ACBC Theology Exam 13 - Substitutionary Atonement

00:00:00.000 | class tonight. I hope that you're doing well and glad that you could make it to Intermediate

00:00:05.840 | Biblical Counseling. This is, I believe, session number 13, and we're looking at Theology exam

00:00:12.640 | number 13 tonight, and I think we're going to be in for a very encouraging study tonight.

00:00:18.960 | We're in the section of our essays where we're dealing with the doctrine of Christ, Christology,

00:00:24.960 | and so what that means is we're writing our essays on our favorite topic, which is the person of

00:00:31.280 | Jesus Christ, and if you're a Christian who loves Christ, then obviously we love to read about

00:00:37.680 | Christ, hear about Christ, and learn about Christ, and we get to write some essays here about Christ,

00:00:45.120 | and so I think we're going to be in for a good study tonight, and so thanks for joining us,

00:00:51.920 | and hope you had a great week, and hope you're working your way through the essays and the

00:00:57.040 | studies, and that this material has been useful for you. Just as a word of devotion for tonight,

00:01:05.360 | I want to start off our class by looking at a section of Scripture that is packed with meaning.

00:01:13.520 | I'm just going to pull out one devotional thought from Matthew 3, verses 13 to 15,

00:01:20.800 | and just introducing the whole concept of substitution. Theology exam number 13 is

00:01:28.720 | dealing with the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, and so the concept of substitution,

00:01:36.640 | one person standing in place of another, is going to be the simple concept that we're going to

00:01:43.920 | be looking at for an hour in this webinar, and also that you're going to be thinking about

00:01:49.920 | and writing about in your essay in the week to come, and it's a simple concept, a beautiful

00:01:56.640 | concept. It's repeated time and time again in the Scripture, the concept of substitution,

00:02:03.120 | one man standing in place of another, and that is, as we'll see, the essence of the gospel,

00:02:12.960 | and this was just, I think, a number of years ago. I did some reading on this topic,

00:02:20.400 | on this particular passage from Matthew 3, verses 13 to 15, where you have the baptism of Jesus,

00:02:28.240 | and it says in verse 13 that Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by

00:02:34.880 | him. John would have prevented him saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"

00:02:41.200 | But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all

00:02:46.160 | righteousness." Then he consented. So, here we are at the beginning of Jesus's public ministry.

00:02:54.560 | John the Baptist has been preaching a message of repentance. John the Baptist, as you know,

00:03:02.320 | has come to prepare the way for the Messiah, and his message was just simple and clear and

00:03:11.360 | a very hard message. It was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,"

00:03:17.280 | and so John's message was very simple. You all are sinners, and you need to repent. He preached

00:03:26.400 | baptism of repentance, so he was calling sinners to repent and confess their sins. Then he would

00:03:33.840 | baptize them in the Jordan as a public demonstration of their contrition. What a person was saying

00:03:42.880 | when they were baptized by John in the Jordan was essentially, "I'm a sinner, and I need forgiveness,

00:03:52.240 | and I need repentance." They were confessing their sins as they were being baptized

00:03:59.360 | by John. So, John had this very hard message, "Repent." He had no patience for the religious

00:04:13.120 | sort of virtuosity, this exterior religion that was practiced in Israel in that day.

00:04:22.720 | He even preached to the Pharisees, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the

00:04:29.280 | wrath that is to come?" He went to the religious leaders of his day, and he basically called them,

00:04:34.640 | "You bunch of snakes, you need to repent, and you need to bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

00:04:40.400 | Don't just tell me that you're repentant. Show in your actual life that you have turned from your

00:04:46.480 | sin and turned to the Lord." So, John was just preaching this hard message. And so, it was just

00:04:54.880 | a very simple picture of being baptized by John. You were saying, "I am a sinner, and I need

00:05:04.000 | to repent." And so, here is this amazing scene in Matthew 3 verse 13 as the context

00:05:13.200 | where it says that Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him.

00:05:21.040 | That's really just a stunning scene. Why is that? You remember that John knew who Jesus was,

00:05:33.760 | that Jesus was the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. Jesus was the Messiah,

00:05:39.360 | and John the Baptist knew all of that. And yet, here comes Jesus who needs no repentance,

00:05:45.920 | and he wants to be baptized by John. And John's looking at this, and it says in verse 14,

00:05:53.520 | "John would have prevented him." And you know why. John understood, "Jesus, you're not a sinner.

00:06:00.080 | You're the Lamb of God who's come to take away the sin of the world. You're the Messiah.

00:06:05.600 | You're the light. You don't need to stand in the place of a sinner." And he wanted to stop Jesus

00:06:14.880 | from being baptized. And then to carry the thought even further, he was protesting not only that

00:06:21.760 | Jesus would stand in the place of a sinner, but he was protesting that he would be standing in

00:06:29.040 | the place of a righteous man baptizing Jesus. And verse 14, John's basically saying, "The roles are

00:06:37.920 | reversed here. I need to be baptized by you. I'm the sinner, Jesus. I need to be in the place of

00:06:46.000 | sinners. You're the righteous man. You need to be in the place of a righteous man. We have our roles

00:06:54.320 | reversed." He says, "Do you come to me?" And Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus

00:07:02.080 | it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. Now, there's been

00:07:06.160 | pages and pages of reflection on this simple scene of why was Jesus baptized and what is

00:07:14.240 | the significance of all of that. And I just want to pull out a devotional thought for us tonight

00:07:19.680 | as we consider this whole concept of substitution. And my devotional thought is simply this, that

00:07:26.800 | Jesus began his earthly ministry the same way he ended it, and that is he stood in the place of

00:07:36.320 | a sinner even though he had no sin. That was why Jesus came. He came to be a substitute for sin

00:07:49.200 | and to stand in the sinner's place. And what results from Jesus standing in the sinner's

00:07:58.080 | place is that you have this role reversal, which is seen in, you know, the theme is already here.

00:08:05.920 | It's going to come to full crescendo and climax at the end of the gospel records, but you begin to

00:08:11.280 | see the theme here of because Jesus says, "I'm going to stand in the place of a sinner," then

00:08:18.640 | John is saying, "Why are the roles reversed? Why am I not in the place of the sinner? Why am I in

00:08:27.360 | the place of a righteous man?" Now, you get the concept here. This is initial, the beginning of

00:08:36.560 | Christ's ministry. This isn't in full clarity what we're going to see in the fullness of Christ's

00:08:42.000 | life, death, and resurrection, but you begin to see the themes start to emerge, and they will come to

00:08:50.560 | a full climax at the cross of Calvary where Jesus will, at the cross, stand in the place of a sinner.

00:08:59.120 | He will be the perfect substitute for sin. He will take our penalty. He will die our death.

00:09:07.600 | He will take our curse. He will take the wrath of God that a sinner deserves, and he will stand

00:09:17.440 | in the place of a sinner so that the sinner who trusts in Jesus for salvation will stand

00:09:27.120 | in the place of a righteous man. And you and I look at the cross, and we are saying a similar

00:09:35.360 | thing that John said at Jesus' baptism, which is, "Jesus, what are you doing in the place of a sinner

00:09:42.240 | at the cross? And Jesus, what am I doing in the place of a righteous man that you have died my

00:09:49.600 | death, and I now live your life? You have taken my curse, and I now receive your blessing. You,

00:09:59.040 | the Son of God, were forsaken by the Father so that I, as a child of wrath, would be accepted

00:10:07.920 | by the Father." The role reversal of the gospel is just stunning, and yet that is the essence

00:10:15.600 | of Christianity. That is the good news that we proclaim is not just Christian ethics,

00:10:22.640 | not just Christian morals, not just Christian behavior, but we proclaim Christ as substitute.

00:10:29.360 | He is the perfect substitute who stood in our place so that we would receive all of the blessings

00:10:38.640 | that he earned through his perfect life and his obedience to the law. And I just want to

00:10:46.240 | encourage you as counselors in training that that is not just a theological truth that we

00:10:53.360 | tuck away, and we write an essay about, and then we kind of put that essay aside, and we

00:10:58.560 | never see it again. If you're going to minister to people who are struggling with sin,

00:11:05.040 | you are going to need to learn to teach them about Jesus and his saving work on the cross.

00:11:12.960 | You have good news to tell to those who are struggling with sin, to those who are

00:11:18.880 | weak in their faith, to those who are downcast and downhearted because of all of the issues of life.

00:11:27.840 | You and I have encouraging news to give to both those who are strong in faith, those who are weak

00:11:35.680 | in faith, and we have good news. We have the gospel to proclaim even when our counselee is

00:11:41.440 | an unbeliever, even when we realize that they've never placed their trust in Jesus Christ. We have

00:11:47.440 | the gospel, the good news, the evangelion to proclaim to our counselees, and I just hope that

00:11:57.040 | that truth will shape your counseling ministry, that you will be, as we'll discuss tonight, you

00:12:03.520 | will be constantly relating the message of your counseling back to Jesus and Jesus Christ and him

00:12:13.120 | crucified, back to his work on the cross and all that he accomplished for us, and that you will

00:12:20.480 | learn to minister that truth to marriages who are in need of transformation, to fellow saints

00:12:30.880 | who are struggling with sin, to those who have lost hope. We want to minister the message of

00:12:37.200 | the cross, and back to our defense of biblical counseling, only biblical counseling can minister

00:12:45.600 | that message. It's those counselors who are most committed to the Scripture who will be the most

00:12:52.240 | Christ-centered and cross-centered, gospel-centered in their message and their counseling ministry,

00:13:01.040 | so I hope that encourages you as we prime the pump to look at the great doctrine of substitutionary

00:13:07.440 | atonement tonight. Let me pray for us, and we'll dive into our study tonight. Father, thank you

00:13:13.760 | for Christ, and thank you for the message of Jesus and him crucified. We thank you for our perfect

00:13:20.480 | substitute. We thank you that Jesus obeyed the law perfectly and earned the blessings of the law,

00:13:29.200 | and at the cross, he stood in the sinner's place, that though he had earned the law's full blessing,

00:13:39.600 | that he took the full cursing of the law of God so that those who had only sinned against you

00:13:46.800 | and who had only rebelled against your law would receive the full blessings

00:13:51.440 | of his obedience. We thank you for this amazing role reversal that has taken place,

00:13:59.440 | that we as sinners stand in the place of a righteous man while Christ, the righteous man,

00:14:07.840 | stood in the place of a sinner. We pray that this doctrine of substitution, the full atonement

00:14:15.920 | that's been made on our behalf, would shape our lives, that would shape our ministry, and that it

00:14:23.520 | would be an essential component of the content that we communicate to our counselees, that we

00:14:31.760 | believe in Jesus Christ and him crucified, and therefore we have hope for life and we have hope for

00:14:37.760 | those who are struggling under the weight of sin. Thank you for my brothers and sisters tonight who

00:14:42.560 | are tuning in and desiring to hear your word and to learn from your word, and bless each one,

00:14:48.720 | we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, well we're going to dive right into theology exam number

00:14:58.320 | 13, and the exam question is provide an explanation of and the biblical basis for

00:15:06.560 | the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. That's my comment there. Note the concept of substitution

00:15:13.760 | is there. Explaining the implications of this doctrine for human guilt over sin and relate

00:15:23.040 | your understanding of this to the concept of false guilt. So a very important essay question,

00:15:32.880 | and I trust that this will be a rich study for each of you. You're going to have to

00:15:41.440 | address this exam in two parts. There is, first of all, the explanation of the doctrine of

00:15:48.880 | substitutionary atonement, and then secondly, you will want to deal with the issue of guilt

00:15:56.720 | under the heading of objective guilt and subjective guilt. You'll also want to deal

00:16:04.160 | with the concept of false guilt, and we'll do some overview of those topics tonight,

00:16:11.280 | and so this is a wonderful study, and I hope this will be a blessing and encouragement to you.

00:16:19.680 | So on your handout, I have some resources that I've put into your hands. Paul N's Moody Handbook

00:16:31.760 | of Theology has an excellent section on the atonement and the whole concept of substitution.

00:16:37.520 | He goes into great detail on the grammar, the Greek grammar in the New Testament that deals

00:16:45.200 | with the concept of substitution, and so that is a very good read and resource for you.

00:16:53.040 | I also want to highlight that Paul N's in that book has a good section on the false theories

00:17:02.880 | of atonement that you'll want to be familiar with to contrast with the biblical view of atonement,

00:17:10.640 | and we'll do a little bit of work on that tonight. I won't be able to get to all of the false

00:17:17.600 | views on atonement, but if you want more on that, you can read Paul N's Moody Handbook of Theology.

00:17:23.840 | Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology is excellent on that topic as well,

00:17:28.960 | and Charles Ryrie's Basic Theology is very good on this topic. I think I would recommend reading

00:17:35.760 | N's and Ryrie first and then going to Grudem after that. You'll find a lot of overlap in those

00:17:43.920 | resources, but each of those works are excellent, and I think it'll be helpful to you to nail down

00:17:50.800 | this whole doctrine of substitutionary atonement. And then on false guilt, we have Jay Adams,

00:17:58.480 | A Theology of Christian Counseling, pages 144 to 146. You may need to purchase the whole book to

00:18:08.000 | get those three pages. I don't know any easier way to do that, but I guarantee you that if you

00:18:16.480 | do purchase that book, that the rest of the book is worth the price of admission, so you won't be

00:18:20.720 | wasting any money, but those three pages from A Theology of Christian Counseling really go into

00:18:27.440 | this whole concept of false guilt. Jay Adams is writing in order to address the issue of Freud

00:18:37.760 | and how Freud dealt with the issue of false guilt. Freud basically said that false guilt is guilty

00:18:45.600 | feelings that aren't rooted in any objective truth. It's just the battle between the ego,

00:18:52.240 | the id, and the superego. And so, psychotherapy according to Freud was working out all of these

00:18:59.920 | guilty feelings that weren't rooted in objective truth. And so, Adams is responding to that whole

00:19:08.720 | concept of the Freudian concept of false guilt and outlining a biblical view of guilt that is

00:19:16.960 | really rooted in objective guilt that we believe that we feel guilty because we are guilty.

00:19:25.280 | There is real actual guilt and violation of the law of God that results in guilty feelings. So,

00:19:34.640 | the contrast between the Freudian view of guilt is that we as sinners have actually

00:19:42.160 | transgressed the law of God, and therefore, we feel guilty. So, Adams talks about the biblical

00:19:50.080 | view of dealing with guilt is we deal with subjective guilty feelings by dealing with the

00:19:58.800 | objective guilt problem where Freud just said you have these guilty feelings. They're not

00:20:06.960 | really rooted in anything. So, the answer is you talk about them in psychotherapy,

00:20:11.520 | and that can go on for years, and there's no real guarantee that psychotherapy will actually

00:20:17.920 | make substantive change in your life. But it was a model that Freud espoused and promoted.

00:20:30.240 | So, just realize Adams is responding to that, and he has good three pages there in the Theology of

00:20:37.440 | Christian Counseling. So, I would feel guilty recommending that to you to get the entire book

00:20:45.600 | for three pages of reading material, but my guilty feelings are not rooted in objective guilt. I

00:20:53.760 | think you'll be well-served to get the entire book, and that entire book is a great resource

00:21:00.480 | for anyone who's training to be a biblical counselor. And then I want to recommend Robert

00:21:04.800 | Jones's work, I Just Can't Forgive Myself. He has a journal article version of this material,

00:21:12.640 | A Biblical Alternative to Self-Forgiveness, and then Jones also has a booklet that's available.

00:21:19.920 | I think it's $2 on Amazon, or you can go to biblicalcounselingbooks.com and get a copy.

00:21:26.720 | And I think the title of that booklet is Forgiveness, I Just Can't Forgive Myself.

00:21:35.920 | So, either the journal article or the booklet will be extremely helpful to you

00:21:43.120 | in really expanding this whole idea of false guilt. This idea that counselees will say,

00:21:51.200 | "I know that God has forgiven me for my sin, but I just can't forgive myself."

00:21:57.440 | How do you deal with that in a counseling session? And Jones walks you through some possible

00:22:04.880 | options as to what is happening in the counseling room and how you can address those issues. And

00:22:11.280 | if I have time tonight, I'll be able to touch on that briefly, but I really encourage you to get

00:22:20.880 | those resources in relation to the issue of false guilt. It's probably too much material to

00:22:27.680 | incorporate in your essay, but it is a very good foundation to biblical counseling ministry,

00:22:34.720 | and you'll find it very helpful in future ministry opportunities.

00:22:39.840 | So, think through those resources, and I hope that's a helpful introduction to you.

00:22:46.160 | So, let's move to your handout on page number two. We're introducing the doctrine of substitutionary

00:22:55.360 | atonement and just some general kind of primer type of quotes to stir up your thinking on the cross.

00:23:04.800 | John Stott has written that "the cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love

00:23:11.680 | is kindled, but we have to get near enough to it for sparks to fall on us." I think what Stott's

00:23:19.520 | saying there is that you would do well to spend much time studying the cross of the Lord Jesus

00:23:29.920 | Christ. I highly recommend Stott's book, The Cross of Christ. That is a must read. I would rank that

00:23:37.280 | up with J.I. Packer's Knowing God as one of the top 10 or top 20 books that every Christian should

00:23:44.480 | have. The cross of Christ, where he goes into the meaning of the cross and all the implications of

00:23:53.040 | Christ's death on our behalf for the Christian life. It's a very foundational work and one that

00:24:00.000 | will help you see and appreciate the love of Christ. I love what Spurgeon said, "Oh give me

00:24:07.840 | the story of the cross, the veritable story. Yes, let my eyes behold the wounds of Jesus as I stand

00:24:14.800 | and bow before the crucified." Just this wonderful language. "Here I see atonement completed,

00:24:23.360 | satisfaction rendered, justice honored, grace expounded, love struggling, bleeding, contending,

00:24:31.040 | conquering. In the actual death of Christ upon the cross, I see the safety of his elect whom

00:24:38.080 | he has purchased with his precious blood." Just another wonderful perspective that calls us to

00:24:46.320 | consider the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we see that the cross is at the center of biblical

00:24:55.200 | Christianity and the implication should be the cross should be at the center of our counseling

00:25:02.160 | ministry. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 3 says, "For I deliver to you as a first importance what I also

00:25:08.640 | received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was

00:25:13.200 | buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures." So as it has well

00:25:20.160 | been said, there are many things that are important but there are only a few things that can be

00:25:26.080 | categorized as being of first importance and what is the first importance in the church and in our

00:25:35.120 | lives ought to be the essential truths of the gospel. Christ died for our sins in accordance

00:25:42.320 | with the scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

00:25:47.440 | Now at the risk of overstating the obvious, I mean that is Christianity is the belief in Jesus

00:25:53.680 | Christ and him crucified and this is the simple focus that we want our counselors to embrace and

00:26:01.360 | to communicate to counselees and you have to ask the question if it's so simple then why doesn't

00:26:07.840 | everyone do it? Why doesn't everyone counsel and tell people of how their problem relates to the

00:26:16.000 | message of Jesus Christ and him crucified and when you survey the scene that's going on in the

00:26:21.680 | counseling world today, you realize that this is actually a lot more rare than you might first

00:26:28.880 | think. Secular counselors don't minister Jesus Christ and him crucified. Integrationist counselors,

00:26:36.000 | there's a wide range of Christian integrationists but that is not the focus or the center of

00:26:41.600 | their message to counselees. It's really the distinction of biblical counseling that we

00:26:48.240 | minister Jesus Christ and him crucified and then we relate every counseling issue back to

00:26:53.840 | the cross. I have hope when I counsel someone dealing with an anger problem

00:26:58.400 | because if that person is a believer then Jesus died to save that person from their sins

00:27:06.640 | and not only to save that person from the penalty of sin but also from the power of sin

00:27:15.040 | and so I can reason from the counseling issue which is anger to the cross and give that believer

00:27:22.320 | hope and encouragement that because Jesus died to save you from the power of sin you can make

00:27:28.720 | progress and you can grow and overcome this anger issue. You would hope and think that that kind of

00:27:35.840 | counseling would be going on all the time but you realize that's just not the case in the counseling

00:27:41.680 | world and so because the cross is at the center of biblical Christianity, we want it to be at the

00:27:47.840 | center of our biblical counseling ministries. If you look at your handout in 1 Corinthians 2 verse

00:27:54.880 | 2, Paul makes this amazing statement, "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus

00:28:01.600 | Christ and him crucified." So that's a pretty good counseling conviction. I have determined my heart

00:28:11.520 | to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. You say, "Then why are we in training

00:28:18.160 | for biblical counseling? Why are we dealing? Why are we studying the topics of anger and anxiety

00:28:24.160 | and depression and conflict resolution?" Well, it's not so that you can think less of Jesus Christ

00:28:30.240 | and him crucified. It's so that you can relate all of those counseling issues and as Spurgeon said,

00:28:37.360 | you take any issue in life and you make a beeline to the cross. It's dealing with

00:28:43.520 | two believers who are in conflict with one another and taking them to the foot of the cross

00:28:50.400 | where they can both behold Jesus Christ and him crucified and see that their conflict really needs

00:28:57.440 | to be resolved with grace being extended to both parties because Christ has given so much grace

00:29:05.680 | to us. So when Paul says, "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him

00:29:10.480 | crucified," he's not saying I don't study other issues. He's saying every topic that I study,

00:29:16.880 | I relate it to the message of the cross and the fundamental truths of the gospel.

00:29:23.760 | This is how D. A. Carson has explained it. He said, "Focus on Christ crucified." That is what

00:29:29.200 | Paul did. "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him

00:29:33.840 | crucified." This does not mean that this was a new departure for Paul, still less that Paul

00:29:40.080 | was devoted to blissful ignorance of anything and everything other than the cross. No, what he means

00:29:46.080 | is that all that he does and teaches is tied to the cross. He cannot long talk about Christian joy

00:29:52.640 | or Christian ethics or Christian fellowship or the Christian doctrine of God or anything else

00:29:59.680 | without finally tying it to the cross. Paul is gospel-centered. He is Christ-centered. I love

00:30:07.440 | that language of tying everything to the cross. Friends, tie your counseling to the cross,

00:30:19.520 | and God will use and bless your ministry greatly. The Spirit loves to exalt the person of Christ,

00:30:27.920 | and the Spirit especially loves to exalt the message of Jesus Christ and him crucified because

00:30:35.040 | that is the central theme of all of Scripture. And so learn to tell people of the finished work

00:30:42.880 | of Jesus Christ on their behalf. There's so many counseling scenarios that we could draw up and

00:30:49.280 | just relate back to the cross, but one comes to mind is that when you're counseling someone who's

00:30:55.120 | going through a physical illness, a chronic illness, or just some form of suffering in a

00:31:04.640 | season of disappointment, to minister the message of the cross is one of the most powerful things

00:31:11.680 | that you can do for that person. Just taking them to Calvary, assuring them of the love of Christ,

00:31:17.200 | telling them of the height and the length and the breadth and the depth of Christ's love for each

00:31:23.440 | believer, and then showing them that the greatest demonstration of Christ's love for them is not in

00:31:31.040 | the circumstances that they're facing. It's not in whether their preferences are fulfilled. It is in

00:31:38.320 | the final work of Jesus on the cross. That is the greatest demonstration and proof of Christ's love

00:31:44.640 | for every believer. So learning to minister that to believers is one of the greatest things that a

00:31:52.640 | counselor can do. Let me move to page three, and I'll cover some of this quickly, but letter b would

00:32:00.800 | be the truth that the cross is a demonstration of the attributes of God. You have here the holiness

00:32:08.640 | of God, the righteousness of God, the love of God, the wrath of God, the wisdom of God, the sovereignty

00:32:14.880 | of God. All of these attributes are put on full display at the cross of Calvary where Jesus died

00:32:22.000 | for our sins. I love the language of Eric Raymond who wrote this, "Stand with me in the shadow of

00:32:27.440 | the cross and see God's attributes perfectly illuminated, tremble at his holiness and the

00:32:34.000 | demands of his sacrifice. Be convicted and comforted by the unfathomable love that demanded

00:32:40.160 | and accomplished Calvary. Feel your knees knock as you behold the gasping sun drink dry the eternal

00:32:46.560 | vat of condemnation that was due you as he bears all of the burden of divine righteousness. Stand

00:32:53.840 | in the shadow of the cross to learn of God for it is here where the son of God was set for to amplify

00:33:01.280 | and supremely demonstrate all of the divine perfections. Stand here and fall in love with

00:33:08.800 | this dangerously lovely God and his supremely beautiful son. Stand here and marvel, stand here

00:33:17.680 | and worship, stand here and don't move for you are right where God wants you." I just love that idea

00:33:26.320 | of standing in the shadow of the cross to learn of God. It says, "We stand in the shadow of the cross

00:33:34.480 | and behold Jesus and him crucified that we behold the holiness of God." This is how much God hates

00:33:40.880 | sin. We see God's holy wrath and judgment upon sin. It says, "We behold the wondrous cross upon

00:33:51.840 | which the prince of glory died that we behold the righteousness of God." The righteousness that is

00:33:59.040 | given to the sinner by grace alone through faith alone. A righteousness that's not earned

00:34:04.400 | through works of the law but a righteousness that is given by grace through faith. We behold the

00:34:12.960 | love of God as we behold the cross. That Jesus loved us even when we were his enemies and he

00:34:20.960 | laid down his life for us in order to redeem us and to bring us to himself and to reconcile us to

00:34:29.120 | God the Father. We behold the wisdom of God that makes foolish the wisdom of man. We behold the

00:34:39.520 | sovereignty of God that this is God's salvation plan that he has determined before the foundation

00:34:45.440 | of the world and that he has unfolded through the generations of time to culminate in the sacrifice

00:34:53.680 | of the Son of God at the cross of Calvary. It's as we stand in the shadow of the cross that we learn

00:35:02.000 | of the attributes of God. That the attributes of God are not to be learned only in abstraction or

00:35:10.720 | in principle but we see each of these attributes put on display as the Son of God laid down his

00:35:20.320 | life at Calvary. And so as C.H. Spurgeon has well said, "Abide hard by the cross and search the

00:35:29.120 | mystery of his wounds." All of that to say as we move to the next page of your handout on page four

00:35:37.760 | that I really hope and believe that the writing of this essay ought to be a life-changing experience

00:35:46.480 | for all of us. Any contemplation of the cross of Jesus Christ, the perfect substitute,

00:35:53.920 | the perfect Lamb of God, ought to drive us to worship and to be lost in wonder, love, and praise

00:36:04.400 | at the greatness of who Jesus is. It ought to stir us to love one another for if Jesus has loved us

00:36:11.840 | in this way and so we ought also to love one another and it ought to assure us of the greatness

00:36:21.040 | of Christ's love for us. And I just pray that that'll be your experience as you study these

00:36:25.280 | things and as you write these essays that it'll be more than an intellectual experience but that

00:36:32.560 | it will be a devotional exercise in abiding hard by the cross and allowing the greatness of Christ's

00:36:43.520 | love to encourage and to sanctify you. As we move to page four and we're looking here at the

00:36:51.600 | doctrine of substitutionary atonement and we'll just break that up in terms of its concepts

00:37:00.560 | and make it as simple as we can. Just beginning here with that first word, substitution,

00:37:07.600 | the concept of substitution, which simply means that Christ died in the place of sinners,

00:37:17.120 | that Jesus took our place at Calvary. This is the simple message of the gospel and yet we never

00:37:28.160 | move on from it that Jesus Christ is our perfect substitute. And this concept of substitution

00:37:36.880 | is made very clear throughout both Old Testament and New Testament scriptures and I want to spend

00:37:44.080 | a little bit of time on that just to show you that it's not that when Jesus died on the cross

00:37:49.920 | in the gospel records this was the first time we saw the concept of substitution

00:37:54.480 | in the Bible. That's not true at all. We see this concept of substitution repeated

00:38:01.360 | throughout all of Old Testament history and then into New Testament history is repeated and

00:38:08.800 | emphasized in so many ways in so many different places. Charles Ryrie has defined it this way,

00:38:17.440 | "Substitutionary or vicarious atonement simply means that Christ suffered as a substitute for us.

00:38:24.800 | That is, instead of us, result in the advantage to us of paying for our sins." And just looking at

00:38:34.560 | the clear scriptures which speak of this concept of substitution, Isaiah 53 verse 4,

00:38:43.440 | "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken,

00:38:49.440 | smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for

00:38:56.320 | our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his stripes we are

00:39:04.560 | healed." Just the clear language there articulating the concept of substitution, Jesus

00:39:14.480 | standing in our place. Verse 10 says, "Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

00:39:20.480 | He has put him to grief when his soul makes an offering for guilt. He shall see his offspring.

00:39:27.600 | He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish

00:39:33.360 | of his soul he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

00:39:38.880 | make many to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities."

00:39:46.480 | So again, the concept of substitution being closely tied to this idea of role reversal.

00:39:54.800 | That he is going to take our iniquities. He is going to take our griefs. He is going to be

00:40:01.200 | crushed for our sins. And the result is that many will be made righteous. Many who have sinned and

00:40:10.160 | gone astray will receive righteousness. This of course is more clearly articulated by the Apostle

00:40:19.840 | Paul in the epistle to the Romans. And yet even here in the Old Testament, you begin to see

00:40:26.400 | the concept of substitution being articulated and the idea of a righteousness that we have not earned

00:40:35.360 | being given to those who do not deserve it. Moving to the New Testament, we have

00:40:43.600 | among many passages, 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 24, which says, "He himself, that is Christ,

00:40:50.880 | bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

00:40:57.680 | By his wounds you have been healed." So many elements of this. Jesus dies our death. We take

00:41:10.480 | his life. Jesus takes our curse. We receive his blessing. Jesus takes our sins. We receive his

00:41:18.160 | righteousness. Here in verse 24, you have, "He is wounded so that we receive healing."

00:41:26.000 | So many different aspects of the wondrous grace of God in this respect.

00:41:33.600 | We point out the grammar. I mentioned Paul Enns has some good material there

00:41:38.880 | looking at the grammar of the New Testament, the preposition ante,

00:41:44.400 | meaning instead of, as Ryrie explains, the root meaning of this preposition, which occurs

00:41:50.480 | 22 times in the New Testament, is face-to-face opposite as two objects placed over against each

00:41:57.840 | other and one being taken instead of the other as in an exchange. So you can call it a role reversal.

00:42:06.000 | You can call it an exchange. It's the idea of two objects being placed over against each other.

00:42:15.200 | The preposition ante, Ryrie says, supports substitution. We see this preposition used in

00:42:25.520 | Luke 11, verse 11, where Jesus says, "What father among you, if his son asked for a fish, will

00:42:32.320 | instead ante of a fish give him a serpent?" So in that passage, the two objects being exchanged

00:42:41.280 | are a fish and a serpent, one being exchanged in place of another.

00:42:50.000 | But we see that same preposition being used by Jesus to describe his redeeming work

00:42:56.240 | on the cross. Matthew 20, verse 28, "Even as the Son of Man came not

00:43:00.080 | to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

00:43:07.040 | So Jesus stands in the place of many as he dies on the cross for our sins. 1 Timothy 2,

00:43:19.920 | verse 6, "Who gave himself as a ransom," using that same preposition, "ante lutron,"

00:43:26.240 | a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. So that preposition in the

00:43:35.040 | Greek supports the language of substitution. And then you have the preposition "who pair"

00:43:40.320 | with the meaning "for the sake of" or "on behalf of." Romans 5, verse 6, "For while we were still

00:43:48.720 | weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. But God shows his love for us that

00:43:54.080 | while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Again, supporting the idea of substitution.

00:44:04.800 | These quotes aren't on your handout, but I couldn't resist sharing them with you because

00:44:12.400 | they're so helpful. John Gill, who was an expositor of the days of old, he writes,

00:44:20.400 | "Becoming the surety of his people, he was made under the law, stood in their place,

00:44:24.720 | and having the sins of them all imputed to him, the law finding them on him,

00:44:30.560 | charges him with them and curses him for them. The curse of God in vindicating his righteous law was

00:44:39.280 | on Christ when he hung on the cross, for he was made a curse not for himself or for any sins of

00:44:45.520 | his own, but for us in our stead, for our sins, and to make atonement for them." And John Stott

00:44:56.000 | in his work, The Cross of Christ, has said this, "The concept of substitution may be said then to

00:45:02.080 | lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself

00:45:08.640 | for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man puts himself

00:45:17.280 | where only God deserves to be. God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man

00:45:24.960 | deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone. God accepts penalties which

00:45:32.320 | belong to man alone." That is amazing grace. How sweet the sound. And I hope you will celebrate

00:45:41.040 | that this week and also in your counseling ministry. Our counselees need to hear this.

00:45:49.920 | They need to hear that Christ stood in their place for their sin. It should not be assumed.

00:45:57.600 | It should not be something that you touch on once and then you never come back to again.

00:46:03.440 | It is a truth that we ought to teach our counselees and then come back to and enrich

00:46:12.400 | and deepen their understanding of the cross. And that is what makes for a powerful counseling

00:46:20.800 | ministry. So moving on then from the broader concept of substitution,

00:46:27.120 | letter B, you have the doctrine of penal substitution.

00:46:31.520 | The doctrine of penal substitution. And that simply can be defined as Christ bore in our

00:46:39.600 | place the full penalty for sin. This is in the work, "Pierce for Our Transgressions,

00:46:48.560 | Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution." The authors write, "The doctrine of penal

00:46:53.920 | substitution states that God gave himself in the person of his son to suffer instead of us

00:47:00.960 | the death, punishment, and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin."

00:47:06.640 | And so this is the biblical teaching that the demands of the law needed to be satisfied,

00:47:15.760 | that there was a penalty for transgression of the law and the only man who ever fully kept God's law

00:47:23.040 | was the one who took the penalty of the law and he fulfilled the law's demands in full,

00:47:30.000 | allowing the law's blessings to be placed upon us. That is the doctrine of penal substitution,

00:47:39.360 | that Jesus fully satisfied the penalty for sin at the cross. Now that's a simple truth,

00:47:48.880 | but I want you to just contrast that with some false views of what happened at the cross. These

00:47:54.560 | are some false views of atonement that are explained in Paul Enz's work and also in Charles

00:48:02.000 | Ryrie's work. You'll find more detail on this, but just to give you a flavor of how you can go

00:48:09.280 | wrong on this doctrine, the false view would be number one, the ransom to Satan theory.

00:48:14.880 | This is the idea that Satan held people captive as a victor in war and so a ransom had to be paid

00:48:24.480 | in order to set people free. The ransom needed to be paid not to God, but to Satan.

00:48:30.560 | And so this false view is the idea that Jesus paid a ransom to Satan in order to free men

00:48:41.440 | from Satan's power. In response to this view, the biblical teaching is that the ransom

00:48:53.040 | was made to God, not to Satan. Satan did not have the power to free man. God alone had the power,

00:49:00.880 | and so this theory is false because it makes Satan the benefactor of Christ's death.

00:49:07.760 | A second false view would be the moral influence theory.

00:49:12.720 | This view taught that the death of Christ was not necessary as penal substitution,

00:49:23.120 | or rather Christ merely set a moral example to influence people to have a softened heart,

00:49:36.240 | and through the moving of people's emotions, they will be led to repentance,

00:49:42.800 | and therefore the death of Christ was not substitutionary in nature. It was merely

00:49:50.800 | a death that was meant to morally influence others and bring emotions that would lead them

00:49:58.480 | to repentance. Obviously, that is a false view of what happened at the cross. And then a third

00:50:06.160 | false view would be the example or martyr theory. This view, which is more liberal than the moral

00:50:13.360 | influence view, suggests that the death of Christ was unnecessary in atoning for sin.

00:50:18.960 | Christ was an example of obedience that was meant to inspire people to live as Christ

00:50:29.280 | lived, so there was no penal substitution that took place under this view. It was merely

00:50:37.040 | Jesus set a good example so that we would love as he loved.

00:50:43.120 | We want to articulate an understanding of the cross which emphasizes penal substitution. There

00:50:51.280 | was a penalty that needed to be paid because of sin. The wages of sin is death. There was

00:50:58.240 | the wrath of God that needed to be satisfied in order for men to be reconciled to a holy God,

00:51:06.480 | and so at the cross, a holy God unleashed his holy wrath on a holy sacrifice and Jesus made

00:51:17.360 | the full payment for sin at the cross and satisfied God's wrath in full. That is the

00:51:25.680 | doctrine of penal substitution. Very briefly, letter C, you may want to bring into your essay

00:51:33.600 | and your understanding of penal substitution just the Old Testament pictures of substitution,

00:51:41.280 | which are many. They're all over the Old Testament. You can go all the way back to

00:51:49.040 | Genesis and how God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin of an animal, and you see even in those very

00:52:00.480 | first pages of the book of Genesis, you have the concept, at the very least, of an animal being

00:52:08.800 | killed in order to cover man. That's not a full, clear explanation of substitution as we find in

00:52:19.280 | the New Testament, but you do see some initial echoes of that teaching even in the very beginning

00:52:24.800 | of the book of Genesis. You have in Exodus 12, you have the Passover, the lamb being slaughtered,

00:52:32.800 | the blood of the lamb being placed over the doorposts, allowing the wrath of God to pass over

00:52:40.480 | the Israelites' homes, and you have this idea that there was an innocent life that needed to

00:52:51.200 | be a substitute, that an innocent life needed to die in order for God's people to be redeemed.

00:53:00.000 | And then you have the Old Testament sacrificial system, Leviticus chapter 4, the sin offering.

00:53:06.000 | You have Leviticus chapter 16, the day of atonement. You have the blood of bulls and

00:53:13.280 | goats and lambs being slaughtered in order to be a picture of atonement and forgiveness of sin.

00:53:24.080 | Obviously, those bulls and goats could never fully take away sin, but they could only point forward

00:53:30.240 | to the perfect sacrifice that would come in God's time that would effectually pay for all of man's

00:53:38.880 | sin. But just think about living in the Old Testament and just celebrating the Passover and

00:53:43.840 | observing the sacrifices, and you have blood everywhere, you have animal sacrifices being

00:53:52.960 | offered on behalf of sinners, and it would have been hammered into your heart and into your mind

00:54:00.720 | that in order for atonement to be made for sin, in order for a sinner to live,

00:54:07.440 | that there must be one who takes the sinner's place. There must be an innocent life that is

00:54:15.760 | taken, and blood must be shed in order for the sinner to have life. And that would have been

00:54:24.160 | hammered into your heart and mind over generations of Old Testament history so that when Jesus

00:54:32.160 | comes in the fullness of New Testament revelation and John the Baptist proclaims, "Behold the Lamb

00:54:39.440 | of God who takes away the sin of the world." If you have all of this Old Testament language and

00:54:47.360 | picture of substitution having been hammered into your heart and mind, that statement would have

00:54:55.360 | landed with incredible power. That this is what all the Old Testament pointed forward to. This

00:55:04.880 | is the Lamb of God who fully takes away the sin of the world, and that statement, that proclamation

00:55:12.560 | by John, would have landed with great impact. That here is the perfect substitute that all

00:55:21.600 | Old Testament sacrifices could only point forward to and anticipate. So that leads us to letter D,

00:55:30.320 | and I believe this is, I think that's a typo at the bottom of page 5, but pretend that's a letter

00:55:37.040 | D, the result of substitution. And this is the good news, is that because Jesus is our substitute,

00:55:45.360 | that the wrath of God has been satisfied on our behalf. The word "propitiation" in the New

00:55:52.720 | Testament simply means "satisfaction." That is good news. God is satisfied with the work of Jesus

00:56:04.800 | on our behalf. This is why God the Father calls us to come to his throne of grace and calls us to

00:56:14.880 | come with confidence, because he's satisfied in the work of his Son. And I think what you're going

00:56:22.080 | to find in counseling is that in many believers' lives, they claim to not be Catholics. They claim

00:56:32.160 | to be Protestant and to believe in grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, the scriptures alone,

00:56:38.320 | the glory of God alone. They claim to believe in the biblical gospel, and they do. But functionally,

00:56:46.400 | on a practical level, there may be this idea that I have to do penance because of my sin,

00:56:56.400 | that I can't fully come into the holy presence of God through the work of Christ, that God

00:57:05.120 | looks on me with disfavor, or God is punishing me for my sins. You'll find that many counselees

00:57:12.160 | struggle with this whole idea of, "Yes, I know I have sinned, and so I have to do some form of

00:57:19.280 | penance in order to make it up to God." And that's where we as counselors need to minister

00:57:26.480 | the biblical gospel, that any believer in Christ has full access into the throne of God, because

00:57:34.400 | God is satisfied with the Son's sacrifice. So let me move to the last page here, and I will cover

00:57:41.120 | this briefly. What the essay question is asking you to do is to not only articulate an understanding

00:57:48.480 | of the cross and the concept of substitutionary atonement, which is this idea that Christ paid

00:57:58.240 | the penalty for our sins. It wasn't just that He was a moral influence. It wasn't just that

00:58:03.600 | the cross of Christ was meant to move us emotionally, but it was an actual payment

00:58:10.560 | for the penalty of sin that satisfied God's wrath. And so then the essay is asking you to

00:58:18.880 | relate that to the issue of guilt. And I cover this in my year one training, and so I'm not going

00:58:26.880 | to do this in full depth here, but just to lay the foundation, what you're going to need to do

00:58:36.880 | under this topic is to distinguish between objective guilt and subjective guilt.

00:58:42.480 | Objective guilt is the actual guilt that we have incurred because of our disobedience to God's law.

00:58:49.760 | Subjective guilt is the feelings that result because of the fact that we are actually guilty.

00:58:59.040 | So as I said, that's the contrast with the Freudian view, which said that

00:59:04.640 | subjective guilt has no objective basis. The biblical understanding is we feel guilty because

00:59:10.960 | we are guilty. Miller Erickson says that guilt is the objective state of having violated God's

00:59:17.680 | intention for man and thus being liable to punishment. Stuart Scott defines objective

00:59:23.920 | guilt as a legal liability or culpability to punishment. So if you look at that passage in

00:59:29.360 | Genesis 3, Adam and Eve felt guilty. They were ashamed because they were guilty. They had

00:59:38.320 | disobeyed God's command. And so ideally speaking, your subjective guilty feelings always correspond

00:59:47.600 | to your actual objective guilt. That would be the functioning of a healthy conscience. A healthy

00:59:56.880 | conscience registers subjective feelings of guilt when you have actually incurred objective guilt.

01:00:07.360 | Now, the counseling problem is that most people's consciences aren't always

01:00:13.520 | healthy. They malfunction or they register guilty feelings where you're not actually guilty

01:00:22.240 | or they don't register guilty feelings when they ought to make you feel guilty.

01:00:30.720 | And so that is where this whole category of false guilt comes in. And I'll just define false guilt

01:00:38.480 | very simply. It can be defined as subjective feelings of shame that are not rooted in an

01:00:45.280 | objective state of wrongdoing. So the perfectionist feels guilty because he or she did not get straight

01:00:55.360 | As. So your GPA is a 3.8 instead of a 4.0. And so the perfectionist feels guilty over that.

01:01:07.200 | But you have to ask the question, where does it say in the Bible that you have to get a 4.0 in

01:01:14.160 | your academic career? Where does it say that? I mean, you can relate that to a perfectionist

01:01:21.120 | may feel like very guilty that I don't do home-cooked meals every day for my children.

01:01:28.640 | And I have to do takeout and feed the McDonald's every once in a while. My wife and I gave up on

01:01:37.040 | that issue many years ago. We don't feel guilty anymore for feeding them McDonald's. They live.

01:01:43.360 | But perfectionist may feel that way that, gosh, I should feed them something more healthy and

01:01:48.080 | nutritious. And I feel so guilty not cooking every meal. And you have to go back to where

01:01:56.720 | does the Bible say that that is the standard for cooking meals? Where does the Bible say that that

01:02:04.480 | is the standard for academic careers? So you see that false guilt is you're registering guilty

01:02:11.120 | feelings where there is no actual objective guilt. And so the counseling implication here

01:02:19.840 | is that we need to help people train their conscience with the Word of God so that their

01:02:26.240 | guilty feelings correspond to actual guilt. And then where they actually are guilty,

01:02:35.120 | we need to take that guilt to the cross and minister the grace and the hope that is in

01:02:43.440 | the truth of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We need to minister that to our counselees.

01:02:48.240 | We need to let them know that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

01:02:54.000 | We need to let them know that Christ's sacrifice on the cross is more than sufficient to pay for

01:03:00.080 | all of your sins—past, present, future—sins of omission, sins of commission, sins of attitude,

01:03:06.880 | sins of action. Christ's sacrifice is sufficient to pay for all of your sins. And we need to

01:03:14.400 | minister the gospel to objective guilt. When we do that, the guilty feelings will be dealt with.

01:03:22.720 | Where the guilty feelings are not related to objective guilt, then we need to help train

01:03:28.160 | our counselees' conscience with the Word of God so that their conscience starts to register

01:03:34.160 | subjective guilt where there is objective guilt. So I hope that's a helpful overview

01:03:41.600 | for you. Okay, I took some time with that. I was hoping to get to the issue of self-forgiveness,

01:03:52.160 | but I'm not going to have time to get to that. But I'll commend to you the link that I sent out

01:03:58.560 | with Robert Jones's work on false guilt, as well as his booklet, "I Just Can't Forgive Myself."

01:04:07.680 | If you want to get some more perspective on this whole idea of false guilt and the counseling

01:04:13.440 | implications of that, get Robert Jones's work, and he will help you with that. Do read the

01:04:21.040 | link that I sent you from Jones on objective guilt and subjective guilt. He also deals with

01:04:29.200 | false guilt and works through those categories. I think you'll find that that is very helpful

01:04:34.400 | and very practical. So thank you for joining us tonight. What I'm going to do is I'm going to

01:04:42.160 | pray, and I'm out of time. So I'm going to pray. Close our time. I will hang on for another five

01:04:47.600 | minutes if any of you have questions about the essays or anything I can help you with practically,

01:04:51.920 | but I hope that was a good overview of substitutionary atonement and how it relates

01:04:56.560 | to false guilt. I hope you have a wonderful week of study on these topics. Let me pray for us.

01:05:02.240 | Well, Father, we thank you so much for Christ, and we just thank you so much for

01:05:07.520 | that glorious truth that we can never really get enough of, the truth of Jesus Christ,

01:05:15.840 | our perfect substitute. We just thank you that, Lord, we are accepted on the basis of His merits

01:05:22.960 | and not on the basis of our own merits. And because we come to you through the Son

01:05:29.040 | and His perfect work, that we can be assured of your love and your affection toward us.

01:05:35.840 | And we just glory in these things. We thank you for your Spirit who ministers this truth to our

01:05:42.640 | hearts and assures us that we are indeed children of God in Christ. And we pray that we would be

01:05:50.080 | able not only to rejoice ourselves in these truths, but give us grace that we may be able to minister

01:05:56.320 | the truth of the cross and Jesus Christ and Him crucified to those who are struggling

01:06:04.720 | and weighed down with the issues of life. Make us into biblical counselors who are also

01:06:10.880 | Christ-centered counselors, we pray. I thank you for my brothers and sisters here and bless

01:06:16.960 | their week and make it, we pray, fruitful for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.

01:06:22.480 | Well, amen. I will hang on for a couple of minutes here. And if you have any questions,

01:06:30.160 | otherwise I will encourage you to have a great week of study in these doctrines.

01:06:59.520 | Okay, we have one question that came in. Can you continue with your counseling example on

01:07:04.080 | false guilt and forgiveness? I'm trying to remember the example that I gave. It's a good question.

01:07:14.560 | I think the Jones material is going to help you work through the whole idea of people who say,

01:07:27.680 | "I can't or haven't forgiven myself." You know, "I know that God has forgiven me, but I can't

01:07:35.680 | forgive myself." And he gives a number of options there that what they might be saying.

01:07:44.240 | And one of those options, possible things that a counseling might be saying is that, "I have a

01:07:54.720 | standard." For example, the perfectionist who believes that he needs to get a 4.0

01:08:05.040 | on all academic work and feels guilty if he gets a B in a class.

01:08:11.840 | Well, there's no biblical standard that says you have to get all A's in every class,

01:08:19.120 | but the counselee has made an extra biblical standard and is holding himself to a higher

01:08:25.760 | standard than the Word of God. And so, part of the biblical counseling ministry, I think,

01:08:33.040 | is to help people with that. It's just to say, point them to the standards of God's Word that

01:08:39.600 | God's commandments are not burdensome. 1 John 5 verse 3, "Jesus promised an easy yoke and a light

01:08:47.920 | load." And if you have loaded yourself up where your Christian life is so burdensome

01:08:53.680 | that you feel oppressed because there's so many standards that you're consistently

01:09:01.680 | failing to measure up to, then you have to ask yourself, "Is that the commandments of God,

01:09:08.000 | or is that your own standard for yourself that you have made?" And you do find that in counseling

01:09:14.720 | ministry that people have made their own standards, that they will labor to exhaustion trying to

01:09:24.000 | fulfill standards that are not in the Bible. You think of parents today, especially here in Orange

01:09:31.440 | County, where there's every option for parents to put their kids in art class, in athletics,

01:09:39.520 | in music class, as well as every academic class and tutoring that you could possibly

01:09:47.760 | imagine. It's just parents are drowning in options, and high-performance parents who

01:09:53.680 | feel that everything in their parenting revolves around their performance and their ability to

01:10:00.160 | have their children in the best programs will drive themselves to exhaustion and drive their

01:10:06.960 | children to exhaustion trying to meet some kind of standard that they perceive is a standard of

01:10:12.400 | excellence, but it's not God's standard. There's no Bible verse that says you must raise your

01:10:20.720 | children to be athletic, artistic, musical, academic, and you have violated God's commands

01:10:29.840 | if you don't fulfill that. That's a standard you may have made for yourself, but the Bible hasn't

01:10:35.920 | made that for you. Working with parents on that and just what is the biblical standard? Well,

01:10:42.480 | Ephesians 6.4 says, "Bring your children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

01:10:48.560 | Fathers, don't provoke your children to anger." If you don't make your children mad, then you're

01:10:57.120 | halfway there. It's not a complicated parenting paradigm that the Bible presents to us. Just

01:11:05.040 | don't make them angry and raise them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Then

01:11:10.720 | aside from that, there's just a whole lot of freedom of how you're going to apply that.

01:11:13.920 | I do think that a lot of false guilt is related to legalistic standards that we make for ourselves

01:11:22.800 | and we don't experience the easy yoke that Christ has given to us. It's an excellent question.

01:11:32.560 | There's probably a longer answer than you wanted, but it's an excellent question on

01:11:36.880 | false guilt and forgiveness. A second question came in. "What about those that have sinned

01:11:43.120 | against someone and has honestly repented toward that person, but that person refuses to forgive

01:11:48.000 | them and the one who already repented still feels guilty because that person did not forgive them?"

01:12:00.080 | It's an excellent question. The issue is you have Believer A who has repented.

01:12:07.920 | It looks like the second person may be a believer, may not be a believer,

01:12:14.640 | but the second person is refusing to forgive them. I would try to help that person understand

01:12:25.360 | what is their responsibility versus what is the other person's responsibility.

01:12:30.320 | Romans 12, "As far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men," and you cannot take

01:12:40.320 | the responsibility of the other person's responses toward you. You're responsible before God to

01:12:50.320 | repent, to confess sin, to pursue peace. There is an element of if a person has

01:12:58.400 | seriously sinned against another person and has repented of that sin and confessed that sin,

01:13:07.120 | then there is an element of you need to give the other person time to process that and not demand

01:13:14.960 | forgiveness, but to request forgiveness. I think you're probably describing an issue of

01:13:23.440 | more of that the person is weighed down with unnecessary guilt because there hasn't been

01:13:34.320 | reconciliation in the relationship. I would just be trying to help that person understand

01:13:40.960 | their responsibility before God versus the other person's responsibility.

01:13:46.800 | Take a look at Paul Tripp's Circles of Responsibilities. I think that's in his

01:13:52.800 | appendix in Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands. That's an excellent tool that I use

01:13:58.960 | in counseling just to distinguish what is your responsibility as a believer versus what is

01:14:05.680 | God's responsibility. Your responsibility is to be as obedient as you can to the Word of God,

01:14:13.040 | and God's responsibility is to work a number of these issues out. For example, my responsibility

01:14:21.120 | is to be faithful to raise my children. It's not my responsibility to make them Christians.

01:14:28.560 | I can't take that responsibility for myself. If I do, I'm going to labor under a lot of

01:14:35.280 | unnecessary guilt because I'm trying to take responsibility for something that God has not

01:14:40.960 | given me grace to accomplish. Just think trying to help people understand their limited responsibility

01:14:51.600 | in this world is something that happens in counseling. You counsel people who are afflicted

01:15:01.040 | with insomnia, and some of it is they're afraid to go to sleep because the universe is going to

01:15:08.640 | fall apart without their labor. They're burning the candle at both ends because it all depends

01:15:15.840 | on them and their work to get things accomplished. Part of helping people sleep is to help them

01:15:23.520 | realize their limited responsibility in this world. If you look at Paul Tripp's Circles of

01:15:29.760 | Responsibility, and you look at our responsibility, you'll find that our responsibility is actually a

01:15:35.440 | lot smaller than we might think it is. Excellent question, and I hope you can encourage that

01:15:43.360 | believer to fulfill their responsibility before the Lord. God bless you guys. Thank you so much

01:15:54.480 | for joining us tonight. We'll be back here next Sunday at five o'clock p.m pacific time, and we'll

01:16:01.600 | look at theology exam number 14. In the meantime, have a great week, and God bless you. Thanks so

01:16:09.520 | much for your encouragement, and we'll see you next week.

ACBC Theology Exam 13 - Substitutionary Atonement

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