Focus on Worship: December 2004 Archives

May the theology of the Incarnation sweeten your worship this Christmas season. The following paragraphs are from T.F. Torrance's The Mediation of Christ.

Jesus Christ embodied in himself in a vicarious form the response of human beings to God, so that all their worship and prayer to God henceforth became grounded and centered in him. In short, Jesus Christ in his own self- oblation to the Father is our worship and prayer in an acutely personalized form, so that it is only through him and with him and in him that we may draw near to God with the hands of our faith filled with no other offering but that which he has made on our behalf and in our place once and for all.

In that perspective we must think of prayer as taking place within the relations of covenant partnership and reciprocity between God and mankind, but of Christian prayer as grounded in and governed by the fact that through his Incarnation Jesus Christ has stepped into that relationship as the Mediator, who not only brings God and man and man and God near to each other in propitiation but who in doing so stands in our place where we cry in prayer to God and makes himself our prayer, a prayer not in word or even in an act only but a prayer which he is in his own personal Being. Just as in Jesus Christ God addresses his word to us in such a way that he himself is wrapped up in his word in the form of personal being, so in Jesus Christ God has provided us with prayer that is identical with the personal self-offering and self-oblation of Jesus Christ to the Father on our behalf. It is as such that Jesus Christ stands in our place where we pray to the Father, so that from deep within our humanity, where he has united himself to us, and from out of it, assimilated to his own self-consecration to God, he prays: 'Our father who art in heaven. Hallowed by thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven . . .' That is to say, where we are unable to pray to the Father as we ought or in any way worthy of him for all our prayers are unclean, Jesus Christ puts his prayer, prayed with us to the Father, into our unclean mouth that we may pray through him and with him and in him to the Father, and be received by the Father in him: 'Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.'

We do not come before God, then, worshipping him and praying to him in our own name, or in our own significance, but in the name and significance of Jesus Christ alone, for worship and prayer are not ways in which we express ourselves but ways in which we hold up before the Father his beloved Son, take refuge in his atoning sacrifice, and make that our only plea.

'Nothing in my hands I bring;
Simply to thy Cross I cling.'

In worship and prayer Jesus Christ acts in our place and on our behalf in both a representative and a substitutionary way so that what he does in our stead is nevertheless effected as our very own, issuing freely and spontaneously out of ourselves. Through his incarnational and atoning union Jesus Christ has united himself with us in such a reconciling and sanctifying way that he interpenetrates and gathers up all our faltering, unclean worship and prayer into himself, assimilates them to his one self-oblation to God, so that when he presents himself as the worship and prayer of all creation, our worship and prayer are presented there also. When the Father accepts us in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, who then can distinguish our worship and prayer from Jesus' worship and prayer, for they are one and the same, wholly his and wholly ours in him?

Thus in all our worship and prayer, private and public, informal or formal, we come before God in such a way as to let Jesus Christ take our place, replacing our offering with his own self-offering, for he is the vicarious worship and prayer with which we respond to the love of the Father. We pray and worship in such a way as to make room in our prayer and worship for the living presence of Jesus as our Mediator in whom Offerer and Offering are one and the same, but in whom we are gathered up, with whom we are inseparably united, so that with him we pray and worship as we could not otherwise do.

At the end of the day when I kneel down and say my evening prayer, I know that no prayer of my own that I can offer to the heavenly Father is worthy of him or of power to avail with him, but all my prayer is made in the name of Jesus Christ alone as I rest in his vicarious prayer. It is then with utter peace and joy that I take into my mouth the Lord's Prayer which I am invited to pray through Jesus Christ, with him and in him, to God the Father, for in that prayer my poor, faltering, sinful prayer is not allowed to fall to the ground but is gathered up and presented to the Father in holy and eternally prevailing form. At the same time, I recall that the Father has promised to send the Spirit of his Son, mediated through the name and vicarious humanity of Jesus, into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father; and I am assured that as I pray in the name of God' s beloved Son I am caught up with all my own infirmities within the inarticulate intercession of the eternal Spirit of the Father and of the Son from whose love nothing in heaven or earth, nothing in this world or in the world to come, can ever separate us (T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, pp. 86-89).

Another pic from Matt Hand with accompanying Scripture:

“I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. Then sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore” (Psalm 121)

One of the questions that my pastor, Mark Stuenzi, answered in his sermon this past Sunday morning on Luke 2 was “Why here?” Why was the firstborn of Mary born in a stable and placed in a manger? That question really doesn’t carry the heavy emotional baggage for us that it would have carried for Mary and Joseph. Here are Mary and Joseph traveling some 90 miles at the most inopportune time for expecting parents “due” to a decree issued by Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1). One of the last things that any mother would wish to do, especially when she is anticipating the birth of her firstborn, would be to travel tens of miles over rough terrain when the time for her to give birth was too close for ease of mind and travel. It was most definitely not the ideal scenario for the birth of a child, let alone the birth of a firstborn who was to be given “the throne of his father David,” who would “reign over the house of Jacob forever,” and of whose “kingdom there would be no end” (Luke 1:32-33). In a world that boasted (as our world still does) in the births of the powerful and the noble (1 Corinthians 1:26), for a child destined for an eternal kingship to be born in circumstances like this was utter foolishness, drop-the-jaw folly. But such were the circumstances of the Holy One who was to be born to Mary.

Why was the Christ Child born into circumstances such as these (Why then?)? Why was the Holy One of God born in the most unsanitary place imaginable, namely, a manure filled and urine stained stable (Why there?)? Why would God ordain that the first breath of the infant Messiah’s lungs take in stench permeated air? Why then and why there?

On our way home after the sermon, I began to think of those questions in the context of the Hypostatic Union, that is, in the context of the union of the two natures (divine and human) of Christ in the one Person of Christ. I wondered if this great doctrine of the Hypostatic Union held any answers to our perplexing “why then” and “why there” questions. I am now convinced that it indeed does. It teaches that true and complete humanity came in union with true and complete deity in such a way that they can never be separated and yet never confused. “In this union God has become Man without ceasing to be God, and man is taken up into the very being of God without ceasing to be Man” (T.F. Torrance). This doctrine is a mystery that should give our little minds unending opportunities to worship the Christ who came to seek and to save that which was lost.

But how does this awesome doctrine help us answer our questions? With regard to the Hypostatic Union, Gregory Nazianzus (early church father) wrote, “That which is not taken up (assumed) is not healed.” Cyril of Alexandria wrote, “The thing not taken up is not saved.” One of the questions I ask the seniors who are taking their senior oral examination with me is, “Did Christ take up our pre-fall or post-fall humanity?” Every senior thus far has answered, “Our pre-fall humanity.” Their reasoning is that because Jesus did not have a sin nature he could not take up our post-fall humanity. I always first applaud their zeal for the sinlessness of Christ, but then ask this follow-up question, “Did the pre-fall humanity of Adam and Eve need to be redeemed?” To which they have all answered, “No.” “So what needed to be redeemed?” They answer, “The post-fall humanity of Adam and Eve.”
The saving significance of the Hypostatic Union is that Jesus took up our post-fall humanity yet without sin. Jesus actually assumed our brokenness and misery in the incarnation. He did not assume our humanity as it existed before sin. No, he took up all of our humanity that needed to be healed and saved. Jesus assumed the entirety of the flesh of fallen humanity apart from sin. Why? Because the unassumed is unhealed!

How does this aspect of the great doctrine of the Hypostatic Union help us answer our “why then” and “why there” questions? By giving us a tangible and real demonstration that would aid our understanding of what the Messiah came to do, namely, take up the entirety of our post-fall humanity apart from sin including the worst of our human misery and brokenness. He was born in a manure-filled and urine-stained stable, the most unsanitary place imaginable, so that he might save us from the dung of our human misery. His infant lungs took in stench-permeated air that he might rescue us from the reek of our human brokenness.

So feel free this Christmas season to breathe in the stench and reek of the Christmas story for God’s glory and your salvivic joy. Hallelujah, what a Savior!

A few years ago I purchased a set of tapes by Edmund Clowney on finding Christ in the Psalms. It opened a whole new world for me in my study in the Psalter and brought a richness to my meditation that I had not known previously. Well, I finally tracked down an article by Edmund Clowney that articulates one of the most helpful discussions found in that great set of tapes. It is rather lengthy, but I think you will be richly blessed if you read it all. I found the article in Moody Monthly (July-August, 1979). I love having my office next to a theological library! Enjoy!

Edmund Clowney writes:

Two Auca Indians sang a haunting chant of worship to God before a great missionary congress in Berlin. One of the singers had driven his spear into the bodies of the missionary martyrs who had landed in the Ecuadorian jungle to tell the love of Jesus. But now that love had changed his cry of blood-lust to a song of praise.

Where Christ comes, a song comes, for Jesus Christ is a singing Savior. “I will declare Your name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation will I sing Your praise” (Heb. 2:12).

The writer to the Hebrews ascribes to Jesus these words taken from Psalm 22. That Psalm begins with the cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus made that cry His own on the cross. But the Hebrews passage reminds us that the whole Psalm is Christ’s—not only the cry of abandonment at the beginning, but also the vow of victory at the climax (v. 22).

Jesus had sung that Psalm often before He went to the cross. Indeed, He knew and sang all the Psalms in the congregation of God’s people. Think of the meaning the Psalms had when He sang them! If you would open a new experience of worship, meditate on the Psalms as the Psalms of Jesus.

You have noticed that there are “we” Psalms, written in the first person plural: “We are thy people and the sheep of thy pasture” (Psalm 100:3). Jesus sings those Psalms with us. He is the singing Shepherd; we are the lost sheep He has brought home rejoicing. He sings over us (Zeph. 3:17), and with us, and for us.

Jesus can sing the “we” Psalms with us because He sings the “I” Psalms for us as our Savior. “Lo, I am come; in the roll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will, O my God” (Psalm 40:7-8).

Many of the “I” Psalms were written by King David. He wrote, not as a private individual, but as the Lord’s Anointed, called to suffer as God’s servant. David’s cry, uttered in the Spirit, anticipates the voice of Christ. His shout of victory is made ready for his greater Son and Lord (Psalm 110:1; Matthew 22:43-45). Jesus, after His resurrection, explained the Psalms to show His disciples that He must suffer these things and enter into His glory (Luke 24:26, 44).

Christ could explain His suffering and glory from the Psalms because He experienced the agony and the ecstasy the Psalms predicted. His cry, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” came from the pit of His anguish. Abandoned by His friends, ringed about by His enemies—seen in the Psalm as wild bulls, roaring lions, baying hounds—Jesus knew the ultimate horror, the hell of forsakenness by His Father. The God who promised never to fail or forsake His own did forsake His beloved Son, in order not to break His word but to keep it. In the dark moment of that abandonment both the Father and the Son paid the price of our redemption forever.

What songs of agony Christ sings—the psalms of His suffering that sealed salvation! Listen, and learn of Him hymns that know the fellowship of His sufferings, hymns that can come from a cross, or rise from a prison cell at midnight. The singing Savior does not lead songs modeled on sugary commercials or the pounding of the disco scene. Sterner, stronger, deeper, His songs carry us through the valley of the shadow of death.

Our Lord became our brother to die in our place. He teaches us honest songs, heart-cries to God: “My days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth” (Psalm 102:3).

Yet Christ’s psalms of suffering rise in faith to God. In abandonment He cries “Why?” but His question leaps from the depths to the heights. “My God!” He cries, even in His forsakenness. “Thou art holy” (Psalm 22:3) . . . “save me from the lion’s mouth” (v. 21). Indeed, even before God answers, the anguish of His Anointed turns to a vow of praise: “In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee” (v. 22).

Christ who sang in suffering now sings in triumph. Peter on Pentecost preached Christ’s resurrection from the Psalms. It is Christ who says, “Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption” (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:27).

Read all of Peter’s quotations from Psalm 16, and reflect on how the whole applies to Christ. So, too, do such parallel passages as these: “I shall be satisfied when I awake with beholding thy form” (Psalm 17:15); “Thou wilt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory” (Psalm 73:24).

Jesus Christ is the singing Victor of the Psalms, the Son (Psalm 2:7), seated on God’s right hand (Psalm 110:1). He is at once the righteous man who ascends into the hill of the Lord (Psalm 24:3-5) and the King of glory for whom the everlasting gates are thrown open (Psalm 24:7-10).

When Jesus sang the Passover Psalms in the upper room with Simon Peter, and James, and John, His Father heard and all heaven listened: “The Lord is my strength and song; and he is become my salvation” (Psalm 118:14). The song of Moses (Exodus 15:2) and of the prophet (Isaiah 12:2) became the song of the Lamb. Even the angels’ song in the fields of Bethlehem could not compare with the song of the Sin-Bearer.

But now the risen Savior sings in glory. He is the sweet singer of Israel, the choirmaster of heaven. He is not ashamed to call us brethren, but sings in the midst of His assembled saints in the heavenly Zion and on earth where two or three are gathered in His name.

Praise His name, the Christ who sings in the congregation sings a missionary hymn among the Gentiles. Paul reminds us that Jesus has fulfilled the mission of Israel as the great Minister of the circumcision, “that he might confirm the promises given unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” Then Paul ascribes to Jesus this verse from the Psalms: “Therefore will I give praise to thee among the Gentiles and sing unto thy name” (Romans 15:9; Psalm 18:49).

Jesus sings among the nations. His missionary hymn is a doxology, calling the Gentiles to join Him in singing praise to His Father’s name.

In the Old Testament praise was centered in Jerusalem, in the courts of God’s house (Psalm 116:18-19). The singing people of God called on all the nations to praise the Lord of the whole earth, whose salvation was seen in Zion (Psalm 98:3-4). The prophets picture the nations streaming in to praise God in His City (Isaiah 2:2-3; Zeph. 3:9-10).

In the New Testament the missionary direction seems to be reversed. Jesus sends His disciples from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:18-19). But the doxology of missions remains. Jesus Christ has all power, in heaven and earth. He ascends to the heavenly Jerusalem and calls the nations to gather with Him in praising the God of salvation (Hebrews 12:22-29).

Our evangelism must be doxological. We are God’s holy nation, a people of God’s own possession that we “May show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9b). As we sing of God’s amazing grace among the nations, Jesus Himself leads our praise. We do not bear witness defensively or proudly, but in the joy of worship. Like the shepherds who saw the Savior we go on our way glorifying and praising God.

You needn’t hum a hymn to begin your personal witness to a neighbor, but if your heart is singing praise, then your witness will ring true. And a praising church, full of gospel singing, is a church in which visitors will say, “God is among you, indeed!” (1 Corinthians 14:25).

By the lament of His prayer and the paean of His praise Jesus Christ turns our sighing into singing and gives us the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

Come to heaven’s festival of music; come to Jesus, who makes the tongue of the dumb to sing. Hallelujah!