Let's pray again. Father, again, I pray that you will capture our hearts and minds this morning, that you will free us up from things that would distract us, things that would carry our thoughts away or cloud our thinking, and pray that you will bind us together in your spirit to be of one mind and heart, and that you will, by your spirit, communicate to us in a way that will instruct us, that will encourage us, that will build us up. These are profound things, but they are also the very marrow of what it means to know Christ and to follow Him, to be formed in His likeness and to be His witnesses in the world. And so I pray, Father, that each of us is here today with that same mindset that characterized those Gentiles that day, as Jesus was preparing to go to the cross when they came and they said, we would see Jesus. I pray that we are gathered as those who would see Jesus, whose desire is to see him more clearly, to know him more thoroughly, to be more perfectly conformed to him. So help us, instruct us, meet each one according to his faith, according to his need. Let Christ be honored and glorified in our hearts and in our minds. and in our shared union together as we gather in his name this morning. As always, we ask all these things in his name and ultimately for his sake, amen. Well, it's been two weeks, as I say, but hopefully you haven't completely forgotten our last time together. And what I tried to do the last time as we talked about this matter of incarnation was show how important it is to understand the Incarnation in a truly biblical way. And people might say, well, I mean, if we have any kind of understanding of Incarnation, we know it in a biblical way because it's a Bible truth, right? And so that's how we know about it. But as I said, it's more common for Christians to think of the Incarnation in terms of this category called deity and a category called humanity. And how do those two things get stuck together? How do we stick together a divine nature and a human nature, and how does that function in terms of this person that we call Jesus? And it's not that all of that is totally superfluous or has no relevance at all, but ultimately, to think about incarnation biblically, we have to think about it in the way that the Bible itself presents it and understands it. And as I said, it doesn't deal with these issues of of persons and natures and hypostases and all of the things that are a part of the theology, if you will, of incarnation. But the way the Bible treats it is to refer to and to see this thing of incarnation as Yahweh's return to Zion. For centuries, God had been promising that he would return and he would put all things right. He had departed from his temple, At the time of the exile, he had sent his covenant people away. He had desolated the temple. He had desolated the city of Jerusalem. He had desolated David's throne. The whole kingdom was totally desolated. And yet through all of that was the promise that God would return one day, and he would liberate his people from their captivity. He would restore them back to himself. and he would again take up his place in their midst. And as we've seen, hopefully we understand at this point, it wasn't just about restoring himself back to Israel, but it was ultimately about him restoring Israel so that Israel could fulfill its own function in his purposes, which is that they would be the light of the nations. They would be the means by which God's blessing would go out to all the families of the earth. unless and until Israel would be Israel indeed, the curse could not be addressed. The nations would dwell in darkness. The creation would remain estranged from God. So Israel was that chosen instrument, the election of God for the sake of the reversing of the curse, for the sake of restoring all things back to God, even as we've seen ultimately that God would become all in all, that all things will be summed up in Christ himself. And so that's what Israel was waiting for, not just for God somehow to return or to forgive them in some sort of personal way, but that His purposes for the world would ultimately be realized. And that return of God to reconcile Himself to Israel as His covenant people and to, in that way, enable Israel to fulfill its calling on behalf of the world, that's how the Bible understands incarnation. That's the way in which the Lord was going to return and accomplish that. That's how that actually played out. And we talked about last time also the fact that at the center of that is this relational dynamic. The sanctuary language, the language of the dwelling place of God where he meets with and encounters human beings. most narrowly where he met with and encountered Israel itself, his dwelling place. He was going to return to his sanctuary. And that idea of the sanctuary or sacred space, the place where God encounters and meets with human beings in his world, that was introduced in Eden already at the very beginning in the creation account. And it keeps moving through as a constant theme through the Old Testament, ultimately finding its point of substantial fulfillment in the Incarnation. That's where God now becomes present in and connected with, communicative with, interactive with His created order. So incarnation shows us that God would be fully and manifestly present and operative in his creation, not just by returning to a place in some sort of abstract way, but by joining himself to his human creature in and through Jesus, the singular image son. That's how Paul could say that God's work in the world is being directed towards this goal of summing up everything in his creation in his Son, so that God himself will become all in all. And that summing up idea is that everything in the created order would find its identity, its function, its truth, its ultimate flourishing in and through and in relation to Christ himself. Everything centered in him. So the incarnation then, as we saw last time, underscores that God is known in his creation in terms of his essential relation to man. And on the other side of that, that man is known in terms of his essential relation to God. You can't have a doctrine of God without a doctrine of man, and you can't have a doctrine of man without a doctrine of God. And what I want to do today is to discuss these practical implications of incarnation, but in five specific ways. And there's more that could be said, but I want to deal with five specific ways in which we can say, okay, what are practical implications of incarnation? And the first is maybe the most general, and I think one that is often missed, which is that the way in which we know God is back through incarnation. You begin with Jesus as the New Testament reveals him and work back to knowing the God of the scriptures. Why is that important? Because typically we do the opposite. What we do is we start out by saying, okay, who is this being called God? What does the Bible tell us about this being called God? And then we start compiling a catalog of divine attributes and qualities, you know, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, holiness, sovereignty, whatever, a bunch of categories and qualities that we say, okay, this is what defines the being of God. And then what we do is we say, okay, if Jesus is fully God, then we try to impose those attributes and those qualities onto him. And as we talked about in the first week, the Christological controversies in the early history of the church, the way in which the early church was wrestling with who is this Christ, how do we understand this idea of divinity and humanity and the one person of Jesus, those Christological controversies tended to work from that same vantage point. working from the nature of this thing called deity and trying to now reconcile that somehow with humanness. An example that we can think of even in our own time is where you see Christians wrestling with this idea, okay, if Jesus is fully God, then how come he didn't know everything? How could he say, you know, no one knows the day or the hour except my father? How could he have to be dependent on the Spirit for the miraculous deeds that he did? He's God. How come he didn't know everything? God is omniscient. Why did he need to be empowered by God to do what he did? He was God. He didn't need any power from some outside source. You see what I'm saying? And so what we do is we tend to look at things back through the lens of defining Jesus in terms of a catalog of attributes and then trying to figure out how that works in the case of his own human existence. But as startling as it may be, biblically we have to actually work back the other way. which is that if it's true, as we read in Colossians, that in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and as John puts it, that he is the exegesis of the Father. No one has seen God at any time, but God, the only begotten Son, has fully explained him. Jesus himself said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. That means that in trying to understand this being of God, the God revealed in the scriptures, we have to work back from the historical Jesus revealed to us in the pages of the New Testament back to this God. We work from Jesus back to God. because it's in Jesus that we see in a way that is manifest to us, discernible to us, physically present with us. In Jesus we see the full revealed operative truth of who God is. So we don't work from a catalog of attributes back to Jesus. We work from Jesus back to who is the God that the scriptures reveal. and first and foremost as he is the God of Israel for the sake of the world, right? And ultimately unto the whole creation. So that's the first thing as an implication of this is how do we even do this thing called coming to know this God that is revealed in the Bible? We know him in Christ. And the truth is that unless we know Christ in truth, we do not know the living God in truth. There is no way to know him in truth except in and through Christ himself as the knowledge of Christ is conveyed to us and perfected in us by the Spirit. So incarnation then secondly is about God unto man and man unto God. but not just in terms of God communicating with man, or men communicating with God, or some sort of outward relation between God and human beings, but as I say here, ontological union. The union of our being with God's being. That's at the very center of incarnation. If we believe that the incarnation is God becoming man, then we understand that the created nature of man as being suitable of being the communicator of the truth of God in the world. Man is a creature capable of embodying the living God. If we can't say that, then we can't say that Jesus is truly man as we are human beings. He's not a human being as we are human beings, or he's not God as the God of the Bible is God. if you don't have man capable of being the embodiment of the living God. You see what I'm saying? But at the center of that is this sanctuary motif. As I said at the outset, God had promised that he was going to return and again take up his place in his sanctuary. The Jews had rebuilt the temple and now it had sat there for 500 years and they're waiting for the Lord to return. and they were expecting that he would return in his Shekinah glory again. His glory would once again descend and fill the Holy of Holies. That's what they were expecting to happen. Well, God had indeed returned, but not in a physical structure, but by taking up their human existence in the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Specifically, as I said last time, he took up Israel's own life and lot. The God of Israel took up Israel's life in order that in and through him Israel would become Israel indeed for the sake of the world. So as the incarnate word, as John puts it in his gospel, Jesus is then the true sanctuary of the living God. And we've seen how that's a central theme in John's Gospel, Jesus as the fulfilled sanctuary. Beginning all the way at the beginning in the prologue, the Word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us, and we beheld His glory. Not the Shekinah glory in the Holy of Holies, but the glory of God that is in the Only Begotten God, the Son of the Father. He's the man in whom God's design for human beings has been realized. He's the true image son whose relationship with the Creator Father is determined and defined by this absolute intimacy that God intended of I in you and you in me. In the incarnation, we see fulfilled God's design for human beings. I in you, you in me. But what Jesus fulfilled in himself, he fulfilled, as we've seen, hopefully you understand this, for the sake of all people. The incarnation wasn't just about a one-off thing of, okay, see, God can actually embody himself in a human being. It was for the sake of the whole human race. The incarnate word became the last Adam, a new Adam. And he did so, as we saw last time, by putting to death that fallen Adamic humanness in himself in order to inaugurate a new human race in himself. That's what a new Adam does. He's the beginning of a new human race that shares in his likeness, just as human beings share in the likeness of the first Adam. And that means that they are a family of imaged children that share in his intimacy, his sonship with the father. So incarnation then is the explanation for how Yahweh intended to fulfill his promise to gather all the nations to his sanctuary to commune with him there. So when we see people who can't wait for a new temple to be built in Jerusalem, they're really missing this understanding. This is the way in which God was going to restore his temple and draw all the families of the earth all people. This is Isaiah 2, right? In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will become the chief of the mountains and all the nations will stream to meet with Yahweh at his temple on his Holy Mountain. This is the way in which God was fulfilling that promise. So the sanctuary idea that God's design for his creation is to become perfectly intimate with it, but through an absolute intimacy with the human creatures that are created in his own image and likeness, and I in you, you in me. That's the way in which God would be perfectly present and intimate in his creation. So what does that tell us then? It shows us that Jesus isn't just an example to be followed. He's not just an avatar. He's not just a good example. What would Jesus do? Be like Jesus. He's not just an example to be followed, although in a certain sense He is an example to be followed. But that's not primarily what he is, and we have to even think about the sense in which he's an example through the lens that I'm going to put out right now, which is that he is the very substance of human existence. He is the true human being. He is the last Adam. He is the one in whom human beings become what God created them to be. So he's not an example of a good kind of human being, be like him, don't be like this kind of person. He is the very substance of true human existence as God intends it. He uniquely in himself embodies true humanness, meaning the humanness for which God created mankind. so that authentic human existence is a matter of incorporation into him, the incarnate and glorified image son, not imitating him. That's really what Paul is getting at in Romans 8. Those he foreknew he predestined, those he predestined he called, those he called he justified, those he justified he glorified. It doesn't say one day they'll go to heaven and be glorified. All that whole thing together is the glorification of man and the glorification of individual humans who share in Christ's glory. If we are joined to Him, if we're incorporated in Him, then we are already sharing in His glory as those raised up in Him, seated in the heavenly realm in Him. sharing in his glory as the resurrected, ascended, enthroned image son. That's what Paul's getting at there, not you're going to go to heaven someday. He is man unto mankind, but as the last Adam, he's the first fruit of God's new creation. So the issue is being found in him becoming truly human in him, not following him as a good example of a person who behaves the way God wants us to behave. Well, what's the implication of that? It has huge implications for how we understand this issue of salvation, personal salvation. Typically, and we can probably all relate to this, but typically in Christian circles, salvation is viewed in forensic terms, meaning in legal terms, as God addressing a person's violation of their obligation of obedience to his revealed standard. You've broken God's law. To get saved is for God to deal with that violation of you being a lawbreaker. Violating his revealed standard. So if you're saved, it means you've been cleansed from the guilt and the defilement of your disobedience. God has now forgiven you and he has brought you into a right standing. You have the righteousness, Jesus' moral perfection, his perfection under the law reckoned to your account, and therefore you now have a right standing with God. So even if then we think about this idea of the new birth or regeneration or whatever, that's understood through that same lens. So that to be born again means that now I have the capacity and the resource by the Spirit to be obedient in a way I wasn't before. In other words, now I can become a law keeper. I can conform to the obligation of obedience that is put out in God's standard, however we envision that. generally understood in terms of this idea of law, but God has revealed a standard to which people have to conform. And so now, by the Spirit, we are enabled to become obedient in a way that we couldn't before. So it's not viewed in this sense of new birth as being, again, incorporated into Jesus. As Paul puts it, we've died and our lives are hidden with Christ in God. That's a whole different thing than simply now I've been given ability through the Spirit to be obedient to God in a way that I couldn't before. In a way that, to some extent, approximates Jesus' own perfect obedience. I can never be perfect as he was perfect. but at least I can be aspiring to that standard now in a way that I couldn't before when I was unsaved. But if personal salvation is indeed, as we're talking about, becoming one spirit with the Triune God, being taken up in the life of God through union with Christ by the Spirit, if that's what it really is to be saved, then it adds a whole new dimension to this idea of personal salvation. We no longer have independent existence as human beings. See, we think in terms of, there's a God out there, I'm here, I've done some things wrong, he's not happy with me, how do I get right with him so that when I die it will go well for me instead of going badly for me? And really, the existence of anybody else or their circumstance is totally irrelevant. All that really matters is my own lot with God, how I stand in relation to God. And as you've heard me say before, we often tell people when we proclaim the gospel to them, we say, Jesus would have died for you even if you were the only person. God loves you so much, Jesus would have died for you even if you were the only human being. because he wants you to be saved. And see, it misses the whole point that God's intent was never to have this be an individual thing. You've heard me say so many times through the years, God's intent is not a bunch of saved individuals inhabiting a place called heaven, but the forming of a new human organism. that consists of human beings woven together into a human organism that draws its life and its vitality from Christ who is the head. This is Paul's body imagery. So if we are believers, if we are saved, we don't have any individual independent existence anymore. We don't exist as independent, individual, autonomous, self-directed, self-motivated, self-seeking individuals. The truth of each one of us is in the whole of the body of Christ, ultimately under the headship of Christ himself. And that's a radical thing to be confronted with, right? And we certainly don't tend to think that way as Christians. But again, incarnation is about what? God becoming one with human beings by taking up their own existence into his existence. If we are saved, we are taken up in the life of God in that way. And therefore, we are joined together in one spirit with every other person who is also taken up in the life of God. We're members of one another. Paul says Christ is one, and yet Christ is many. Christ has many members. Right? We become one in that way. And that's why Paul, even in Ephesians 4, he says, as he prays for the church, he says, my burden for you is that you will maintain the unity of the Spirit. Not the unity of denomination or confession or doctrine or whatever it happens to be, but the unity that is in the Spirit. One faith, one Lord, one Christ, one God and Father of us all. That you will actually be one. Wasn't this the focal point of Jesus' high priestly prayer? So incarnation brings a whole profound shift to our understanding of what it means to be saved, and even what it means to be saved not just as we ourselves, but as we become a part of this thing called the Church or the Body of Christ. And given the fact, again, that this sanctuary imagery is at the center of even how we understand incarnation, it's not surprising, it shouldn't be, that the same sanctuary language, the place of God's habitation in relation to his creation, that that same language is taken up with respect to the church. Psalm 118. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is marvelous in our eyes. This is God's work. It's marvelous in our eyes. Well, the New Testament writers, the early Christians, took up that idea and they said Christ is the cornerstone of God's sanctuary, but he's building on that cornerstone all of those who become living stones in him. This is 1 Peter 2, right? Paul says, together you are becoming the sanctuary of God in the Spirit, the dwelling of God in the Spirit. You, having come to Christ, the Living Stone, the chief cornerstone, are becoming living stones in him to be built into a spiritual house. In that way, as the sanctuary of God offering spiritual sacrifice is acceptable to God. Note that there's nothing individual in that. It's as the sanctuary of God, the true dwelling of God that has Christ as its substance, the chief cornerstone, that we live out this thing called the Christian life and offer spiritual sacrifices pleasing to God. So we have to rethink personal salvation in terms of incarnation. And if that's the case, then we also have to rethink this thing called sanctification. in terms of incarnation. When I talk about sanctification, I'm talking about it in the way that we've been taught to think of it. Sanctification is just the idea of holiness, and the fundamental idea, biblically, of holiness is a new state of being. It's not about how we behave. It's about who we are. Holiness speaks to this idea of consecration, being set apart to God in Christ. It's this idea, again, of being taken up in the life of God in Christ. But here what I'm referring to is the way that we tend to think of sanctification, which is the practical holiness of the Christian life, what it means to live the Christian life and grow in our faith in Christ. That's what I'm getting at here. But that has to be rethought too. Where we think of salvation, our personal salvation, in forensic terms of God has a standard. I failed his standard. Jesus kept the standard. If I believe in Jesus, then now that perfect compliance with God's standard gets put into my account. When we believe that that's the issue, that God wants us to keep a standard, then we see our sanctification through that same lens. So as I said, now what we say is, okay, I'm justified by faith in Jesus, but I'm essentially piggybacking on his perfect conformity to God's standard. We are saved by works, we're just saved by Jesus' works. But now that we're saved by Jesus' works, we need to be about this thing of being obedient to the standard. And now we're empowered by the Spirit to be able to try to do that. So sanctification, whether we talk about mortifying our sin or doing, it always is oriented towards being more obedient, right? That's how we're taught to think of it. This is, and I mention even here this idea of, you know, Calvin and talking about the third use of the moral law. That the moral law that's said to be summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments, that's kind of the summary of God's moral law is the Ten Commandments. It has three uses, and the third use is the most important, which is that it informs the Christian sanctification. It helps him to understand what it looks like for him to be a faithful Christian and to be obedient. And in Reformed theology you see this parallel thing of law and gospel, law and gospel, law and gospel. And all preaching, all good instruction, all growth in Christ is oriented around a proper relationship of law and gospel. So we do tend to think again of sanctification practical growth in our holiness, if you will, in terms of this forensic obligation meeting a standard. But if salvation, if being saved, involves being taken up in God's life through union with Christ by his Spirit, then sanctification is the process of perfecting that union. and the perfecting of God's goal, the attaining of God's goal in forming that union. The way that I would put it is that sanctification is concerned with Christiformity, being conformed to Christ, conformity to the person of the resurrected and glorified Messiah, not increasing conformity to a divine standard. If to be saved is to be incorporated into Christ so that we become truly human in Him, now what is the outcome or the goal of that? It's to see that new, true, authentic humanness consummately perfected. It's to become, as Paul said, full sharers in that likeness to Christ. Remember 2 Corinthians 3. We all, with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same likeness by the Spirit, from glory unto glory. The glory of Christ is the glory of man as truly man, and those he justified he has glorified. But we're growing in that conformity to Christ. Will that look like good behavior? Yes, to the extent that Jesus lived a life of conforming to God's actual demands of sound, valid, authentic human existence, yes. But that valid, sound, authentic human existence can look like disobedience in some instances. The holy men of Jesus' generation did not see him as a law keeper, did they? They saw him as disobedient. And yet he was the one who was living in perfect conformity to the Father's mind and will and heart. So I'm not arguing against morality or, you know, keeping commandments or whatever in some sort of absolute sense. But how do we understand what this is really about? This is about being conformed to Christ. As Paul said, learning Christ, growing up in Christ, sharing in all that is true of him. So that's what sanctification is ultimately all about. Conformity to Christ, which is full participation in his consummate glorified human existence through the transforming work of his Spirit. That's what the Spirit does is conform us to Christ. The Spirit will take what is mine and he will impart it to you and he will perfect it in you. So the resurrected and enthroned Messiah is man as God intends. Man as regal, priestly, imaged Son, animated, informed, and led by His Spirit. That's what it is to be truly human. That's what we saw in the first instance at the beginning in Genesis 1, right? That's what man is. Regal, priestly, imaged Son, animated, informed, led by the Spirit. That's has its substantial, its essential truth in Jesus himself, but he is the last Adam. So that his humanness, his destiny, his inheritance are ordained for all of God's image children. If we are sons of God, then we are heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, Paul says in Romans 8. So what does that mean then in terms of sanctification and its works? Well, it clearly means that Christian works are neither salvific, they don't contribute to our salvation, which everybody would agree, but they're also not testamentary in the sense that upright behavior and lifestyle are sure evidence of our salvation. Good works don't testify to the fact that we're saved in the sense that if we're behaving properly, that's evidence that we're saved. Because anybody can behave properly. Right? Anybody can behave properly. They just have to have the proper motivation. Christians are called to good works. Paul says that in Ephesians 2. You were created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them. And it is true that in the right sense, faith is attested by those good works, but these works have to be defined as the outflow of our renewal in Christ. good works, the Christian good works that the Bible talks about, that Paul talks about, those are the manifestation of Christ's life and the continuation of his work in the world in the power of his Spirit. When Paul says, you are God's creation, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, he's not saying God recreated you in Christ Jesus so you can start behaving properly. It's so that you can be about the business of accomplishing the work and the will of God in the work as human beings in the way that God created you to be. God created human beings for a certain purpose and role in his creation. and he has recreated us, renewed us, restored us in Jesus unto that, that we would be about that human vocation, that human ministration that God created us for. So they are the works of Christ deformity. They are the works that manifest Christ's life and the continuation of his work. They are works that affirm new creation and serve the fruitfulness of new creation as the work of God in and through his faithful imaged children. That's what good works are in the biblical sense. So at bottom, these good works are nothing more than Christians living into who they really are. And this is why Paul, we see in his epistles, he keeps saying, don't you know who you are? Don't you know who you are? when all of the issues of foolishness and immorality and impurity and selfishness and pride and all of the things that are characterizing these Christians, when Paul confronts that, he says, don't you know who you are? Why do you take each other to court and sue each other? You have the mind of Christ. Isn't there someone among you who could sort these things out? And it doesn't matter whether you prevail in court. whether you're actually technically in the right, the fact that you go to unbelievers to adjudicate these things for you, you've already lost. You've already compromised your testimony. You've already lied against the truth. Don't you know that we're going to judge angels? Isn't there someone among you who can judge these things? In terms of sexual immorality, what does he say? Don't you know who you are? Why will you join Christ to a harlot? You are members of Christ. He doesn't say, don't fornicate. He says, why will you bring Christ into that sort of relationship? You are members of him. You are taken up in him. So it always comes back to living out the truth of who we are in Christ. That's what these good works are about. Don't you know who you are? And that takes us lastly then to this issue of Christian mission. Okay, what is it God wants us to do in this world? What is our mission in this world? Did he just save us to hang out until we can go off to heaven? What is the Christian mission? Put most broadly, what is the human vocation for which God has renewed us in the Messiah? Well, the incarnation lived out in Jesus' own life, in His death, in His resurrection, the Incarnation shows us that God's loving commitment to His creation, what that looks like, how He intends for that commitment to work itself out and achieve the end for which He's appointed it. Let me put it this way, the Incarnation shows us God's ultimate end for his creation, that he will be God to his creation, present in, operative in, wisely, lovingly administering his Lordship in, in and through man the creature who is his image and likeness, who is taken up in his own life, such that when you see man, you see God himself. That's what incarnation tells us. So the Father sent the Son into the world with a view to that end. Not just to get individual people saved so they could go to heaven, not so that he could finally have people keep his commandments. He sent the son into the world in view of his design for the earth, for the world. What was that design? That he would flood the earth with his loving presence and his wise and his just rule. That's what Jesus came to do. That's what incarnation was about. And Jesus entrusted that commission to his disciples. When you think of Matthew 28, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations. And he said in John, as the Father sent me, so I am sending you. I am entrusting my commission to you. You will be me in the world. My mission of mediating the knowledge of God to all the families of the earth, bringing the blessing, the life, the goodness of God into all the world, I'm going to accomplish that through you, because you, the church, the people of God, are my fullness, the people who operate in my spirit. It's good for you that I go. Unless I go, the spirit will not come. But when he comes, then the works that I have done, you will do, but greater than that. because of the Spirit. You will carry out, I will carry out in and through you, the mission that God sent me into the world to accomplish." So we see this, even as I mentioned earlier, in the upper room discourse in John 13-17, where Jesus is trying to explain to his disciples how they need to understand his crucifixion. the fact that he's going to die and what's going to come from that, the fact that he's going to leave them in a sense. And he says, I'm not really leaving you. I'm going away for a time, but I'm coming back to you and I'm returning to you in my spirit. And in that day, when I do return to you, then you will understand that I'm in the father, the father's in me and I am in you and my father and I will make our place with you. I'm going to prepare a place for you. What is that place? That you will be taken up into the Father's own life by being joined to me in the Spirit. And you, my disciples, you, my people, will become one as the Father and I are one. That's the goal that God has. And that's the mission that he was entrusting to the disciples. His high priestly prayer then as the high point, the climax of that instruction in the upper room, showed them what this was really ultimately about. God filling his world through a human race in which he is one. Them in him, him in them. In and through the Messiah. So it shows that the Christian mission isn't about soul winning. And by that I mean soul winning is going around and getting people saved so that they can go to heaven when they die. Getting people to believe in Jesus so that they can be forgiven and go to heaven. And we say, okay, oh, I got this person to pray the prayer. Oh, this person got baptized. Oh, this person is saved. My work is done. No, it's not about soul winning. That's not what our mission in the world is. It's about the ministration and the cultivation in the world of the new creation and its fruits. It's ministering the life of Christ who is the beginning of this new creation. Does this involve proclaiming the good news of the gospel? Yes, but it's the good news of God's triumph in Christ, which is that in the Son, the Father has inaugurated his new creation. It's not about trying to give people a salvation formula to get them into heaven. The gospel proclaims Christ's lordship as king over this inaugurated kingdom of God's new creation. So the gospel calls people to forsake the old order and its pattern of being human that's defined by the curse and there to become truly human by embracing life in the last Adam. They are to embrace the Messiah in the sense of taking hold of him, to become sharers in him, being incorporated into him, becoming human beings indeed. Not just getting forgiven of their sins. And that's what Jesus meant when he challenged his disciples to take up their cross and follow him. If anyone would come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me." And we read that and we see it in terms of Jesus calling us to give up all of the fun things in life and live an ascetic lifestyle and drink water and eat kale and live in a monastery for the rest of our lives. Take up your cross. And that's not what he's getting at. He was calling, he was telling his disciples that whoever would follow him, whoever would be his disciples must follow the path that he followed. They have to also condemn and oppose this Adamic humanness that they share, that he was born into, that he condemned, that he opposed, that he put to death through his own faithful sonship that culminated with the cross. What Jesus is calling his disciples to in taking up their cross is that he's calling them to a self-denial that consists in renouncing and forsaking our pseudo-life under the curse, the human life that we know, however good, however moral, however bad, however religious, however irreligious, human life as we know it, to renounce and forsake that, to find our authentic life, the life for which the Creator created us, which is the life that is in Jesus himself. That's why Jesus said, whoever would keep his life must lose his life, and whoever loses his life, for my sake and for the sake of adherence to this good news, embracing this good news, will find his life. You have to lose your life to find your life. Well, that doesn't make sense unless it's understood in this way, and that's what Jesus was trying to get at. That's what it is to take up your cross. That's what it is to live a life of sanctification. So we're calling people to that. That's what Christian mission is about. The good works of new creation. And if that is what this good work, if that's what our mission is about, then it pertains to the non-human creation. We've talked about this as well. This isn't about soul winning, just trying to get people into heaven. If this is about the work of new creation, it pertains to the non-human creation as well. It proclaims Jesus' lordship over all creation. In Him, Yahweh, the true and living God, has taken up His everlasting reign as King over all the earth. This is what the Gospel proclaims. And this obligates His subjects, ultimately the whole creation, to uphold and administer His Lordship in every arena of life. This is the human vocation, that we would be God's vice-regents, that we would administer His wise, loving, just Lordship over the earth. And therefore it involves not just spiritual concerns of people's lives and their spiritual issues and, like I said, getting them saved. The Christian mission concerns the whole created order. This is the answer to Christian environmentalism, or politics, or economics, or civics, or the arts, or whatever it may happen to be. ultimately Christian vocation, Christian mission pertains to the whole creation. Because what incarnation is about is the beginning, the substance of God's ultimate design to sum up everything in his Son that God would become all in all. He's reconciled the whole creation to himself. We've got to be about the whole created order as we experience it. This planet, this earth, this world. The spirit who imparts salvation is the creator spirit. The spirit who is now the recreator spirit. And that work of recreation is directed towards the whole of creation, ultimately being renewed, gathered up, and glorified in the image sun. That's Romans 8. The creation is waiting for the revealing of the sons of God so that it too can be brought into this renewal. These are just some of the core practical implications of incarnation, but hopefully you see they're profound. And hopefully you can see, and I'm not pointing fingers and being condescending, but we can see how easily these things are missed in the wider Christian community and how people think about salvation and sanctification and Christian mission and what it is to live the Christian life. it all has to come back to Incarnation. That's where we began a few weeks ago when I said, if we don't get Incarnation right, we don't get the Scriptures right. We don't get God right. We don't get the Christian life right. We don't get anything right if we don't get Incarnation right. So I know it's a lot again to think about, but it gives you some things at least to to chew on, and hopefully you will chew on them. But let me go ahead and close in prayer, and then we'll finish our time of worship with our final song, okay? Father, these are profound things, but they are crucially important things. And I pray that you would not let us just press them aside or have them escape through our minds like sand that slips through our fingers. These are things that we need to hold on to. We need to meditate on them. We need to ruminate on them. It's interesting that the Psalms which begin, or are at the center of Israel's worship, Israel's historical relationship with you, those Psalms begin with an ode to the right sort of man. The godly man, the faithful man, the righteous man is the man who meditates on your instruction day and night. who meditates on your Torah, that one is like a tree planted by the stream of water. Its leaves never wither. Its fruit comes in season. In everything that it does, it finds prosperity, the prosperity of the flourishing of an authentic life. That tree that sits by an ever-flowing stream. And so the man who meditates on Torah day and night finds himself in that same place. But what is that Torah? It is the Torah that is yes and amen in the Messiah. The Word become flesh. And so Father, we have to be a meditative people. We have to be a people who consider these things deeply and who strive and pray and seek from you that they will be not just formed in our minds, but that they will be fleshed out in our very beings, that we will become people who are defined by these truths. people of the Messiah, people of the Word become flesh. So help each one, and Father, convict each one. Help us to find the time and the energy and the interest, the zeal. We find time for the things that are important to us, and I pray that this would be something that would be the priority in our hearts and minds, not because it has to be, but because it is our soul's delight. the thing that we feed on, the thing that nourishes us, the thing that fills us up, as Jesus said, the thing that delights us, the food that is to do the will of the Father, which is that in all things we would be conformed to the likeness of Christ, and so testify of Him faithfully in the world. So meet us in that way, and Father, help us to be encouragers of one another in that way, to spur one another on towards love and good works, these works of new creation, these works of Christiformity. Give us grace, give us strength in these things. We pray all of these things in the name of Christ our Lord, amen.