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The Bridge of Persuasion

The only way that we can move toward Christ is if he calls us out of the tomb, and by that call gives us new life.

Written by Scott Oliphint, Ref21 | Friday, June 21, 2013

If we are meant to “connect” the truth of God’s Word with the truth that God is always revealing to all men, then we dare not present the resurrection of Christ, or the existence of God, or any other truth of Scripture as if it were a “maybe.” Any “maybe” has underneath it a standard of measurement that will, if applied, undermine and negate the foundation of God’s revelation. In order to be as persuasive as we are meant to be, we are obliged to connect the truths of God’s revelation

 
Last month we explored the biblical notion of antithesis. It is important to see that this notion has its home in Reformed thinking. Because we confess that man, in Adam, is dead in trespasses and sins, we understand that there is nothing in our character as depraved sinners that can move even an inch toward the truth of God. Our condition before God is not simply that we are sick, not even that we are really, really sick. We are dead. We are Lazarus in the tomb. The only way that we can move toward Christ is if he calls us out of the tomb, and by that call gives us new life. Apart from that, there can be no movement at all. Dead means dead; it doesn’t mean ‘partly alive.’

By grace, those who are in Christ have eternal life. The Spirit of Christ has given us Christ’s resurrection life; he has re-created us so that we can see ourselves, the world, and, most importantly, him for what and who they really are. As the hymn writer put it, “Heav’n above is softer blue, Earth around is sweeter green! Something lives in every hue Christless eyes have never seen.” The life that is given to us in Christ gives us, for the first time, eyes to see and ears to hear.
It is this regeneration, this new life, that activates the antithesis. Without new life, we are all in the same sinful boat. We are all dead in our sins. How, then, can those who are made alive in Christ communicate with, reason with, those who remain in the tomb? What advantage is there, what rationale is there, for attempting to communicate with someone who is dead? There needs to be more to the story than simply spiritual life and spiritual death if it is communication we’re after. There needs to be a bridge between those in Christ and those in Adam, a way that the two can be “connected.”
We said in our last post that the bridge between the antithesis has its focus in our constitution as image of God. But we need now to highlight just what (in part) that image is, and to seehow it provides the foundation for a persuasive defense of the Christian faith. And here we will be drawing out implications of things we have discussed in the past in these posts, so those blessed with good memories will likely already be ahead of us.
One of the initial things that Paul wants to make clear in his letter to the church at Rome is that all men, both Jew and Gentile, abide under the wrath of God. Because sin is universal, the wrath of God is universal. Paul is anxious to point them to the “righteousness of God revealed,” (1:17), but before he explains to them the glories of the gospel, he has to make clear to them the “wrath of God revealed” (1:18).
It is clear from Paul’s discussion beginning in Romans 1:18 that the general theme he has in mind is the universality of man’s condition after the fall. Specifically, he is, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, explaining to us the effects of sin on those who are, and remain, in Adam and image of God. Because Paul is describing God’s natural revelation, both in terms of God’s activity and of ours, he has in view who we are by nature and how sin seeks to pervert and distort that which is natural. And by “natural” Paul does not mean a self-sustaining world, or a neutral context in which all of us live. For Paul, “natural” is not “mother nature,” but it is God’s revealing activity in and through his creation.
The wrath of God, says Paul, is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. It is God’s universal disposition toward all who are in Adam. What does this wrath look like? It looks like the Lord giving people over to their own sinful desires (cf. 1:24, 26, 28ff.). One of the reasons that sin takes its destructive course in the life of one who is in Adam is because of God’s wrath; it is because God lifts his gracious restraints in the lives of some, and allows them to pursue more of, and more deeply, the sin for which they perversely lust.
But there is something deeper than God’s wrath going on in the lives of all of God’s human creatures. It is “deeper” because it is the foundation that lies beneath the surface of our sin; it is what makes sin so inexcusable. The activity of God revealing his wrath presupposes a “prior” activity of God toward all men. And that activity is God’s constant and universal revelation of himself, his character, to every person, through creation.

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