Don't you love when you put on some jeans or a coat you haven't worn in a while and find a few bucks in the pocket? Well, that's the feeling I get when I find a book I didn't remember owning. Or when I run across a book I had intended to read but never got to. Well, that's what happened with this little book In My Place Condemned He Stood by J. I. Packer and Mark Dever. I belive I received it at T4G last year. I completely forgot I had it.
In My Place is actually a compilation of articles and portions of other material all centered on the atonement. In the first chapter of the book, you find yourself reading a chapter from Packer's classic Knowing God. The quote about John 20:19-20 comes on page 49. Packer's answer to his own question is as follows:
"Not just to establish his identity, but to remind them of the propitiatory death on the cross whereby he had made peace with his Father for them. Having suffered in their place, as their substitute, to make peace for them, he now came in his risen power to bring that peace to them . . . It is here, in the recognition that, whereas we are by nature at odds with God, and God with us, Jesus has made 'peace through his blood shed on the cross' (Col. 1:20), that true knowledge of peace of God begins." Id.
Consider the irony of Jesus using a common salutation: "Peace be with you." On this day, however, this was not common. It was not like what we hear nearly everyday in the way of empty greetings like, "How are you?" or meaningless well-wishings like, "Have a good day." No. On that day, Jesus' words of welcome were pregnant with meaning. When He uttered "peace" to His disciples, He wasn't being hopeful that they would have a peace-filled day in their precarious cultural predicament. You will recall that verse 19 begins:
"On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews..."
Jesus' address had no reference to the blood-thirsty Jewish leaders who had orchestrated His death and were now on the hunt for His followers. No. On that day, Jesus' actually proclaimed peace with God Himself and proclaimed a peace that was already transacted on their behalf. This most blessed of proclamations was based upon God's wrath being absorbed by Jesus in their place. This propitiatory death was evidenced by His wounds which He showed to them.
Take a moment and meditate what had to have been silent awe in that upper room at that moment. Given Jesus' announcement of this new and costly peace with God, I wonder what must have become of their fear of the Jewish leaders from which they had been hiding. My good friend, Ray, rightly alludes (in his comment) at this point to the truth of Romans 8:31-35,
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 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? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?"
What mercy that He shows His wounds to us over and over again in the Scriptures! May we continue to see them and remember the peace with God that they bring as our own unique fears fade into insignificance.
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Do you think the disciples rightly understood it that way? Could it have been the wounds that affirmed it at this particular time?
ReplyDeleteThank you for making it clear that Jesus wasn't just identifying Himself or wishing the disciples the absence of stress when He said to them, "Peace be to you," but, rather, He was proclaiming that they already had peace with Almighty God, and by showing them His hands and His side, He reminded them that He had purchased their peace with God by His propitiatory death on the cross.
ReplyDeleteAs Christ is seen in Revelation as "a Lamb as though it had been slain," Rev. 5:6, we will see His wounds eternally as a reminder of the price that He paid for our redemption, for which "God also has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name," Phil. 2:9, and for which He is worthy to "receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!" Rev. 5:12. May we praise and honor Him forevermore!
Pat MacLean
Think about the change in attitude of the disciples. They had been dejected and afraid. The one they had left everything for and followed, the one that was going to deliver them had been murdered. BUT THEN, here he is resurrected, announcing peace and showing them the wounds by which He had bought that peace. That had to be an exciting change of tone in that room!
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