In the last article we identified five ways the victory of Christ reaches out and embraces us:
- The destruction of the devil.
- The dominion of Christ.
- The launch of a new age.
- The promise of a total final destruction of evil.
- The end of sin’s reign in the lives of believers.
Further, Christ’s saving work did not conclude at the cross, nor even at the empty tomb.
It issues, of necessity, in his present, ongoing ministry of applying what he has achieved — which is why the benefits of a victory won two thousand years ago reach you this morning.
‘The benefits of Calvary are held out to us moment by moment by the same hand that won them.’
Why He Had to Leave
6. Christ’s ongoing application of his achieved salvation. It is only by virtue of Jesus’ victory that God is able — by the gift and work of the Holy Spirit — to distribute and apply the benefits he has won for his people (John 16:17; Acts 2:33; Eph 4:8-11; Heb 7:25).
Christ’s saving work did not conclude at the cross, nor even at the empty tomb. It issues, of necessity, in his present, ongoing ministry of applying what he has achieved.
That’s the force of John 16:7: he must depart precisely so that the Paraclete may come. The two events aren’t merely sequential but causally bound — Christ’s exaltation is the condition of the Spirit’s coming, as John makes explicit when he notes the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified (John 7:39).
Peter draws the same logic at Pentecost, tracing the outpouring of the Spirit directly to Christ’s session at the Father’s right hand (Acts 2:33). Paul reads Psalm 68 the same way — the ascended Christ’s gifts to the church (Eph 4:8-11) are the spoils of a victory already won, distributed from a throne already occupied.
Nor is this distribution a single past transaction. Hebrews grounds the believer’s ongoing salvation in Christ’s unceasing intercession: he saves to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he lives forever to intercede for them (Heb 7:25). He has entered heaven itself not to rest from his labour but to appear continually in God’s presence on our behalf (Heb 9:24).
Union with this reigning Christ (Col 3:1) is therefore not a static fact secured once, but a living relation continually mediated. The benefits of Calvary are held out to us moment by moment by the same hand that won them.
Facing Death Without Panic
7. Dealing with fear by confidence in Christ. The last enemy, death (1 Cor 15:26), has yet to be finally destroyed, and the devil manipulates our fear of it (Heb 2:14-15).
But because Jesus reigns over all things in the kingdom of God, death itself may be faced with calm assurance (Luke 12:4; John 8:51). Slavery to the fear of dying holds enormous sway over human existence — yet this bondage has been done away with (Heb 2:15), and death itself can even be said to have been abolished (2 Tim 1:10).1Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – Kingdom, Freedom, and Fullness of Life: Jesus in the Broad Perspective of the Life He Brings; https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/kingdom-freedom-and-fullness-of-life/
So we may approach the future in peace and confidence:
‘[I]n all these things we are more than conquerors through him who love us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, no rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8:37-39).
The Obedience That Counts as Yours
Alongside the language of victory, Scripture uses another category to describe what Christ was doing — and it reaches us just as directly.
Paul states it with stark clarity: ‘For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous’ (Rom 5:19).
The obedience of Jesus Christ, rendered for us and in our place, is God’s own gift to us. Sent in love by the Father, he lived a perfect life, fully obedient to the Father’s will, and perfectly pleasing to him.
Scripture presents that obedience in two main ways.
First and most simply, Jesus’ sustained submission to God’s will provides the perfect example of a life lived in constant alignment with it (John 5:30; 6:38; 8:29; 12:49).
Second and most significantly, Jesus’ sustained learning of obedience in the face of intense suffering (Heb 5:7-9) — in the ‘form of a servant’ even ‘to the point of death … on a cross’ (Phil 2:8) — was ‘an act of righteousness’ (Rom 5:18) on our behalf, for our good.
The value of that obedience is such that it constitutes ‘the free gift of righteousness’ (Rom 5:17), leading to ‘justification and life for all men’ (Rom 5:18).
Reckoned to You
Trust in Jesus accordingly involves acknowledgement of, and reliance upon, his obedience on our behalf.
To grasp the significance of it is to receive personally by faith ‘the free gift of righteousness’ — that is, our justification, God’s declaration that rather than being guilty and in the wrong before him, we are forgiven and forever in the right with him.
His obedience is reckoned to us and counted as ours (Rom 4:3-8), as we are ‘justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 3:24; cf. 5:1-11).2See Alan Spence, ‘Justification,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 585-90.
Which is worth pausing on if you’ve ever measured your standing before God by your own record of obedience. The record that counts isn’t yours.