The Gospel & Glorifying Grace's Finality in the Resurrection of Christ

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The Gospel & Glorifying Grace's Finality in the Resurrection of Christ

March 20, 2022

Glorifying Grace is predicated on the glory Christ has in his resurrection and vindication over sin and death. Christ is now seated at the right hand of the father in glory because he defeated sin and death. He proved himself the son of God because he was sinless and the grave could not hold him. Due to this resurrection of Christ, we find our glory from him by looking to Christ as our savior and the great executioner of death. Thanks for listening, I hope you are encouraged brothers and sisters.

Key Texts:

* Ephesians 1:16-23

* Revelation 15:4

* 2 Thessalonians 1:10-12

* 1 Corinthians 15:40-43

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Transcript

He's given us what? A glorious inheritance in the saints that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead there in verse 20. So verse 18 is kind of predicated on what's happening in verse 20 that Christ is being raised from the dead. And then what happens after that? After he's raised from the dead and vindicated by his father, then what happens? He's seated at the right hand of the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion above every name that is named.

Wow, if you're being seated in this high place and your name is above every name that is named, that sounds like a glorious position that a king is given. A position of nobility. Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life.

That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life. Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord.

Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron. And I will not apologize for this God of the Bible.

[Music] This is the For the King podcast and I'm your host, Rocky Ramsey, and I am not actually joined with my co-host, my brother Bryce, this week.

But on this podcast we proclaim the edicts of the king over all his creation that Yahweh reigns. So as I said, Bryce is not joining me this week. I do not have my beloved co-host with me this week, my spiritual brother and physical brother Bryce.

But we will, regardless, continue on with our series and miss his presence and his wisdom that he usually shares with us. Not everything's great, but it's usually pretty good. So as we've been talking about, we're in the Gospel Foundations series that we've been going through here on the For the King podcast.

The foundational, pivotal parts of the Gospel. And I want to remind everybody here as we continue on this series that Bryce and I are fully aware of pietism and churchianity infecting a lot of Christendom today. And we are not trying to privatize the Gospel to just soteriology or individual salvation.

Bryce and I understand that the Gospel, the good news, is much more than just soteriology, the doctrine of how one is saved. So as we continue to go through this series, we've talked a lot of... Soteriology has been kind of the crux of the series. And the reason why is because the good news is that men's hearts are redeemed by which the following good news that results from that is a sanctified individual.

And then a sanctified world. Okay. Institutions all the way out.

Bryce and I are post-mills. So we see the Gospel having an impact in politics and economics and science. All the institutions and all the earth in Christ is ruler over all that.

So I just want to maintain that and remind everybody that we're not pietists and we're not in the cult of churchianity, right? Where everything is just all about the church and we don't care about anything outside of the church. But we do recognize that the foundation by which God is winning the world to himself is the conversion of the world, which includes individuals. So that's why we've been kind of dealing more with soteriology here in the Gospel series.

So we've been doing a four-part series within this series of the Gospel foundations. And one of those foundational things of the Gospel is God's grace to us, His grace. And we've talked about God's justifying grace, His sanctifying grace.

We've talked about, well, and then lastly, His glorifying grace. So we talked about last week, the progressive or teleological glorifying grace of God. How we are seeking after glory, the glory found in Christ in this faith that we walk, each and every one of us in Christendom, each individual in Christendom.

So continuing on this little mini-series talking about glorifying grace. I want to talk about this Sunday, glorification in the resurrection of Christ. Glorification that we have vicariously through Christ, as we were talking about last time, a teleological or appointed glorification that we have been given by God is final in the resurrection.

It's kind of founded on the resurrection of Christ, which is, again, a huge foundational component of the good news. With Christ's vindication over death and sin in His resurrection after He provided atonement on the cross for us. So the first text I want to go to to try to make my case here would be Ephesians 1, 16-23.

So you're going to see the glory of Christ in this text, and we're going to see how that connects to our glorification in our individual salvation. And also the glorification of the whole earth, the moaning and groanings of the earth that we see in Romans 8. The whole creation is awaiting redemption and glory. So we're going to get to all that.

But let me read this text first. So Ephesians 1, I'll start in 16 and I'll go to verse 23. "I did not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power towards us who believe, according to the working of His great might, that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all and all." Why am I starting here? I'm starting here because if we want to understand why glorification or glory is final in the resurrection, it's kind of built on the resurrection of Christ for the saints in terms of the glory of the saints. We see here that God has given in Christ through the spirit of wisdom and of the revelation of the knowledge in Him and having our hearts enlightened. He's given us what? A glorious inheritance in the saints that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead there in verse 20.

So verse 18 is kind of predicated on what's happening in verse 20, that Christ is being raised from the dead. And then what happens after that? After He's raised from the dead and vindicated by His Father, then what happens? He's seated at the right hand of the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name that is named. Wow.

If you're being seated in this high place and your name is above every name that is named, that sounds like a glorious position that a king is given, a position of nobility, an honor, a position of honor, a position of glory. Christ is glorified by the Father when He's vindicated because death could not hold Him because He had done no wrong. He was the fulfillment of the law.

You can go read that and not read that. You can go listen to that episode that Bryce and I did, I think maybe a month or two months back about Christ and the fulfillment of the law, the gospel and the fulfillment of the law. That Christ was that fulfillment of the law.

So we see the glory of Christ here after He is risen from the dead. And that's why, moving on, I'm going to read from Revelation 15. 4 now, "Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy and all nations will come and worship You, for Your righteous acts have been revealed." So He says, "Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name?" You alone are holy.

You alone are God. God alone is the one that wins the nations. The Son of Man is the one that wins the nations that has this kingdom that we see in Daniel 7, that he's handing to his father.

This comes on the heels of conquering the beast being conquered here in Revelation and all that. And Bryce and I are partial preterists, so we're not going to go into all the understanding of Revelation here. But the point is, this song of the Lamb after the beast and those that have the image of the beast standing beside the sea, and the sea is representing the Gentiles, the chaotic nations out in the world, right on the heels of this in verse 3, "It's great and amazing are Your deeds, O Lord God, the Almighty, just and true are Your ways, O King of the nations." And then it says, "Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name?" and all the things I just read.

So God being the King of the nations, Jesus ruling over sin and death, I mean, what rules the nations? It's Satan, sin, and death. And now that Christ has conquered Satan, sin, and death, He is therefore the ruler of the nations now, and they ought to bend the knee, and they will as we see in Psalm 2, "Kiss the Son lest He be angry with you." So we see the glory that Christ gets in His name, like Bryce and I were getting out from John 17 last episode, you know, it's all founded in Christ and His resurrection. These are the great and mighty deeds that He has done.

Continuing on, we see in 1 Thessalonians, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, 2 Thessalonians 1, 10 through 12, it says, "When He comes on that day to be glorified," like the day of the Lord, this judgment that's coming, "When He comes on that day to be glorified in His saints, and to be marveled at among all who believe, because our testimony to you is believed, to this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling, and may fulfill every resolve for good, and every work of faith by His power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you," and then here it is right here, "and you in Him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ." According to the grace, so we're being, this is predicated on Jesus as judge, and Jesus is judge because of what? He's been vindicated by His Father, and He will come to judge the living and the dead, the creep, the nice and creep. So this is what we're looking forward to, this is Jesus as judge. So He's going to come, and when He's judging, He's going to be glorified in His saints, the saints will glorify and respond and worship towards Him because of their testimony, right? I mean, we're going out into all the world, the Great Commission, we're going out to all the world testifying about who Christ is, who the King is, baptizing the nations in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And for this end that the saints are glorified, that Christ is being glorified in the saints, Paul is saying that we are praying for you, Church of Thessalonica, we're praying for you. We see Jesus being glorified in that church, the Church of Thessalonica, and that they would be glorified in Him. So again, back to the last episode of teleological glorification, we wanted to make it explicit this episode, that it's rooted in the resurrection of Christ, which is why He ends saying, "According to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ." So it's predicated on God's grace, the greatest gift God has given us is His Son, this is the great gift that now He rules the nations, He's a gift to the nations.

The nations ought to kiss His Son, lest He be angry with them and destroy them with an iron rod and break them in vessels of earth and where, these vessels of destruction. You definitely don't want to be a vessel of destruction, you want to be a vessel of mercy in God's kingdom. So again, pushing that point of our glorification and Christ's glorification, but again, it's a derivative and it comes in a certain order.

Jesus is glorified first and we're glorified in Him by our union with Him, which is what we get in John 17, in the high priestly prayer that Bryce and I started this little series with last episode. So to cap off this episode here, I want to end in 1 Corinthians 15, which is the most, some of these, you can kind of see how I'm trying to connect it to Christ's resurrection, His vindication on the cross. We see it most clearly in Ephesians 1, or really clearly in Ephesians 1, which is why I wanted to start there, that He's been given this glory being seen in the right hand of His Father, after He's been raised from the dead and vindicated.

That's, this is kind of the turning point of the story, I guess, the story of God, in what He's doing with His people. And then in Revelation and 2 Thessalonians, we see Paul or John, the revelator, and then Paul and 2 Thessalonians kind of laying out why we ought to glorify Christ and why we're glorified in Him. But we see it in terms of the resurrection of Christ, the most clearly in 1 Corinthians 15, which is just a wild section of Scripture.

I mean, I highly encourage you guys go read it. It is spectacular, and it really is kind of one of the foundational texts of post-millennialism. It comes in this passage.

I mean, it's a beautiful understanding of Christ, who He is as King, and what's happening throughout history, Christ being the first fruits of the resurrection. What's the point of that? That Jesus would be vindicated and be given reign. He'd be given a position of authority that His Father would glorify Him.

So in this rhetoric, the Corinthians are confused about the resurrection, the resurrection of the body, the physical body, and kind of how that works and how they ought to think about that. I think they were expecting the resurrection of the body much sooner. And Paul eventually gets to his rhetoric in his dialogue in this section, and he's keying them into an understanding of the resurrection.

But even in the midst of that, we have an awesome text about the glory of a resurrection, of being vindicated from death. Death really is, when death came into the world, this is what we see in Romans 1, that they're exchanging the glory of God for the glory of images and of things made by men, creatures. This is a big no-no.

This is a big issue with humanity that we're switching glory, that the glory of God for the glory, we're giving our glory to something else when God should be given our glory, right? If that kind of makes sense. And Adam was meant to worship and to be in perfect communion with God in the garden, but he exchanged that glory for created things when Satan tempted him. So let me read 1 Corinthians 15.

I'm going to read 40 through 43, and then I'll dialogue on it, and then we'll end. "There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for star differs from star and glory.

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.

It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power." And then in verse 45, he says, "Thus it is written, the first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit." So basically saying Adam had to be given life, he became a living being, he had to be given that, right? He didn't create himself, God created Adam, but this last Adam, Christ, the federal head of the new covenant, this new Adam, he is the one that is the life-giving spirit. He's saying each of these things have a glory of their own, but the heavenly glory is of another kind, that an earth of glory, but the heavenly glory is a greater glory. This is why God exists in the heavenlies, right? I mean, not that there's not a glory in the physical, God's not Gnostic, God doesn't hate the physical.

Jesus took on flesh, that therefore God does not hate, nor is it sinful to have flesh, to have a body. There's nothing sinful about material. There's something sinful about the flesh in terms of the spiritual inclination that humans have towards sin, but we don't want to confuse those.

When we see flesh in the Bible, this is talking about the fallen human nature. This isn't talking about just the nature of having Adams and being made up of molecules. This isn't inherently evil.

God created it and it's good. Adam and Eve were made up of molecules before they had an inclination to sin, a sinful nature. It's not wrong to have a natural body, and there's a glory to that, but this body, because of sin, is deteriorating and is dying.

And he says that what is sown is perishable. So when we die, this is a perishable existence, but what is raised, the heavenly body, this is imperishable. It's sown in dishonor.

We die in dishonor. We don't have our full glory, our glorification. I'm sorry, I just lost my train of thought.

Oh, it's sown in dishonor and it's raised in glory. So when we finally have a glorified body, a final resurrection, this is the great glory by which we seek after. And it's predicated in Christ who is the firstfruits of this resurrection from the dead, because he says earlier, I'll read in 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 21, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, for as by a man came death, has come also the resurrection of the dead, for as an Adam all die, so also Christ shall all be made alive.

But each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits, then his coming, those who belong to Christ. So basically saying, we're waiting for Christ's coming for this resurrection of the dead. Now there's a lot to unpack here in terms of partial preterism and post-millennialism, so I'm not gonna labor that point.

What I'm trying to hone in on here is the glory of Christ's vindication on the cross and him being a life-giving spirit because of his vindication on the cross. That's kind of the main crux of what I'm getting at here. So let's remember that we are seeking after a glory that can be attained in this life, partly, but there is a type of glory for heavenly bodies and there's a type of glory for earthly bodies.

We gotta remember what Paul's saying here, but there is a greater glory. There's an ordering of these things and this kind of imperishable raising of glory that we will get with Christ when he comes at the end is gonna be beautiful. It's a glory that we seek after.

It's a glory that we want. So part of the glory that we seek after in this life is, again, God's grace is always abounding. It's a glory that is predicated in the glory of Christ in his resurrection, defeating sin and death, and it's also a glory that we will attain when we will be raised with him as well.

So I hope that's a good reminder that there's no sting in death any longer. Death has been defeated, so there is a great glory in the resurrection of Christ and then our vicarious resurrection through his work in defeating sin and death and becoming a life-giving spirit, now being the new Adam, the last Adam, the federal head of the new covenant, which is a life-giving covenant. So I hope that was encouraging.

I hope you see what I'm getting at here. This glorifying grace is final in the resurrection of Christ. It's final.

It's completed. It's done. That kind of glory is secured in Christ.

He's seated at the right hand of the Father. He said, "It is finished." That's a secured glory and God gives his grace to us in our ability to see, believe, and trust in Christ, the first fruits of that kind of glory of an imperishable body, imperishable resurrection, and we will get that as well because of our union with Christ. So as we seek after the teleological grace, glorifying grace, we have to remember glorification is final in the resurrection.

This grace of glory is final in the resurrection of Christ. Hope that was encouraging. I hope you see what I'm getting at there.

Check out the website for thekingpodcast.com. Last episode was abortion apologetics with my brother in Christ, Carter, presenting that to us. I didn't know that. You can go to the website and actually download the presentation that Carter gave with that.

So we appreciate Carter doing that for us, teaching us that thing. It was really helpful to think about how to defend the faith and abortion God's word that predicates the human life and the womb is human life and that it is murder to kill a baby prematurely in the womb. That's called murder.

It's a very simple definition of murder. Innocent life being taken without just cause. So yeah, go check that out.

If you haven't, go check out the website for thekingpodcast.com. If you have any questions or inquiries, you can reach me at forthekingpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, guys. I always end with a doxology. I'll end with the one at the end of 1 Corinthians here.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Sole day of glory.

(upbeat music)