take up YOUR cross? DIE on that cross? are you willing to take everything you have and let it be ripped from you, to be beaten and stripped of your clothes, to be hung in the most humiliating way for all the world to see, and die a death that is as slow and painful as any man can possibly imagine? that is what we are called to do. Die. Die daily. to leave behind our old ways, put on a new self, and go about the world, shining the light of Jesus Christ and his redemptive sacrifice on the cross, to throw people to God, to forsake ourselves to simply share the gospel with the world around us. why is it that we as Christians have the absolute defination of happiness, joy, peace, and strength buried inside of us, and yet we are not sharing it? why do I get nervous when an opportunity arises to speak of Christ and His sacrifice for us all? why do I care at all about how people feel about me? why does it matter to us? we are not instructed to be concerned with what the world thinks of us!
1 John 3:13-
13Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.

that right there sums it up. The world WILL HATE YOU! they hated Jesus, they hate His followers, they hate me, they hate you. so don't let that bother you, don't let it surprise you. don't act like everyone loves you, because they don't. Don't act like Jesus has made you oh so super happy, if inside you are a wreck. Jesus can redeem that, all of our unbelief, our wandering, and our hatred for him and his word. yes, our hatred for Him and Hid word. have any of us ever loved God perfectly? no, we have not, I for one have been so angry and incensed with God that I shook my fist in rage at Him and told Him to kill me, i hated God. But He did not kill me, because He loves me, a self sacrificing and all encompassing love that cannot be increased or decreased. He loves us perfectly, all the time, even if we do not love Him back in the same manner. Let that be what we understand, let us realize that God's love is never failing, let Him be our banner (jehovah-nissi) Let us not get in the way of His work, let us only be fully humbled by Him to do his work the way He wants us to, not the way we want to. To not question when we are humiliated, persecuted (not the way most united states Christians think they are, but actual persecution where you life is in danger because you said that God, Jehovah is Lord of all), let us take this sword that is His word and share it with the world, it is a double bladed sword with no hilt, we cannot strike down lies for others without impacting ourselves. let us remember that, and hold for God, and god alone as our banner, over anything here on earth, let us elevate God to His rightful position in our lives, above all else, and let us be all be willing to die to see Him elevated in the lives of others. now go and share the gospel with someone, if you are a Christian, then you should be able to share the gospel, because you should know the gospel, because you should have heard it, then believed the gospel. If you cannot share the gospel because you do not know the gospel, then it would be a good time to sit down and study the scriptures, begining with the gospel according to Matthew and see if you really are saved, and following after Christ in that self sacrificing manner, even unto your own death. When you become saved, you are automatically equipped with all the tools that you need to share the gospel:The power of God,and the ability to share it with the world around us. If your faith is not being shown, then it is not faith, because faith is not fake. if you truly believe, others will know it. Make sure now that they know exactly what it is that you are trusting in, God, and God alone.

Stand Strong!
Soli Deo Gloria!

in Christ alone,
your brother,
-Lee

How Should We Then Work?

Jonathan Dodson

From the daily grind to unethical demands, Christians struggle to honor God at work. How do we find our identity amidst the challenges of vocational excellence, ethics, evangelism, and essence? If we emphasize one of these aspects to the neglect of the other, our motivation for work is easily distorted and our results can dishonor God. However, if we approach our work with these four aspects of work in proper focus, work can become worship! We can work in the workplace and not be "of it."

Ethical Work
The way we carry out our work can honor or dishonor God. If we fudge on the books, arrive late to work, or lie about our progress, we deny God honor in the realm of creation and culture. Even if our ethical compromise produces a superior product, we cheat the Creator of his glory by denying his moral nature and biblical commands. The end does not justify the means. Christian work cannot be excellent and unethical. How we work reflects who we are.

Excellent Work
On the other hand, we can work ethically without producing excellence. You may be punctual and honest while turning out inferior reports and products. If we are to do our work in an excellent way, we must not only strive to honor the moral nature of God but also the essential nature of God, his manifold excellence and comprehensive glory.

Evangelistic Work
Too many people use their workplace as a platform for evangelism. The film The Big Kahuna comes to mind, in which Bob makes work an excuse for evangelism. As a result, he blows the business deal. Christian work does not compromise excellence for the sake of evangelism.

To be sure, the workplace is a place of people, eternal beings with eternal destinies, people with real struggles and issues that only the gospel can solve. But if we do our work without redemptive concern for others, we reduce the purpose of our vocation to self-concern and self-promotion. Thus, it is important that we work with a broader view of the gospel, as a message that affects all of life, from people to culture.

Theological Work
Work as reflection on vocational essence is simply working with the nature and character of God in view. The attributes of God are reflected in the essence of our work. Artistic work reflects God’s life-giving creativity. Computer based work relies upon binary code, a sequence of ones and zeroes that enables our computers to function. In essence, computer work reflects order, order that reflects the orderly nature of God. Orderly computers can be used to crank out pornography, or they can be used to help care for hospital patients. But the essence of what computers do in our work reflects the orderly character of God.

Identity and Work
How do we find our identity in God instead of in work that is ethical, excellent, evangelistic, and theologically reflective? In order to avoid the pitfalls of these approaches to work, we must work from our acceptance in Christ, not for our acceptance. We should not seek the acceptance and applause of our coworkers or competition through unethical or less than excellent work. Instead, we can rest in God' acceptance and approval, working excellently to honor him (Col 3:22; 1 Cor. 15:50-58). No matter how tight our work ethic, we will inevitably fail. Instead of taking comfort in our superior work ethic, Christ calls us to rest in his finished work on our behalf (Eph. 2:8-9; Heb. 9:23-28).

Instead of approaching work with a narrow view of the gospel, we can take the whole gospel into the whole workplace, contributing to the whole of society and ministering to people’s individual needs. As a result, we do excellent, ethical, and evangelistic work, not to earn God’s favor or to impress others, but as a faith effort, as an act of worship. As you work, rest in his acceptance and work for his honor.

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Sound Off, what do you think about that? Is it true that the work place is not solely in existance so that we may evangelize? (unless of course your job and your work is that of evangelism) What are some ways that you have shared Christ with those in a non-Christian work environment?

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My take: I have worked in numerous "hostile environments" with unbelievers and have had the opportunity to share Christ, and while I was unable to see the people come to faith, I found that dilligence and persistance to do what was right rather than just what was easy payed innumerable dividends. I am not promoting an idea of "Sharing Christ with my life" because how will they know unless we tell them? But I do know that if you back up what you say with what you do, people take notice.

God Bless
Stand Strong!
-Lee

Making Room for Aethists - John Piper (Desiring God Minstries)

Making Room for Atheism
John Piper

Our church exists "to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ." That is our mission. "All things" means business, industry, education, media, sports, arts, leisure, government, and all the details of our lives. Ideally this means God should be recognized and trusted as supreme by every person he has made. But the Bible teaches plainly that there will never be a time before Jesus comes back when all people will honor him as supreme (2 Thessalonians 1:6-10).

So how do we express a passion for God's supremacy in a pluralistic world where most people do not recognize God as an important part of their lives, let alone an important part of government or education or business or industry or art or recreation or entertainment?

Answer: We express a passion for the supremacy of God...

1) by maintaining a conviction at all times that God is ever-present and gives all things their most important meaning. He is the Creator, Sustainer, and Governor of all things. We must keep in our minds the truth that all things exist to reveal something of God's infinite perfections. The full meaning of everything, from shoestrings to space shuttles, is the way they relate to God.

2) by trusting God in every circumstance to use his creative, sustaining, governing wisdom and power to work all things together for the good of all who love him. This is faith in the future grace of all that God promises to be for us in Jesus.

3) by making life choices that reveal the supreme worth of God above what the world values supremely. "The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life" (Psalm 63:3). So we will choose to die rather than lose sweet fellowship with God. This will show his supremacy over all that life offers.

4) by speaking to people of God's supreme worth in creative and persuasive ways, and by telling people how they can be reconciled to God through Christ, so that they can enjoy God's supremacy as protection and help, rather than fear it as judgment.

5) by making clear that God himself is the foundation for our commitment to a pluralistic democratic order-not because pluralism is his ultimate ideal, but because in a fallen world, legal coercion will not produce the kingdom of God. Christians agree to make room for non-Christian faiths (including naturalistic, materialistic faiths), not because commitment to God's supremacy is unimportant, but because it must be voluntary, or it is worthless. We have a God-centered ground for making room for atheism. "If my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight" (John 18:36). The fact that God establishes his kingdom through the supernatural miracle of faith, not firearms, means that Christians in this age will not endorse coercive governments-Christian or secular.

This is why we resist the coercive secularization implied in some laws that repress Christian activity in public places. It is not that we want to establish Christianity as the law of the land. That is intrinsically impossible, because of the spiritual nature of the kingdom. It is rather because repression of free exercise of religion and persuasion is as wrong against Christians as it is against secularists. We believe this tolerance is rooted in the very nature of the gospel of Christ. In one sense, tolerance is pragmatic: freedom and democracy seem to be the best political order humans have conceived. But for Christians it is not purely pragmatic: the spiritual, relational nature of God's kingdom is the ground of our endorsement of pluralism, until Christ comes with rights and authority that we do not have.

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: www.desiringGod.org. Email: mail@desiringGod.org. Toll Free: 1.888.346.4700.

Epoch of The Armory

After having a xanga blog for years, I decided to branch out, and use this one as a more ministry based blog, while the other is a more personal blog.

You may notice that this blog is titled "The Armory." I selected that title because my intentions are to use this blog to equip the Soldiers of Christ around the world that are "fighting the good fight" (1 Tim 6:12)

well folks, that's all for now, more to come later.

Stand Strong
-Lee