In John 17, Jesus made these two statements: “I have finished the work which you gave me to do.” And, “Now I am no more in the world.” He was still here, and still had the cross to endure.
Do you think these words pivot off what Revelation so surprisingly tells us, that Jesus was “Slain from before the foundation of the world”?

Above and behind all the contingencies of time that seem so contingent and uncertain to us, Jesus lived and walked in a whole other place. He walked in the works that had been finished already before the foundation of the world. He walked, lived and labored out of the rest (Heb 4:3, 11). ).

With the cross still before Him, and even before He would plead that the cup be somehow removed, even while knowing this would be impossible, since for this cause He came into the world. This seeming contradiction between a predestined inevitably and the Son’s appeal as though some lingering ignorance of an unavoidable certainty had come over Him.

This is no contradiction at all!, as some wicked gainsayers have suggested. On the contrary, this is the nexus of the glory of the incarnation, of the One who so emptied Himself to be exalted, as a man!, to the highest preeminence, even equality with God! Precisely here is the greatest demonstration of the perfect convergence of a fully poured out humanity in a final act of perfectly voluntary submission to the will of His Father in the face of the unbearable and incomprehensible.

Consider: He knew He was not just about to die but take on Himself the full punishment of divine wrath due the sin of the world. Certainly He would ask the cup be removed, “if possible”. He wouldn’t be human if He did not stagger beneath the weight of all that His prophetic senses could only contemplate with an intensity beyond our capacity to imagine. Let’s ponder this for a moment.

He knew He was asking the impossible, but the scripture wanted us to see the glory of a fully submitted humanity that would not be human if it did not shudder and shrink in horror at what now lay just before Him.

In the words of the grand old hymn, “did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?” I would ask, did e’er such humanity and deity meet, or the Father’s love and glory more surround?

If we could only know the power of weakness, we could begin to understand the glory of that one word, “nevertheless”. “Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.” When that heart of utter submission dwells in a person, it is a piece of incarnation, as it reflects living witness to the mystery of the incarnation itself. Why? Because this kind of love, and voluntary submission in the face of such sacrifice on behalf of another, particularly an enemy, is “impossible with man”. This is why martyrdom is so central to the faith. It is not human heroics; it is submitted love. But back to the point.

It is so amazing to contemplate that the one who could say outside the grave of Lazarus …

And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. John 11:42

comes now to Gethsemane, with a request that though gloriously heard, could never be granted, and Jesus knew it only too well. Still, His very humanity required expression in the impossible request, and the scripture was unwilling that we should fail to hear it.

But lest anyone vainly imagine that for something to be an inevitable and predestined certainty that it is somehow automatic or mechanical, look again. Jesus did nothing by external constraint or necessity, but only by the liberty of the Spirit. It was very necessary that no man take His life from Him (though men would be the witless agency), but that He lay it down “FREELY” of His own accord. Freedom, the God kind of freedom, is also at the very heart of a predestined incarnation of the Spirit of liberty.

Even while seeing, I know I don’t see. The glory of this is blinding. It would take a very uncommon revelation to begin to even conceive, let alone grasp.

The reason for this is very much to your question.

As no one else has ever walked, Jesus walked in perfect, unfettered faith in works that were finished (predestined) — already accomplished, before the foundation of the world. He lived in the past tense in the sense that He saw His future as already accomplished. Still, He prayed and groaned and travailed in prayer for the birthing and coming forth of God’s predestined future.

No contradiction here, just our mortal minds faced with the incomprehensible power of God to balance freedom, responsibility, and a fixed and unalterable predestination. And aren’t we glad God is in control of every sparrow that falls? Pity those who are afraid to embrace their best friend — the predestining power of God.

Imagine rising up in the morning, knowing you will be walking in works that were predestined before creation? Jesus lived with this consciousness. He lived each day as predestined, and in that sense past. Each day was predicted by a certainty that could not be stopped, though all hell should make it all the more glorious in the futile attempt.

We live in all the uncertain contingencies of the natural world around us, we struggle in suspense of all the maybes and what if’s of this life. Jesus lived in the consciousness that everything, literally everything concerning Him was on a predestined timeline. Is there something here for us?

The free actions and seemingly free decisions of men, enemies and disciples alike, would all fall into perfect service of a predestined plan that was perfectly ordained and utterly impossible to thwart or alter. In the words of my beloved brother, Art. “How’s them apples?”

How does that work? Exactly! We cannot grasp such a concept. Why strain and break our brain. Such paradox should not be cause for debates over philosophical, theological questions over freedom and determination, but amazement and worship at the power of grace to win the battle despite all the gates of hell, freedom and contingency notwithstanding. We can only bow and worship at such wonders that defy comprehension.

It all had to be just so, with no part (cog) missing or out of its appointed place, because the whole original purpose for creation depended on it. And not only the cross at just some eventuality along the way, but by a predestined set time under the equally ordained (pre-set) circumstances, with every player in place, yet with no violence to the will of responsible individuals. But precisely at this time, under no other possible set of circumstances. How do you do that? Only God!, which is precisely the point.

I’m now coming to the verse that I think speaks most to your question, but first one more verse that is very much like it.

John 13:3-4
Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; He rises from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself …

Here is the Lamb of God’s grand exit from this world, and what does He do? He stoops to wash our feet! Take that in. This is astonishing! This is His statement that will only begin to be conceived or understood in retrospect.

Jesus said and did a lot that would only be understood in retrospect, but oh, the glory of looking back in hindsight at all that the Father was so perfectly controlling to the tiniest detail. What part could have been left out? Even the human editing of every word of the four gospel accounts is part of a perfectly sovereign, utterly superintendence, right down to the finest detail. As Jesus said, “not one jot or tittle can pass from the Torah unfulfilled.” Now that’s micro-management! Yes, God is all about the details and the small print. He guards the jots and the tittles as all a piece with the ‘seamless garment’ of the sacred trust of our divinely sent canon, perfectly supervised in its preservation and transmission.

Only Jesus could see how a perfectly predestined future was not put in doubt by the necessity of the indispensable, equally predestined travail of holy intercession that was no less voluntary, but constrained by the grace of the Spirit. We must note how nothing of what God ordains is dispensable. Prayer is the ordained means to all of God’s ordained ends. There is no conflict between a predestined outcome and the equally predestined means to its birthing into the creation, even though the works were finished before the foundation of the world. Big thoughts for our little minds! But back to the verse that is to your question.

“And now I am in the world …” These are words that look at the present from the eternal perspective above time, that sees by the “Spirit of prophecy” what is to come as though already accomplished. This is a common characteristic of Hebrew prophecy. Scholars call it the “prophetic past tense”. This is a common characteristic of Hebrew prophecy which can accomodate temporal conditionality and contingency based on response with an absolute predestination that assures a certain response at a certain, foretold time. That’s sovereignty!, where nothing of the tension is lost, but nothing is left to uncertainty. This is because the whole, with all its moving parts, is being perfectly controlled towards a predestined end, and that end, and the perfectly foretold process leading to it, is never put at the mercy of mere foresight alone.

The logic of all that the scripture says of God’s attributes in the Trinity of persons concerning an eternal purpose that had no beginning in time but always existed in the Godhead (as one brother put it, “from all eternity, there was a cross in the Godhead), leads us to conclude that the Father and the Son were enjoying the end of the timeline as already finished before it started. It was done before it began. That’s what this language, especially here in John is intended to convey. Now for those final two verses that bring this out most perfectly, also here in Jn 17, in what has been called, “Jesus’ high priestly prayer”.

John 17:4-5
I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. (Spoken as already finished when the cross still lay ahead)

And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

If that isn’t glorious Trinitarian language, I don’t know what would be!

From His perspective, Jesus has already been here and returned to the Father. This glory that the eternal Son had with the Father before the creation always existed in full finished certainty and fellowship of mutual enjoyment, and all on the basis of what was now, just about to be accomplished in time.

In the words of Fanny J. Crosby, “I scarce can take it in!” Think about it. The cross, and all the things of time that would be constructed around this great, eternally centermost event that was not only known and predestined in God, but the object of eternal, pre-temporal fellowship and enjoyment of infinite glory in the Godhead before anything had been created. It was finished before it began, but it all depended on that one center-most event of time — the cross.

Seen this way, Jesus’ last words from the cross. “It is finished!”, takes on a meaning that reverberates through all time and eternity from the Alpaha to the Omega.

That is who He is. He’s everything! All things have been put in His hands and only the Father Himself can weigh His worth!!’

Reggie

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Before it’s greater conquest of the kingdoms of this world, the kingdom is first and foremost where Jesus sits as King on the throne of the heart. When the heart is fully possessed by the High King of Heaven, there is the kingdom of God in its mightiest display of sovereign power. Part of the “mystery of the kingdom” in its present hidden form is that it is no less powerful in its present working as it will be in the day when it will fill all of redeemed creation. Until then, with the exception of certain occasional demonstrations of outward power, the kingdom in its present working must appear to the world as weak and contemptible. This, since at its center is the scandal of the cross, not just as a historic event of redemptive necessity, but in its character as a cruciform way of life where the kingdom is not only entered once, but continually ‘being’ entered.

Not only when the kingdom began to be preached by John and Jesus, but no less since, “the violent take it by force” (Mt 11:12). Or, as in Luke’s version, “every man presses into it” (Lk 16:16). It cannot be otherwise! The straight gate of the kingdom that only few will ever enter will not swing open to casual interest (Mt 7:13). It requires a violence of desperation to enter at all cost (Mk 9:47), and none can presume to have entered if its value and priceless beauty has not far exceeded and eclipsed all else (Mt 13:45-46). The kingdom can brook no rival in the heart. It is all or nothing, and the fruits of the life of the kingdom will demonstrate this radical singleness of eye and heart in the life of it’s true heirs (Mt 6:22-23).

Where the conditions of this reality are met in truth, the triumph of the kingdom is as sure and secure in its present mystery form as in its future completion. But this security becomes a treacherous false security if the firm requirements for entering the kingdom have not been met in the real fruits that demonstrate the presence and power of the life of the kingdom, which is the character and nature of the King. Ultimately then, the call to enter the kingdom is the call to regeneration. But if regeneration is not defined and understood by its kingdom context, it risks being greatly perverted.

The call to make every effort to enter the kingdom at all cost becomes the call to be “made partakers of His divine nature”. It is union with God’s life, which is the life of the new creation, the life of the age to come. It’s subjects are no mere servants under its authority and jurisdiction, but but free children who share in the very nature and character of the King through the mysterious miracle of the new birth, also compared to resurrection (Eph 2:1).

Only as Jesus’ message of the kingdom in all it’s high demand is kept in close, inseparable connection with Paul’s gospel of grace can error be avoided. Only be holding both together in faithful tension and and agreement is the true nature of regeneration rightly defined and understood. But to relax or compromise the desperate urgency of entering the kingdom at all cost through submission to its high demands is to pervert the gospel of grace into another gospel, tilting either towards license and casual compromise or the equally deadly trap of legalism. Grace works! The watchword of the Reformation guarding against this common perversion says, “whereas we are justified by faith alone, the faith that justifies is never alone”.

Every seed produces after its own kind, and when the seed of the kingdom has germinated into true union with the life of the indwelling divine nature that was most perfectly incarnated in Jesus, the result is that one has now been “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which lives and abides forever (1Pet 1:23).

To be born of that seed is also to live and abide and forever, but the cost to enter is the full and free exchange of anything and everything that might compete in loyalty or affection. Jesus warns that only the comparative few will ever enter. The straight gate of the kingdom is the straight gate of true and abiding regeneration, a much greater rarity than many seem willing to consider. Once entered, the cost for continuance is not conveniently lowered. This is why Peter will say, “take diligence to make your calling and election sure”.

For the sake of His steadfast covenant with “all the seed”, He MUST require that first things be first. This is why when we begin to neglect or forget, as certainly as we are true sons and daughters, we may be sure that we are on our way to the wood shed, till what counts most counts most again. This is why “judgement must begin at the house of God” (1Pet 4:17 with 1Cor 11:22).

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How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall encompass a man.

Try sometime checking the smorgasbord of commentaries on the internet, and you will find a dizzying array of disagreement and very unsatisfying suggestions to what all will agree is a very cryptic and controversial passage. But I say, what did you expect where there is hidden glory like this?, as the example I showed in the debate over how Isa 49:5 should be translated.

I took greatest comfort to learn that in many of the commentaries it was acknowledged that the early church fathers understood this of the virgin conception of the Messiah. I am 100% sure they were right. They affirmed this in the face of the nay saying of the sophisticated scholarship of their day. Today, only a rare few “fundamentalist hillbillies’ affirm such an antiquated notion. But I say, behold the context!

It is given by Jeremiah as God’s remedy for Israel’s perpetual backsliding. It is presented as the basis for the righteousness that enables Israel to receive the promised salvation the restoration of ‘a pure language’. As always, the setting is the post-tribuational day of the Lord.

What makes this cryptic statement commend itself as a reference to the virgin birth of the woman’s seed? It is ultimately transitional. It is placed between Israel’s continual tendency to backslide and the promise of final salvation and inheritance of the Land. This mysterious insertion is made the pivot on which all else turns. Israel’s long awaited inheritance of the promise begins as the result of this new thing that Yahweh will created in the earth, first this, then that.

Notice too it’s remarkable parallel language to the Song of Isaiah (Isa chapters 7-12). It makes you wonder how conscious Jeremiah was of Isaiah’s prophecy of the virgin when he would use such similar terms at this juncture in a context announcing the end of backsliding and the everlasting salvation of covenant promise.

Recall Yahweh’s challenge to Ahaz to ask a sign, but not just any sign. Make it hard, Ahaz! Ask for a sign as great as anything that can be conceived in the heights of heaven or the depths of the earth. Now THAT’S quite a sign!

Of course, Ahaz waxes pious and declines. This is when the Lord seizes upon the king’s feigned modesty to give, not only Ahaz, but now all Israel a sign of His own choice (notice the pronoun, ‘you’, goes from singular to plural in the Hebrew, expanding the recipients of this sign to all Israel).

In keeping with the context of the question and the answer of God, this sign must exceed anything within the conceivable bounds of nature in heaven above or earth beneath. It is, of course, the sign of the virgin conception whereby a woman encompasses a man (goes around, avoids, circumvents, bypasses).

This is the new thing in the earth that has never been created before. It is without precedent, since on it turns the turning of Israel’s captivity. And so, in a wondrous providence of unimagined, inconceivable, transcendent glory, we sing “Oh come, Oh come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel ….” Exactly!, as only a manchild conceived by a virgin WITHOUT, APART FROM the help of man could bypass the fallen nature and be in a position to reverse the curse for all who had fallen under it through sin.

How does one reverse the curse that has passed upon all humanity through the transmission of a fallen nature that none can escape (in sin I was conceived) unless that one is brought into the world in a unique way that bypasses the fallen nature?

This is the logic of the virgin birth, and it is fully present in the original promise. Remember too, Adam and Eve knew the experience of paradise and would have been intimate with the magnitude of the change that passed on the whole observable created order. But they had this promise. When this would come, they did not know, but they knew how it would come. It would come by a man born to the woman (already implying some distinct contrast from the role of the man in procreation).

The woman’s son would reverse the curse through a substitutionary wound that he would endure on behalf of those who had fallen under the curse through sin. (Remember, God had taught them the principle of sacrifice as necessary to any covering of sin). How, therefore, does this not imply sinlessness? The prophets surely recognized this, as the scripture is clear that they understood that Messiah should suffer and be “cut off” before His exaltation to glory (Dan 9:26; 1Pet 1:11). It is therefore, much easier to see then the implication of Eve’s exclamation, “I have gotten a man by the help of the Lord!” However, in the Hebrew text, the word “help” does not appear. It is supplied by translators. It is more accurately translated, “I have gotten a man (or ‘manchild’), the Lord”, some translate, “even the Lord”.

Very probably, Eve thought she was the woman who would bring the savior into the world. Obviously wrong about the time and the person, she nonetheless understood that for the curse to be reversed and paradise restored, a very extraordinary power would have to attend the promised manchild. Is it possible she thought this power might by the Spirit of Lord with whom she had walked and communed in the garden? That is speculative, but the predominant conditions in which the freshly fallen pair found themselves certainly implied a great power would have to attend the one born to conquer the one who had brought them, and the whole of creation under the power of death observed all around them.

Obviously, Eve didn’t understand that the promised seed would come without the help of the man in the sense of natural procreation, but her jubilant exclamation may suggest that she might have intuited that the only one who could conceivably accomplish to the conquer the power of sin and death would have to be, in some sense, God. Perhaps, as in the case of Caiaphas, Eve spoke not of herself, but in the position as the mother of all living, prophetically anticipates the necessary deity of the manchild. In any event, it is at least inviting to consider the possibility in view of the unique form of the Hebrew text. But this is not at all critical to our argument.

Even if we take the more natural assumptions of most commentators that Eve could never have been in possession of even an incipient shadow of such a ‘high Christology’, it is no less a plain fact that the promise of Gen 3:15 carries in it the seed of just such a high Christology of virgin conception and substitutionary atonement. How so? Because in order for one to reverse the curse, that one cannot be under it.

THAT is the maxim the whole of scripture anticipates and demonstrates gloriously. Through later revelation, particularly the episode with Isaac’s stay of execution, by which Abraham was able to look ahead and see Jesus’ day, it became clearer and clearer that only an innocent sufferer, free from the taint of sin, could ever break its dominion through a sacrifice that would avail for all the election of grace and secure the everlasting inheritance of all the seed. How would this be? Answer: “a woman shall encompass a man.”

But there is something that points even more decisively to the necessity of the unique begetting of the coming One. It is the issue of the nature of the sin nature. Sin must be overcome, not by an “hero” who would master the inclination towards the sin that all flesh is born ‘under’. That would be works. On the contrary, the Messiah would be free of the false presumption of strength, i.e., the human view of strength. In a sense, none born of woman was ever so weak and blind as He who could see and judge so perfectly whose only strength was the Spirit of the Lord.

By bypassing the help of man in his conception and perfect life of obedient faith, the divine Messiah would bypass the curse of self reliance. Though tempted beyond our ability to conceive, He would never venture one word or action on His own initiative or strength. By never speaking or doing anything of Himself, His humanity was preserved and perfected as the habitation of all the fullness of God.

It was His glorious weakness, free of any mixture of ‘man’, receiving nothing of the help of man. This is how His humanity could be the habitation of all the fullness of God in a body (a body you have prepared me). To this one, uniquely begotten Son, the Spirit could be given without the measure, because there was nothing of our common fallenness in Him to hinder or limit that fullness.

It was this perfection that alone could be accepted as substitute and sacrifice for sin. The author of sin and death would bruise ‘His’ heel, and God would turn this bruising to mortally wound the head of Satan who has the power of death and thus reverse the curse, bringing the kingdom of God to earth as it in heaven.

It’s all right there in the most pregnant promise in the Bible, as nothing in all subsequent unfolding revelation is not found fully present in that first seed of promise. Simply glorious to contemplate. “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning …”

Reggie

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I would like to hear your explanation as to why “bride” and “wife” are used to describe the same group of the redeemed? Or, is a distinction actually being made with respect to the same group? I have heard some teach that the “wife” represents the redeemed of Israel (Hosea) and the “bride” represents the redeemed from among the Gentiles. What say you? – fl

I think it is precisely so that we will not make such unjustified distinctions. The wife and the bride are the same. Redeemed Israel and the body of Christ are one. One of the reasons why the woman of Rev 12 has been so misinterpreted is because traditionally the church has “over” distinguished between Israel and the church. Is there a distinction? Yes, there is an important distinction, but it is not of the nature usually assumed. The church is simply the Israel within Israel. Regardless of how many gentiles swell the ranks of the body of Christ, the people of Christ, the true seed of Abraham, remain no less the Israel of God within the still predestined nation of the Jews. However much a mystery has been newly revealed, the church is the people of the Spirit of all times and dispensations.

However much the revelation of the mystery of the gospel has brought to greater light the nature of the unity of the mystical body of Christ as the one new man of the Spirit, still, the body of Christ remains in corporate continuity and solidarity with the “remnant according to the election of grace,” i.e., the Israel within Israel. In this sense, the regenerate “remnant of her seed” are distinct but not separate from larger Israel, as the yet “elect woman” who, though presently blinded and under divine discipline, is predestined to be an all saved national entity. The fulfillment of the covenant in the salvation of “all Israel,” is precisely what Satan most fears and resists, and why he so assiduously seeks the destruction of the woman before this can be established with real flesh and blood Jews in real space and time history in public vindication of the everlasting covenant.

We may compare the relation of the church to Israel, as we would compare the regenerate spirit to a body that though subject to death because of sin is no less destined for resurrection because of the promise. In this sense, the living church, like the living Lord of glory, is joined to the elect body of corporate Israel. Though presently dead spiritually, Israel is destined for full corporate salvation because of the promise and election of the fathers, the spiritual seed within the seed, as the church is a spiritual nation within the nation. You see, one cannot be “in Christ” and not be “in Israel.” In that sense, the church is an internal phenomenon within Israel, i.e., the nation of the natural branches.

As much as God remains in covenant with Israel despite her present blindness, so the church should never see herself as separate and apart, but like a corporate, weeping Jeremiah, travail in birth till Christ be formed in the elect nation. This we do, even while we preach the good news and prophesy to the nations of the glories of the New Covenant. God is not in such a covenant of predestined mercy with the apostate church of world Christendom. He remains, however, whether for weal or woe, benefit or judgment, in a unique covenant bond with Israel, and so are all who are born of His Spirit, or should be, were our identity not so obscured through false doctrine concerning our relationship to Israel, as though we belong to an entirely separate entity. Distinct? Yes! Separate? No!

This is the logic of why Israel receives the double for the double. Even in their unbelief, they are His national son, called to be the servant nation, though presently prodigal and estranged from the new nature of the Spirit, they, as a national Jewish entity, are no less predestined, uniquely, as a nation, for full corporate salvation. This is the covenant that will be openly vindicated throughout the millennium in the sight of all nations, and it is an election that God will require all nations to honor.

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Excellent, my brother! This whole essay… point[s] to 1 Cor 4:7 long before your reference to it. Reminds me of Paul saying “if there be…”

God is orchestrating our walk as if He were The Puppeteer and we merely shadows. Though we can’t say we cast a very good imitation of The Master; hopefully we will grow more to sound the echo and less an off key resonance.

You probably don’t realize how pleasing your words and even your assessment of your own situation is to the Lord right now. I believe you are taking all of this in the right way and with the right heart, and that counts more in those heavenly places where principalities and powers are being educated through you, so much more than we tend to know.

Remember, Satan is called the accuser of the brethren for a reason. He is the supreme legalist, a prosecuting attorney of the highest skill. He is always renouncing and questioning the legality of God’s right to justify and glorify us in Christ, particularly since he can “see” so clearly all of our shame and regret in the flesh.

Since the angels, even the good angels, can only ‘desire to look into’ (1Pet 1:12) the revealed glories of the gospel, it just now occurred to me that Satan, being an angel, cannot receive the things of the Spirit anymore than the unaided flesh of the natural man. Certainly, he knows the outward form of the truth, as one on the outside looking in; but that’s just it; the heart and spirit of the truth can only be apprehended from within by the quickening of a new creation. The flesh can’t get it.  In that sense, even revealed truth remains a mystery to the flesh.

Just as the sinner cannot really see the greatness of his sin apart from revelation, it is only by the Spirit that the believer can know the greatness and glory of the righteousness that has been imputed. It is none other than the very righteousness that was perfected in the humanity of Jesus. This is staggering.  This “everlasting righteousness” by which even the least believer is fully justified is not from hence. It is nothing of our own (Phil 3:9).

The righteousness that justifies must fulfill the law in all points perfectly. That is why it cannot be a partial righteousness that is only beginning in its development. No, it must be imputed in the whole, as at once altogether perfect and complete. It cannot be less than that righteousness that was tested under the law and approved in all points. No other righteousness can stand in the judgment, because no other can stand in the presence of unveiled holiness. This is the dreadful point that Jesus makes in His parable of the wedding feast concerning the man that presumed to come in before the king without the designated wedding garment (Mt 22:11-13).  

The prince of this world had nothing in Him, precisely because He fulfilled the law in all points. Over 33 1/2 years of active obedience, the Lamb was examined and fully approved. Even Moses who gave the law was cut off bythe law in that he died, because the law had said, “he that does it (perfectly by the Spirit) shall live in it” (Lev 18:5). That is not just a maxim of the law; it is a prophecy of the coming of the just One, since only Jesus so perfectly fulfilled the law as to not be cut off by it.

This is why Paul shows that the blessing of Abraham, strictly understood, can only bless the One (‘not seeds, as of many, but ‘Seed’, as of one). Paul sees that the word seed signifies something more than a line of descendants. It speaks of a nature, even the divine nature of Christ in all the children of God (since no one ever lived unto God apart from the indwelling Spirit of Christ (Mk 12:27; 1Pet 1:11).

That seed (nature) could only dwell in the righteous by faith on the legal basis of the perfection of that nature (seed) in the representative humanity of the divine Son. Though they did not know the mystery of how God would accomplish this (it wasn’t time), it was only through the imputation of the blood of the eternally slain Lamb that the pre-incarnate Spirit of Christ could take up lawful and holy residence in the OT believer. Apart from the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, the Spirit could not lawfully be given.

Whether Old or New Testament believer, it is only by the imputation of this one, perfect, ‘wholly other’ kind of righteousness, that anyone is counted just in the sight of God. It is certainly NOT because of ‘their’ faith, since this too is a gift. It is because of the sovereign drawing power of the Spirit that works a living faith in whosoever is willing to receive Him as their only hope of righteousness (“I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus name”).

To have this righteousness imputed is also to receive the quickening of the divine nature, which is the nature of Christ, the Seed. Hence it is that the Seed inherits all things, and we in Him and He in us. That is how the promise can be infallibly sure to all the seed (Ro 4:16) apart from human works of righteousness.

This righteousness may be more fully active in a greater sanctification, but it can never be more perfect and complete in one more than another in the sense of justification and standing. The degree of sanctification is relative; but justification and standing is absolute and never a matter of degree. Therefore, the justifying righteousness of Christ extends equally to all the seed. In this way, “he that is least in the kingdom is greater than John.”

I differ here from many of the commentaries that do not see John as standing already within the sphere of the kingdom. By no means is Jesus speaking here of the millennial kingdom, as in the Scofield notes. There are clear references that show that the kingdom was already present and being entered by many (Mt 11:12; 23:13; Lk 16:16). John was certainly in the kingdom, else how were many entering in by his preaching? No, Jesus is saying something much more profound than comparing some future state with the greatness of John.

Though in a somewhat different way, I believe Jesus is making the same essential point here that He is making when He makes the really shocking statement that “unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.” For the average Jew, nothing could have sounded more forbidding. For the average Jew, to exceed the piety and discipline of a Pharisee might as well be Mount Everest. In other words, it was a divinely intended recipe for despair. It was another instance of the Lord’s necessary preliminary work of demolition to prepare the way of the Lord (Jer 1:10).

The Lord’s reference to John intends something of the same, as this is either the worst or the best of news. Let me explain. Jesus knew the popular sentiment and estimation of John was very high. John represented the highest example, not only of godliness, but of spiritual anointing. Jesus commends John, but in order to send home His point with fullest force, He goes much further to make the really astonishing statement that “of all who have been born of women, there is none greater than John.” What is He doing here?

I submit that he is using the example of John to show that the highest example of righteousness is not high enough. Jesus points His hearers to both a requirement and a promise that takes them well beyond even the highest estimation of anything that might be associated with even the greatest among God’s servants. This would include Abraham, Moses, Daniel etc. This is simply amazing.

Jesus is saying that the kingdom requires and promises a greatness that is greater than the greatest. But a greatness of what kind? What kind of greatness is this that exceeds John’s greatness by even the least one in the kingdom? I believe it is nothing less or other than the ‘everlasting righteousness’ of covenant promise (Dan 9:24; Jer 32:40). It is an eternal standing in the kingdom that is based on the imputation of the righteousness that was perfected in one place only, the un-fallen humanity of Jesus. This is righteousness of another kind, and that is why it is greatness of another kind. The least one in the kingdom has this righteousness, as no lesser righteousness can be acceptable.

This is glorious news to the destitute; it is disastrous news to those that presume to come into the wedding feast with a mixed garment. In this way, the very least in the kingdom of heaven stands in a righteousness that exceeds anything that can be associated with the strictest Pharisee, or even the most saintly of saints. It is nothing less than the eternal and indestructible righteousness of Christ. When this revelation dawns on the destitute, in one moment of time, the last is made first.

No wonder the catholic theologians of Trent called this a “legal fiction”. It sounds illegal. It is simply too good to believe. But if God can make Him to be sin who knew no sin; is it harder for Him to count me the very righteousness of God in Him? If that is a legal fiction, then it is one that God has purchased at an awful price. God can now be just while justifying the unjust, “calling the things that are not as though they were” (Ro 4:17). With holy blood He purchased this right for Himself. Let none in their ignorance blaspheme the holiness of this just and glorious exchange.

This is not some ‘positional’ make believe. The righteousness of the believer in Christ is as real and actual as the Word that brought the worlds into being. That Word says we ‘ARE’ a new creation, not just on the way to becoming a new creation. Oh for grace to apprehend the power of those words of John: “Beloved, NOW are we the sons of God, and it doesn’t yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1Jn 3:2). In the words of Fanny J. Crosby, “I scarce can take it in.” Hallelujah! What a Savior!

His choicest blessings overtake you, Reggie

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