“When it comes to holocausts or other horrors, most of us assume God has

his hands tied and his back to the wall. We figure the devil wreaks havoc

when God’s not looking; we rationalize the Lord’s ‘mistakes,’ figuring he

absentmindedly took his hands off the wheel when tragedies happen. But

John Piper paints a different picture from the pages of Scripture that will

strengthen your heart, bolster your faith, and deepen your understanding

of the ‘largeness’ of God’s sovereignty.”

— Joni Eareckson Tada, Joni and Friends International

Disability Center

“I had to read this book twice. The weighty truths about the sovereign

wisdom and power of God unpacked in these pages created in me an

overwhelming feeling of gratitude and ultimate safety. To be reminded of

his might over everything is priceless, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to

preach the same again.”

— Matt Chandler, Lead Pastor, The Village Church,

Highland Village, Texas

“Pastors, make sure your people read this book! I know of no one who has

so clearly addressed the relationship of man’s sin and God’s sovereignty as

John has done in Spectacular Sins.”

— Randy Pope, Pastor, Perimeter Church, Duluth, GA

“Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ. Wow!

Spectacular and sin! I’ve never seen those words together before. And who but John Piper could so brilliantly weave them into the same lyric as the

global, purposeful glory of Christ! This man never ceases to inspire me to

be more awestruck with the supremacy of Jesus.”

— Chris Tomlin, song-writer and lead worshiper

“‘Wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians’—this is the repeated refrain

in these pages. But there is nothing wimpy about the worldview provided

in Spectacular Sins. It dares to ask—and answer—the most daunting ques-

tion for the Christian: ‘ Why do sin, suffering, and evil exist in a world

where God is sovereign?’ Dr. Piper has provided an honest, biblical, and

pastoral theodicy for our generation. These pages turn the lights on in the

darkest room of Christian theology.”

— Rick Holland, Executive pastor, Grace Community Church

and Director of the Resolved Conference

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“It is impossible to truly apprehend the magnificent comfort of God’s

sovereignty before we first consider that sovereignty in light of pain, suf-

fering, evil, and sin. In this little book, John Piper is sending the church a

precious gift by demonstrating how the fallenness of this world has been

designed for our ultimate good and God’s ultimate glory. It is a biblical,

impassioned plea for this generation to consider God’s world in light of

God’s word. He who has an ear, let him hear!”

— Miles V. Van Pelt, Reformed Theological Seminary,

Jackson, Mississippi

“I wish I could have read this book as a new Christian as I was unprepared

to face calamity because of my deficient view of God’s sovereignty. I am

delighted now as a young pastor to be able to hand my congregation this

book that will enable them to see and worship God in their suffering.”

— Darrin Patrick, Pastor of The Journey, St. Louis

“Don’t let the small size of this book fool you. Like most of Piper’s

writings, it’s wonderfully dangerous and critically needed in our day—

especially in the Western world. This is a stick of gospel dynamite that

has the potential of radically altering the way you view suffering and evil

forever—on both a personal and global scale. But I must warn you. Don’t

expect to find in this book all the typical, soft ‘words of comfort’ espoused

by many in our day to help people maximize pleasure by minimizing or

rationalizing away the pain of suffering. Instead prepare yourself to have

your mind renewed by the deep, weighty truths of God’s word, your faith

strengthened by a renewed vision of God’s supremacy in all things (includ-

ing evil), and your courage bolstered in the face of the inevitable suffering

that lies ahead to follow hard by faith after the One whose death was the

most spectacular sin—for the sake of the nations and the glory of God.

Only this can bring you the true comfort of God in the face of suffering

and evil. I highly recommend it!”

— Steven L. Childers, President & CEO, Global Church

Advancement; Associate Professor of Practical Theology,

Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, Florida

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S p e c t a c u l a r S i n s

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Books By John PiPer

God’s Passion for His Glory

Beyond the Bounds (with Justin Taylor)

The Pleasures of God

Don’t Waste Your Life

Desiring God

The Passion of Jesus Christ

The Dangerous Duty of Delight

Life as a Vapor

Future Grace

A God-Entranced Vision of

All Things

A Hunger for God

(with Justin Taylor)

When I Don’t Desire God

Let the Nations Be Glad!

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ

A Godward Life

(with Justin Taylor)

Pierced by the Word

Taste and See

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

The Legacy of Sovereign Joy

God Is the Gospel

The Hidden Smile of God

Contending for Our All

The Roots of Endurance

What Jesus Demands from the World

The Misery of Job and Amazing Grace in the Life of

the Mercy of God

William Wilberforce

The Innkeeper

Battling Unbelief

The Prodigal’s Sister

Suffering and the Sovereignty of God

Recovering Biblical Manhood (with Justin Taylor)

and Womanhood

50 Crucial Questions

What’s the Difference?

When the Darkness Will Not Lift

The Justification of God

The Future of Justification

Counted Righteous in Christ

The Supremacy of Christ in a

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

Postmodern World (with Justin Taylor)

The Supremacy of God in Preaching

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J o h n P i p e r

s p e c t a c u l a r

S I N S

A n d T h e i r G l o ba l P u r p o s e

i n t h e G l o ry o f C h r i s t

C R O S S W AY B O O K S

W H E A T O N , I L L I N O I S

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Spectacular Sins

Copyright © 2008 by Desiring God Foundation

Published by Crossway Books

a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the

prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copy-

right law.

Cover design: Jessica Dennis

Cover illustration: The Bridgeman Art Library

Paperback printing for Desiring God, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-4335-0587-4

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard

Version®. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry

of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John, 1946–

Spectacular sins : and their global purpose in the glory of Christ /

John Piper.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-0275-0 (hc)

1. Sin—Biblical teaching. 2. Sin—Christianity. I. Title.

BS680.S57P57 2008

241’.3—dc22

2008010514

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To Joseph

whose life of suffering and salvation said,

“You meant evil against me,

but God meant it for good.”

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C o n t e n t s

Introduction: The Times Are Changing

11

When the Bruised Heart Needs a Tire Iron

1 God Sovereign over Human Sin

21

The Impulses Behind This Book

2 Christ Sovereign over All Hostile Powers

31

All Things Were Created for Him

3 The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ

39

Why Does God Permit Satan to Live?

4 The Fatal Disobedience of Adam and the

Triumphant Obedience of Christ

53

How Adam’s Sin Serves the Supremacy of Christ

5 The Pride of Babel and the Praise of Christ

65

How the Judgment of God Brings Joyful Acclaim to Jesus

6 The Sale of Joseph and the Son of God

75

How Salvation Comes through Slavery

7 The Sinful Origin of the Son of David

87

How the God-Man Becomes the King of Kings

8 Judas Iscariot, the Suicide of Satan, and the

Salvation of the World

97

How God Conquered Sin through Sin

A Closing Prayer

107

Acknowledgments

111

Scripture Index

113

General Index

119

Desiring God: A Note on Resources

123

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I n t r o d u c t i o n :

T h e T i m e s A r e

C h a n g i n g

When the Bruised Heart Needs a Tire Iron

Jesus Christ, who was in the beginning with God, and was God

(John 1:1), created the universe. He did this as God the Father’s

equal and as his agent. “All things were made through him”

(John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2). And he did it to display his glory.

“By him all things were created . . . and for him” (Col. 1:16). By

him and for him. All things were created by Christ and for Christ.

The Son of God, who has become a human being—the God-man,

Jesus of Nazareth—in perfect concert with his Father, created the

universe for the display of his all-satisfying glory.

Not only that, he holds it all together with total authority.

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of

his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power”

(Heb. 1:3). How this massive power—to create and uphold the

universe—is wielded to display the glory of Christ is the great

issue of our time, and of all time.

The Greatest Display of the

Glory of Christ

The apex of the glory of Christ is the glory of his grace—treating

people infinitely better than they deserve—giving himself for

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12 Introduction

the everlasting joy of the worst of sinners who will have him as

their highest Treasure. And the apex of this grace is the murder

of the God-man outside Jerusalem around a.d. 33. The death

of Jesus Christ was murder. It was the most spectacular sin ever

committed.

At the all-important pivot of human history, the worst sin

ever committed served to show the greatest glory of Christ and

obtain the sin-conquering gift of God’s grace. God did not just

overcome evil at the cross. He made evil serve the overcoming of

evil. He made evil commit suicide in doing its worst evil.

Evil is anything and everything opposed to the fullest display

of the glory of Christ. That’s the meaning of evil. In the death of

Christ, the powers of darkness did their best to destroy the glory

of the Son of God. This is the apex of evil. But instead they found

themselves quoting the script of ancient prophecy and acting

the part assigned by God. Precisely in putting Christ to death,

they put his glory on display—the very glory that they aimed to

destroy. The apex of evil achieved the apex of the glory of Christ.

The glory of grace.

To See the World Differently

When you see this, and feel the force of it, the way you look at

the world changes. I am writing this book because I think the

days that are coming will demand from the followers of Christ

this change in the way we look at the world. It seems to me that

Christians in the West are being coddled. We suffer little in the

name of Christ. Therefore, we read the Bible not with a desperate

hunger for evidences of God’s triumph in pain, but with a view to

improving our private pleasures.

Therefore, we read the Bible selectively. We pick a text here

and there to fit our felt needs. This is like a doctor who forgets

how to write prescriptions for the best antibiotics because every-

body seems healthy, and he has spent the last decades tweaking

good health with hip-hop exercise videos, unaware that pestilence

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Introduction 13

is at the door. It’s like the soldier who forgets how to use his

weapons because the times seem peaceful, and he has spent the

last decades doing relief work and teaching the children how to

play games.

The Times Are Changing

But the times are changing. For seventy million baby boomers, for

example, life has changed. It seems very short now. What used to

be a fond nostalgia for the sixties has turned into an ache that the

beloved decade is now so far away that its main meaning is: we

are dying. Different ages get the message in different ways.

And not only life, but the world too is shrinking. People who

don’t like Christians are all around us. Only a strange providence

keeps our churches from being bombed. It is only a matter of time

till the reality of the rest of the world comes home. And all the

while we are called by Christ to go to them, love them, sacrifice

for them, bring the gospel to them. The Great Commission is not

child’s play. It is costly. Very costly.

The coddled Western world will sooner or later give way to

great affliction. And when it does, whose vision of God will hold?

Where are Christians being prepared for great global sorrows?

Where is the Christian mind and soul being prepared for the

horrors to come? Christians in the West are weakened by wimpy

worldviews. And wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians.

God is weightless in our lives. He is not terrifyingly magnificent.

His sovereignty is secondary (at best) to his sensitivity.

The Missing Bible

What is missing is the Bible. I mean the whole Bible, with its

blood and guts and sins and horrors—and all of it under the

massive hand of God. The hand whose fingers flick stars into

being. The hand that gives life and takes it. The hand that rules

everything. Everything. What we need is to know the great

things about God. Knowing great things about God will help

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14 Introduction

make us ready not to collapse under cataclysmic conflict and

personal catastrophe.

The Bruised Heart and the Tire Iron

I am aware that these things seem emotionally distant and unre-

lated to the personal pains of many. In our quiet daily miseries

of marriage or parenting or loneliness or sickness or depression,

we may feel that all this talk about the grandeur of God is like

trying to heal a bruised heart with a tire iron. I know that God is

tender, and that personal fellowship with him is sweet, and that

touching the heart happens through the brokenness of the still,

small voice. I know this, and I love it. Jesus Christ is a precious

friend to me.

But I also know something else. If, while I am having a tender

conversation with my wife, a man breaks in and kills her and all

my children and leaves me wounded on the living room floor, I

will need a way of seeing the world that involves more than the

tenderness of God. If pestilence takes out tens of thousands of

my fellow citizens and half my church, my mental and spiritual

survival will depend on more than the precious gifts of God’s

intimacy.

Catastrophes Are Coming

I am writing this book to build a vision of God into our lives

that will not let us down in the worst of times. I mean really bad

times. Horrific times. Who is prepared to meet the Agony that is

coming?

Our worship services and our preaching too often pamper us.

They coddle. I am not opposed to friends helping us with the daily

frustrations that make us unhappy. There is plenty of proverbial

wisdom in the Bible to warrant this. It is good. Love does this.

I need this help. I want it. There is a time for everything under

heaven, even pampering. But surely the preaching of God’s word

must aim for more than this.

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Introduction 15

Global cataclysms and personal catastrophes are coming.

I say this not as one with my finger in the wind, but with my

finger in the Bible. “Through many tribulations we must enter

the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). “If they persecuted me, they

will also persecute you” (John 15:20). “You yourselves know

that we are destined for [these afflictions]” (1 Thess. 3:3). “All

who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”

(2 Tim. 3:12). We are “fellow heirs with Christ, provided we

suffer with him” (Rom. 8:17). “Not only the creation, but we

ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly

as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our

bodies” (Rom. 8:23).

“Your Brother and Partner in

the Tribulation”

I have shepherded too many Christians through death in the

best of times to think that any times are easy. But hard times

are coming. Times are coming that have already been. Times

when we will speak again the way John spoke on the island

of Patmos. We will write to one another and, with no sense of

melodrama, sign our letters, “Your brother and partner in the

tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that

are in Jesus” (Rev. 1:9). Few write like this now in the West.

But we will.

Times are coming when shepherds will say again to their

flock, as they have done in days gone by, “Do not fear what

you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw

some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten

days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I

will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). I am deeply thank-

ful for Christian counseling to make my marriage better. But

in addition, I need a shepherd who will tell me: “The devil

may kill you, but that’s okay. Jesus will give you the crown

of life.”

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16 Introduction

The Beast Will Win . . . For

a Season

Along with the tender words of daily blessings, I need the

tough warning that the Beast will win. For a season. “[The

Beast] was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer

them . . . and . . . cause those who would not worship the

image of the beast to be slain” (Rev. 13:7, 15). I need the

warning that the great Babylonian whore will one day be

“drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs

of Jesus” (Rev. 17:6).

These horrors are in the Bible. God’s word. Where is the

shepherd who is preparing the saints for this kind of future? What

answer could he give to our questions? What answer would fit

with the upbeat entertainment mood? Where in the West do we

hear the answer: “They have conquered him by the blood of the

Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their

lives even unto death” (Rev. 12:11)?

Our Felt Needs Are About

to Change

The fact that people do not feel a need for this kind of food in

their spiritual diet should not silence the wise and loving shep-

herd. Our felt needs are about to change dramatically. Pastors

will be glad if they are ahead of the curve. Otherwise, it may be

too late. Coddled people will not be good listeners when their

world collapses. They will be numb with confusion and rage at

the God who wasn’t supposed to allow this. “If this is the way

God is, why didn’t you tell us?”

The aim of this book is not to meet felt needs, but to

awaken needs that will soon be felt, and then to save your faith

and strengthen your courage when evil prevails. These are big,

deep, weighty, strong truths. Truths for pestilence and war and

personal calamity. These truths are made of steel. I know that a

tire iron cannot caress a bruised heart, but if your car is rolling

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Introduction 17

over on you and about to crush you, a cold, steel perpendicular

tire iron might save your life. Then later, at home, as you tell

the story, tears will flow, and Jesus will hold you as you sob for

joy.

The “Success” of Sin in the

Providence of God

My aim is to show that sin and evil, no matter how spectacular,

never nullify the decisive, Christ-exalting purposes of God. No,

my aim is more than that. These spectacular sins do not just fail

to nullify God’s purpose to glorify Christ, they succeed, by God’s

unfathomable providence, in making his gracious purpose come

to pass. This truth is the steel God offers to put in the spine of

his people as they face the worst calamities. There will be tender-

ness in due time. But if the back of our faith is broken because

we think God is evil or absent, who will welcome him when he

comes with caresses?

The Aim Is Love

In the end, my aim, as I will make clear as we go along, is that you

will be given the strength and courage of never-failing love toward

all people, including your enemies (Matt. 5:43–44). “Love bears

all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”

(1 Cor. 13:7). There will be much to endure. Without a way of

seeing the world that can deal with massive evil and unremitting

pain under the supremacy of Christ, we will collapse in self-pity

or rage. This is the opposite of love. If we are to endure and bear

and believe and hope, we need to see the spectacular sins of his-

tory the way God sees them.

I hope this book helps. The assumption is that telling the sto-

ries of these sins as they are told in the Bible will be as helpful as

writing a formal theology of providence. Once the stories are in

place, you then have a lifetime to trace out all their implications

in larger books than this.

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18 Introduction

How a Little Window Works

This book is small. But my prayers for it are large. Sometimes, if

you put your eye close enough, the smallest pinhole can reveal a

new world. It isn’t the size of the window that determines how

much you see. It’s which way the window is facing, and how close

you are, and whether the glass is clear. The little window of this

book is facing toward the Son of God and the triumphs of his

glory through some of the most spectacular sins of history. The

glass I have used in building this window is the Bible. If I am not

faithful to what the Christian Scriptures teach, you should take

your leave. I hope that you will come close to the pane so that the

fullest panorama is visible.

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S p e c t a c u l a r

S i n s

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1

G o d S o v e r e i g n o v e r

H u m a n S i n

The Impulses Behind This Book

The king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of affairs brought about

by God.

2 C h r o n i c l e s 1 0 : 1 5

“Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these

your prophets. The Lord has declared disaster concerning you.”

2 C h r o n i c l e s 1 8 : 2 2

Amaziah would not listen, for it was of God, in order that he might give them

into the hand of their enemies, because they had sought the gods of Edom.

2 C h r o n i c l e s 2 5 : 2 0

The first impulse to write this book came when we were

on vacation in 2007. I was sitting on a porch in Asheville,

North Carolina. It was midsummer, and that means I was in

2 Chronicles. My through-the-Bible-in-a-year reading plan1 had

put me in the same place in the Bible that it does every summer.

Reading the Bible with the same plan every year makes for some

interesting associations in my mind between towns and texts. The

association with Asheville that year was God’s sovereignty over

demonic evil and human sin.

1See www.hopeingod.org/BibleReadingPlan.aspx.

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22 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

What I Saw in Asheville

Here’s a glimpse of what I was seeing and what I mean by God’s

sovereignty over sin. I’m sitting there on the porch looking out

over the Blue Ridge Mountains (and they really are blue at certain

times of day), and I am reading things like this:

A Turn of Affairs Brought about by God

First, Solomon, king of Israel, had died. His son Rehoboam was

about to be made king. Jeroboam, who had opposed Solomon

and was driven into exile in Egypt, returned quickly and gathered

the people behind him as a popular leader. He took the people

and stood before Rehoboam and offered to serve him if he would

lighten their load. “Your father made our yoke heavy. Now there-

fore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on

us, and we will serve you” (2 Chron. 10:4).

Rehoboam sought counsel from the old men. They counseled

wisely, “If you will be good to this people and please them and

speak good words to them, they will be your servants forever”

(2 Chron. 10:7).

But Rehoboam abandoned the counsel of the old men and

sought counsel from “the young men who had grown up with

him.” They gave foolish counsel: “Thus shall you speak to the

people . . . ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. And

now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to

your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will disci-

pline you with scorpions’” (2 Chron. 10:10–11).

Rehoboam embraced the foolish counsel of the young men.

The result was the tragic split of Israel into two warring king-

doms—ten tribes in the north and two tribes in the south. Why

did Rehoboam react in this sinful and foolish way? There are lay-

ers of answers. But the writer of 2 Chronicles tells us the ultimate

answer: “The king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn

of affairs brought about by God” (2 Chron. 10:15).

This is what I mean by God’s sovereignty over sin.

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God Sovereign over Human Sin 23

God Put a Lying Spirit in the Mouths of the Prophets

Second, a few chapters later Ahab, king of the northern tribes of

Israel, made an alliance with Jehoshaphat, the king of the south-

ern tribes. They would go to war together against Syria. Before

going they sought counsel from the prophets. Four hundred

prophets counseled them to go up against Syria. God would give

it into their hands, they said (2 Chron. 18:11).

But these prophets were deceived. The one true prophet,

Micaiah, described to the kings what had happened. He gave a

window into heaven. He explained that among the hosts gathered

before God there was a “lying spirit” who volunteered to deceive

the prophets. “I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth

of all his prophets” (2 Chron. 18:21). So God says, “You are to

entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.” Then the

true prophet Micaiah said to Ahab, “Now therefore behold, the

Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these your proph-

ets. The Lord has declared disaster concerning you” (2 Chron.

18:22). Why did the prophets give false and destructive counsel

to King Ahab? There are layers of answers. But the writer of

2 Chronicles gives the ultimate one: “The Lord has put a lying

spirit in the mouth of these your prophets.”

It Was of God

Third, one more illustration from what I was reading on the

porch in Asheville. Seven chapters later in 2 Chronicles, Amaziah,

the king of Judah, became bigheaded by a recent victory over the

nation of Edom. In his pride, he decided to press his authority on

the northern kingdom ruled by Joash.

Joash resisted and pointed out Amaziah’s pride: “You say,

‘See, I have struck down Edom,’ and your heart has lifted you up

in boastfulness.” Then he gave him wise counsel: “Stay at home.

Why should you provoke trouble so that you fall, you and Judah

with you?” (2 Chron. 25:19).

But Amaziah would not forsake his pride and aggression.

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24 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

Why? Again the answer has many layers. But the writer of

2 Chronicles gives us the ultimate answer: “Amaziah would not

listen, for it was of God, in order that he might give them into

the hand of their enemies, because they had sought the gods of

Edom” (2 Chron. 25:20).

This is what I mean by the sovereignty of God over sin.2

The Impulses Giving Rise to This Book

Why Does God Want Us to Know His Sovereignty over Sin?

Why does God think it is good for us to know this? Why does

God tell us repeatedly in the Bible that, in some unfathomable

way, he governs the sinful acts of men? We know that God him-

2I am aware that James 1:13–15 is a text some would use against this point. “Let no one

say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. (14) But each person is tempted when he is lured [ exelkomenos] and enticed [ deleazomenos] by his own desire. (15) Then desire when it has conceived

[ syllabousa] gives birth [ tiktei] to sin, and sin when is it is fully grown brings forth death.”

There is no point in hiding each other’s problem texts. I am not allowed to pick and choose any more than I allow it to others. If I cannot make texts harmonize, I try to let them both stand until someone wiser than I can (even if I must wait for God’s final enlightenment in heaven).

My effort at understanding James 1:13, in view of all the examples of God’s willing that

sinful actions come about, is to say that “tempt” is defined in verse 14 as being “dragged away” ( exelkomenos) and “lured” ( deleazomenos). In other words, James is not thinking of temptation in terms of an object of desire being put in front of someone (note that he does not attribute “temptation” to Satan, the arch-“tempter,” but to our “desire”). For example, temptation is not the pornography on display, in James’s way of thinking here; rather, it is the “dragging” and “luring” experienced in the heart that makes a person look at the pornography. He is thinking of temptation as the engagement of the emotions in strong desires for evil. This he calls the “conceiving” ( syllabousa) stage of temptation before the actual

“birth” ( tiktei) of the act of sin (v. 15).

Thus it seems to me that James is saying that God never experiences this kind of “being dragged away” or “being lured.” And he does not directly (see Chapter Four, note 1) produce that “dragging” and “luring” toward evil in humans. In some way (that we may not be able

to fully comprehend), God is able without blameworthy “tempting” to see to it that a person does what God ordains for him to do even if it involves evil.

But when James says that God “cannot be tempted by evil,” he is not saying that God cannot have objective enticements to evil put in front of him (for Jesus certainly was

“tempted” in this sense in the wilderness), nor that he himself does not arrange events at times so that such enticements come before us, which may lead us, through the “dragging”

of our desires, to sin (which God knew and, therefore, in one sense, willed). In fact, the Bible reveals that God tests (same word as “tempt” in Greek) his people often (cf. Heb. 11:17) by arranging their circumstances so that they are presented with dangerous acts of obedience that they might sinfully fear, or sinful pleasures that they might covet. In the end, what I say is that God is able to order events, if it seems wise and good to do so, such that sin comes about; yet he does so without “tempting” those who sin, as James says. See John Piper, “Are There Two Wills in God?” in Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce Ware, eds. Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 107–131.

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self never sins or does anything evil or unholy. If there is one thing

the Bible is clear about, it is that God is holy and does not sin.

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and

is to come!” (Rev. 4:8; see Isa. 6:3). “God is light, and in him is no

darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). “God cannot be tempted with evil,

and he himself tempts no one” (Jas. 1:13). “Shall not the Judge

of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18:25). Yes. That is not up

for grabs. God is just and holy and eternally without sin.

So why does God tell us about his sovereignty over sin? It

troubles people. Why does he want us to know this? There must

be some good reason. I want to know what that is. That’s the first

impulse that gives rise to this book.

Why Does God Not Restrain Sin More Often?

The second impulse behind this book is the overwhelming evil

in the world. Whatever month of the year you choose, heart-

rending calamities fill the news from coast to coast and around

the world. And if we had the connections to know about them,

we would see that they fill our churches as well. Calamities strike

the world of unbelievers and the children of God every day with

mind-numbing pain. Some of these tragedies come directly from

natural disasters, and some come directly from the sinful acts of

man against man.

Just when you think violent crime in one state is decreasing,

you read about a major city where the murder rate is up 50 per-

cent in the last seven years. Just when you hear that drug use is

on the decline among teenagers, you read about execution-style

murders among our youth. Somewhere in the news miners are

trapped deep underground, and family members are huddled

in a church hoping against hope. An interstate bridge collapses,

and a just-married husband doesn’t arrive home for supper—

ever. Planes collide, and bodies fall from the sky. Trains explode

in flesh-burning balls of flame. The most stable countries sud-

denly burst into ethnic violence, and headlines venture the term

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26 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

genocide. A father throws his children off a bridge to spite his

wife. Little girls are kidnapped and made to serve as sex slaves.

Ethnic and religious minorities are systematically starved out of

existence. Tsunamis sweep away whole villages and churches.

Earthquakes bury thirty thousand people in a night. Suddenly

twenty million people are displaced with South Asian flood-

ing. And forty-six million pre-born babies are killed every year

around the world.

Does this have anything to do with Jesus Christ—the risen

king of the universe who stops the threatening wind and waves

with a single word (Luke 8:24–25), who commands the dead and

they live (John 11:43–44), who makes the lame walk and the blind

see and the deaf hear (Matt. 11:5), who feeds five thousand with

a few loaves of bread (Mark 6:41–42), who created the universe

and everything in it (John 1:3), and who upholds the universe

with the word of his power (Heb. 1:3) and says, “All authority in

heaven and earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18)?

Surely, this Jesus can stop a tsunami, and make the wind blow

a jet off its deadly course toward a crowded tower, and loosen the

stranglehold of an umbilical cord from around an infant’s neck,

and blind the eyes of torturers, and stop a drought. Surely he can

do this and a thousand other acts of restraint and rescue. He has

done it before. He could do it now. What is his reason for not

doing it more often than he does? That is the second impulse that

gives rise to this book.

How Can We Have Faith and Joy during the Severity of the Last Days?

Third, the Bible itself tells us that in the last days things will be

difficult and severe. There will be much suffering, and it will

not exclude the followers of Jesus. In 2 Timothy 3:1 Paul says,

“Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of

difficulty.” This statement is meant as a warning for Christians

to expect trouble. Lots of trouble.

He goes on to explain that the source of this difficulty will

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God Sovereign over Human Sin 27

be pervasive sin. “People will be lovers of self, lovers of money,

proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful,

unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control,

brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with

conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the

appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:2–5).

Together with human sinfulness, the last days will be perme-

ated with natural calamities. It will be as though the earth is in

the heavings of childbirth. “Nation will rise against nation, and

kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earth-

quakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the

birth pains” (Matt. 24:7–8).

There will be sweeping hostilities toward Christians: “They

will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you

will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake” (Matt. 24:9).

“Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will

grow cold” (Matt. 24:12).

Tragedies and calamities and horrific suffering and sinful

atrocities should not take Christians off guard. “Beloved, do not

be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you,

as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Pet.

4:12). They are foreseen by God, and he foretold them for us to

know. God sees them coming and does not intend to stop them.

Therefore, it appears that they somehow fit into his purposes.

Indeed, he says as much about the murder of his saints in

Revelation 6:10–11. Those who had already been killed cry out

in heaven, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before

you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the

earth?” John describes the answer they receive: “They were each

given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number

of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete,

who were to be killed as they themselves had been.”

There is a number of martyrs to be filled. God knows how

many murders of his children there must be. And God reigns

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28 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

over every one of them. He does not spare his children physical

death, but he does save them eternally: “Some of you they will

put to death. . . . But not a hair of your head will perish” (Luke

21:16, 18).

As a pastor, I do not think it is my job to entertain you during

the last days. It is not my calling to help you have chipper feel-

ings while the whole creation groans. My job is to put the kind of

ballast in the belly of your boat so that when these waves crash

against your life, you will not capsize but make it to the harbor of

heaven—battered and wounded, but full of faith and joy. That’s

the third impulse that gives rise to this book.

How Is Christ Glorified in a World of Sin?

The fourth impulse behind this book is the ultimate aim of my life

and ministry. Recently I went back almost three decades and lis-

tened to my candidating sermon at the church I still serve. It was

January 27, 1980. I told that old and graying downtown church

that I had one supreme passion and one simple goal. I learned it

from my father, and I learned it from the apostle Paul.

I exist to magnify Jesus Christ. That is, I am on this planet for

one ultimate reason: to do whatever I can to make Jesus Christ

known and treasured—a knowing and a treasuring that accords

with his infinite beauty and immeasurable worth. My text that

Sunday was the clearest statement of this passion and goal in the

Bible. The text was Philippians 1:20: “It is my eager expectation

and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full cour-

age now as always Christ will be magnified in my body, whether

by life or by death.” Paul’s “eager expectation” is that Christ be

made to look as great as he really is by the way Paul lives and

dies. That’s my passion too.

This is the fourth impulse behind this book. How is Christ

magnified in a world like ours? Or a world like 2 Chronicles?

How is Christ magnified in the fall of Satan from his position of

perfection? In the sin of Adam and the fall of the entire human

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God Sovereign over Human Sin 29

race into sin and misery? In the tower of Babel and the fractur-

ing of the human race into thousands of languages? In the sale of

Joseph into slavery in Egypt? In Israel’s treason against God in

demanding a human king to be like the nations? In the betrayal

of the Son of God by the kiss of his friend?

Sorrowful, Yet Always Rejoicing

Between Asheville and this book, I preached a series of messages

under the title “Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in

the Glory of Christ.” It marked the beginning of my twenty-

eighth year of preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church. There

was death that autumn, just like there had been death in the

spring. My father and my granddaughter. The I-35 bridge over

the Mississippi River collapsed. Darkness overcame the young.

And steady-state suffering kept its inexorable pace. I write out

of the way I experience the word of God. And what I experience

almost every day is someone’s pain. Sometimes my own. Always

someone else’s that, in part, becomes mine.

We are Christian Hedonists at Bethlehem. That means we

believe and pursue the truth that God is most glorified in us when

we are most satisfied in him. But we also know that in this life, joy

in God is never unmixed with sorrow. Never. Love won’t allow

that. Our banner bears the seal of 2 Corinthians 6:10, “sorrowful

yet always rejoicing.” We are pushing our way through a blood-

spattered life that makes us feel connected to the world and dis-

connected at the same time. We are here but not here. Love binds

us to the tragic earth, and love binds us to the Treasure of heaven.

Christians are strange. Our emotions are inexplicable in ordinary

terms. “[Let] those who [mourn] mourn as though they were not

mourning, and those who [rejoice] rejoice as though they were

not rejoicing” (1 Cor. 7:30). That is our experience. That is the

daily context of this book.

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2

C h r i s t S o v e r e i g n

o v e r A l l

H o s t i l e P o w e r s

All Things Were Created for Him

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him

all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether

thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through

him and for him.

C o l o s s i a n s 1 : 1 5 – 1 6

God has not answered all of our questions about the sin and

misery that are in the world. “The secret things belong to the

Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29). There are mysteries we will not

fathom while “we see in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12). In this

present age, we “know in part”; in the age to come we will know

even as we are known (1 Cor. 13:12).

But God has not been silent about these things. There are

things he wants us to know. The honor of his Son is at stake in

the spectacular sins of history and their global purpose in the

glory of Christ. The apostle Paul makes this clear in Colossians

1:9–20.

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32 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

The Most Concentrated Description

of Christ’s Glories

Paul has just prayed for the Colossians that they would “be filled

with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and

understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,

fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and

increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:9–10). In verse 14,

he begins a litany of amazing truths about Jesus Christ that are

probably the most concentrated description of the glories of Jesus

in the entire Bible. I will mention them—all fifteen of them—and

then come back to the one I want to focus on.

•   In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (v. 14).

•   He is the image of the invisible God (v. 15a).

•   He is the firstborn of all creation—that is, the specially honored,

first and only Son over all creation (v. 15b).

•   By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible

and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authori-

ties (v. 16a).

•   All things were created through him (v. 16b).

•   All things were created for him (v. 16c).

•   He is before all things (v. 17a).

•   In him all things hold together (v. 17b).

•   He is the head of the body, the church (v. 18a).

•   He is the beginning (v. 18b).

•   He is the firstborn from the dead (v. 18c).

•   In everything he is preeminent (v. 18d).

•   In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (v. 19).

•   He reconciles all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven

(v. 20a).

•   He makes peace by the blood of his cross (v. 20b).

This is worth memorizing. If your heart ever wavers and grows

cold, come here. Memorize this litany of glories, and ask God

to give you affections that correspond to the measure of this

greatness—infinite in beauty, immeasurable. If any person or any

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Christ Sovereign over All Hostile Powers 33

power or any wisdom or any love awakens any admiration or

any amazement or any joy, let it be the greatest person and the

greatest power and the greatest wisdom and the greatest love that

exists—Jesus Christ.

All Things Created by, through, and

for Jesus Christ

But for our purposes in this book, we go back to verse 16. Notice

the three prepositions: “For by him all things were created . . . all

things were created through him and for him.” So Paul teaches

us that Jesus Christ created all that is. They were created through

him. And all things were created for him.

All that came into being exists for Christ—that is, everything

exists to display the greatness of Christ. Nothing—nothing!—in

the universe exists for its own sake. Everything—from the bot-

tom of the oceans to the top of the mountains, from the smallest

particle to the biggest star, from the most boring school subject

to the most fascinating science, from the ugliest cockroach to the

most beautiful human, from the greatest saint to the most wicked

genocidal dictator—everything that exists, exists to make the

greatness of Christ more fully known—including you, and the

person you have the hardest time liking.

Even Evil Supernatural Powers

But of all the things—the millions of things Paul could have men-

tioned that Christ made and that exist for his glory—he chose to

mention these: thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. Verse

16: “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth,

visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers

or authorities—[even these] were created through him and for

him.”

Now Paul knows that these “rulers” and “authorities” include

evil supernatural powers. We can see this in the next chapter. In

Colossians 2:15, Paul celebrates Jesus’ triumph on the cross by

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34 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

saying, “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to

open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” So here are the

“rulers and authorities” that he referred to in Colossians 1:16.

They are evil. Jesus died to disarm them.

They turn up again in Ephesians 6:12: “We do not wrestle

against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the author-

ities.” They are, Paul says, “the cosmic powers over this present

darkness . . . the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

They are evil supernatural powers that aim to deceive and destroy

the human race.

According to Colossians 2:15, they have been decisively

defeated at the cross where Jesus disarmed them and made his

believing people completely secure. But they still do much harm

in the world because not everyone believes, and even believers can

be hurt by them, but not destroyed.

For example, Jesus said to the church in Smyrna, “Do not fear

what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw

some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days

you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give

you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). The devil can imprison and kill

God’s loved ones. But he cannot destroy them. That is the kind of

power the rulers and authorities have.

For the Glory of Jesus Christ

So where do these evil supernatural powers come from and why

do they exist? Colossians 1:16 gives a decisive part of the answer.

Not the whole answer, but the part we need to know. They come

from Christ. “By him [by Christ, the Son of God!] all things were

created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether

thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. . . .” That’s where

they came from. They were created by Christ. And why do they

exist? Verse 16b: “All things were created through him and

for him.” They exist for Christ. They exist to make his glories

known—to display his infinite beauty and immeasurable worth.

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Christ Sovereign over All Hostile Powers 35

It doesn’t say he created them evil. In fact, the little New

Testament book of Jude speaks of “angels who did not stay

within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwell-

ing” (Jude 6). They were created good, and they rebelled against

God.

Paul knows this. He knows what they once were and what

they have become. And we will see in the chapters to come that

Paul knows something else. He knows that Christ knew they

would fall before they fell. Christ knew that there would be

sin and rebellion and evil. And with infinite wisdom he and his

Father took it all into account as they planned the history of sal-

vation and the triumphs of grace at Calvary.

Therefore, when Paul says, “rulers [and] authorities” were

created by Christ and for Christ, he means that they were created

knowing what they would become and how it is that precisely in

that evil role they would glorify Christ—knowing everything they

would become, they were created for the glory of Christ.

Fuel for a God-Centered Fire

Now why would Paul tell us this? Is it helpful to know this? Paul

certainly thinks so, because these evil powers are the one thing

Paul chooses to mention as an example of what was created by

Christ and for Christ. Of all the thousands of things he could have

mentioned, he mentions these evil powers. He wants us to know

this. Why? Why does he think this is good for us to know? That’s

what this book is about.

The main point of this book is not information for your

heads, but application to your lives. I am thinking as I write of

the way Paul was thinking about Timothy as he wrote his second

letter to Timothy. In dealing with an intensely practical, and

probably painful, matter in Timothy’s life, Paul leads him back

to the most profound, and even mind-boggling, doctrinal truth.

Timothy is prone to anxiety. He is retiring and sometimes fearful.

His timidity threatens the effectiveness of his ministry.

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36 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

Paul wants to help him overcome his fear and be courageous.

So Paul says, “Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our

Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel

by the power of God” (2 Tim. 1:8). That much we may expect.

But then to help Timothy even more, he takes him into heavy

theology.

He describes God in the next verse like this: “. . . [God] saved

us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but

because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ

Jesus before the ages began.” Paul tells timid Timothy that before

there was any human sin in the world that needed grace, before

Adam had sinned, before the world existed, God gave grace to

Timothy in Christ Jesus for salvation. God had Timothy in view,

and he had Jesus Christ in view, and he had grace in view, and he

had salvation in view before there was any world or any human

sin or any human guilt. That is heavy.

And why does he say it? Because Timothy is timid. Paul’s

antidote for wimpy Christians is weighty doctrine. In Paul’s mind,

the most massive truths are meant for producing radical lives of

obedience. That’s why I say the main point of this book is not

information for your head, but application to your life. There

is truth. Weighty truth like the kind Paul unveiled for Timothy

in 2 Timothy 1:9. But the aim is love and justice and purity and

compassion and courage. All to the end that Christ might be

known and treasured as infinitely beautiful and immeasurably

valuable. Great biblical truths are fuel in the fire of the God-

centered soul.

Why the Truth of Christ’s

Sovereignty?

In anticipation of what is coming, we will end this chapter with

five summary statements about why God wants us to know the

truth of Christ’s sovereignty over “rulers [and] authorities” and

the way they are involved in the most spectacular sins of the

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Christ Sovereign over All Hostile Powers 37

universe—as well as all the others. God’s sovereignty over sin in

Jesus Christ is important to know for at least these five reasons.

First, God wants us to know this because it is objectively true,

not merely opinion or a merely human idea. It is a fact. It is real,

like the seat you are sitting on. Or the floor on which you stand.

Or the mattress where you lie. Truth matters. People perish, Paul

says, for not knowing and loving the truth. His heart aches for

those “who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth

and so be saved” (2 Thess. 2:10).

Second, God wants us to know this truth because it makes

clear that Christ alone, not “rulers [and] authorities,” is to be

worshipped. Some people in Colossae were saying that the “wor-

ship of angels” (Col. 2:18) was part of the way up to God. No,

Paul says, these angels that some think are so great—the good

ones and the evil ones—were created by Christ and for Christ.

Don’t worship them. Worship the one who made them.

Third, God wants us to know these things because our day is

not so unlike Paul’s. Paul was concerned that, in the pluralistic,

intellectual atmosphere of Colossae, Christians could be capti-

vated by high-sounding heresies. “See to it that no one takes you

captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human

tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not

according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). Paul believed that the great truth

of Christ’s sovereignty over sin and evil was a kind of ballast in

our boats that would keep us from capsizing under the waves

of error that roll endlessly over the sea of human culture. He

believed that great truth would protect us from philosophies and

traditions that do not cherish the supremacy of Christ. When you

embrace truths like this, you are not easily swept away by man-

centered trends or traditions.

Fourth, God wants us to know this truth to make us valiant

in the face of odds that seem overwhelming to the natural eye.

Paul wants to make crystal-clear that when Christians, who feel

small and vulnerable, hear about hostile “thrones or dominions

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38 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

or rulers or authorities,” they know beyond any doubt that Jesus

Christ has all authority over them. He means to give us courage

that these hostile powers cannot do anything apart from God’s

sovereign permission (Job 1:12; Luke 22:31–32).

And therefore, finally, Paul tells us these things because he

wants us to see and feel that our salvation in Christ is invincible.

When Christ died for sin and rose again, “he disarmed the rulers

and authorities” (Col. 2:15). If you have put your trust in him,

here is what he says about you in Colossians 3:3–4: “You have

died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ

who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in

glory.” You are secure forever in Christ. Nothing can separate

you from him, not even the most vicious cosmic powers (Rom.

8:38–39).

All Things Serve His Glory and

Our Gladness

All things were created by him and through him and for him—

even our worst supernatural enemies. In the end, it was they—not

Christ—who were shamed at the cross (Col. 2:15). In the end,

everything and everyone serves to magnify the glory of our Savior

and increase the gladness of his people in him.

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3

T h e F a l l o f S a t a n

a n d t h e V i c t o r y

o f C h r i s t

Why Does God Permit Satan to Live?

God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and commit-

ted them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.

2 P e t e r 2 : 4

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and

her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

G e n e s i s 3 : 1 5

The devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur

where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and

night forever and ever.

R e v e l a t i o n 2 0 : 1 0

Vying for the most spectacular sin ever committed is the desire

of once-holy angels to love their own glory more than God’s.

It is unfathomable. The Bible does not take us deep into the heart

of such mysterious sin to explain the soul-dynamics that make

rebellion rise out of righteousness. We are not given the final

answer of how the origin of sin in the soul of a holy being takes

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40 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

place. But neither are we left to wonder if God was surprised or

if he had to revamp all his plans. We are taken by Scripture deep

into the halls of eternity and given glimpses that are breathtak-

ing. And God’s aim in this is not to promote speculation, but to

awaken worship and make us mighty for Christ in the midst of

sin and misery.

As we come through Genesis 1–2 to Genesis 3, all is well, it

seems. Genesis 1:31 says, “God saw everything that he had made,

and behold, it was very good.” God did not create anything evil.

It was all very good.

Then suddenly when chapter 3 opens, there is this serpent.

And he is clearly evil. He is calling God’s word into question.

Verse 1: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in

the garden’?” He is devious and deceitful and destructive. God

had said in Genesis 2:17, “The day that you eat of [this tree] you

shall surely die.” But the serpent says in verse 4: “You will not

surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will

be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Therefore, Jesus says of him in John 8:44 that he is both a

“liar” and a “murderer.” “He was a murderer from the begin-

ning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no

truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character,

for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Satan, That Ancient Serpent

Who is this serpent? The fullest answer is given in Revelation

12:9: “The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient ser-

pent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole

world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were

thrown down with him.” So the serpent in the garden is the devil

(which means slanderer), and Satan (which means accuser), and

the deceiver of the whole world.

Jesus calls him “the evil one” (Matt. 13:19) and “the ruler of

this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). The Pharisees call him

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The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ 41

“Beelzebul, the prince of demons” (Matt. 12:24). Paul calls him

“the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4) and “the prince of the power

of the air” (Eph. 2:2).

That’s the one we meet in Genesis 3. He is already evil,

already a deceiver, already a murderer when he appears in the

garden of God. In Genesis 3:15, after the serpent lures Adam

and Eve into sin, God pronounces judgment on the serpent: “I

will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your

offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you

shall bruise his heel.”

Notice that at first it looks like the warfare will be between

two offsprings: “between your offspring and her offspring.” But

in the next statement, something surprising is said: “He shall

bruise your head.” Who is he? Answer: the woman’s offspring.

Who is your (“he shall bruise your head”)? Answer: the serpent

himself, not his offspring. That is significant.

The Crushing of Satan at the Cross

The day is coming, God says, when you, the serpent (not just your

offspring), will be defeated and removed from the earth. The off-

spring of this woman will crush you. That’s why the Son of God

became human. It was a human who would crush Satan—the

seed of the woman.

Hebrews 2:14 describes the connection between the humanity

of Jesus and the destruction of Satan. “Since therefore the children

share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same

things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the

power of death, that is, the devil.” The decisive blow was struck

by the perfect offspring of the woman, Jesus Christ, when he died

on the cross. This is one of the reasons why the eternal Son of God

had to become human—because it was the offspring of the woman

who would crush Satan. “The reason the Son of God appeared was

to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). God intended for

his Son to get the glory as the Victor over the serpent.

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42 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

Colossians 2:14–15 describes what God did to the demons

when his Son died on the cross: “The record of debt that stood

against us . . . he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the

rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumph-

ing over them in him.” When Christ died for our sins, Satan was

disarmed and defeated. The one eternally destructive weapon

that he had was stripped from his hand—namely, his accusation

before God that we are guilty and should perish with him. When

Christ died for us, that accusation was nullified.

All of us who entrust ourselves to Christ will never perish. No

accusation will stand against us. Satan cannot separate you from

the love of God in Christ (Rom. 8:37–39).

The Insurrection of Satan

Now the question that cries out for an answer is: Where did Satan

come from? And why does God tolerate his murderous activity? In

Genesis 3, he just seems to appear. God created everything good,

but something happened. The good creation was corrupted.

The books of Jude and 2 Peter in the New Testament give us

clues as to what happened. Jude 6 says, “The angels who did not

stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper

dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness

until the judgment of the great day.” And 2 Peter 2:4 says, “God

did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and

committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until

the judgment.”

This may not be a direct reference to the original fall of Satan

and his rebellion. Some argue that it refers to the sins of angels

(“sons of God”) in Genesis 6:1–4. But in any case it is the best

pointer we have in the Bible to how Satan and his subordinates

came to be what they are.1

1Thomas Schreiner, for example, thinks the main reference of 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 is to the sins of angels in Genesis 6:1–4 but says that the “prehistoric fall of angels” is “a legiti-mate deduction theologically.” 1, 2 Peter, Jude, The New American Commentary, Vol. 37

(Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2003), 336.

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The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ 43

It appears then that at first there was a host of holy angels.

And some of them, including Satan, “sinned,” or as Jude 6 says,

“did not stay within their own position of authority.” In other

words, the sin was a kind of insurrection. A desire for more

power and more authority than they were appointed to have by

God and under God.

So Satan originates as a created angel who, with other angels,

rebels against God. They reject him as their all-satisfying king

and joy and set out on a course of self-exaltation and presumed

self-determination. They do not want to be subordinate. They

do not want to be sent by God to serve others (Heb. 1:14). They

lose their reverence and admiration and satisfaction in God. Now

they dream of having authority over themselves and exalting

themselves above God.

The Origin of Satan’s Sin

But now we ask: Why? How could this happen? There is no easy

answer. In fact, the ultimate biblical answer creates even more

questions. So it seems that in this age, while we “know in part”

(1 Cor. 13:12), not all our questions will be answered.

Some people find help in saying that the angels had “free

will,” and therefore God, out of respect for this free will, could not

exert decisive influence to hold their allegiance or keep them ador-

ing him. But I don’t find that idea helpful. It simply doesn’t answer

the question: Why would a perfectly holy angel in God’s infinitely

beautiful presence use his free will to suddenly hate God?

This idea that God was unable to prevent the rebellion

because of his respect for the innate self-determining wills of sin-

less angels is not a solution to the problem. It doesn’t account for

why perfectly holy beings would use their wills to despise what

they were adoring when created. And it doesn’t fit with what

the rest of the Bible says about God’s rule over the devil. In this

setting, the term free will is simply another way of naming the

mystery. But it’s not the way the Bible deals with the situation.

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44 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

My approach to answering the question of how to think

about the origin of Satan’s sin is to read the whole Bible with the

question: How does God relate to Satan’s will? Is God helpless

before the will of evil powers? Is he respectful of the freedom of

Satan’s will so that he does not intrude on it and exert his sover-

eignty over it? Are there powers outside himself that limit his rule

over them? Or is God presented throughout the Bible as having

the right and the power to restrain Satan anytime he pleases? And

if so, why doesn’t he do it more often? In fact, why doesn’t he just

nullify him or destroy him entirely?

So when I read the Bible, here is what I find. Here are just

a few glimpses of God’s power over Satan. They point the way

for how we should think about what measure of freedom Satan

has.

God’s Sovereign Sway over Satan

1. Though Satan is called “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31),

Daniel 4:17 says, “The Most High [God] rules the kingdom of

men and gives it to whom he will.” And Psalm 33:10–11 says,

“The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frus-

trates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands

forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” Yes, Satan is

“the ruler of this world” in a subordinate sense. God has given

him astonishing latitude to work his sin and misery in the world.

He is a great ruler over the world, but not the ultimate one. God

holds the decisive sway.

2. Though unclean spirits are everywhere doing deceptive

and murderous things, Jesus Christ has all authority over them.

Mark 1:27 says, “He commands even the unclean spirits, and

they obey him.” When Christ commands the devil, the devil

obeys. This raises the question about the difference between the

command of God, say in the Ten Commandments, and the com-

mand of Christ in telling demons to depart or telling the universe

to come into being. Clearly, God does exert his authority in giving

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The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ 45

the Ten Commandments. All his creatures are obliged to obey,

including the devil.

Nevertheless, the devil disobeys these commands every day.

The authority that they have is not the same kind of authority

that Jesus wields in Mark 1:27: “He commands even the unclean

spirits, and they obey him.” This is an absolute, effective author-

ity. When God exerts this authority, it produces what it demands.

When he wills, he can make the demons do what he commands.

This is a different authority than he exercises in his written

law, such as the Ten Commandments. It is decisive. Christ holds

sway over Satan’s will whenever he pleases. This means that any-

time demons are doing horrible things, Jesus is not commanding

them to do otherwise. And in not commanding them to do other-

wise, he has a reason for letting them do what they are doing.

3. Satan is a roaring lion, prowling and seeking to devour.

Peter says, “Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same

experiences of suffering are being experienced by your brethren

throughout the world” (1 Pet. 5:8–9). In other words, “suffering”

is the way Satan is trying to devour the saints. But Peter says in

1 Peter 3:17, “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should

be God’s will, than for doing evil.” If that should be God’s will.

In other words, whether we suffer—whether the jaws of the lion

are allowed to clamp down on our leg or throat—is ultimately

decided by God. If the Lord wills, we will suffer or not. If the

Lord wills, Satan will be given this permission or not. This suffer-

ing, these jaws of the prowling lion, are opened and closed only

according to God’s will. God holds final sway, not Satan.

4. Yes, Satan is a murderer from the beginning, Jesus said

(John 8:44). But has Satan taken the gift of life out of the hand of

the Giver? No. Deuteronomy 32:39 says, “See now that I, even

I am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I

wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my

hand.” God holds final sway in every death and every life.

James says the same thing in James 4:15: “If the Lord wills,

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46 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

we will live and also do this or that.” James does not say we will

live “if Satan wills.” He says, “If the Lord wills, we will live.” The

Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. And his name is blessed (Job

1:21). Satan is a murderer. But his choices whom to murder do

not make the life-giving God his lackey. God makes all the final

choices concerning who will live and who will die. Satan is not

absolute. God is.

5. When Satan aims to destroy Job and prove that God is not

his treasure, he must get permission from God before he attacks

Job’s possessions and his family with destruction, and before he

attacks his body with sickness. In Job 1:12, God says to Satan,

“Behold, all that [Job] has is in your hand. Only against him do

not stretch out your hand.” That is, “You have my permission to

attack, but you will not go beyond the bounds that I set.”

In Job 2:6 God gives Satan permission to go so far and no far-

ther: “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, he is in your hand; only

spare his life.’” And when the story is complete and the inspired

writer is summarizing all that happened, he does not even give

Satan so much as a mention. He sees only God’s overarching

supreme hand in all that Satan did: “[Job’s brothers and sisters]

showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the

Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). Satan’s causality in

all Job’s suffering was not ultimate. That is why the writer can

simply leave him out of account and say that the Lord was the

final and decisive wisdom that ordered these things. Satan was

not ultimate. God was.

6. Satan is the great tempter. He wants us to sin. Luke tells

us that Satan was behind Peter’s denials. He tempted him to deny

Jesus. But could he do that without God’s permission? Listen

to what Jesus says to Simon Peter in Luke 22:31–32. It is very

similar to the way Satan and God interact in Job: “Simon, Simon,

behold, Satan has demanded to . . . sift you like wheat, but I have

prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. And when you have

turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

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Satan could not do what he wished with Peter without God’s

permission. And when he had it, just as with Job, God had set him

a boundary: “You will not destroy Peter. You will only make him

stumble tonight.” Which is why Jesus says, “When [not if!] you

have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus, not Satan,

has the upper hand here. And Satan is allowed to go so far and

no farther.

7. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that “the god of this world

has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.” But is this power to

blind people an ultimate power? Can God overcome it and resist

and nullify it? Yes, he can. Two verses later Paul says, “God, who

said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to

give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of

Jesus Christ.” In other words, the blinding effect of Satan gives

way to God’s light when he says, “Let there be light.”

God Governs Satan’s Every Move

So now back to the question about the origin of Satan’s sinful-

ness. Is God unable to do with his own angels what he does with

the demons on earth: “He commands . . . and they obey” (Mark

1:27)? Is there a power outside himself that limits his rule over

them? My conclusion is that from cover to cover the Bible pre-

sents God as governing Satan and his demons. He has the right

and power to restrain them anytime he pleases. He holds sway

over their wills. He commands the evil spirits, and they obey. I

have no reason from the Bible to think otherwise.

I conclude, therefore, that God permitted Satan’s fall, not

because he was unable to stop it, but because he had a purpose for

it. Since God is never taken off guard, his permissions are always

purposeful. If he chooses to permit something, he does so for a

reason—an infinitely wise reason because he is infinitely wise.

How the sin arises in Satan’s heart, we do not know. God has

not told us. What we do know is that God is sovereign over Satan,

and therefore Satan’s will does not move without God’s permis-

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sion. And therefore every move of Satan is part of God’s overall

purpose and plan. And this is true in such a way that God never

sins. God is infinitely holy, and God is infinitely mighty. Satan is

evil, and Satan is under the all-governing wisdom of God.

Why Not Wipe Out Satan?

Why, then, does God not simply wipe Satan out? He has the right

and power to do this. And Revelation 20:10 says he is going to do

it someday. “The devil who had deceived them was thrown into

the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet

were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Why didn’t God cast him into the lake of fire the day after he

rebelled? Why let him rampage through humanity for centuries?

Satan deserved the lake of fire the moment he rebelled against

God. It is an infinitely grievous sin to rebel against an infinitely

worthy Being. He was completely worthy of the lake of fire the

moment he sinned. A finite number of sins following this rebel-

lion would not bring Satan’s guilt finally to the point of deserving

the lake of fire. Satan did not need millennia of sinful carnage to

deserve the lake of fire. God had the right and the power to put

Satan out of commission the moment he sinned. Therefore, the

fact that God did not do it shows that he had a reason. Can we

know what it was?

For the Fullness of Christ’s Glory

The ultimate answer, as we saw in the last chapter, is that “all

things were created through [Christ] and for [Christ]” (Col.

1:16). God foresaw all that Satan would do if he created Satan

and permitted him to rebel. In choosing to create him, he was

choosing to fold all of that evil into his purpose for creation.

That purpose for creation was the glory of his Son. All things,

including Satan and all his followers, were created with this in

view. They were created knowing what they would do, and that

knowledge was taken into account in God’s decision to create

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them. Therefore, the evil that they do in the world is part of how

the greatest purpose of God will be accomplished.

Satan’s fall and ongoing existence are for the glory of Christ.

The Son of God, Jesus Christ, will be more highly honored and

more deeply appreciated and loved in the end because he defeats

Satan not the moment after Satan fell, but through millennia of

long-suffering, patience, humility, servanthood, suffering, and

decisively through his own death. A single, sudden, and infinitely

holy display of power to destroy Satan immediately after his fall

would have been a glorious display of power and righteousness.

But it would not have been the fullest possible display of all the

glories in the Son and the Father. God chose an infinitely wise way

of displaying the full array of divine glories in letting Satan fall

and do his work for millennia.

The glory of Christ reaches its highest point in the obedient

sacrifice of the cross where Jesus triumphed over the devil (Col.

2:15). Jesus said in that final hour of his own sacrifice, “Now

is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him” (John

13:31). Paul said that the crucifixion of Christ is the point where

we see his wisdom and power most gloriously displayed: “We

preach Christ crucified . . . the power of God and the wisdom of

God” (1 Cor. 1:23–24).

Jesus said to Paul about Satan’s thorn in Paul’s side, “My

power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Satan, and all

his pain, serves in the end to magnify the power and wisdom and

love and grace and mercy and patience and wrath of Jesus Christ.

We would not know Christ in the fullness of his glory if he had

not defeated Satan in the way he did.

How to Relate to Evil

So I close this chapter with an urgent and practical question: How

then should we relate to evil? How should we think and feel and

act about satanic evil? The death of a little boy at the attack of

a pit bull? The deaths of three valiant miners trying to save their

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buddies? Five hundred dead in an earthquake in Peru? These are

just some of the agonies in the news the week I preached this mes-

sage. And what about the evil and pain you confront in your own

lives? Here is my summary answer.

Eight Things to Do with Evil

On the one hand:

1. Expect evil. “Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it

comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were

happening to you” (1 Pet. 4:12).

2. Endure evil. “Love bears all thing, believes all things, hopes

all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7; cf. Mark 13:13).

3. Give thanks for the refining effect of evil that comes

against you. “Give thanks always and for everything to God the

Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20; cf. 1

Thess. 5:18). “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffer-

ing produces endurance . . .” (Rom. 5:3–5).

4. Hate evil. “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold

fast to what is good” (Rom. 12:9).

5. Pray for escape from evil. “Lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13).

6. Expose evil. “Take no part in the unfruitful works of dark-

ness, but instead expose them” (Eph. 5:11).

7. Overcome evil with good. “Do not be overcome by evil,

but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21).

8. Resist evil. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you”

(Jas. 4:7).

Four Things Never to Do with Evil

But on the other hand:

1. Never despair that this evil world is out of God’s control.

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The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ 51

“[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph.

1:11).

2. Never give in to the sense that because of seemingly ran-

dom evil, life is absurd and meaningless. “How unsearchable are

his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! . . . For from him

and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for-

ever” (Rom. 11:33, 36).

3. Never yield to the thought that God sins or is ever unjust

or unrighteous in the way he governs the universe. “The Lord is

righteous in all his ways” (Ps. 145:17).

4. Never doubt that God is totally for you in Christ. If you

trust him with your life, you are in Christ. Never doubt that all

the evil that befalls you—even if it takes your life—is God’s lov-

ing, purifying, saving, fatherly discipline. It is not an expression

of his punishment in wrath. That wrath fell on Jesus Christ our

substitute (Gal. 3:13; Rom. 8:3). Only mercy comes to us from

God, not wrath, if we are his children through faith in Jesus. “The

Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom

he receives” (Heb. 12:6).

When we renounce the designs of the devil and trust the

power and wisdom and goodness of God displayed in the humble

triumphs of Jesus Christ, we fulfill God’s purpose in letting Satan

live a little longer. We glorify the infinitely superior worth of

Jesus. So I invite you to trust him and to stand in awe of how he

saves you and defeats Satan in one great sacrifice of love.

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4

T h e F a t a l

D i s o b e d i e n c e o f

A d a m a n d t h e

T r i u m p h a n t

O b e d i e n c e o f C h r i s t

How Adam’s Sin Serves the

Supremacy of Christ

Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like

the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

R o m a n s 5 : 1 4

If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much

more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righ-

teousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

R o m a n s 5 : 1 7

One of the aims of this book is to impress on our minds the

fact that Jesus Christ is the most important person in the

universe. Not more (or less) important than God the Father or

God the Spirit, of course. With them, he is equal in worth and

beauty and wisdom and justice and love and power. But he is more

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important than all created persons—whether angels or demons

or kings or commanders or scientists or artists or philosophers or

athletes or musicians or actors—the ones who live now, or have

ever lived, or ever will live. Jesus Christ is supreme.

All Things for Jesus—Even Evil

This book is also meant to show that everything that exists—

including evil—is ordained by an infinitely holy and all-wise

God to make the glory of Christ shine more brightly. The word

ordained is peculiar, I know. But I want to be clear what I mean by

it. There is no attempt to obscure what I am saying about God’s

relation to evil. But there is an attempt to say carefully what the

Bible says. By ordain I mean that God either caused something

directly or permitted it for wise purposes. This permitting is a

kind of indirect causing, since God knows all the factors involved

and what effects they will have and he could prevent any out-

come. So his permission is a kind of secondary causing, but not

a direct causing.1 This distinction is an effort to be faithful to the

different ways the Bible speaks about God’s relation to events.

1I find the effort of Stephen Charnock (1628–1680), a chaplain to Henry Cromwell and

a non-conformist pastor in London, to be balanced and helpful in holding the diverse Scriptures on God’s will together. He writes:

God doth not will [sin] directly, and by an efficacious will. He doth not directly will

it, because he hath prohibited it by his law, which is a discovery of his will; so that if he should directly will sin, and directly prohibit it, he would will good and evil in the same manner, and there would be contradictions in God’s will: to will sin absolutely,

is to work it (Psalm 115:3): “God hath done whatsoever he pleased.” God cannot

absolutely will it, because he cannot work it. God wills good by a positive decree,

because he hath decreed to effect it. He wills evil by a private decree, because he

hath decreed not to give that grace which would certainly prevent it. God doth not

will sin simply, for that were to approve it, but he wills it, in order to that good his

wisdom will bring forth from it. He wills not sin for itself, but for the event. (Stephen Charnock, Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God [Grand Rapids, MI:

Baker Book House, 1979], 148.)

Some people disparage an appeal to “secondary causes” between God’s sovereign will

and the immediate effecting of a sinful act (cf. Jack Cottrell, “The Nature of the Divine Sovereignty,” The Grace of God and the Will of Man [Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1995], 100–102). But this idea of intermediate causes, which is different from God’s ultimate causing, is not introduced because of the demands of a theological system, but because so many Scriptures demand it. For example, 1) God commissions an “evil spirit” between Abimelech

and the men of Shechem to bring about his will (Judg. 9:22–24); 2) in Luke 22:3 Satan

leads Judas to do what Acts 2:23 says God brought about; 3) Paul says that Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers (2 Cor. 4:4), but also says that God sends a blinding spirit of stupor (Rom. 11:8–10); 4) Satan stirs up David to take a census (1 Chron. 21:1), which proved

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The Bible expresses both ideas—causing and permitting—in

the way God brings things about. For example, in Mark 5:12–13,

the demons beg to be sent into the pigs, and Jesus “gave them per-

mission.” In 1 Corinthians 16:7 Paul says, “I hope to spend some

time with you, if the Lord permits.” Hebrews 6:1–3 exhorts the

people to “leave elementary doctrine . . . and go on to maturity,”

then concludes, “And this we will do if God permits.”

And the Bible speaks of God’s more direct action even in

events that involve evil. For example, Joseph’s brothers sold him

into slavery. By this sinful act Joseph goes to Egypt and later is in

a position to save the very brothers who hated him. Joseph says,

“God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth”

(Gen. 45:7).

At the exodus from Egypt, we read about God’s harden-

ing the heart of Pharaoh and his turning the Egyptians to hate

the Israelites. “I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the

people go” (Ex. 4:21). “He turned their hearts to hate his people,

to deal craftily with his servants” (Ps. 105:25).

And when it comes to calamities—physical and spiritual—

they are repeatedly described as sent by God. “I will send fam-

ine and wild beasts against you, and they will rob you of your

children” (Ezek. 5:17). “I will send a famine on the land—not a

famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words

of the Lord” (Amos 8:11).

to be sin (2 Sam. 24:10), and yet it is written that God was in some sense the cause behind Satan (2 Sam. 24:1); 5) Satan gets permission from God to torment Job (Job 1:12; 2:6), but when Satan had taken Job’s family and made him sick, Job said, “The Lord has taken away”

(Job 1:21), and, “Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil” (2:10)—to which the writer responds: “In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (1:22; 2:10). Texts like these make the theological reflections of Theodore Beza (in 1582) biblically sound:

Nothing happens anyhow or without God’s most righteous decree, although God is

not the author of or sharer in any sin at all. Both His power and His goodness are so

great and so incomprehensible, that at a time when He applies the devil or wicked

men in achieving some work, whom He afterwards justly punishes, He Himself none

the less effects His holy work well and justly. These things do not hinder but rather

establish second and intermediate causes, by which all things happen. When from

eternity God decreed whatever was to happen at definite moments, He at the same

time also decreed the manner and way which He wished it thus to take place; to such

extent, that even if some flaw is discovered in a second cause, it yet implies no flaw

or fault in God’s eternal counsel. (Quoted in Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics

[Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978, orig. 1860], 143–144.)

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56 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

So when I say that everything that exists—including evil—is

ordained by an infinitely holy and all-wise God to make the glory

of Christ shine more brightly, I mean that, one way or the other,

God sees to it that all things serve to glorify his Son. Whether he

causes or permits, he does so with purpose. For an infinitely wise

and all-knowing God, both causing and permitting are purpose-

ful. They are part of the big picture of what God plans to bring

to pass.

Evil Exists for Its Appointed Purpose

The Bible is explicit that wickedness exists for God’s wise pur-

poses. For example, Proverbs 16:4 says, “The Lord has made

everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trou-

ble.” God has done this in his own mysterious way that preserves

the responsibility of the wicked and the sinlessness of his own

heart. We should humble ourselves if we cannot explain how this

can be. We are told that it is so. Beware of bringing to the Bible

assumptions that are not taught in the Bible. That is how God’s

word is nullified.

We saw in Chapter Two that all things were made through

Christ and for Christ (Col. 1:16). We saw that this explicitly

includes the “thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities” that

were defeated by Christ at the cross. In other words, they were

made “for the day of trouble,” as Proverbs 16:4 implies. God

knew what they would become when he created them, and he

folded their evil into his plan of redemption. On Good Friday,

when Christ died and the evil powers were defeated, the power

and justice and wrath and love of Christ were displayed. Sooner

or later every rebellion against him comes to ruin and serves to

glorify Christ.

The God Who Is There

This book also aims to solidify the conviction that Christianity

is not merely a set of ideas and practices and feelings designed

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Disobedience of Adam and Obedience of Christ 57

for our psychological well-being—whether designed by God or

man. That’s not what Christianity is. Christianity begins with

the conviction that God is an objective reality outside ourselves.

We do not make him what he is by thinking a certain way about

him. As Francis Schaeffer said, he is the God who is there. We

don’t make him. He makes us. We don’t decide what he is going

to be like. He decides what we are going to be like. He created

the universe, and it has the meaning he gives it, not the meaning

we give it. If we give it a meaning different from his, we are fools.

And our lives will be tragic in the end.

Christianity is not a game; it’s not a therapy. All of its doc-

trines flow from who God is and what he has done in history.

They correspond to hard facts. Christianity is more than facts,

but not less. There is faith and hope and love. But these don’t

float in the air. They grow like great cedar trees in the rock of

God’s truth.

And the reason I make this one of my aims in this book is

because I am deeply convinced from the Bible that our eternal

joy and strength and holiness depend on the solidity of this

worldview putting strong fiber into the spine of our faith. Wimpy

worldviews make wimpy Christians. And wimpy Christians

won’t survive the days ahead. Rootless emotionalism that treats

Christianity like a therapeutic option will be swept away in the

last days. Those who will be left standing will be those who have

built their houses on the rock of great, objective truth with Jesus

Christ as the origin, center, and goal of it all.

Jesus’ Glory Planned in Adam’s Sin

The focus of this chapter is on the spectacular sin of the first man,

Adam, and how it set the stage for the more spectacular counter-

thrust of Jesus Christ. We turn now to Romans 5:12–21.2

The glory of Christ is the main purpose that God had in

2When I preached through Romans at Bethlehem Baptist Church, I devoted five sermons to

these verses. Those sermons are at www.desiringGod.org. In this chapter, the focus is different from anything I looked at in those messages.

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58 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

mind when he permitted Adam’s sin, and with it the Fall of all

humanity into sin. Remember what we have seen about God’s

permission: Whatever God permits, he permits for a reason. And

his reasons are always infinitely wise and purposeful. He did not

have to let the Fall of Satan or of Adam happen. He could have

stopped it.

The fact that he did not stop it means he has a reason, a pur-

pose for it. And he doesn’t make up his plans as he goes along.

What he knows to be wise, he has always known to be wise—

eternally. Therefore, Adam’s sin and the Fall of the human race

with him into sin and misery did not take God off guard. It is

part of God’s overarching plan with the aim of it all to display the

fullness of the glory of Jesus Christ.

One of the clearest ways to show this from the Bible—and we

won’t go into it in detail here3—is to look at those places where

the sin-defeating sacrifice of Christ is shown to be in God’s mind

before the creation of the world.

For example, in Revelation 13:8, John writes about “every-

one whose name has not been written before the foundation of

the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.” So there

was a book before the foundation of the world called “the book

of life of the Lamb who was slain.” Before the world was created,

God had already planned that his Son would be slain like a lamb

to save all those who are written in the book.

Or consider 2 Timothy 1:9: “[God] saved us and called

us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of

his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus

before the ages began.” Saving grace was given to us before

the ages began. That is, it was given to us before there was

any human sin to save us from. Therefore, grace was planned

before human sin was there to need it. This means that God’s

plan to save us through grace was not a response to human

3For a fuller development of this, see my chapter “Why God Appoints Suffering for His

Servants” in Suffering and the Sovereignty of Christ, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL.: Crossway Books, 2006), 91–109.

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decisions to sin. Saving grace was the plan that made sin nec-

essary. God did not find sin in the world and then make a plan

to remedy it. He had the plan before the ages, and that plan

was for the glory of sin-conquering grace through the death

of Jesus Christ.

This is even more plain in Ephesians 1:4–6: “[God] chose us

in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should

be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for

adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose

of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has

blessed us in the Beloved.” To what end did God predestine us

sinners for adoption? To the praise of the glory of his grace. That

is why the plan was made. The ultimate aim of the eternal plan

was that praise might be as intense as possible for the glory of

God’s grace. And the apex of that glory is in the death of Jesus.

So much so that the gospel of the death of Christ for sinners is

called “the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of

God” (2 Cor. 4:4).

Therefore, the biblical view is that the sufferings and death

of Christ for sin are not planned after the actual sin of Adam but

before. Therefore, when the sin of Adam happens, God is not

surprised by it, but has already made it part of his plan—namely,

a plan to display his amazing patience and grace and justice and

wrath in the history of redemption, and then, climactically, to

reveal the greatness of his Son as the second Adam superior in

every way to the first Adam.

So we look at Romans 5:12–21, keeping in mind that Adam’s

spectacular sin did not frustrate God’s Christ-exalting purposes,

but instead served them. Here’s the way we will look at these

verses. There are five explicit references to Christ. One of them

sets up the way Paul is thinking about Christ and Adam. And the

other four show how Christ is greater than Adam. Two of those

four are so similar we will lump them together. Which means we

will look at three aspects of Christ’s superiority.

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60 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

Jesus, “The Coming One”

Notice the way Christ is referred to in verse 14. Verses 12–13

supply the context: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world

through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to

all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before

the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose

sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type

of the one who was to come.” There’s the reference to Christ in

verse 14: “the one who was to come.”

This verse sets up the way Paul is thinking in the rest of the

passage. Notice the most obvious thing first: Christ “was to

come.” From the beginning, Christ was “the coming one.” Paul

shows that Christ is not an afterthought. Paul does not say that

Christ was conceived as a copy of Adam. He says that Adam was

a type of Christ. God dealt with Adam in a way that would make

him a type of the way he planned to glorify his Son. A type is a

foreshadowing of something that will come later and will be like

the type—only greater. So God dealt with Adam in a way that

would make him a type of Christ. God’s plan for Christ preceded

his dealing with Adam.

Notice more closely just where, in the flow of his thought,

Paul chooses to say that Adam is a type of Christ. Verse 14: “Yet

death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sin-

ning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of

the one who was to come.” He chooses to tell us that Adam is a

type of Christ just after saying that even people who did not sin

in the way Adam did still bore the punishment that Adam bore.

Why did Paul, just at this point, say that Adam was a type of

Christ?

Jesus, Our Representative Head

What he had just said gets at the very essence of how Christ and

Adam are alike and the way they are different. Here’s the paral-

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Disobedience of Adam and Obedience of Christ 61

lel: People whose transgression was not like Adam’s died like

Adam. Why? Because they were connected to Adam. He was the

representative head of their humanity, and his sin is counted as

their sin because of their connection with him. That’s the essence

of why Adam is called a type of Christ—because our obedience

is not like Christ’s obedience and yet we have eternal life with

Christ. Why? Because we are connected to Christ by faith. He is

the representative head of the new humanity, and his righteous-

ness is counted as our righteousness because of our connection

with him (Rom. 6:5).

That’s the parallel implied in calling Adam a type of Christ:

Adam

>Adam’s sin

>humanity condemned in him

>eternal death

Christ

>Christ’s righteousness

>new humanity justified in him

>eternal life

The rest of the passage unpacks how much greater Christ and

his saving work are than Adam and his destructive work. Keep

in mind what I said at the beginning of this chapter. What we are

seeing here is God’s revelation of realities that define the world

that every person on this planet lives in. Everybody on this planet

is included in this text because Adam was the father of everybody.

Therefore, every person you meet, of any ethnicity, is facing what

this text talks about. Death in Adam or life in Christ.

This is a global text. Don’t miss that. This is the defining real-

ity for every single person you will ever meet. Wimpy worldviews

produce wimpy Christians. This is not a wimpy worldview. It

stretches over all of history and over all the earth. It profoundly

affects every person in the world and every headline on the

Internet.

Celebrating the Superiority of Jesus

Now let’s look at three ways that Paul celebrates how Christ

and his work are superior over Adam and his work. They can be

summed up under three phrases: (1) the abundance of grace, (2)

the perfection of obedience, and (3) the reign of life.

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62 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

The Abounding Grace of Christ

First, verse 15 and the abundance of grace. “But the free gift

[of righteousness, v. 17] is not like the trespass. For if many

died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of

God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ

abounded for many.” The point here is that God’s grace is more

powerful than Adam’s trespass. That’s what the words much

more signify: “much more has the grace of God . . . abounded

for many.” If man’s trespass brought death, how much more will

God’s grace bring life.

But Paul is more specific than that. God’s grace is specifically

“the grace of that one man Jesus Christ.” “Much more have the

grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus

Christ abounded for many.” These are not two different graces.

“The grace of that one man Jesus Christ” is the incarnation of the

grace of God. That’s the way Paul talks about it, for example, in

Titus 2:11: “The grace of God has appeared [namely, in Jesus],

bringing salvation. . . .” And in 2 Timothy 1:9: “his own . . .

grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus.” So the grace that is in

Jesus is the grace of God.

This grace is sovereign grace. It conquers everything in its

path. We will see in just a moment that it has the power of the

king of the universe. It is reigning grace. That’s the first celebra-

tion of Christ’s superiority over Adam. When the trespass of the

one man Adam and the grace of the one man Jesus Christ meet,

Adam and his trespass lose. Christ and his grace win. That is very

good news for those who belong to Christ.

The Perfect Obedience of Christ

Second, Paul celebrates the way that the grace of Christ conquers

Adam’s trespass and death, namely, the perfection of Christ’s obe-

dience. Verse 19: “For as by the one man’s disobedience [namely,

Adam’s] the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedi-

ence [namely, Christ’s] the many will be made righteous.” So the

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Disobedience of Adam and Obedience of Christ 63

grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, keeps him from sinning—keeps

him obedient unto death, even death on the cross (Phil. 2:8)—so

that he offers flawless and complete obedience to the Father on

behalf of those who are connected to him by faith. Adam failed in

his obedience. Christ succeeded perfectly. Adam was the source of

sin and death. Christ was the source of obedience and life.

Christ is like Adam, who was a type of Christ—both are the

representative heads of an old and a new humanity. God imputes

the failure of Adam to his humanity, and God imputes the success

of Christ to his humanity, because of how these two humanities are

united to their respective heads. The great superiority of Christ is

that he not only succeeds in obeying perfectly, but does so in such

a way that millions of people are counted righteous because of his

obedience. Are you only connected to Adam? Are you only a part

of the first humanity bound for death? Or are you also connected

to Christ and part of the new humanity bound for eternal life?

The Reign of Life

Third, Paul celebrates not only the abounding grace of Christ

and the perfect obedience of Christ, but finally, the reign of life

through Christ. Grace leads through Christ’s obedience to the

triumph of eternal life. Verse 21: “. . . so that, as sin reigned in

death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to

eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Grace reigns through

righteousness (that is, through the perfect righteousness of Christ)

to the great climax of eternal life—and all of that is “through

Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Or, once more in verse 17, the same point: “For if, because

of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much

more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free

gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”

The same pattern: Grace through the free gift of righteousness leads

to the triumph of life, and all of that through Jesus Christ.

I mentioned above that the grace of God in Christ that Paul

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64 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

refers to in these verses is sovereign grace. You can see that in the

word reign. Death has a kind of sovereignty over man and reigns

over all. All die. But grace conquers sin and death. It reigns in life

even over those who once were dead. That is sovereign grace.

Jesus’ Spectacular Obedience

This is the great glory of Christ—he vastly outshines the first man

Adam. The spectacular sin of Adam is not as great as the spec-

tacular grace and obedience of Christ and the gift of eternal life.

Indeed, God’s plan from the beginning, in his perfect righteous-

ness, was that Adam, as the representative head of humankind,

would be a type of Christ as the representative head of a new

humanity. His plan was that by this comparison and contrast, the

glory of Christ would shine all the more brightly.

Verse 17 puts the matter to us very personally and very

urgently. Where do we stand? “For if, because of one man’s

trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will

those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righ-

teousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” Read

these words very carefully and personally: “those who receive the

abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness.”

Precious Words for Sinners

These are precious words for sinners like you and me: The grace

is free, the gift is free, the righteousness of Christ is free. The ques-

tion is: Will we receive it as the hope and treasure of our lives? If

we do, we will “reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”

And in this eternal reign, we will enjoy as our supreme Treasure

the beauty and worth of Jesus Christ whose glory shines all the

more brightly against the backdrop of Adam’s spectacular sin.

The point of Romans 5:12–21 is that Christ’s saving achievement

is understood and cherished as it should be in view of Adam’s

spectacular sin. This was not a coincidence. It was God’s purpose

before the foundation of the world.

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5

T h e P r i d e o f B a b e l

a n d t h e P r a i s e

o f C h r i s t

How the Judgment of God Brings

Joyful Acclaim to Jesus

“Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and

let us make a name for ourselves.”

G e n e s i s 1 1 : 4

So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they

left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the

Lord confused the language of all the earth.

G e n e s i s 1 1 : 8 – 9

Our theme in this book is Spectacular Sins and Their Global

Purpose in the Glory of Christ. In this chapter, we come to

the spectacular sin of the building of the tower of Babel. Lest you

think this is too distant and irrelevant to your modern life, ask

these questions: Where do all the languages in the world come

from—and all the people groups? Are they the result of sin? Are

they a good idea, full of potential for the glory of Christ and the

joy of God’s people? Is it good or bad that there are separate,

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66 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

independent political states that are often in conflict? What does

God think of a monolithic super-state? Will he prevent one? Will

the world end with one? And personally, what is your own root

sin, and what does God think of it? What has he done to rescue

you from it? All of that and more flows out of this account.

A Perplexing Matter Answered

Let’s begin by clarifying one perplexing matter of context. Genesis

11:1–9 seems to describe the origin of languages. But careful read-

ers of Genesis notice that in chapter 10 the peoples and languages

are described already, before the tower of Babel in Genesis 11.

For example, look at Genesis 10:5: “The coastland peoples

spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in

their nations.” Then you get to Genesis 11:1 which says, “Now the

whole earth had one language and the same words.” The author

knew what he was doing. He has not forgotten in 11:1 what he had

just written in 10:5, 20, and 31 (only two verses earlier).

The solution is to recognize that the author has not put these

two stories in chronological order. He first describes the spread

of the peoples and languages in chapter 10, and then he describes

the origin of that diversity in 11:1–9. Sometimes, when you have

something shocking to say about why an event happens, you put

it at the beginning of the event, and sometimes you wait and put

it at the end of the event.

After the Flood, God had said to Noah in Genesis 9:1, “Be

fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” That’s what chapter 10

describes. It was happening as peoples and languages multiplied.

It looked like a simple fulfillment of God’s command. It looked

like obedience. Then Genesis 11:1–9 drops the bomb on us. It

wasn’t obedience after all. The people weren’t spreading to fill

the earth. They were clustering. God came down and shattered

their disobedience and made their clustering impossible. He con-

fused their language and broke humanity into many peoples and

languages.

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The Pride of Babel and the Praise of Christ 67

Two Great Sins Exposed

Let’s dig in here for a moment and see what the sin was and then

what God’s judgment was before we ask how all this is designed

for the glory of Christ. Genesis 11:1–4 reads,

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the

land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another,

“Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And

they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they

said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its

top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest

we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

The key statements are in verse 4: (1) They aim to build a city.

(2) They aim to build a tower in the city that reaches to the heav-

ens. (3) They aim to make a name for themselves. (4) They aim

not to be dispersed over the whole earth. The first two of these

correspond to the second two.

Building a city is the way one avoids being dispersed over

the whole earth. And building a tower into the heavens is the

way one makes a name for oneself. So the city and tower are the

outward expressions of the inward sins. The two sins are the love

of praise (so you crave to make a name for yourself) and the love

of security (so you build a city and don’t take the risks of filling

the earth).

God’s will for human beings is not that we find our joy in

being praised, but that we find our joy in knowing and praising

him. His will is not that we find our security in cities but in God

whom we gladly obey. So the spectacular sin of man is that even

after the Flood, which was a thunderclap of warning against sin

for Noah and his descendants, it turns out that we are no better

now than we were before the Flood. The human condition is

just like it was with Adam and Eve. We will decide for ourselves

what is best. We think we can even rise up and claim the place

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68 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

of God. This is the story of mankind to this very day apart from

redeeming grace.

Adam’s Sin Replayed

Two things in verse 5 signal that man is about to be put in his

place. “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which

the children of man had built.” First, notice that he calls them

“the children of man,” or translated another way, “the sons of

Adam.” The building of this city and this tower are similar to

what Adam did when he rebelled against God and ate of the tree.

The sinful nature of Adam goes on in his descendants—including

you and me.

Holy Scorn Displayed

Second, notice that it says, “The Lord came down to see the city

and the tower.” This is holy scorn. The author mocks the tower

by saying that God had to come down to see it. This tower is so

far from being in heaven, God can’t see it from heaven! Of course,

God can see everything everywhere. But when you want to show

the ludicrous nature of man’s God-belittling pride in his little

achievements, you take some risks, and you speak with irony and

you describe God as peering down in search of this great tower

“with its top in the heavens.”

Global Aspirations Limited

Now what will God do in response to this spectacular sin of man

who is refusing to fill the earth with God’s glory, instead securing

his life in a city, and trying to exalt himself to the place of God?

Genesis 11:6–8 says:

And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they

have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what

they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be

impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse

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their language, so that they may not understand one another’s

speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face

of all the earth, and they left off building the city.

Notice what God says in verse 6: “Behold, they are one people,

and they have all one language.” That signals that God is not only

about to divide their language, but in doing so is about to divide

one people into many peoples. He is about to multiply languages

and peoples. So God says in verse 7, “Come, let us go down and

there confuse their language, so that they may not understand

one another’s speech.” In this way, God dispersed them over the

face of all the earth.

So his response to the presumption and arrogance of man

was to make it harder for man to communicate and thus harder

to unite in God-belittling global plans. God has built into the

world a system by which the pride of different groups of people

restrains the pride of other groups of people. God knows the

immense potential of human beings created in his own image.

And he has given them amazing liberty to exalt themselves and

design their own security systems without trusting him. But

there are limits. Thousands of languages around the world and

thousands of different peoples limit the global aspirations of

arrogant mankind.

How Was This Designed to

Glorify Christ?

Now turn with me to the question of God’s global design in all

this for the glory of Christ. Keep in mind the principle we have

leaned on repeatedly: When God permits something, he does so

for a reason. And that reason is part of a plan. God does not act

whimsically or haphazardly or aimlessly. So when he permits

this spectacular sin of the pride and presumption and rebellion

on the plains of Shinar, he knows exactly what he is doing and

what his response to it will be. Which means that the peoples

and languages of the world are not an afterthought. They are the

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70 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

judgment of God on sin, and at the same time, they are designed

by God for the global glory of Jesus Christ.

So we ask again: How does this spectacular sin and its con-

sequence in the divided languages of the world serve to magnify

the glory of Christ? Here are five ways.

Christians Guarded

God’s division of the world into different languages hinders the

rise of a global, monolithic anti-Christian state that would have

the power to simply wipe out all Christians. We often think that

the diversity of languages and cultures and peoples and politi-

cal states is a hindrance to world evangelization—the spread of

Christ’s glory. That’s not the way God sees it. God is more con-

cerned about the dangers of human uniformity than he is about

human diversity. We humans are far too evil to be allowed to

unite in one language or one government. The gospel of the glory

of Christ spreads better and flourishes more because of 6,500

languages, not in spite of them.

Pride Destroyed

Here is a second way that the story of the tower of Babel glorifies

Christ. Suppose someone asks, “But isn’t there going to be in the

last days a great global government and won’t Christians in fact

be persecuted everywhere?” The answer is yes. In the last days,

God will loosen the restraints that now hold back this evil. The

Antichrist—“the man of lawlessness” as Paul calls him (2 Thess.

2:3), “the beast” as John calls him (Rev. 13:3)—will rise with

great global attraction, and there will be horrific persecution of

Christians. But here’s the link with the rebels of Shinar. The tower

they built was called the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:9).

The word babel in Hebrew occurs over two hundred times

in the Old Testament and is translated Babylon in all but a few.

When the writer says in Genesis 11:9, “Therefore its name was

called Babel [ babel], because there the Lord confused the lan-

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The Pride of Babel and the Praise of Christ 71

guage of all the earth,” it’s a putdown of the great city of Babylon.

It means that Babylon, with its vaunted towers and walls and

gardens and idolatry, is a pitiful effort compared to God. And

this name Babel or Babylon is the name given to the city of the

Beast in the book of Revelation (14:8–9). And in this, the glory

of Christ shines because, even though for a brief season Babylon

is drunk with the blood of Christian martyrs (Rev. 17:6), she

will, just like the tower of Babel, be brought to naught. Here’s a

description that marks her out as a latter-day “tower of Babel.”

Her sins are heaped high as heaven. . . . As she glorified herself

and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and

mourning, since in her heart she says, “I sit as a queen, I am no

widow, and mourning I shall never see.” . . . “Alas! Alas! You

great city, you mighty city, Babylon! For in a single hour your

judgment has come.” (Rev. 18:5, 7, 10)

So, yes, in the last days God will loosen the restraint he has put on

the nations. They will swell with the pride of Babylon. Christians

will suffer. And then, in one instant, Christ will come from his

infinite heights and slay the man of lawlessness with the breath of

his mouth (2 Thess. 2:8). And Babylon will be no more. The pride

of man will be eliminated from the earth. The story of Genesis

11:1–9 is a foreshadowing of that. The victory there and at the

end is the victory of Christ.

Every Group Claimed

Here is a third way that the sin of Babel and God’s judgment on

it leads to the global glory of Christ. The authority and power of

Jesus is magnified because he lays claim on every language group

and every people. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been

given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”

(Matt. 28:18–19). Yes, in response to sin, God has divided

the languages and the nations. But in the end, it magnifies the

authority and power of Christ to make disciples in every lan-

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72 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

guage. His power is all the more glorious because it breaks into

so many different languages and peoples and brings salvation.1

The Gospel Glorified

And the same must be said about the gospel of Christ in partic-

ular—the message of his death and resurrection, the message of

forgiveness and justification. Romans 1:16: “I am not ashamed

of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone

who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” A great

part of the glory of the gospel is that it is not provincial. It is not

a tribal religion. It breaks into every language and every people.

If there were no diversity of languages, if the spectacular sin of

Babel had not happened with its judgment, the global glory of the

gospel of Christ would not shine as beautifully as it does in the

prism of thousands of languages.

Jesus Praised

And finally, the praise that Jesus receives from all the languages

of the world is more beautiful because of its diversity than it

would have been if there were only one language and one people

to sing. “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to

take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by

your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and

language and people and nation, and you have made them a king-

dom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth”

(Rev. 5:9–10). “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude

that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and

peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the

Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,

and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God

who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Rev. 7:9–10).

It was the spectacular sin on the plains of Shinar that gave

1See a fuller explanation of how the diversity of cultures glorifies Christ in John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad, second edition (Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker, 2003), 196–200.

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rise to the multiplying of languages that ends in the most glorious

praise to Christ from every language on earth. Therefore, from

every language and people, praise the Lord! Let everything that

has breath praise the Lord!

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6

T h e S a l e o f J o s e p h

a n d t h e S o n o f G o d

How Salvation Comes through Slavery

“And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep

alive for you many survivors.”

G e n e s i s 4 5 : 7

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it

about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

G e n e s i s 5 0 : 2 0

“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between

his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the

peoples.”

G e n e s i s 4 9 : 1 0

The story of Joseph’s fall and rise through the sins of his broth-

ers and the sovereignty of God is overflowing with lessons

about the ways of God and the (seeming!) detours of our lives.

One of the most famous sayings of the Bible is in this story. It

has shed painfully comforting light on a thousand tragedies:

You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. The “you” in

that sentence could be anyone who does something that hurts

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76 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

you, even the devil himself. What we will see is that this story

points finally to the One who was hurt worse than anyone by

his enemies, and in that very abuse and pain God meant it for

good—infinite good.

The Covenant People, Israel

Before we look at the last chapters of Genesis and retell the story

of Joseph and the spectacular sin of his brothers and its global

purpose in the glory of Jesus Christ, let’s back up to Genesis 12.

God has chosen Abram from all the peoples of the world by free

grace and owing to nothing in him. In Genesis 12:2–3, God makes

him a promise: “I will bless you and make your name great, so

that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and

him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of

the earth shall be blessed.” This is the beginning of the people of

Israel through whom Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.

would come into the world to save us from our sins.

Four Hundred Years!

Then in Genesis 15, God makes a formal covenant with Abram.

He uses a remarkable symbolic act and some astonishing words.

He says to Abram in Genesis 15:13–16,

Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a

land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will

be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment

on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come

out with great possessions. . . . And they shall come back here

in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not

yet complete.

So at the very beginning of his covenant relationship with his

chosen people, God predicts a four-hundred-year stay in Egypt

and then a return to the Promised Land. “They will be afflicted

four hundred years.” He has his strange reasons why they must

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The Sale of Joseph and the Son of God 77

leave for four centuries (Think of it! Four centuries!) and not

inherit the land now, namely (verse 15), “The iniquity of the

Amorites is not yet complete.”

When the Israelites come back to take the land under Joshua

in four hundred years, they will destroy these nations at God’s

command. How are we to understand that? Deuteronomy 9:5

gives God’s answer: “Not because of your righteousness or the

uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land,

but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your

God is driving them out from before you, and that he may con-

firm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham,

to Isaac, and to Jacob.” The conquest of the Promised Land is the

judgment of God on the fullness of centuries of wickedness.

God’s People Enter Through Many

Afflictions

In the meantime, God says that his people will be sojourners in

a land that is not theirs, namely, in Egypt, and will be afflicted

for four hundred years. So there is God’s plan for his pilgrim

people—a kind of picture of our life on this earth until heaven. If

God plans four hundred years of affliction for his people (Gen.

15:13) before the Promised Land, we should not be surprised

that he says to us, “through many tribulations you must enter the

kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

Prophecy Fulfilled through a

Spectacular Sin

The question for us is: How will it come about that God’s people

wind up in Egypt? And what does God want to teach about his

ways and about his Son in this strange sojourn in Egypt? The

answer is that God fulfills this prophecy through a spectacular

sin. And through this sin, he preserves alive not only his covenant

people of Israel, but also the line from which the Lion of Judah

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78 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

would come to save and rule the peoples. Huge things are at stake

in the story of Joseph.

Destroying the Dreamer

Going back to Abram, let’s bring the story up to Joseph. Abram

has a son Isaac. Isaac has a son Jacob (whose other name is

Israel), and Jacob has twelve sons who become the fathers of the

twelve tribes of Israel. One of Jacob’s twelve sons, Joseph, has

two dreams. In both of them, his eleven brothers and his parents

bow down to him. Genesis 37:8 says that his brothers hated him

for these dreams. And verse 11 says they were jealous.

The day finally comes when they can vent their rage against

their brother. His father sends him to see if it is well with his

brothers (Genesis 37:14). They see him coming and say in verses

19–20, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and

throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce

animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of

his dreams.” Reuben tries to save Joseph, but his attempt is only

partly successful when the brothers sell Joseph as a slave to a

caravan of Ishmaelites heading for Egypt (Gen. 37:27–28). They

keep his special coat and soak it in animal blood, and his father

assumes he was eaten by wild animals. The brothers think that is

the end of the matter.

An Invisible Hand at Work

But they have no idea what is happening. They are utterly

oblivious to God’s invisible hand in their action. They do not

know that in the very effort to destroy this dreamer, they are ful-

filling Joseph’s dreams. Oh, how often God works this way! He

takes the very sins of the destroyers and makes them the means

of the destroyers’ deliverance.

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Potiphar, Prison, and Providence

In Egypt, Joseph is purchased by Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh

and captain of the guard (Gen. 37:36). Joseph submits to God’s

strange providence and serves Potiphar faithfully. He rises with

trust and influence over Potiphar’s household. And you would

think that the righteous would prosper. But it seems to be

otherwise. Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Joseph. He flees fornica-

tion. And the spurned woman is vicious and lies about Joseph. In

spite of his righteousness, he is put in prison.

In prison, again, totally unaware of what God is doing in

all this misery, he serves the jailer faithfully and is given trust

and responsibility. Through the interpretation of two dreams of

Pharaoh’s butler and baker, Joseph is eventually brought out of

prison to interpret one of Pharaoh’s dreams. His interpretation

proves true, and his wisdom seems compelling to Pharaoh. So

Joseph is made commander in Egypt. “You shall be over my

house,” Pharaoh says, “and all my people shall order themselves

as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than

you” (Gen. 41:40).

The Dreams Fulfilled

Seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine strike the

land, just as Joseph said they would. Joseph preempts starvation

in Egypt by gathering huge reserves of grain during the seven

good years. Eventually Joseph’s brothers hear that there is grain

in Egypt, and they go for help.

They don’t recognize their brother at first, but eventually he

reveals himself. He had been seventeen years old when they sold

him into slavery (37:2). Now when he identifies himself, he is

thirty-nine years old (41:46, 53; 45:6). Twenty-two years had gone

by. They are stunned. They tried to get rid of the dreamer, and in

getting rid of him, they fulfilled his dreams. The brothers are bow-

ing down at last to Joseph just as the dreams said they would.

Eventually, he invites them to live in Egypt to save their

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80 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

lives. The fulfillment of the distant prophecy that Abraham’s

seed would sojourn four hundred years in Egypt begins. So we

ask again: How did it come about that God’s people wind up in

Egypt in fulfillment of God’s plan? And what does God want to

teach us about his ways and about his Son in this strange sojourn

in Egypt?

Two Biblical Descriptions of

This Fulfillment

The answer to how the people wound up in Egypt is clear at one

level: They got there by means of the spectacular sin of attempted

murder, greedy slave-dealing, and the heartless deceiving of a

brokenhearted old man. But how does the Bible describe this

fulfillment of God’s prophecy? In two ways.

God Sent Joseph to Preserve Life

First, in Genesis 45:5, Joseph says to his brothers who are very

afraid of him, “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves

because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve

life.” The first way the Bible describes this spectacular sin of the

brothers is that it was God’s way of sending Joseph to Egypt in

order to save the very ones who were trying to kill him. “God

sent me before you.”

And lest we think this was a side comment with little signifi-

cance, we read the very same thing in Psalm 105:16–17—only

there the stakes are raised even higher. Not only was God ruling

the actions of these brothers to get Joseph to Egypt, but God was

ruling the famine as well: “When he summoned a famine on the

land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of

them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.” So we should put out of

our minds the thought that God simply foresaw a famine hap-

pening on its own, or happening by Satan. God summoned the

famine. And God prepared the deliverance. And he did it through

a spectacular sin.

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What Man Designed for Evil, God Designed for Good

So the first way the Bible describes the fulfillment of God’s proph-

ecy that his people would come to Egypt is by saying God sent

Joseph there ahead of them. The second way the Bible describes

this prophecy is even more penetrating and sweeping. The broth-

ers come before Joseph again, this time after the death of their

father, and they are again afraid he will take vengeance on them.

In Genesis 50:19–20, Joseph says, “Do not fear, for am I in the

place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God

meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be

kept alive, as they are today.”

The second way the Bible describes the way God fulfilled

his prophecy is: The brothers meant the sale of Joseph for evil,

but God meant it for good. Notice it does not say that God used

their evil for good after they meant it for evil. It says that in the

very act of evil, there were two different designs: In the sinful

act, they were designing evil, and in the same sinful act, God was

designing good.

A Life-Saving Sin Pointing

to Christ

This is what we have seen and will see over and over: What man

designs—or the devil designs—for evil, God designs for some

great good. The great good mentioned in Genesis 45:5 is “to

preserve life”—the life of the chosen people through whom the

Savior of the world will come.

And the great good mentioned in Genesis 50:20 is “to

bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they

are today”—the people through whom the Messiah will come.

These two descriptions of God’s design in this sin are pointers

to God’s global purpose. Here is a life-saving, people-saving sin.

This will prove to be a powerful foreshadowing of the glory of

Christ and how the murderous sin against him will also be a

saving sin.

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Let’s look at three things in this story that prepare us to see

the glory of Jesus and who he really is.

Salvation Comes through Sin and Suffering

First, we see the general pattern that turns up over and over in

the Bible, namely, that God’s saving victory for his people often

comes through sin and suffering. Joseph’s brothers sinned against

him, and he suffered for it. And in all this, God is at work to save

his people—including the very ones who are trying to destroy the

savior. The fact that Jesus came this way should not have been as

surprising to as many people as it was. That he was sinned against

and suffered on the way to save his people is what we would

expect from this pattern that turns up again and again.

So in the story of Joseph and the spectacular sin of his brothers,

we are being prepared to see the glory of Christ—his patience and

humility and servanthood, all the while saving the very ones who

were trying to get rid of him.

Died He for me, who caused His pain—

For me, who Him to death pursued?

Amazing love! How can it be

That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me? 1

The Suffering One Is Righteous

Second, the story of Joseph and the spectacular sin of his brothers

prepares us to see Jesus not just because of the general pattern

that God’s saving victory for his people often comes through

suffering and sin, but more specifically, in this case, because the

very one who is suffering and being sinned against is so righteous.

Joseph, without being perfect, stands out in this story for his

amazing constancy and faithfulness to every relationship.

Even in undeserved exile, he is faithful to Potiphar, and he

is faithful to the jailer. Genesis 39:22: “The keeper of the prison

1Charles Wesley, “And Can It Be That I Should Gain?” (1738).

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The Sale of Joseph and the Son of God 83

put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison.

Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it.”

And what was Joseph’s reward? He was lied about by Potiphar’s

wife, and the cupbearer of Pharaoh, whose dream Joseph inter-

preted, thanklessly forgot about him in prison for two years after

his interpretation.

So the point of all this is not just that there is sin and suffering

and that God is at work in it to save his people. More specifically,

the point is that the righteous one, even though mistreated for

so long, is finally vindicated by God. Even though others have

rejected this righteous stone, God makes him the cornerstone

(cf. Matt. 21:42). His vindication becomes the very means of the

salvation of his persecutors.

Jesus Christ is the final and ultimate and perfect righteous one

(Acts 7:52; 1 John 2:1). To others it seemed as if Jesus’ life was

going so badly that he must be a sinner. But in the end, all the sin

against him, and all the suffering he endured in perfect righteous-

ness, led to his vindication and, because of it, to our salvation.

If Joseph is amazing in his steadfastness, Jesus is ten thousand

times more amazing, because he experienced ten thousand times

more suffering, and deserved it ten thousand times less, and was

perfectly steadfast, faithful, and righteous through it all.

The Scepter Will Not Depart from Judah

There are other parallels in this story between Joseph and Jesus,

but we turn now to the most important thing in this story about

Jesus, and it is not a parallel with Joseph. It’s a prophecy about

the coming of Jesus, which could not have happened if these sin-

ful sons of Jacob had starved in the famine.

The spectacular sin of these brothers was God’s way of sav-

ing the tribe of Judah from extinction so that the Lion of Judah,

Jesus Christ, would be born and die and rise and reign over all the

peoples of the world. We see this most clearly in Genesis 49:8–10.

Jacob, the father of Joseph, is about to die. Before he dies, he

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pronounces a prophetic blessing over all his sons. Here is what

he says about his son Judah:

Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the

neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before

you. Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone

up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness;

who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah,

nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to

him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

Here is a prophecy of the coming final king of Israel, the Lion of

Judah, the Messiah. Notice that the scepter—the ruler’s staff, the

sign of the king—will be in the line of Judah until one comes who

is no ordinary king, because all the peoples, not just Israel, will

obey him. “To him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”

This is fulfilled in Jesus. Listen to the way the apostle John

describes Jesus’ role in heaven after his crucifixion and resurrec-

tion:

“Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the

Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll

and its seven seals.” . . . And they sang a new song, saying,

“Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you

were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God

from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you

have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they

shall reign on the earth.” (Rev. 5:5, 9–10)

The Lion of Judah Is the Lamb

Who Was Slain

The most magnificent thing about the Lion of the tribe of Judah

in his fulfillment of Jacob’s prophecy is that he lays claim on the

obedience of all the peoples of the world not by exploiting our

guilt and crushing us into submission, but by bearing our guilt

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The Sale of Joseph and the Son of God 85

and freeing us to love him and praise him and obey him with joy

forever. The Lion of Judah is the Lamb who was slain. He wins

our obedience by forgiving our sins and making his own obedi-

ence—his own perfection as the righteous one—the basis of our

acceptance with God. And in this position of immeasurable safety

and joy—all of it owing to his suffering and righteousness and

death and resurrection—he wins our free and happy obedience.

The story of Joseph is the story of a righteous one who is

sinned against and suffers so that the tribe of Judah would be

preserved and a Lion would come forth and would prove to be

a Lamb-like Lion and by his suffering and death purchase and

empower glad obedience from all the nations—even from those

who put him to death.

Does he have yours?

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7

T h e S i n f u l O r i g i n o f

t h e S o n o f D av i d

How the God-Man Becomes

the King of Kings

All the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the Lord your God,

that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for

ourselves a king.” And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have

done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart.”

1 S a m u e l 1 2 : 1 9 – 2 0

The point of this chapter is that the kingship of Israel—the

fact that Israel had kings—was owing in part to sin. It was a

spectacular sin for the people of God to say to their Maker and

Redeemer, “We want to be like the nations. We do not want you

to be our king. We want a human king.” That is a spectacular

sin. Samuel calls it, in verse 17, a great wickedness. Nevertheless,

if Israel had had no kingship, Jesus Christ would not have come

as the king of Israel and the Son of David and King of kings. But

Christ’s kingship over Israel and over the world is not an after-

thought in the mind of God. It was not an unplanned response to

the sin of Israel. It was part of his plan.

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Why Do It This Way?

So our question is: If God saw this spectacular sin coming and he

knew that he would permit it and thus make the kingship of Israel

part of his plan to glorify Christ as the King of kings, why not just

make kingship part of Israel’s governance from the beginning?

Why not make Moses the first king, then Joshua, and so on? Why

plan for a more direct kingship of God himself at the beginning

and then bring human kingship into Israel’s history later through

a spectacular sin?

Abraham and the Coming Kingship

Let’s begin with the story itself. God chose Abram as the father of

the people of Israel in Genesis 12 and promised him that through

his offspring all the families of the world will be blessed (Gen.

12:1–3). The Messiah, Jesus Christ, will come through this line.

One of the first things that happens to Abram is that he

meets a strange figure named Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18. He

is called “priest of God Most High” and “king of Salem.” His

name means “king of righteousness.” The writer of the book of

Hebrews, in the New Testament, sees Melchizedek as a type or

a prefiguring or foreshadowing of Christ, because Psalm 110:4

says that the coming messianic king is also “a priest forever after

the order of Melchizedek.” So Hebrews says, “Melchizedek . . . is

first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then

he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace . . . resembling the

Son of God . . .” (Heb. 7:1–3).

Hannah and the Coming Kingship

So already in the purposes of God, the coming Messiah will be a

priest-king. The decision for him to be a king did not come after

some other plan failed. We see this again in the story of Samuel’s

birth and dedication. Recall that his mother Hannah was barren.

Then Eli prophesied that she would have a child. Samuel was

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born, and Hannah brings him to the temple and dedicates him

to the Lord.

Among the amazing things that Hannah says, one is found in

1 Samuel 2:10—and remember, this is decades before there was

any king in Israel (only when Samuel is an old man do the people

press him to give them a king). She says, “The adversaries of the

Lord shall be broken to pieces; against them he will thunder in

heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give

strength to his king and exalt the power of his anointed.” In other

words, there will be a human king in Israel someday.

Moses and the Coming Kingship

Back in Deuteronomy 17:14–20, Moses had given instructions

about the kingship for the day that the people would go in that

direction. And Deuteronomy 28:36 foretold the exile of the

people and their king if they were to rebel against the Lord: “The

Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a

nation that neither you nor your fathers have known.”

So I conclude that what happened in 1 Samuel 12 was not a

surprise to God. He knew that this spectacular sin would happen,

and he knew that he would permit it. And when God intends to

permit a thing, he does so wisely, not foolishly. Therefore, this

spectacular sin is part of God’s overarching plan for the kingship

of Israel and for the glory of his Son.

How the Kingship Came

Let’s see how it came about before we ponder why he would do it

this way. The demand for a king started back in 1 Samuel 8, but

we will pick it up in chapter 12. In verses 8–11, Samuel shows

that God himself has been a good king to Israel.

[The Lord] brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them

dwell in this place. But they forgot the Lord their God. And

he sold them into the hand of Sisera, commander of the army

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of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the

hand of the king of Moab. And they fought against them. And

they cried out to the Lord and said, “We have sinned, because

we have forsaken the Lord and have served the Baals and the

Ashtaroth. But now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies,

that we may serve you.” And the Lord sent Jerubbaal and

Barak and Jephthah and Samuel and delivered you out of the

hand of your enemies on every side, and you lived in safety.

The point of these verses is to show that God was faithful

as their divine king. When they cried to him, he saved them. He

gave them safety. That’s what a king is for—to provide peace for

the people. And what was their response? Verse 12: “And when

you saw that Nahash the king of the Ammonites came against

you, you said to me [Samuel], ‘No, but a king shall reign over us,’

when the Lord your God was your king.”

You can hear the disbelief in Samuel’s voice: You asked

for a king when God was your king! What should Samuel do?

The Lord had already told him in 1 Samuel 8:7–9, “Obey the

voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not

rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over

them. . . . Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly

warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign

over them.”

Spectacular Sin: “Your Wickedness

Is Great”

So Samuel says in 1 Samuel 12:13, “Behold, the Lord has set a

king over you.” Then he calls on the Lord to give them a sign in

thunder and rain, and he describes their sin as a great wicked-

ness. Verse 17: “Is it not wheat harvest today? I will call upon the

Lord, that he may send thunder and rain. And you shall know

and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the

sight of the Lord, in asking for yourselves a king.”

And just to make sure we don’t miss the holy work of God

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through this unholy wickedness, Paul, in Acts 13:20–22, makes

explicit that it was God who gave Israel her first king. “[God]

gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a

king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe

of Benjamin, for forty years. And when he had removed him , he

raised up David to be their king.” We have seen this repeatedly

in the spectacular sins of history. Man meant it for evil, and God

meant it for good.

What Are We to Learn from This?

So the question is this: If God saw this spectacular sin coming

and he knew that he would permit it and thus make the kingship

of Israel part of his plan to glorify Christ as the King of kings,

why not just make kingship part of Israel’s governance from the

beginning? Why not make Moses the first king, then Joshua, and

so on? Why did God start with himself as the king, and then bring

human kingship into Israel’s history later through a spectacular

sin? What are we to learn from this?

At least six things.

We Are Stiff-Necked, Rebellious, and Unthankful

We should learn from this how stiff-necked and rebellious and

unthankful we are. That’s why 1 Samuel 12 begins the way it does,

reminding the people how God saved them from Egypt and then

gave them the Promised Land and then rescued them from evil

kings. Each time they forgot God and went after other things.

That is not just the story of Israel. It’s the story of humanity.

It’s the story of my life and your life. Even as Christians, we are

not steadfast in our affections for God. We have thankful days

and unthankful days. And even our thankful days are not as

thankful as they should be. Just think of how joyful and thankful

you would be if your heart responded to God himself and his ten

thousand gifts with the admiration and gratitude of which he is

worthy.

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So God gives us pictures of ourselves in stories like this. He

allows his people to drift into these kinds of ungrateful and idola-

trous seasons so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole

world held accountable before God (Rom. 3:19).

God Is Faithful to His Own Name

We should learn from this how faithful God is to his own name.

Look at verse 22: “It has pleased the Lord to make you a people

for himself. ” What is the deepest foundation of God’s faithful-

ness? His allegiance to his own name. His passion for his own

glory. Read verse 22 slowly and thoughtfully: “The Lord will

not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake.” It does not say

for “their name’s sake” but “for his name’s sake.” God is totally

committed to upholding the worth and truth and righteousness

of his own name. So stories like this are in the Bible to teach us

that God’s ways are governed by an infinite wisdom guided by

the infinite worth of the name of God.

Grace Flows to Sinners from God’s Supreme Allegiance to His Name

We should learn from this how amazingly grace for sinners like us

flows from God’s supreme allegiance to his own name in the midst

of sin. Consider the illustration of this in verses 19–22.

In verse 19, the people are terrified at the spectacular sin they

have committed against God. They say, “Pray for your servants to

the Lord your God, that we may not die, for we have added to

all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.” The words that

follow this are a picture of free gospel grace to sinners. Samuel

said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil”

(v. 20).

Stop right there and be amazed. “Do not be afraid; you have

done all this evil.” Isn’t that a misprint? Shouldn’t it say, “Be

afraid; you have done all this evil”? But it says, “Do not be afraid;

you have done all this evil.” That is pure grace. God’s grace treats

us not the way we deserve: “Be afraid; you have done all this

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evil.” But better than we deserve: “Do not be afraid; you have

done all this evil.”

How can this be? What is the basis of this grace? Not us!

We have done evil. What then? We’ve seen it already. Verse 22:

Don’t be afraid, “for the Lord will not forsake his people, for

his great name’s sake.” God’s allegiance to his own name is the

foundation of his faithfulness to us. If God ever forsook his

supreme allegiance to himself, there would be no grace for us.

If he based his kindness to us on our worth, there would be no

kindness to us.

We are stiff-necked, rebellious, and ungrateful. Free, unmer-

ited grace is our only hope to be otherwise. And the basis of that

grace is not the worth of our name, but the infinite worth of God’s

name. Recall 2 Timothy 2:13: “If we are faithless, he remains

faithful—for he cannot deny himself.” Allegiance to himself is the

ground of his faithfulness to us. God means for us to learn from

this spectacular sin that the grace of our salvation is ultimately

based not on our value to him, but his value to himself.

Kingship Belongs Only to God

We should learn from God’s way of bringing about the kingship

in Israel that kingship belongs only to the Lord. God inaugurates

his relationship with Israel with no human king in order to make

crystal-clear that only God should be the king of Israel. Only

God is king. When Israel asked for a king, they were rejecting this

truth. God says it plainly in 1 Samuel 8:7: “They have rejected

me from being king over them.” If God had begun the history of

Israel with Moses and Joshua being the first kings, it would not

be clear that only God can be the rightful king of Israel. He will

have no merely human competitors.

A God-Man Must Be King

Therefore, we should learn from God’s way of installing a human

king what his purposes are. He meant to inaugurate a line of

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human kings who would all fail until the King came who was not

only man but also God. This follows from the double fact that,

on the one hand, all ordinary humans fail and, on the other hand,

only God can be king of Israel in the fullest sense. In giving Israel

a human king, God did not change his mind about only God

being the full and rightful king of Israel. The point is that God

alone is King of Israel, and there is coming a King, a Son of David,

who will not fail like the others. He will not be just another sinful

man. He will be the God-man.

The last question on the lips of Jesus that silences the Pharisees

is based on Psalm 110:1, where David says, “The Lord [God]

says to my Lord [the coming king and Messiah]: ‘Sit at my right

hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” Jesus quotes

this and then asks his adversaries, “If then David calls him [the

Messiah] Lord, how is he his [David’s] son?” (Matt. 22:45).

In other words, for those who have ears to hear, Jesus is more

than the son of David. He is more than a merely human king. “In

the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the

Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among

us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the

Father” (John 1:1, 14). Only God can be the final rightful king

of Israel. That’s the way it began. That is the way it ends. Jesus

Christ is the divine-human king of Israel.

The King Died for His People

Finally, we should learn from the way God brought a human king

to Israel that there needed to be a human king. Only God can be

the rightful king of Israel. But there needed to be a human king.

Why? Because for God to have a people to rule and to love, who

were not in hell because of their sins, the king had to die for the

people. And God can’t die. Man can die. So God had planned not

only that God himself was the full and rightful king of Israel, but

also that the rightful king of Israel must die in the place of the

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people. So the king of Israel is the God-man so that the king can

be God, but he is also the God- man so that the king can die.

When Samuel said, “Do not be afraid, you rebellious, stiff-

necked, ungrateful sinners; you have done all this evil” (1 Sam.

12:20), what was the basis of this grace? It was the value of God’s

name. “The Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s

sake” (v. 22). The upholding and the vindication of God’s name

is the basis of grace.

And where was that vindication most decisively and finally

displayed? Answer: in the cross of Christ. Romans 3:25: “God

put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received

by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his

divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”

At the Cross, for His Name’s Sake

Indeed, he had passed over sins. On this very day when the people

deserved to be destroyed for asking for a king, God forgave them

and passed over their sins—for his name’s sake. But God can’t

sweep sin under the rug of the universe and still uphold his name

as a righteous and holy God. Sin must be dealt with. It must be

punished. And it was, when Jesus died.

The only reason that sinful people like us can have a king as

great and glorious and powerful and good and holy and wise as

Jesus, without being consumed for our sin, is that God planned

for the king to die for his subjects and rise again. In every Gospel,

Jesus is asked just before he dies, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

And he answers, “You have said so” (Matt. 27:11; Mark 15:2;

Luke 23:3; John 18:33).

The Coming King of All

And not just the king of the Jews, but the king of all—especially

those who trust him. He is seated at the right hand of the Father

today until all his enemies are put under his feet and all his elect

are gathered in from all the peoples of the earth. Then the end will

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come. And Christ “will appear a second time, not to deal with sin

but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Heb. 9:28).

And “on his robe and on his thigh he has a name written”—not

king of the Jews, but “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev.

19:16). Amen. Come, King Jesus.

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8

J u d a s I s c a r i o t ,

t h e S u i c i d e o f S a t a n ,

a n d t h e S a l va t i o n

o f t h e W o r l d

How God Conquered Sin through Sin

Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the

twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he

might betray him to them. And they were glad, and agreed to give him money.

So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the ab-

sence of a crowd.

L u k e 2 2 : 3 – 6

The aim of this book has been to show that over and over in

the history of the world, the epoch-making sins that changed

the course of history never nullified but only fulfilled the global

purposes of God to glorify his Son and save his people.

My prayer is that as these great historical vistas of God’s sov-

ereignty over sin take their place in your mind, they would have

a profoundly practical effect in making you strong in the face of

breath-stopping sorrows and making you bold for Christ in the

face of dangerous opposition—Christ-exalting strength in calam-

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98 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

ity and Christ-exalting courage in conflict. I pray that the Lord

will weave cords of steel and silk into the fabric of your soul.

History’s Most Spectacular Sin:

The Murder of Jesus

The most spectacular sin that has ever been committed in the his-

tory of the world is the brutal murder of Jesus Christ, the morally

perfect, infinitely worthy, divine Son of God. And probably the

most despicable act in the process of this murder was the betrayal

of Jesus by one of his closest friends, Judas Iscariot.

Judas was one of the twelve apostles whom Jesus had per-

sonally chosen and who had been with Jesus during his entire

public ministry. He had been entrusted with the moneybag for

the whole group (John 13:29). He was close enough to Jesus at

the Last Supper to be dipping bread with him in the same cup

(Mark 14:20).

“Satan Entered into Judas”

On the night of the Last Supper, Luke tells us in Luke 22:3–6

that “Satan entered into Judas. . . . He went away and conferred

with the chief priests and officers how he might betray [Jesus] to

them. And they were glad, and agreed to give him money. So he

consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in

the absence of a crowd.” Later he led the authorities to Jesus in

the Garden of Gethsemane and betrayed Jesus with a kiss (Luke

22:47–48). With that, Jesus’ death was sealed.

When Luke tells us in verse 3 that “Satan entered into Judas,”

several questions come to our minds. One is whether Satan sim-

ply mastered a good Judas or whether Judas was already walking

sinfully in step with Satan, and Satan simply decided that now

was the time. Another question is why Satan would do this, since

the death and resurrection of Jesus would result in Satan’s final

defeat, and there is good reason to think that Satan knew that.

And the third and most important question is: Where was God

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when this happened? What was his role or non-role in the most

spectacular sin that ever was? Let’s take these questions one at

a time.

Satan’s Power in Judas’ Sinful

Passions

When it says in Luke 22:3 that “Satan entered into Judas,” how

are we to think about the will of Judas and the power of Satan?

Judas was not an innocent bystander when Satan entered into

him. The apostle John tells us in John 12:6 that he was a “thief.”

When Judas complained that Mary had wasted money in anoint-

ing Jesus, John comments, “He said this, not because he cared

about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of

the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.”

If that sounds incredible, just think of the scandalous behav-

ior of so-called Christian leaders today who use ministry gifts to

buy $40,000 worth of clothes at one store in a year, and send their

kids on a $30,000 trip to the Bahamas, and drive a white Lexus

and a red Mercedes. As Judas sat beside Jesus with his pious,

religious face and went out and cast out demons in Jesus’ name,

he was not a righteous lover of Jesus. He loved money. He loved

the power and pleasures that money could buy.

Paul tells us how that works together with Satan’s power.

Listen to Ephesians 2:1–3: “You were dead in the trespasses and

sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world,

following the prince of the power of the air [ notice the connec-

tion: dead in sins, following Satan], the spirit that is now at work

in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in

the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and

the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of

mankind.” Dead in our sins, walking in the passions of the flesh,

fulfilling the desires of body and mind, and therefore following

the prince of the power of the air.

Satan does not take innocent people captive. There are no

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innocent people. Satan has power where sinful passions hold

sway. Judas was a lover of money, and he covered it with a phony,

external relationship with Jesus. And then he sold him for thirty

pieces of silver. How many of his ilk are still around today! Don’t

be one. And don’t be duped by one.

Satan’s Role in His Own Destruction

The second question is why Satan would lead Judas to betray

Jesus. Didn’t he know that the death and resurrection of Jesus

would result in his final defeat (Col. 2:13–15; Rev. 12:11)? There

is good reason to think Satan knew that.

When Jesus began his ministry on the way to the cross, Satan

tried to turn him away from the path of suffering and sacrifice.

In the wilderness, he tempted him to turn stones into bread and

jump off the temple and get the rulership of the world by wor-

shiping him (Matt. 4:1–11). The point of all these temptations is:

“Don’t walk the path of suffering and sacrifice and death. Use

your power to escape suffering. If you’re the Son of God, show

your right to reign. And I can help you do it. Whatever you do,

don’t go to the cross.”

And remember the time when Jesus predicted he would suffer

many things from the elders and the chief priests and be killed,

and Peter rebuked him and said, “Far be it from you, Lord! This

shall never happen to you” (Matt. 16:22). In other words, I will

never let you be killed like that.

Jesus did not commend Peter. He said, “Get behind me,

Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your

mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matt.

16:23). Hindering Jesus from going to the cross was the work

of Satan. Satan did not want Jesus crucified. It would be his

undoing.

But here he is in Luke 22:3 entering into Judas and lead-

ing him to betray the Lord and bring him to the cross. Why the

about-face? Why try to divert him from the cross and then take

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the initiative to bring him to the cross? We are not told. Here is

my effort at an answer.

Satan saw that his efforts to divert Jesus from the cross had

failed. Time after time Jesus kept the course. His face was set like

flint to die (Luke 9:51, 53), and Satan concluded that there was

no stopping him. Therefore, he resolved that if he couldn’t stop it,

he would at least make it as ugly and painful and as heartbreaking

as possible. Not just death, but death by betrayal. Death by aban-

donment. Death by denial (Luke 22:31–34). Death by torture. If

he could not stop it, he would drag others into it and do as much

damage as he could. It was a spectacular sequence of sins that

brought Jesus to the cross.

God’s Role in the Murder of His Son

Which brings us now to the third and final question—the most

important one: Where was God when this happened? Or more

precisely: What was God’s role or non-role in the most spectacu-

lar sin that ever happened—the murder of Jesus Christ?

To answer a question like that we should put our hands on

our mouths and silence our philosophical speculations. Our opin-

ions don’t count here. All that counts is what God himself has

shown us in his word. And the first thing he shows us is that the

details surrounding the death of Jesus were prophesied in God’s

word hundreds of years before they happened.

The Scriptures show that evil men would reject Jesus when

he came. “Jesus said to them [quoting Psalm 118:22], ‘Have you

never read in the Scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is

marvelous in our eyes”?’” (Matt. 21:42).

The Scriptures showed that Jesus must be hated. Jesus quoted

Psalm 35:19 and said, “The word that is written in their Law must

be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause’” (John 15:25).

The Scriptures showed that the disciples would abandon

Jesus. Jesus quotes Zechariah 13:7: “You will all fall away because

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of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and

the sheep of the flock will be scattered’” (Matt. 26:31).

The Scriptures showed that Jesus would be pierced, but none

of his bones would be broken. John quotes Psalm 34:20 and

Zechariah 12:10 and says, “One of the soldiers pierced his side

with a spear. . . . For these things took place that the Scripture

might be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken.’ And

again another Scripture says, ‘They will look on him whom they

have pierced’” (John 19:34–37).

The Scriptures showed that Jesus would be betrayed by a

close friend for thirty pieces of silver. Jesus cites Psalm 41:9 and

says, “I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have cho-

sen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has

lifted his heel against me’” (John 13:18). In Matthew 26:24, Jesus

says, “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to

that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed!” And Matthew

27:9–10 says, “Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the

prophet Jeremiah, saying, ‘And they took the thirty pieces of

silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of

the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the

Lord directed me’” (Jer. 19:1–13; Zech. 11:12–13).

And not only the Scriptures, but Jesus himself declared, down

to the details, how he would be killed. In Mark 10:33–34 he says,

“See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be

delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will

condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And

they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him.

And after three days he will rise.” And on that last night, Jesus

looked at Peter and said, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before

the rooster crows, you will deny me three times” (Matt. 26:34).

According to His Sovereign Will

From all these prophecies, we know that God foresaw and did

not prevent and therefore included in his plan that his Son would

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Judas Iscariot and Salvation of the World 103

be rejected, hated, abandoned, betrayed, denied, condemned, spit

upon, flogged, mocked, pierced, and killed. All these were explic-

itly in God’s mind before they actually happened as things that he

planned would happen to Jesus. These things did not just happen.

They were foretold in God’s word. God knew they would happen

and could have planned to stop them, but didn’t. So they hap-

pened according to his sovereign will. His plan.

And all of them were evil. They were sin. It is surpassingly

sinful to reject, hate, abandon, betray, deny, condemn, spit upon,

flog, mock, pierce, and kill the morally perfect, infinitely worthy,

divine Son of God. And yet the Bible is explicit and clear that God

himself planned these things. This is explicit not only in all the

prophetic texts we have seen, but also in passages that say even

more plainly that God ordained that these things come to pass.

God Brought It to Pass

For example, Isaiah 53:6, 10 says, “All we like sheep have gone

astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord

has laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . It was the will of the

Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.” The Lord crushed

him. God was at work in all the circumstances that brought Jesus

to the cross. Behind the spitting and flogging and mocking and

piercing is the invisible hand and plan of God.

And I say that carefully and with trembling. This truth is too

big and too weighty and too shocking to be glib about or to be

cocky about. I choose to say that the invisible hand and plan of

God are behind these most spectacular sins in all the universe—

more grievous and more spectacular than the Fall of Satan or any

other sins. The reason I use these very words is because the Bible

says it in these very words.

The Hand and Plan of God

In Acts 4:27–28 we have the clearest, most explicit statement

about God’s hand and plan behind the horrific crucifixion of

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104 S P E C T A C U L A R S I N S

his Son. “Truly in this city there were gathered together against

your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and

Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,

to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take

place.” Those are the two words I am using: the hand of God and

the plan of God.

It is a strange way of speaking—to say that God’s hand and

plan have predestined something to happen. One does not ordi-

narily think of God’s “hand” predestining. How does a hand pre-

destine? Here’s what I think it means: The hand of God ordinarily

stands for God’s exerted power—not power in the abstract, but

earthly, effective exertions of power. The point of combining it

with “plan” is to say that it is not just a theoretical plan; it is a

plan that will be executed by God’s own hand.

This explains Isaiah 53:10: “It was the will of the Lord to

bruise him; he has put him to grief.” Or more literally, with the

King James Version, “It pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath

put him to grief.” The Lord bruised him. Behind Herod and Pilate

and the Gentiles and the people of Israel was Jesus’ own Father

who loved him with an infinite love.

The Gospel: God at Work in Death

Why should this matter to you? It should matter because if God

were not the main Actor in the death of Christ, then the death of

Christ could not save us from our sins, and we would perish in

hell forever (Matt. 25:46; 2 Thess. 1:9). The reason the death of

Christ is the heart of the gospel—the heart of the good news—is

that God was doing it. Romans 5:8: “God shows his love for us

in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” If you sepa-

rate God’s activity from the death of Jesus, you lose the gospel.

This was God’s doing. It is the highest and deepest point of his

love for sinners. His love for you.

Romans 8:3: “Sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful

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Judas Iscariot and Salvation of the World 105

flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.” God condemned

sin in Jesus’ flesh with our condemnation. So we are free.

Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the

law by becoming a curse for us.” God cursed Jesus with the curse

that belonged on us. So we are free.

2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he [ God] made him to be

sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righ-

teousness of God.” God imputed our sin to him, and now we go

free in God’s righteousness.

Isaiah 53:5: “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was

crushed for our iniquities.” God wounded him. God crushed him.

For you and me. And we go free.

The Cross of Christ: The Work and

Love of God

The reason why this book matters is this. If you embrace the

biblical truth (and I pray you will) that God ordains spectacular

sins for the global glory of his Son, without God in any way

becoming unholy or unrighteous or sinful in that act, then you

will not shrink back from the cross of Christ as a work of God.

You will not be among the number of those who call the world’s

most loving act “divine child abuse.” You will come to the cross

and fall on your face. And you will say: This is no mere human

conspiracy. This is the work of God and the love of God. You will

receive it as his highest gift. And you will be saved. And Christ

will be glorified. And I will not have written in vain.

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A C l o s i n g

P r a y e r

My aim has been to strengthen your faith in the goodness and

mercy and wisdom and power of God, not just in the midst

of calamity, but in the very sins that are woven into the calamity.

When you are tempted to forsake God because of the greatness

of evil and misery in the world, may you remember that the Bible

has prepared us for this temptation. It has shown us over and over

that sin and sickness and disaster never escape the good gover-

nance of the infinitely wise God. Whether it is Satan or Adam or

Joseph or Judas, the great divine dictum holds: “You meant evil

against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20).

The most spectacular sins are not signs of ultimate absurdity.

Satan is the ultimately irrational being. And much of what he

is allowed to do will have the mark of senselessness on it. That

is why there is truth in a president’s words when he gives his

news conference after a calamity and describes a mass murder as

“senseless killing.” But there is another vantage point. Namely,

God’s: Yes, senseless at one level, but not ultimately.

Far, far above thy thought,

His counsel shall appear,

When fully He the work hath wrought,

That caused thy needless fear. 1

The Bible does not say that perseverance in faith through the

horrors of sin and misery will be easy. That is why it says, “The one

1Paul Gerhardt, “Give to the Winds Thy Fears,” 1656 (translated 1737 by John Wesley).

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108 A Closing Prayer

who conquers” will not be hurt by the second death. The first death,

yes, and it may be horrible. But not the second (Rev. 2:10–11).

Maintaining the joy of faith in the face of horrific evil does not hap-

pen by coasting. It happens by conquering. That is my aim. That

you would conquer unbelief and despair in the face of spectacular

sin and misery. To that end, I would like to pray for you.

Gracious and glorious Father,

because you are rich in mercy,

and great in love,

and sovereign in grace,

we ask that you would make this little book

a window onto the panorama of your glory,

and a skylight to your supremacy in all things.

By the truth-loving power of your Holy Spirit

grant that the glass pane would be clean—

that what is faithful to your word would be confirmed,

and what is not would be forgiven, not confusing.

We ask that your cloud-banishing illumination

would be given to our minds,

and that spiritual understanding would fill our hearts,

and that according to the command of your apostle,

we would grow in the grace and knowledge

of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

May we see the spectacular sins of the world

as horrible as they are.

And may we see the holiness of God

as pure as it is.

And may we see the rule of God over the sin of man

as righteous as it is.

And thus grant the steel of ultimate reality

to strengthen the spine of our faith,

and sweeten our lips for the bruised heart.

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A Closing Prayer 109

Put the ballast of biblical truth

in the belly of our little boats,

lest the crashing waves of calamity

in these changing times

cause us to capsize in the sea of trouble.

And according to your apostle’s warning,

forbid that the increase of our knowledge

would cause the increase of our pride.

Rather, O God of infinite wisdom,

reveal, with all our understanding,

the unfathomable sinfulness of our hearts without Christ,

and the infinitesimal smallness of our strength

in comparison to yours,

and the absolute dependence of our life on you,

and the unfathomable depths of your judgments,

and how dim is the mirror in which we see.

Grant to our minds and hearts

new and deeper capacities to see and savor

the glories of Jesus Christ.

With every new glimpse of his glory in your word,

let there awaken new affections in our hearts.

Ignite our souls to treasure Christ in a way that

destroys our sinful lusts

and delights the deepest recesses of our being

and displays his truth and beauty

to a world that does not know

that this is what it needs more than anything.

And from this all-satisfying treasuring of Christ

may there flow a liberation from selfishness,

and a triumph over bitterness and anger,

and a freedom from worry and fear,

and victory over depression and discouragement,

and the severing of every root of sensual lust.

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110 A Closing Prayer

All this freedom, Lord, we seek for the sake of love.

Grant that our contentment in Christ would be a

dissatisfied contentment,

eager to expand by including others.

Grant that the joy of the Lord would not be a solitary joy,

but the strength to sacrifice

for the good of others,

even those who hate us.

May brokenhearted boldness

and contrite courage

attend all our deeds of compassion

and all our commendations of Christ to a lost world.

Awaken in us tender affections

for those who hurt,

and self-forgetful attentiveness

for those in our presence.

And in this treasuring of Christ for his supreme glory

and this overflowing love for others,

may Jesus be exalted above all things—

honored, admired, adored, esteemed, enjoyed,

praised, extolled, thanked, and worshiped.

May our light shine in this world

so that people see you in our sacrificial deeds of love

and our uncompromising words of truth

and give glory to your hallowed name,

Father.

Through Jesus Christ,

your Son,

Amen.

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A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

I have a Great Shepherd whom God raised from the dead so that

through him everything I need in order to do his will would

be given (Heb. 13:20–21). And so it has. If I stumble, there is

no blaming the lack of my Shepherd’s sufficiency or provision.

My stumbling is my sin, not his. He always does what is right.

And if I stand, it is owing to his power. I get the Shepherd-care.

He gets the Shepherd-glory. So my first acknowledgment is that

everything good and true is owing to the grace of my Shepherd,

Jesus Christ.

Under this Great Shepherd, I am a non-great shepherd of

Bethlehem Baptist Church. I thank them for being the kind

of flock who draws out of me joyful efforts of exposition. They

are a hungry and holy band of disciples. I love speaking of Christ

to those who love him so much. This book was first my word to

them. And they graciously let me take the time to put those mes-

sages into the form of this book.

David Mathis and Nathan Miller stand by me to serve in

every way that helps me do this work of shepherding and writing.

Carol Steinbach is a faithful friend and partner at Desiring God

who indexes my books with excellence to the glory of God. I do

not take for granted such a boon of ready and gifted assistance. I

thank God for it and pray that I will be a good steward of it.

Noël, as always, blessed me as I disappeared to a borrowed

cabin in Wisconsin to transform sermons into chapters. She bears

graciously the burden of being married to an imperfect shepherd-

author.

The Crossway Books team shares my mission to spread a

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112 Acknowledgments

passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all

peoples through Jesus Christ. That is why I love working with

them.

May the influences and labors of so many not be in vain,

as the purpose of things reaches its climax in the glory of Jesus

Christ.

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S c r i p t u r e

I n d e x

Genesis

15:13

77

1–2

40

15:15

77

1:31

40

15:13–16

76

2:17

40

18:25

25

3

40, 41, 42

37:2

79

3:1

40

37:8

78

3:4

40

37:11

78

3:15

39, 41

37:14

78

6:1–4

42

37:19–20

78

9:1

66

37:27–28

78

10

66

37:36

79

10:5

66

39:22

82–83

10:20

66

41:40

79

10:31

66

41:46

79

11:1

66

41:53

79

11:1–4

67

45:5

80, 81

11:1–9

66, 71

45:6

79

11:4

65

45:7

55, 75

11:5

68

49:8–10

83–84

11:6–8

68–69

49:10

75

11:8–9

65

50:19–20

81

11:9

70–71

50:20

75, 81, 107

12

76, 88

12:1–3

88

Exodus

12:2–3

76

4:21

55

14:18

88

20:1–17

44–45

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114 Scripture Index

Deuteronomy

10:10–11

22

9:5

77

10:15

21, 22

17:14–20

89

18:11

23

28:36

89

18:21

23

29:29

31

18:22

21, 23

32:39

45

25:19

23

25:20

21, 24

Judges

9:22–24

54

Job

1:12

38, 46, 55

1 Samuel

1:21

46, 55

2:10

89

1:22

55

8

89

2:6

46, 55

8:7

93

2:10

55

8:7–9

90

42:11

46

8:12

90

12

89, 91

Psalms

12:8–11

89–90

33:10–11

44

12:13

90

34:20

102

12:17

87, 90

35:19

101

12:19–20

87

41:9

102

12:19–22

92–93

105:16–17

80

12:20

95

105:25

55

12:22

92, 95

110:1

94

110:4

88

2 Samuel

115:3

54

24:1

55

118:22

101

24:10

55

145:17

51

1 Chronicles

Proverbs

16:4

56

21:1

54

Isaiah

2 Chronicles

6:3

25

10:4

22

53:5

105

10:7

22

53:6

103

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Scripture Index 115

53:10

103, 104

26:34

102

27:11

95

Jeremiah

27:9–10

102

19:1–13

102

28:18

26

28:18–19

71

Ezekiel

5:17

55

Mark

1:27

44, 45, 47

Daniel

5:12–13

55

4:17

44

6:41–42

26

10:33–34

102

Amos

13:13

50

8:11

55

14:20

98

15:2

95

Zechariah

11:12–13

102

Luke

12:10

102

8:24–25

26

13:7

101

9:51

101

9:53

101

Matthew

21:16

28

4:1–11

100

21:18

28

5:43–44

17

22:3

54, 95, 99, 100

6:13

50

22:3–6

97

11:5

26

22:31–32

38, 46

12:24

41

22:31–34

101

13:19

40

22:47–48

98

16:22

100

16:23

100

John

21:42

83, 101

1:1

11, 94

22:45

94

1:3

11, 26

24:7–8

27

1:14

94

24:9

27

8:44

40, 45

24:12

27

11:43–44

26

25:46

104

12:6

99

26:24

102

12:31

40, 44

26:31

102

13:18

102

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116 Scripture Index

13:29

98

12:21

50

13:31

49

14:30

40

1 Corinthians

15:20

15

1:23–24

49

15:25

101

7:30

29

16:11

40

8:6

11

18:33

95

13:7

17, 50

19:34–37

102

13:12

31, 43

16:7

55

Acts

2:23

54

2 Corinthians

4:27–28

103–4

4:4

41, 47, 54, 59

7:52

83

4:6

47

13:20–22

91

5:21

105

14:22

15, 77

6:10

29

12:9

49

Romans

1:16

72

Galatians

3:19

92

3:13

51, 105

3:25

95

5:3–5

50

Ephesians

5:8

104

1:4–6

59

5:12–13

60

1:11

51

5:12–21

57–64

2:1–3

99

5:14

53, 60

2:2

41

5:17

53

5:11

50

6:5

61

5:20

50

8:3

51, 104

6:12

34

8:17

15

8:23

15

Philippians

8:37–39

42

1:20

28

8:38–39

38

2:8

63

11:8–10

54

11:33

51

Colossians

11:36

51

1:9–10

32

12:9

50

1:9–20

31

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Scripture Index 117

1:14–20

32

2:14

41

1:15–16

31

6:1–3

55

1:16

11, 33, 34, 48,

7:1–3

88

56

9:28

96

2:8

37

11:17

24

2:13–15

100

12:6

51

2:14–15

42

13:20–21

111

2:15

33–34, 38, 49

2:18

37

James

3:3–4

38

1:13

25

1:13–15

24

1 Thessalonians

4:7

50

3:3

15

4:15

45–46

5:18

50

1 Peter

2 Thessalonians

3:17

45

1:9

104

4:12

27, 50

2:3

70

5:8–9

45

2:8

71

2:10

37

2 Peter

2:4

39, 42

2 Timothy

1:8

36

1 John

1:9

36, 58, 62

1:5

25

2:13

93

2:1

83

3:1

26

3:8

41

3:2–5

27

3:12

15

Jude

6

35, 42, 43

Titus

2:11

62

Revelation

1:9

15

Hebrews

2:10

15, 34

1:2

11

2:10–11

108

1:3

11, 26

4:8

25

1:14

43

5:5

84

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118 Scripture Index

5:9–10

72, 84

14:8–9

71

6:10–11

27

17:6

16, 71

7:9–10

72

18:5

71

12:9

40

18:7

71

12:11

16, 100

18:10

71

13:3

70

19:16

96

13:7

16

20:10

39, 48

13:8

58

13:15

16

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G e n e r a l

I n d e x

Aim of this book, 14, 16, 97, 107

Cromwell, Henry, 54

All things,

Creation

created by, through, and for

by Jesus, 11

Jesus Christ, 33

purpose of, 11

for Jesus, even evil, 54–56

serve Jesus’ glory and our glad-

Demons, 41–42, 44–45, 47,

ness, 36

54–55, 99

Angels, 35, 37, 39–40, 42–43,

Desiring God, 111, 116

47, 54

“Divine child abuse,” 105

Apex of God’s glory, 11–12, 59

Asheville, North Carolina, 21,

Evil, existing for its appointed

23, 29

purpose, 56

Baby boomers, 13

Felt needs, 12, 16

Beast, the, 16, 39, 48, 70–71

Flood of Noah, 66–67

Bethlehem Baptist Church, 29,

57, 111

Gerhardt, Paul, 107

Beza, Theodore, 55

God

Bible reading plan, 21

faithful to his own name, 92

Bruised heart and tire iron, 14

the God who is there, 56–57

hand and plan of, 103–104

Catastrophes coming, 14–15

invisible hand of, 78, 103

Charnock, Stephen, 54

meant for good what man

Christ, see Jesus

meant for evil, 7, 81

Closing prayer, 109–110

people of enter through many

Cottrell, Jack, 54

afflictions, 77

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120 General Index

Gospel, the, 13, 36, 59, 70, 72,

Abraham and, 88

92, 95, 104, 116

belongs only to God, 93

Grace, apex of God’s glory, 11–12

coming king of all, 95–96

greatest display of the glory of

God-man must be king, 93–94

Christ, 11

Hannah and, 88–89

how the kingship came, 89–90

History’s most spectacular sin, 98

king died for his people, 94–95

How a little window works, 18

Moses and, 89

How to relate to evil, 49–51

Languages, 29, 65–66, 69–73

Last days, 26–28, 57, 70–71

Impulses giving rise to this book,

Life-saving sin pointing to Christ,

21–29

81

Lion of Judah, 77, 83–85

Jesus,

abounding grace of, 62

Marriage, 14–15

celebrating the superiority of,

Martyrs, 16, 27, 71

61–64

Mathis, David, 111

“the coming one,” 60

Miller, Nathan, 111

created the universe, 11

Monolithic super-state, 66, 70

cross of, 33–34, 38, 41, 49, 63, Most concentrated description of

95, 100–101 105

Christ’s glories, 32–33

glory of planned in Adam’s sin,

Most important person in the

57–59

universe, 53–54

greatest display of the glory of,

Murder, 12, 25, 27, 40–42,

11–12

44–46, 80–81, 98, 101, 107

how Adam’s sin serves the

supremacy of, 53–64

Ordaining of events, 24, 54, 56,

our representative head, 60–61

103, 105

perfect obedience of, 62–63

reign of life through, 63–64

Pain, see Suffering

spectacular obedience of, 64

Piper, John, 24, 58, 72

Judgment of God, 39, 41–42, 51,

Piper, Noël, 111

65, 67, 70–72, 76–77, 109

Piper, William, 28

Justification, 72

Pivot of human history, 12

Precious words for sinners, 64

Kingship of Israel, 87–96

Pride, 23, 65, 67–73, 109

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General Index 121

Prophecy fulfilled through a spec-

Sovereignty of God, 13, 21–22,

tacular sin, 77–78

24–25, 36–37, 54, 58, 64, 75

Providence, 13, 17, 79

over human sin, 21–29, 37, 97

Steinbach, Carol, 111

Salvation, through sin and suffer-

Suffering, 7, 26–27, 29, 36,

ing, 82

45–46, 49–50, 58–59, 82–83,

Satan,

85, 100

crushing of at the cross, 41–42

Suicide, 12, 97

every move governed by God,

Supernatural powers, 33–34, 38

47–48

fall of, 41–51

Taylor, Justin, 58

God’s sovereign sway over,

Tire iron, 14, 16–17

44–47

Tower of Babel, 29, 65–66, 70–71

insurrection of, 42–43

origin of sin, 43–44

Ware, Bruce, 24

that ancient serpent, 40–4

Wesley, Charles, 82

why not wipe out?, 48–49

Western world, coddled, 12–13,

Scepter will not depart from Ju-

15–16

dah, 83–84

Wimpy Christians, 13, 36, 57, 61

Schaeffer, Francis, 57

worldviews of, 13, 61

Schreiner, Thomas R., 24, 42

Word of God, see Scripture

Scriptures, 18, 54, 101–102

Worst sin ever committed, 12

Shinar, 67, 69–70, 73

Son of David, 87, 89, 91, 93–95

Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,

29

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If you would like to further explore the vision of God and life pre-

sented in this book, we at Desiring God would love to serve you.

We have hundreds of resources to help you grow in your passion

for Jesus Christ and help you spread that passion to others. At our

website, desiringGod.org, you’ll find almost everything John Piper

has written and preached, including more than thirty books. We’ve

made over twenty-five years of his sermons available free online for

you to read, listen to, download, and in some cases watch.

In addition, you can access hundreds of articles, listen to our daily

internet radio program, find out where John Piper is speaking, learn

about our conferences, discover our God-centered children’s cur-

ricula, and browse our online store. John Piper receives no royalties

from the books he writes and no compensation from Desiring God.

The funds are all reinvested into our gospel-spreading efforts. DG

also has a whatever-you-can-afford policy, designed for individu-

als with limited discretionary funds. If you’d like more information

about this policy, please contact us at the address or phone num-

ber below. We exist to help you treasure Jesus Christ and his gospel

above all things because he is most glorified in you when you are

most satisfied in him. Let us know how we can serve you!

Desiring God

Post Office Box 2901

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402

888.346.4700

mail@desiringGod.org

www.desiringGod.org

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Document Outline

- Table of Contents

- Introduction: The Times Are Changing

- Chapter 1: God Sovereign over Human Sin

- Chapter 2: Christ Sovereign over All Hostile Powers

- Chapter 3: The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ

- Chapter 4: The Fatal Disobedience of Adam and the Triumphant Obedience of Christ

- Chapter 5: The Pride of Babel and the Praise of Christ

- Chapter 6: The Sale of Joseph and the Son of God

- Chapter 7: The Sinful Origin of the Son of David

- Chapter 8: Judas Iscariot, the Suicide of Satan, and the Salvation of the World

- A Closing Prayer

- Acknowledgments

- Scripture Index

- General Index

- Desiring God: A Note on Resources

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Times Are Changing

Chapter 1: God Sovereign over Human Sin

Chapter 2: Christ Sovereign over All Hostile Powers

Chapter 3: The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ

Chapter 4: The Fatal Disobedience of Adam and the Triumphant Obedience of Christ

Chapter 5: The Pride of Babel and the Praise of Christ

Chapter 6: The Sale of Joseph and the Son of God

Chapter 7: The Sinful Origin of the Son of David

Chapter 8: Judas Iscariot, the Suicide of Satan, and the Salvation of the World

A Closing Prayer

Acknowledgments

Scripture Index

General Index

Desiring God: A Note on Resources