To Be Thy Cure

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   Justin Holcomb

   Let's dive in. Let's start talking about the works of Christ for you. It's a very intentional thing that I just wanna unpack together. But to do that, let me tell you about a website called Book a Minute. And it's an ultra-condensed version of classic books, sci-fi, classics, that kind of stuff. And they'll summarize it in like 1 or 2 sentences. So, for example, Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway. This is the summary from Book-A-Minute.

2. 00:38

   Justin Holcomb

   An old man catches a fish that's too big for his boat. The fish gets eaten by sharks. Then he goes home and dies. The end. This actually sounds pretty accurate. The Collected Works of Jane Austen. Female lead, I secretly love male lead. He must never know.

3. 01:02

   Justin Holcomb

   Male lead, I secretly love female lead. She must never know. They find out. The end. Harry Potter series. I thought I was a lowly child. Instead, I'm a wizard. Various adults in my life say, Harry, here are some secrets I'm not supposed to tell you.

4. 01:25

   Justin Holcomb

   I'm telling you. He saves the world. The end. So I want to write one for the Bible. The deepest message of the Bible and the ministry of Jesus is the mercy of God to sinners and sufferers. The end. That's it. The deepest message, it's not the only message, the deepest message of the Bible and the ministry of Jesus is the mercy of God to sinners and sufferers.

5. 01:46

   Justin Holcomb

   So already we're expanding beyond, it's not just you're guilty, be forgiven. Well, it is that, but it's more than that. And so the works of Christ for you are, we're going to explore how comprehensive the works of Christ are. The fact that the title actually says and suffers is different from what many of us grew up thinking that is only for that. And so what this means is that we're always a mixed bag. We're always a mixed bag of sin and suffering. And so pastorally, if someone comes to me and they're presenting sin, we'll talk about the sin that they're talking about. I can guarantee at some point in that conversation or later on, there's gonna be some suffering that's been tethered to that 'cause they go together.

6. 02:28

   Justin Holcomb

   Or sometimes people come in with suffering. And if you're like me, when I'm sinned against and I'm suffering, I sometimes respond sinfully to how I've been sinned against. So there's this— the whole idea is that we're always this mixed bag of relationships of sin and suffering, guilt and shame, being marked by things that I've done and being marked by things that have been done to me, and our Savior takes care of all of them, and that's what we're celebrating. And to do that, the title says, Be Thy Cure, and that is straight from George Herbert.

7. 03:00

   Justin Holcomb

   It's a line, simple, elegant line from George Herbert's poem, The Temple, and he says this, in Christ, 2 natures met to be thy cure. In Christ, 2 natures met to be thy cure. There's 2 essential features built into that one simple line. In Christ, 2 natures met. That's the person of Jesus, fully God, fully man. It's called the hypostatic union.

8. 03:24

   Justin Holcomb

   In one person is the God-Man, and that means Jesus is God with us and all that the incarnation means, and we'll say a little bit about that later on. The second part is the work of Christ. Who he is and what he does belong together. You don't separate and talk about metaphysics of who Jesus is and then all of like the really good, you know, forgiveness and all the other stuff.

9. 03:53

   Justin Holcomb

   Well, it's because he's the God-man that this is powerful. They go together. And the language, I love the language from Herbert, to be thy cure. That's a broader— it's almost like there's a problem with sin and not just us being guilty. We are, and so I'm not minimizing any of that. I'm just adding to it and saying, hey, let's be a little bit more wide on this. To be thy cure means that he is God for us. So, God with us and God for us.

10. 05:07

    Justin Holcomb

    The Nicene Creed talks like this, says, for us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven, became incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. This cornerstone of orthodox Christian belief puts together saving significance not only to Christ's death and resurrection, but also His incarnation. And so, what we're going to do is look at the wideness of the works of Christ. What we're going to do, hopefully, my goal is to celebrate the abundance, the capacity, the immensity of Christ's tender and powerful love for you. We'll get to that for you part in just a second, but these— it's— there are very personal implications of the work of Christ for you and for me as an individual. If we do this right, we're going to sound like we're being all subjective and therapeutic. because it's really actually deep therapy, the best kind. It's not the shallow, superficial platitude type of therapeutic culture stuff.

11. 05:51

    Justin Holcomb

    It's like getting to the core of your heart and hopes, dreams, sins, and being sinned against, but it's also comprehensive for all creation. And so the Lord delights in showing mercy to you as a sinner sufferer, And he's making all things new. And you don't have to pick between the two, they belong together. It's not like, let's talk about the cosmic work of Jesus and we don't wanna talk about the individual, or people only talk about the individual and they don't talk about like, well, he's undoing the works of the fall and sin and all of the effects of that. So let me hone in first, focus my attention on this one point, the for you.

12. 06:24

    Justin Holcomb

    The Bible has this amazing habit of taking the historical events that happened in the person and life of Jesus Christ, God, fully God, fully man, and his redemptive work, and then points to the significance for you, for us, for me, for sins. It's actually all over the place. You can't unsee it once you are hopefully alerted to it. And so the New Testament looks at this shameful, humiliating, excruciating, painful, degrading public death of Jesus, and then says, for, 3-letter word, for you, sin, me. It's this, in the heart of that is language of the substitution happening there. Let me just give you some of these passages just to —

13. 06:55

    Justin Holcomb

    Again, it's all over, but just to show us, every New Testament writer, every book talks about this. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. It's not just for you, it's actually for you when you were not, like when you were acting like a rebel. That's Romans 5. Christ suffered once for sin, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. That's 1 Peter. I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, Galatians, but Christ lives in me.

14. 07:39

    Justin Holcomb

    And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God. Jesus gave us this language. when he instituted the Lord's Supper. This is my body given for you. This cup is poured out for you. Romans again, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32. So again, that for you in the title, The Works of Christ for You, is I'm inviting all of us to just bracket for a second and say, yes, it is cosmic, and we can do a whole conference on that.

15. 08:47

    Justin Holcomb

    We've done that overseas on eschatology and the kingdom of God, all of that. But it's also for you as a sinner and sufferer who was ungodly, unrighteous, all this other stuff. So that's the for you. Let's talk a little bit about the unifying the person and work of Jesus. The best way that I think this can be done is by looking at the threefold office uniting the person of Christ and the work of Christ. And in the threefold office. He's a prophet, priest, and king. All of the places in the Old Testament where someone was anointed, you know, Messiah language, Mashiach, and this prophet, priest, and king, which is the title of the book Mike and I with Liz Mburu are working on, unites this multifaceted aspects of Christ's work.

16. 09:12

    Justin Holcomb

    That's the whole point. I don't want to go through— this isn't a lecture on prophet, priest, king, but the fact that He fulfilled this threefold office of prophet, priest, and king is showing how multifaceted His works are. That's the point. the multifaceted works of Christ that we're going to explore in detail. I'm going to— we're going to list out some of the specific works and how they apply to how we've been sinned against and how we sin. To show you how good and applicable this prophet-priest-king thing is, I'm going to read you one quote. There's a quote from— I could read you stuff from Calvin, I could read you something from Eusebius, from Francis Turretin, from Herman Bavinck, My favorite one is from Francis Turretin. He writes this, and watch how it's connected, watch how the work of Christ is connected to the effects of sin in the world.

17. 10:10

    Justin Holcomb

    The 3 miserable consequences introduced by sin— ignorance, guilt, and tyranny and bondage to sin— required Christ to fulfill 3 roles for us. Ignorance is healed by Christ the prophet. Guilt by Christ the Priest, the tyranny and corruption of sin by Christ the King. So it's already just that, it's already expanding what we think of the effects of sin and being a cure for us. Prophetic light scatters the darkness of error. The merit of the Priest takes away guilt and procures a reconciliation for us. The power of the King removes the bondage of sin and death. The prophet shows God to us, the priest leads us to God, and the king joins us together and glorifies us with God.

18. 12:02

    Justin Holcomb

    The prophet enlightens the mind by the spirit of illumination, the priest by the spirit of consolation, tranquilizing the heart and conscience, the king by the spirit of sanctification subdues rebellious desires and emotions. It's also super Trinitarian right there. But do you hear all that language? Like, In that ignorance and bondage, like, that's the human experience, and Jesus is just tethering his works for, for the good of being our cure. One more thing is, this— the listing of what I'm getting to, and this would normally be a whole lecture in a seminary class, so I'm going to try to do this in like 3 minutes. There's another really important book that influenced how I'm thinking about this, which is from Herman Ridderbos, and it's called Paul: An Outline of His Theology. And I was always fascinated by the 2nd chapter, and I talk about it as much as possible. And Herman Ridderbos says, how does Paul preach about Jesus? Like, what's the heartbeat of his description of Jesus? 'Cause it doesn't just follow through like linearly, well, Jesus was preexistent, then he was born in incarnation, and then his life, then his death, then his resurrection. He's like, the heartbeat, and he just, he puts them out of order of the, the primacy of Paul's preaching, and he says, I'm disposed to think of describing an ever greater circle around one center.

19. 13:00

    Justin Holcomb

    So it's basically like there's a bullseye, then the second level, third level, fourth level, fifth level. He's like, the very heart, at the very— the entryway for Paul's preaching is the death and resurrection of Jesus. That's the bullseye. You're always talking about the death and resurrection of Jesus. And then he is He talked the life of Christ, his obedience, where he was, and so we need to unpack that, that he was also the pre-existent Lord before he was incarnated, and he's also the exalted— Mike talked about the ascension— and coming returning Lord. And so what we learn and what you get from the Christian tradition isn't only Jesus died so you could be forgiven.

20. 13:30

    Justin Holcomb

    That's necessary, but not sufficient to describe the full works of Christ as our cure. And so you have the incarnation, you have the life of obedience of Jesus, you have his death, you have his resurrection, you have his ascension and his return. Those are all the things that we're going to explore as the cure and how those have effects for us. On this cure side of things, I just want to explore that. Um, J. Gresham Machen has this amazing just plea, and I'm imagining him saying, I'm sick, I need a cure. Listen to his request for this cure. What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, which means good news.

21. 14:02

    Justin Holcomb

    Not directions for saving myself, but knowledge of how God has saved me. Your exhortations will not help me, but if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts. Begging, a theologian begging for pure language. Or think of B.B. Warfield. This is basically the summary of what I want to say the rest of the time together, and I'll be doing my breakout on where this line comes from, from The Emotional Life of Our Lord. We must bear in mind that our Lord did not come into the world to be broken by the power of sin and death, but to break it. That's a really good summary of the works of Christ.

22. 14:43

    Justin Holcomb

    He didn't come to be broken. He didn't just show up to go, well, I'm going to suffer so you can see that I suffered and hope that makes you feel better. He did that. That's— we'll explore that, but He didn't just stop there. He didn't come to be broken, to break the power of sin and death, but to break it. The cure is that Jesus broke the power and the effects of sin and death. And this is the good news we need. Going back to Machen, he says, Jesus is our Savior not by virtue of what he said, not because he gave good teachings and good advice, or just what his teachings were, or by virtue of who he was, the God-man, but by what he did.

23. 15:29

    Justin Holcomb

    So Machen is honing in, what are the works of Christ? He is our Savior not because he inspired us to live the same kind of life he lived, But because he took upon himself the dreadful guilt of our sins and bore it instead on the cross. We deserve death, but the Lord Jesus, because he loved us, died instead of us on the cross. So last thing, the effects of sin. Like, let's— guilt's the obvious one. We feel guilty, and that's the one that many people think when you go to church, that's what you're going to hear all the time. And so we don't want to, you know, You know, dismiss it because we have. We just, we confessed our sins this morning in morning prayer. We've sinned against God and neighbor by things we've done and left undone in thought, word, and deed.

24. 16:07

    Justin Holcomb

    I've sinned against God by things I've done in my thoughts. I've sinned against my neighbor by things I've left undone in my deeds. There's 12 categories of guilt for you to experience.

25. 16:16

    Justin Holcomb

    Right?

26. 16:17

    Justin Holcomb

    God, neighbor, done, undone, thought, word, and deed. We've also, all of us have been sinned against and harmed. We've been sinned against by others. We've been harmed by Satan and harmed by the world. And we've been harmed and neglected. And the weapons for harm and neglect that we've experienced by either people, Satan, or the world are thoughts, words, and deeds. And so mapping just over to those areas that we've sinned against, we've been sinned against in a similarly comprehensive way. And it's not a war of, you know, you know, am I sinning or am I suffering? Both.

27. 16:44

    Justin Holcomb

    And he's the cure for both. This might be abuse. And if I'm known for anything, it's because I talk about abuse. I'm not going to not talk about it here. And so if you think about sexual abuse, 1 in 4 women, 1 in 6 men are survivors of sexual abuse.

28. 17:02

    Justin Holcomb

    Intimate partner abuse, 1 in 5 women, 1 in 20, probably less than that because there's so much shame in being a man abused by a spouse. Child abuse is through the roof. Child sexual abuse, 1 in 5 children will be sexually abused before they turn 18. It could be elder abuse, could be intimate partner abuse, could be spiritual abuse. Basically, about half the people in the room either have survived abuse.

29. 17:28

    Justin Holcomb

    Or someone they love has, that you know who they are. You maybe have heard their story. And so we all, because of that, we have a sense of disgrace, of defilement. It's psychological, it is social, it's physical, emotional, and spiritual. We feel shame and embarrassment, denial, guilt, powerless, angry, helpless, vulnerable, depressed, isolated, and anxious. Yeah. And that's just from one particular way that we've been sinned against. And then you think about trauma.

30. 17:55

    Justin Holcomb

    According to the American Psychological Association, quote, approximately one-half of all individuals will be exposed to at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. Continuing, in the United States, 61% of men and 51% of women report exposure to at least one lifetime traumatic event. Which the effects of trauma are bodily, you know, health, emotional, psychological, social, and spiritual. And so I'm basically just describing the human experience at this point. This is why we need the be thy cure. We need, we need a response to that because we're not— we don't have power in ourselves to help ourselves. There's a therapist who talks about just the spiritual effects of trauma. I'm just going to rattle them off like I did before because some of them will hit home.

31. 18:41

    Justin Holcomb

    Because of trauma, we have a loss of hope, loss of intimacy, loss of future, loss of peacefulness, loss of a healing memory, loss of spontaneity, loss of wholeness, loss of innocence, loss of trust, loss of awe. So, the works of Christ are for you. He's being a cure to break the power of sin and death. not only to say you're forgiven of your sins, which is a huge piece of it. So let's look at these effects. And there's not, anytime I teach this in my, I used to teach a theology for counselors class, systematic theology on Christology class, there's not really a right way to make all these connections. This is more art than science. And so I'm gonna explore.

32. 20:21

    Justin Holcomb

    How some of the works of Christ connect to some of the effects of sin and suffering. And I'm going to— so this is the art part, and we'll see, and make the connections that you make with this. And that's always been fun when I'm in a class doing this, and many times a student will raise their hand kind of like, well, can we talk about the Ascension for this one too? Probably. If you can make a connection on that and it's a theological implication, absolutely you can. So, When I do this, I'm not limiting the possibilities of which work of Christ connects to what type of suffering. It's an illustration and a picture of it, and not limiting it. So it's an invitation. But one of the first ones is this sense that we have either in our sin or in our suffering to minimize or deny.

33. 21:00

    Justin Holcomb

    If you're like me, I don't like being a nuisance, and so I minimize my own suffering because I don't want to be a bother to other people.

34. 21:07

    Justin Holcomb

    I don't know where that comes from. I had great parents and friends, but I mean, that is high. I do not wanna be a nuisance. So I kind of just put it down. Others of us theologically edit. I guess God has a reason for this. You know, there's a way that we kind of like theologically rationalize our suffering and minimize what's happening. Or some of us minimize it 'cause it's overwhelming, because, which is actually a beautiful thing about the doctrine of creation, that God made us in such a way that the default mode to overwhelming suffering is to actually hold it at bay.

35. 21:35

    Justin Holcomb

    And we let— you can actually let some of it through at a speed that you can actually handle, which is God's grace that he gave us this ability to hold it at arm's length so we're not flooded by despair and paralyzed throughout our lives all the time. That's beautiful. And what's fascinating, you read the Exodus and you hear about the people are suffering, and the response in Exodus, God says, I see it, I know it. I hear you. I hear what you're saying. I care, and I'm going to act. And so God's not doing what we do. God's not this deist, distant God who's minimizing it.

36. 22:04

    Justin Holcomb

    He's actually going, it's worse than you think it is, and it, and, and it makes me sad. And so what the first thing, knowing that, that God has this sorrow, God mourns and grieves in, in what's happening to you and the devastation that your sin has brought to marriage and friendship and relationships, all that kind of stuff. And he's inviting us to not minimize it, but actually join in on the grief on that. He's sadder than we are, and we can participate in God's sorrow and mourning for the way sin has conquered the world. And that's, I mean, that's what Mike was talking about with Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, was like, I'm sad and I'm angry. Like, I love seeing that piece. But what jumps out to me here, and, and because Mike already said it, I don't need to say much. One of my favorite things, works of Christ, is his ascension, because everything else Jesus did is in the past.

37. 22:40

    Justin Holcomb

    He, he came in the incarnation, he lived a perfect life, he died, he rose again, he's going to come again, but the current ministry of Jesus is the ascended Lord.

38. 22:47

    Justin Holcomb

    And so what he's doing now, what's he doing now? He's not just kind of like waiting until things get done. He's doing— he's mediating. We have mediate, go boldly before the throne of God with confidence because you belong there as a child of God. So he's mediating so we have access to the Father. That's why we pray in Christ's name, because Paul's favorite phrase, little phrase, en Christos, we're in Christ, like 260 times. Paul can't stop talking about being in Christ. So we have access to God the Father, and he's advocating for us. As you are your own prosecutor before the throne of God, as Satan is whispering in your ear, really, did it again? Aren't you supposed to be over that one by now? He's saying, not guilty.

39. 23:35

    Justin Holcomb

    If they confess their sins, He's faithful and just to forgive them their sins. Just is the craziest word in that sentence. How is God just? That's the opposite of justice. Justice is someone paying for your sins. That's not justice, that's mercy. If I don't give a consequence to someone, I'm showing mercy. That's not justice. I'm, I'm not doing justice.

40. 23:58

    Justin Holcomb

    If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us and purify us of our sins. Well, he's just because justice was done. Justice was poured out on Him. So it's actually just for us not to be condemned. And so He's advocating, He's always advocating, and then, as Mike said, He's interceding for you. And I don't even need to say anymore because he said it as powerfully as you can. He's praying for you more than you're praying to Him, and His prayers get answered, and He knows how to pray for you. And so He is praying when you're not powerful enough to pray, you don't, you're not disciplined enough to pray, He's praying for you.

41. 24:54

    Justin Holcomb

    And He's not praying for you more because you decided to pray a little bit more.

42. 25:03

    Justin Holcomb

    He's praying for you regardless, and so join him in that. So we don't have to minimize or deny because he sees it and he's advocating. He sees it and he's saying, let's go to the Father. He sees it and he's interceding on your behalf. But he also gets it, just in the most generic, beautiful way. As fully human, he gets suffering and he gets temptation. He just was without sin, but he gets temptation and he gets suffering.

43. 25:26

    Justin Holcomb

    One of the most powerful things, as a, as a minister, I get to, you know, go to a lot of services, and especially, you know, right during Holy Week, you start talking about the passion of Jesus and what he went through, and seeing people who have suffered abuse realizing, wait a second, Jesus experienced a lot of what I experienced. I was, you know, he was stripped naked, he was lied about, he was lied to.

44. 25:50

    Justin Holcomb

    He was humiliated. He was mocked, yanking out His beard, blindfolding Him. Who hit You? It was— there was no justice at all. It was the mockery of justice. You know, if anyone gets it just in His crucifixion, just in a few days, it's Him, but He had a whole life of 33 years of getting what that was like. We don't need to minimize it, but at the same time, we're invited to grieve because —

45. 26:12

    Justin Holcomb

    He's angry. He gets it in the incarnation. He also conquered sin and death. So we, as 1 Thessalonians 4 says, grieve, but grieve like someone who has hope. I mean, the invitation, we don't need to minimize what's happened to us. We don't have to minimize what we've done. That's why God's kindness leads to repentance. Don't minimize your sin, repent of it.

46. 26:31

    Justin Holcomb

    Don't minimize your suffering, realize God's not expecting you to theologically edit yourself. He wants you to join him in mourning.

47. 26:38

    Justin Holcomb

    but also having hope because he conquered the effects that are coming at you. Second one, second effect of sin and suffering is distorted self-image. I think this is probably pastorally I've seen one of a core issue for all of us, central. What I love is, you know, reading Paul when he says, hey, you once were. I love that once were language. And we can not add to scripture but expand that and say you were once made to feel damaged goods. You were once made— you were once called dirty. So we've all— we once were certain things in our behavior.

48. 27:18

    Justin Holcomb

    We've been made to feel, or we were called, or we were bestowed certain identities from, as Lewis Smedes says, we have crippling guilt and shame because of a brutal culture we live in, ungracious religion, and bad parents. I mean, just think of the effects that you get from your identity being bestowed to you from your culture, from yourself, from your sins, from, and, and parents who told you who you were if they were not gracious, kind, and loving. What we need for our identity, we need a lot of things. One of the core things I think we need is actually the life of Christ. There's a piece that I remember hearing, you know, Jesus died for my sins, I knew that, but he also lived perfectly so I could be declared righteous. I felt like someone— I was like, someone told me a story and didn't tell me the other half of the story. I like that my sins are forgiven, but when you're— when we're told that your sins are forgiven, I fill in the blank as a Type A firstborn who wants to get things done. I'm like, okay, now all of my identity and success is built on my obedience.

49. 27:48

    Justin Holcomb

    Thanks for the forgiveness, I'll get to work, right? If, if our sins are forgiven and we're declared righteous, we've gotten out of debt. We're in debt, our sins are forgiven, gets us back to zero, and then he deposits into your account before God the wealth of his righteousness. That's yours. It's bestowed to you. It's declared, it's imputed to you. We do this great exchange. Take my sin, give me all your wealth. Be treated as if you were a rebel.

50. 28:29

    Justin Holcomb

    I'll be treated as if I was the obedient child of God my entire life. And so what's amazing when you have an alien righteousness, a gifted righteousness, an imputed righteousness of Christ because he was obedient, He perfectly fulfilled the law in thought, word, and deed with God and neighbor all across the board. He had no need to ever confess the sins that we read and go, yeah, that's me. And yet he secures the blessing. He earns and secures the blessing, the guarantee of God's favor, and then gives it to us. And the words the Bible uses, I mean, we, When we, when we think of our low self-esteem, we come up with our own self-made rituals and go, no, I'm good enough. You're way more than good enough because of Christ. Good enough doesn't even get close.

51. 29:40

    Justin Holcomb

    Not close enough. It's anemic. It's not strong enough. It doesn't, doesn't have enough pop. You're not good enough. Um, you're not, you know, not as bad as you thought you were. The words we use, the adjectives for you, Are pure, perfect, righteous, and holy. Those are Bible words.

52. 30:05

    Justin Holcomb

    Those aren't therapeutic, trying to make you feel better. I'm going to say some really crazy extravagant things. These are the words the Bible says. If you're in Christ, you are declared pure, perfect, righteous, and holy. That's way better identity than you can ever make up. And that's an imputed righteousness. And then the Holy Spirit makes you what God calls you. He actually works on you so you actually start reflecting those words out of gratitude, and then one day in glorification, that's going to be done.

53. 30:50

    Justin Holcomb

    You actually will be those types of things. You're not going to be— no need for any more confession. We just praise at that point. So with this distorted identity, the life of Christ has a lot of capital that is useful in probably other ways too. Let me, I just read this poem from Bonhoeffer that I want to, a few weeks ago to our diocesan convention. And he wrote it right before he was getting ready to die in a Nazi prison camp for challenging Hitler. And he's wrestling with his own identity, and I love where he lands, but I like his description of what he toggles between. And then we'll move on.

54. 31:49

    Justin Holcomb

    He says, "Who am I? They often tell me I step from my cell's confinement calmly, cheerfully, firmly, like a squire from a country house. Who am I? They often tell me I would talk to my warders freely and friendly and clearly, as though it were mine to command. Who am I? They also tell me I would bear the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win." I mean, this guy's rocking it. He's suffering and everyone thinks he's got poise. He's not rattled by anything. And then he says, "Am I then really all that which other men tell of? Or am I only what I know of myself…" He's being bestowed an identity, and he knows himself "restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat… thirsting for words of kindness… powerlessly trembling for friends… weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making; faint, and ready to say farewell to it all. Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today, and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, and before myself a contemptibe… weakling?" It's like he's reading our diaries at this point, when we're actually getting honest with ourselves and others. "Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine."

55. 32:44

    Justin Holcomb

    I mean, he spends 90% of his poem talking about how he feels about things: the swirl of his identity. And he has one line which is the most important line of his identity. "Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I'm Thine." So you're pure, perfect, righteous, holy because of the life of Christ, because what He secured for you, you are God's. You're marked as Christ's own forever.

56. 33:35

    Justin Holcomb

    Let's look at shame. This usually is connected to how we've been sinned against. There is an appropriate shame that also comes from our sins where I'm embarrassed by doing that, and I'm embarrassed that I'm repenting to my wife and children again for how I didn't listen or how I was judgy and dismissive and whatever, like— Yeah. It gets old, so there's shame built into that. There's the images of shame in the Bible are really powerful. The Bible gives an image for shame, not so much a lot of words about shame to kind of capture its kind of guttural thing that's happening. The images are naked; they were naked and ashamed in the garden. So nakedness is one core image of shame, and then.

57. 34:18

    Justin Holcomb

    filthy or defiled is the kind of the real word. Defiled is another one. So you're naked, you're defiled, and you're outcast. You're removed from the community. You're isolated, like dirty naked person, get out of here is the sense, like you don't belong here. So shame has those 3 types of images wrapped up into it. And what I can't unsee is that Throughout his whole ministry, Jesus was also engaging with shame, but particularly in his crucifixion, he was stripped naked and humiliated. We have a really sanitized understanding, me too, of the crucifixion.

58. 34:50

    Justin Holcomb

    It's not like a, you all don't understand. We have a sanitized version because we kind of cleaned it up in our imagination. He's stripped naked and humiliated. As Fleming Rutledge said, crucifixion was for the scum of the earth. It was a mess. Jesus had blood, probably, if you go through that kind of trauma, you probably don't have a lot of control over your bodily functions, urine, spit, sweat, garbage thrown at him. I mean, just the image of what's happening is filth. He was also being treated like he was defiled and deserving of you know, capital punishment, which is a defile kind of piece.

59. 35:27

    Justin Holcomb

    And then he was just outside, off in the garbage heap, out there, just like Adam and Eve were sent out of the garden, just like, you know, you don't belong in the people— with the people of God. Because he took our nakedness and our defilement and our isolation, and because of his work and his life and his death, The language the Bible teaching says, you're not naked, you're robed in the righteousness of Christ. In Revelation, you have white garments that have been purified in blood. You're clean. Jesus, if we're the body of Christ and we're his bride, he likes cleaning his body. He purifies his bride. He loves to clean us, and the language used with identity in Christ is pure, perfect, righteous, holy. That's cleansing language.

60. 36:36

    Justin Holcomb

    'Cause we're forgiven. And then we're accepted. We're not outcasts, we're accepted in. We're the people of God, we're the body of Christ, we're the bride of Christ. One of— J.I. Packer talks about justification is what gets you in, adoption's where justification brings you. That's the crown jewel, is that you're adopted into— we were once children of wrath and now we're the adopted children of God. You can't get any more opposite of isolation.

61. 37:15

    Justin Holcomb

    It's not just like come back into the camp, or come back into the city, or come back into a garden. It's coming to my family. That's the opposite. So we have, you know, incarnation, death, the perfect righteousness of Christ all coming to bear with regard to shame. Guilt. I did want to say, and I did say, Jesus died so you could be forgiven of your sins.

62. 37:52

    Justin Holcomb

    Absolutely true, absolutely necessary for us to say, but not the only thing we get to say. So again, I'm not, not displacing it. You know, Ridderbos said cross resurrection is at the bullseye. We're not displacing the cross, we're not displacing the resurrection. Again, what is justification? That our sins are forgiven and we are declared righteous. I need to hear that all the time. I have amnesia. I have gospel amnesia.

63. 38:30

    Justin Holcomb

    Jared was just making like, making jokes about what we all experienced in high school. I'm back there crying, 'cause all he's saying is really simple, clear truths, that my sins are forgiven and I'm declared righteous, not because of where Jesus ran and to whom he ran and why he went there. Let me, I'm gonna, this is a beautiful, illustration of how significant this is, and how provocative this is. I have a— back in the 1990s when I graduated high school in '91, and there was this guy named Wesley Allen Dodd who was a serial killer, and it was famous back then because he sexually abused and murdered children by hanging. It was horrific, horrific.

64. 39:23

    Justin Holcomb

    And he said, he was sentenced to death, and he said, I want to die the way I killed people. I want to be hanged, and people were like, how dare you? So he was actually hanged. How dare you let him have agency on how he's going to die? And so my friend and I wrote him because we were into evangelism. We thought, well, someone's got to tell him the good news, and so we wrote him and said, hey, you know when you're going to die. Most people don't understand this, and so Jesus died for your sins, and you can, go to heaven, like when you die, and you know when this is happening, would you please? And he wrote back. So my mom and dad weren't too fond of serial killers, you know, sending letters. But Wesley Allen Dodd, on December 7th, 1992, wrote this to my friend who was— he was like in his mid-20s, so we used his address. I don't want to use God to save my life from execution.

65. 40:25

    Justin Holcomb

    Man's laws say I must die, and I agree with those laws. I will not ask any man to spare my life. Later on he said, I should probably die because I'm afraid I might kill someone in prison. So that he's that real of like, his impulse is so strong. And he said, I was baptized on July 16th, 1991. After I asked Jesus Christ to be my attorney, to be my attorney in that courtroom before God, where everyone will face judgment. I love the fact that a serial killer is like, I was the worst, but y'all are going to be doing this too. Like, it's not just me.

66. 41:05

    Justin Holcomb

    My attorney, the Lord Jesus Christ, has assured me that I will receive a sentence of eternal life and that he has prepared a place for me right now. That's what forgiveness really looks like, is just the bold confidence that your sins are forgiven and you're declared righteous, and you are not even close to what that reality actually is because of the works of Christ. One of the— another one, that's guilt, and anger is a very important— and a lot of these are— this is not an advertisement to come to the breakout session. Go to the other breakout sessions.

67. 41:41

    Justin Holcomb

    and read B.B. Warfield's Emotional Life of Our Lord. You can read it, you don't need me to be your tour guide on it. I'm happy to be if you come to the session though. But the fact that Jesus— that B.B. Warfield talks about compassion of Jesus and the anger of Jesus and the grief of Jesus, those are the 3 main categories. I love the fact that he has a section on Jesus's anger because God's angrier at the sin done against you than you could ever imagine. We think that we're like the annoying, like, God, do you see what's happening? And He's like, yeah, that is against me.

68. 42:21

    Justin Holcomb

    But what is, what has David said? He abuses Bathsheba and kills her husband. He says, against God alone have I sinned. He knew he sinned against other people, but all sin is an affront to God and His creation. And so when you're sinned against, and when you sin, but when you're sinned against, He's angrier than you ever were at the sin done against you. He's not sitting back and being like, well, let me explain to you, dear child, about providence and sovereignty, because that'll fix how you feel about this. He's like, he gets how sovereignty and providence works. He's angry at the sin done against you. And it's so, just like we're invited to participate in his sorrow and grief, we're also invited to participate in his anger.

69. 42:46

    Justin Holcomb

    And, we're even— if we're even told to be angry, anger is not a sin by any stretch. You know, Paul says, You know, be angry. That's a command. In your anger, don't sin. That's nearly impossible. And so, because— but what gets me here is this language of the return, the idea in Romans. It says, vengeance is mine, says the Lord. The return of Christ, he's coming to bring justice.

70. 43:01

    Justin Holcomb

    He's going to make all things right. He's going to do the justice thing, and he can do justice way better than you and I can. That doesn't mean you don't pursue justice. I'm always, always encouraging survivors, pursue justice. You can forgive someone and call the cops at the same time. So pursue justice because that's, that's God's world and God's law and the way God set things up. Pursue justice. But by all means, if you can get off the hamster wheel of revenge and let justice be his, there's wonderful freedom in that.

71. 43:19

    Justin Holcomb

    that sometimes I actually feel. There's a few people I hate, and I feel this, like, sense of, like, I love justice. Again, Type A, justice is my thing. And I need to— being able to hand those over going, God, okay, you see it, you know it, you're gonna make all things right. We might not see justice in this case ever here, but I know I can trust you with it. So the return of Christ actually has some really helpful stuff on some of the effects of sin. One of the effects of sin is, a proper effect, is anger, and if you're like me, probably don't do that one sinlessly. Again, some of this is just coming from Calvin where he talks about all of the works of Christ have this redemptive hue to it, not only a cross and resurrection.

72. 43:48

    Justin Holcomb

    Then despair or just hopelessness, having no hope that the pain will ever stop. We've been told the lie that time heals all wounds, and after enough time passes and the wounds aren't healed and the hope hasn't just magically popped up, we feel like we're not even suffering correctly now. Like, great, I'm not even, not even feeling better. I'm doing that wrong too. And so what we need in this despair is resurrection. We— the picture of the resurrection of the first fruits, the breaking in. If anyone's heard me talk more than once, I've probably told you about Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island. There's a story about him when he was a little boy looking out the window at his home, looking down into a valley, and his parents were saying, hey, Robert Louis, come here, we've got dinner, and he wouldn't come, and he was just fixated looking out the window, and he was watching a lamplighter going around with a ladder and a torch lighting all the lamplight.

73. 45:17

    Justin Holcomb

    And they said, what in the world are you doing? And he said, I'm watching this man punch holes in the darkness. He had a way with words as a kid. You know, he's like 7 probably and saying poetic things while his parents are trying to get him to come to dinner. That's what's happening. In your darkness, the resurrection, and maybe some other of the works, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ is God's punching holes in your darkness. If nothing else, at least punching the hole of hope that there is light, and maybe that light will grow. Maybe that'll push back some of the darkness. Maybe it will get brighter and brighter.

74. 45:59

    Justin Holcomb

    And I, it feels, I always feel a little bit anxious of saying some of the crazy stuff that we get to say as preachers, because I can't make any of this happen. I'm just counting on God to be faithful to his promise.

75. 46:16

    Justin Holcomb

    That he's punching holes in the darkness. He wants us to have hope because of the resurrection. I'm just pointing it out, and whatever that darkness is, I don't want it to sound like some type of superficial, like, are you in darkness? Well, there's some light. Doesn't it make you feel better? I don't know how this works out. I know God's faithful by his Holy Spirit. He somehow works into our hearts the reality of hope. When it says the peace that passes understanding, that kind of language is what I'm banking that God's faithful on doing, that he brings

76. 46:54

    Justin Holcomb

    peace that passes all understanding, and that sounds like punching holes in the darkness and making it shine, making it reflect in your lives and in your relationships. But he's also not only the resurrection, he's also making all things new. Like, he's, he's ascended, making all things new, and he's returning to actualize that reality that, that, he is not only forgiving you of your sins, being for you, and he's not only punching holes in your darkness, but he's making all things new. And that's where you're headed. And in the best sense possible, we can— it gives us hope to hold on until we get there. And so resurrection and the return have some pop there, I hope, and I believe. So let's start turning toward just ending. We just said earlier on, the deepest message of the Bible and the ministry of Jesus is the mercy of God to sinners and sufferers.

77. 47:31

    Justin Holcomb

    And the good news offers hope And healing for those that have sinned and those that are suffering. And it invites us to say amazing things about God to ourselves and to each other. And when we're feeling broken and burdened and heavy laden and without hope. And so all the blessings of God, God the Father, are freely yours in Jesus Christ. Now and forever, all by grace and mercy, and it is available especially in the valley of the shadow of death, and in the plains of blessing, and in the feast that's joyful, because he died and rose again and conquered Satan, sin, hell, death, and the grave. So your sins are forgiven, you're declared righteous, you have— you're adopted into the family, and you have the hope of everlasting life. And so to our pain in Christ, God says— You will be healed. It's just a matter of time.

78. 48:08

    Justin Holcomb

    It might be now, but it might be later. It will be later. You will be healed. To your shame, he says, nope, come to me in confidence. To your rejection, he says, you're accepted and adopted. To your lostness in Christ, God says, no, you're found and I'll never let you go. To your sin in Christ, the Father says, you are forgiven and I declare you pure, perfect, righteous, and Holy. And to your death in Christ, we hear, you once were dead, but now you are alive.

79. 48:30

    Justin Holcomb

    And we can have this comfort in life and in death. That's why— let me just read to you Heidelberg Catechism, question 1, answer 1. What's your only hope in life and in death? And we are told by the Heidelberg Catechism— some of you are going to whisper this in your hearts as I read it because you know it. Memorize this if you want to and teach it to your children. That I am not my own, but belong body and I've committed my soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He's paid fully for all my sins with His precious blood, set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in Heaven. In fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

80. 49:21

    Justin Holcomb

    Because I belong to Him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him. Comprehensive work of Christ, comprehensive application to all the ways we experience the effects of sin from our sins and being sinned against. We are not making this up either. When Jesus said, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke, learn from me, because I'm gentle and lowly in heart, you'll find rest for your souls.

81. 49:53

    Justin Holcomb

    Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Got cure language coming here. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom. The thief comes only to kill, to steal, and destroy. I came that they might have life, you might have life, and have it abundantly. I'm the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.

82. 50:22

    Justin Holcomb

    So in coming to Jesus and saying to him, coming to him, going to Jesus is having faith. We have this tendency that we need to like, faith is like some magical thing that you can like somehow gauge how strong it is because we've been made to feel guilty that our faith is not strong enough all the time. Going to Jesus is an act of faith. So it's okay for it to just look like going to Jesus and saying, I have no power in myself to help myself.

83. 50:52

    Justin Holcomb

    just that sense and turning into him is saying, I can't do this, and apparently you're the solution. That's why I'm coming to you. And so I'd like to make— again, I'm not trying to minimize faith, I'm trying to make it less of— we turn faith into some type of work and burden that we're not doing that one right. And so the famous prayer, the prayer of humble access, comes to mind. We do not presume to come to you trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. And so when coming to Jesus is faith, you're saying you're the solution and you're trustworthy. There's a— Joseph Hart wrote a hymn called Come Ye Sinners in 1759, and it expands to all of us. It's come ye sinners, but as sinners and sufferers.

84. 51:39

    Justin Holcomb

    Let me just read it to you and just hear again, especially the last line. Come ye sinner, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore. Come, Jesus stands ready to save you, full of pity, love, and power. Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream. All the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him. Come ye weary, heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall. If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. Just the beautiful descriptions of what was in that prayer of, it's not like you sin, get some forgiveness and whatever.

85. 52:16

    Justin Holcomb

    It's like, yeah, it's that and it has this fullness to it. And so I wanna close in prayer in just a second, 'cause we have time to actually do that. But come to him, go to him, all who are weary and heavy laden, and because of the works of Christ for you as your cure, he will give you rest, he will give you light, he will give you life, he will give you forgiveness, he will give you righteousness, he will give you hope, he will give you a family to belong in, he will give you freedom from the tyranny of sin and death, He'll also, in addition, continue to give you extravagant, undeserved, overflowing, constantly pursuing, and unending love, because he secured it for you on your behalf. So to close, would you please grab a prayer book? It's the red books that look like this. Turn to page 218, and 3 of my favorite prayers happen to be on the same page, and so what I'd like to do is grab the prayer book, page 218, and we're just going to pray together each one of those 3 prayers, and I'll lead us, but you can— and if you just want to listen, listen. If you want to not say it out loud and read it in your heart and mind, go for it. But those who would like to pray this out loud together, let's pray, and we're not going to go slow and belabor it, but like, just feel the flood of God's disposition toward you in Christ reflected here. Are you all ready? You got the prayer books?