Shortly before he died, seminary professor J. Gresham Machen sent a telegram to his good friend and fellow seminary professor John Murray. The message said, "I'm so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it." Now, this statement may seem strange to you. You might expect him to be thankful more specifically for Christ's death on the cross for our sin, especially as he was nearing the end of his life. Or, even wonder just what he means by the active obedience of Christ anyway. We usually don't speak of Christ's obedience like that. My goal here is to unpack for you what the good theology professor was getting out with this statement and why it is something we also ought to be very thankful for.
Machen realized that underlying all
that Jesus did during His time on earth was obedience to the Father's will. You
can summarize His entire work with this one word of obedience. In fact, Jesus
Himself even claims such. He says, "For I have come down from heaven, not
to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38). He was
careful to speak only what the Father had commanded Him to. "For I did not
speak from Myself, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a
commandment-what to say and what to speak. And I know that His commandment is
eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told
Me" (John 12:48-49). It was this obedience which led Him to go the cross.
Remember the struggle He had on the night He was betrayed in the Garden of
Gethsemane? How He prayed to ask that if it would be possible for the Father to
remove the cup of His wrath He was to drink? But ultimately, He resolved
Himself to God's will with His powerful words, "yet not as I will, but as
You will" (Matthew 26:39), "Your will be done" (v. 42). Paul
explains that Jesus "humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of
death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8). He was the perfect
obedient servant and son to the Father in everything He did.
It's common to speak of two aspects
of this obedience of our Lord; His passive obedience and active obedience.
Jesus' passive obedience refers to His willingness to lay down His life by allowing
Himself to be handed over to the chief priests and authorities to be crucified.
His obedience to the Father required Him to be passive to all that was
happening to Him in order to receive the penalty and punishment due to us on
account of our sins. Jesus could have easily stopped all of the horrible things
done to Him by the Roman soldiers at any moment. He told Peter after the
disciple had taken out his sword and sliced off one of the soldier's ear who
had come to arrest our Savior that "do you think that I cannot appeal to
My Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of
angels? Therefore, how will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must
happen this way?" (Matthew 26:53-54). The prophet Isaiah spoke of Jesus being
like a sheep being led out to slaughter never once biting or fighting the one
taking it to meet its end (53:7). Jesus just let everything take place to Him
as the Father had planned and commanded.
Jesus' active obedience is His
living out perfectly the commands of the law. Doing everything God had said we
must do in His Old Testament law. Jesus was clear that He did not come to
abolish or do away with the law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17-18). He came to
be obedient to its commands as required. The reason He gave for His baptism was
"to fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15). To do all that was necessary
to live the righteous life we continually fail to live. When it comes to our
salvation, we typically focus on Jesus' passive obedience of His dying on the
cross for our sins. But we need to be careful not to forget about His active
obedience. About His living to earn a perfect righteous record. You see, Jesus
dying on the cross to cover and wipe away our sins would not be enough. We need
a perfect righteousness to enter into His kingdom. Jesus says in the Sermon on
the Mount, "unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and
Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:20). The
scribes and the Pharisees in that day were known to be the most holy and
righteous with their over scrupulous concern in keeping every jot and tittle of
the law. Of course, the problem was that while they kept the outward letter of
the law, they broke it with the desires and attitudes of their hearts, making
themselves out to be hypocrites when they presented themselves to be so
righteous when really they were not. Jesus actually spends the rest of that
chapter in Matthew revealing that to be the case. They could claim not to have
physically slept with another man's wife but they failed to realize that they
were just as guilty of breaking the commandment forbidding adultery in their
heart every time they lusted after someone else's wife (v. 27). The same was
true in regards to murder. They may say that they have never taken another
man's life physically but would not be able to say that with how they feel
towards others and the names they had called them in their anger (vv. 21-22).
He ends that chapter with the bar being as high as it could possibly be.
"Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect"
(v. 48). In order to be accepted by God
and be able to stand in His holy presence, we not only need our sins to be
forgiven and taken away but also to be righteous. To be holy as God is holy.
Something that we continue to fail to be every single day. Since that is the
case, the hope of any of us being perfectly holy and righteous cannot be found
in ourselves at all. Without this active obedience of Christ where He was
perfectly holy and righteous through being obedient to the Father's commands,
we would have no hope whatsoever to enter God's kingdom.
If it helps, we can use a bank
analogy. Say that you are in so much debt you could never pay it off. It would
be impossible to ever earn enough money to even bring the debt down. In fact,
all you keep doing is add more and more debt to it to bring yourself even further
in debt. However, if someone graciously paid off all that you owed in full, you
still wouldn't be where you needed. Sure, they got you out of the hole but you
are still left without any money. The bank account is now zero and there is
nothing you can do with zero dollars. But if someone not only paid for your all
your debt but also filled your bank account full, you then will have all that
you need. Jesus does more than just clear our sinful record by His death. He
replaces it with His sinless spotless one He earned in His perfect righteous
living. He not just took care of the debt of our sin in taking the punishment
for it but filled up our account with His righteousness which we lack so now we
have what is needed to be in His kingdom as an adopted son or daughter of the King,
being viewed as completely holy and righteous as Jesus is. As if we had lived
His holy sinless life which we of course didn’t. As Paul put it in Romans 5:19,
"For as through the one man's disobedience the many were appointed
sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be appointed
righteous." We can be appointed and seen as righteous through the
active obedience of Jesus in living out without fail God's commands.
If only Jesus' death was needed to
save us, then He could have come down and entered humanity as a full grown man
and went straight to the cross, rather than arriving as a tiny baby and going
through all the processes of physical growth and life which we go through. But
He had to be more than just a sacrifice for sin. He had to earn the
righteousness we need to stand before God and be in His holy presence. And
through our faith in Him, we can have that record applied to our account so
that we always can stand as righteous and holy in God's holy presence without
ever being cast aside by Him or punished for our sins.
Machen
understood that he had no hope to stand before God and be in His holy presence
without this righteousness Jesus achieved for us. And that is why he was so
thankful for it. Aren't you thankful for Christ's active obedience as well? We truly would have no hope of salvation
without it. Be sure to take some time to reflect on such today and thank God
for it.
Love
in Christ,
Pastor
Lee
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