Reflections on the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. 23 Aug 14 began a perhaps unbroken, orderly, and personal journey through my favorite written confession of faith. This will be my personal reflections on this beloved written codification of the Christian Faith which is according to a Baptist flavor.
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Chapter 8, paragraph 5: “The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of God, procured reconciliation, and purchased an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto Him.”
Scripture speaks of Jesus offering himself in heaven “through the eternal Spirit” in Hebrews 9:14. This was a part of the unseen work of Jesus after his Resurrection. Everything God does is in perfect triune harmony. What Christ does, he does through both the Father and the Spirit. What the Spirit does he does in perfect union with the Father and the Son, etc. Jesus’ obedience to the will of the Father was down to every jot and tittle of the Bible. He was both perfectly and amazingly submitted to the will of the Father and to the Law he both gave and lived under.
What the confession is speaking of here is simply a theology of the Cross. A theology of the Cross is one where all sin is *taken care of* there. Sin is the problem we all have. Jesus dealt with it on his Cross. He is no longer offering anything for sin. That work is complete. This is a biblical understanding of where grace and forgiveness comes from. It is all, 100%, without omission, through the work of now empty Cross that we receive mercy from God. It is not that we’re in by grace and kept by our works! No no. That would simply be another form of bondage. It is instead by grace alone that we are saved from start to finish. That is a theology of the Cross. How else could we affirm that Jesus himself “satisfied the justice of God”, or “procured reconciliation”? We couldn’t. The Cross was Jesus’ work to save his own. He did so and did so perfectly. He finished the work of atonement there. He, the Way, made the way ready for those he came to save.
Being given to the Father is evident in our coming to Son by Faith. Do you wonder if you’ve been given to the Son by the Father? The way to answer that question is simply to ask yourself if you’ve truly come to the Son in faith? If you have then you’ve been given to the Son by the Father.
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