Discuss Bavinck’s statement: “The obedience of Christ is not only a satisfaction: it is a vicarious satisfaction.”

Vicarious satisfaction is the culmination of the purpose and work of Jesus Christ laying the path of salvation to his elect and providing the Gospel message of hope, faith and love to the world, but especially to the adopted family of God. Bavinck’s main point is that this is the Gospel, that Christ perfectly obeyed God in a way that we could not, that he was sacrificed for us, satisfying God’s divine justice and thus providing eternal life for those who have faith in the covenant promises of God to his people by Jesus Christ alone.

First there must be a sacrifice or the shedding of blood to make atonement for our sins, our transgressions. Within the ordinance of the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16 reveals the vicarious process of laying our sins upon a sacrificial animal, placing the wickedness, disobedience and transgressions of the elect upon the goat to cleanse them before the Lord making them holy and blameless. Isaiah 53: 10 connects the sacrificial atonement to the future coming of the Lord who would be our guilt offering, who’s blood would be shed vicariously in place of ours.
This shedding of blood is the method by which we are redeemed or our debts are paid on our behalf. Satisfaction has been made by redeeming the elect and paying the debt of our sins and our transgressions. Redemption is the second way in which we see Christ’s vicarious satisfaction come to fruition, as Isaiah 53: 5 says, “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.” It is our sin, our debt to pay to God to redeem ourselves from the punishment of his divine justice, but it is Jesus Christ who takes this debt upon himself and makes restitution on our behalf.

That leads us the third view of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction in the expiatory gift of reconciliation given to the elect. Not only does Jesus Christ shed his blood, paying our debt, but he also averts God’s justice and brings about an eternal reconciliation between the created and the Creator. 2 Corinthians 5: 18, 21 says, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…God made him who had no sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Paul shows us here that through our reconciliation, our sins are removed from our account and God’s justice is expatiated from us and placed on Christ. Though he himself was never sinful, our sins were hung upon the cross in Him, so that we may be reconciled before God as holy and blameless creatures resting in Jesus Christ alone.

Finally, the culmination of the sacrificial blood spilled, which bought and paid for our redemption and which provides an excitatory reconciliation between us and God reaches its apex in the propitiation of God’s righteousness applied to us through the vicarious satisfaction of Jesus Christ. We are not only cleansed of our sin, not only purchased by the ultimate act of sacrifice, but also covered over by the pure blood, covered over by the freedom from debt, covered over by the freedom from divine justice, but ultimately covered over by the righteousness that is Christ’s alone. Again, 2 Corinthians 5: 21 ends with, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”, which is Christ’s watershed, propitiatory act of salvation for his elect providing vicarious satisfaction and eternal life by faith in Jesus Christ alone.

Discuss the teaching of John 1 and Hebrews 1 on the doctrine of Christ's Person.

The second person of the Trinity, the God-man, Jesus Christ was eternally present with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. As John 1 shows Jesus Christ is the Word of God which was also with God and is God from all eternity. The Word of God as Hebrews 1 shows is the reality of God speaking to us and shows the power of His word through the act of creation that both John 1 and Hebrews 1 testifies. The person of Christ was not only present at creation but was through whom all things were made. Through this creative act in the beginning and the re-creative act through salvation, Christ becomes the giver of life and light shining out through the darkness.

This light and life are shown forth through the image of God that man bears, the fuller image that the Christian bears and the even fuller image that the person of Jesus Christ bears to all of creation. This can only be seen through the flesh that Jesus Christ takes on as John 1 describes which enables us to see his glory and as Hebrews 1 describes a radiant glory as the perfect and exact representative of God in the flesh. Jesus Christ is the perfect image of God, as the elect are to be in Christ alone, shining this glory before the entire world.

John 1 continues to unfold the person of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the law given to Moses, as the grace and truth of Jesus Christ. The law continuously points us towards the righteousness of God, as that is fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ by the fullness of his grace and truth revealed to the world through his word and redemptive act as the pure sacrifice on the cross. It is because of this sacrifice that Hebrews 1 shows us that Jesus Christ is the superior and supreme Son of God, the King and Lord of all creation. His humiliation leads directly to his exaltation as he receives a higher adoption as the already existent Son of God, magnified and loved by the Father, and given the reward as the exalted Son to sit at the right hand of God as King.

What is the position of Chalcedon on the Person of Christ? Add your evaluation if you wish.

Chalcedon was the definitive council and subsequent creed that proclaimed from the foundation of scriptural truth and evidence and by the counsel and influence of the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ was indeed two natures in one person. The two natures were one of the divine or the very nature of God or as Colossians 1: 19 says, “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him”. The infinite entered time and space, the invisible became visible, the transcendent became immanent. The second nature in the one person was that of a truly physical man, born into the world able to breath, bleed and die, so that he could identify with us, be humiliated for us and finally exalted before us.

The God-man existed eternally as the second person of the Trinity, but only entered into time and space when the fullness of time had come, so that he could accomplish his eternal purpose of salvation for his elect brethren. He suffered a humiliation in life, which consisted of restraining his rightful powers within this singular person, the humbling of himself taking on the role as servant, the suffering of his temptations and eventual death on the cross. Finally he was humiliated by experiencing a death that that removed him from that perfect communion with God the Father.

The glorious nature of his exaltation however is what lies before us as we see his resurrection, ascension, placement at the right hand of God the Father and power to judge the living and the dead. In the God-man’s exaltation we have the promises of redemption and reconciliation laid before us in the promise of eternal life as adopted sons and daughters and brethren to our Lord Jesus Christ. All those that are in Christ have this promise applied to them and can rest in the righteousness of the God-man, who can both fully indentify with their suffering and fully satisfy the divine justice of God.

Discuss: after the Fall, man remains the image of God.

In the creation of man God did not impute a substance of righteousness into his creation, nor was man created with the capacity not to sin, but to choose between an ethical obedience to his creator or a marred disobedience to the one that breathed life into his nostrils. Therefore, even after the fall and man has been ethically and morally corrupted by sin, he is not totally corrupt through and through because he still bears the glorious image of God his creator.
Genesis 5: 1 says, “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God” but there is no substantive righteousness given there, only the image of the immutable God the creator. When the fall of man occurs there is no account of a substantive change with Adam and Eve but a moral implication of withheld blessing and no longer withheld cursing upon them both because of the choice they made to disobey God’s command not to eat of the fruit.

1 Corinthians 11: 7 says of man’s creation that “he is the image and glory of God”, and there is no scripture that points to this image being removed from man. There is a corruption, pollution and eventual carnal death as a result of the curse, but the fingerprint, the breath of life and the image of God are still present within the created glory of man. This cannot be removed from man and is eventually restored, recreated and redeemed by the life giving Spirit for those elect that are promised the blessing of eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ.

James 1: 18 says, “He chose to give us birth through the word and truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created”. Here again we see that much like a child who has disobeyed his parents does not lose the image that he bears as a child of his mother and father, but has made a moral choice to disobey. Those that are in Christ are now like the child who obeys their father in word and truth, so that they can properly bear the image of God as a first and most beautiful fruit of his creation. We recognize that all men subsequent to the fall continue to bear the image of God, albeit in a polluted way, but all those that are in Christ Jesus bear the image of God as it is meant to be and will one day bear that image in Heaven fully as it is meant to be.

A reason to hope

Assignment:
This is a major research paper, and should reflect a solid amount of scholarly exploration of any theological interest of your choice, within the ST 2 topics (such as image of God, sin, person and work of Christ, etc.). Your reference points should be what Scripture says and the Reformed Confessions, on the one hand, and what is being affirmed today, on the other. Plenty of critical engagement with theologians on your topic is expected. Though you may choose to focus mainly on 1-2 figures or books, be sure to bring in plenty of other scholarly voices to enrich the discussion. The paper must have a clear central argument (thesis statement), which you argue throughout by presenting evidence in a logical development.

Regulative Principle of Worship

Assignment:
A response paper of 6-7 pages on the topic of student presentations (“God’s revelation defines Christian worship as it does Christian doctrine” – pro and con).

The goal of the response paper is for the student to interact critically with the primary source material. The student must consider carefully and fairly both sides of a debated issue before coming to a conclusion. The response paper must include footnotes and a brief bibliography.

Discuss Murray’s view of the import of baptism.

Baptism is important to the family of God because it is to be our initiation into this family. God communicates this familial relationship through his covenant promises and covenant blessings. Baptism is the sign and seal of being engrafted into the covenant relationship with Jesus Christ, just as Abraham and his descendants were engrafted into the covenant relationship with Yahweh by circumcision.

When God gave this promise to Abraham, he sealed it with a sign of shed blood which symbolized the cutting off of sin and thus making one pure. The New Covenant realization of that purity is found in the washing away of sin by baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28: 19). Because the former sign pointed to Christ on the cross and the new sign points us back to the promise given to Abraham to “increase your numbers” (Gen 17: 2), we are able to see that this is a more perfect sign. The sign of baptism breaks open the watershed event that is the cleansing of God’s people by offering it to more than just Jewish males, but now to the woman and to the Gentile. This makes baptism vital to the modern church as she seeks to bring the message of salvation to the world.

It is that message of salvation that baptism conveys in the seemingly simple sign of washing. This is a symbol of God’s mercy, his act of propitiation that makes an unclean, unrighteous people the sons and daughters of the living God. The importance of baptism is the gospel message it conveys to us so clearly that our sins are covered and Christ’s righteousness is placed upon us. This is the nature of union with Christ, that we are in him and he is in us.

Baptism is the sign and seal of this covenant promise for salvation in Christ alone. The importance of that comes into even clearer focus as we realize that in God’s keeping of his covenant promises there is no guarantee of covenant blessing. This blessing is only for those that have been called out before the foundations of the world to bear the name of Jesus Christ on their hearts. For those individuals their baptism is a constant reminder of their being set apart from the world, that their baptism was made effectual by faith alone and by their enjoyment of God’s covenant blessings. However, for those that do not receive their baptism by faith they are reaping the grave consequences of God’s covenant cursing. This is why baptism is so important and why teaching children and adults the reality of God’s promises as realized in this sign and seal thereof upon their heart is vital to their souls.