Nick Roark's Blog

“In the Spirit and through the Spirit Christ gives of Himself and His benefits to the church.

It is not by might or violence, therefore, that Christ rules in the kingdom given Him by the Father.

He did not do this in His humiliation, and He does not do it in His exaltation.

His entire prophetic, priestly, and kingly activity He continues to carry on in a spiritual way from His place in heaven.

He fights only with spiritual weapons.

He is a king of grace and a king of might, but in both kinds He leads His regiment out through the Holy Spirit, who, in turn, makes use of the Word as a means of grace.

By that Spirit He instructs, comforts, and leads His church, and dwells in it.

And by the same Spirit He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8–11).

The eventual victory which Christ will gain over all His enemies will be a triumph of the Holy Spirit.”

–Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God (trans. Henry Zylstra; Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 1909/2019), 369.

‘Who is like You, O LORD,
among the gods?
Who is like You,
glorious in holiness,
fearful in praises,
doing wonders?‘
(Exodus 15:11)

“The expression I pitch upon in the text to handle is “glorious in holiness.” God is magnified or honorable in holiness; so the word יאדיר is translated: “He will magnify the law and make it honorable” (Isa. 42:21).

Your holiness has shone forth admirably in this last exploit against the enemies and oppressors of your people. The holiness of God is His glory, as His grace is His riches.

Holiness is His crown, and His mercy is His treasure. This is the blessedness and nobleness of His nature. It renders Him glorious in Himself and glorious to His creatures that understand anything of this lovely perfection.

Holiness is a glorious perfection belonging to the nature of God. Hence He is in Scripture styled often the Holy One, the Holy One of Jacob, the Holy One of Israel.

More often is He entitled “holy” than “almighty,” and set forth by this part of His dignity more than by any other.

This is more affixed as an epithet to His name than any other. You never find it expressed, His “mighty name” or His “wise name” but His “great name” and, most of all, His “holy name.”

This is His greatest title of honor.”

–Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, ed. Mark Jones, Updated and Unabridged, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 2: 1046-1047.

‘Who is like You, O LORD,
among the gods?
Who is like You,
glorious in holiness,
fearful in praises,
doing wonders?‘
(Exodus 15:11)

“Exodus 15:11 is one of the loftiest descriptions of the majesty and excellency of God in the whole Scripture.

It is a part of Moses’s ἐπινίκιον, or triumphant song, after a great, a real, and a typical victory, in the womb of which all the deliverances of the church were couched.

It is the first song upon holy record, and it consists of gratulatory and prophetic material.

It casts a look backward to what God did for them in their deliverance from Egypt and a look forward to what God shall do for the church in future ages.

That deliverance was but a rough draft of something more excellent to be wrought toward the closing up of the world, when his plagues shall be poured out upon the anti-Christian powers, which should revive the same song of Moses in the church, as fitted so many ages before for such a scene of affairs (Rev. 15:2–3).”

–Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, ed. Mark Jones, Updated and Unabridged, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 2: 1043.

“The death of Jesus was designed not solely to deliver us from sin and condemnation but also to demonstrate the righteousness of God and to vindicate His holiness and glorify His good name.

The way that God had governed the world from the fall of Adam to the birth of Christ made it look to many like God was unrighteous and unaffected by sin and indifferent to moral evil.

For centuries it appeared that God had been doing what Ps. 103:10 says he does: “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (ESV).

In order to make known His greatness and the majesty of His holiness, God sent His Son to pay the price for sins committed and thereby vindicated and demonstrated the immeasurable worth of His glory.

Paul intends for us to see in the death of Christ, first and foremost, a declaration and demonstration of the unfathomable worth and infinite value of God. God is committed above all else to uphold and make known the glory of His name.

But there appears on the surface to be a miscarriage of justice in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Prov. 17:15 we read that “the Lord detests” both “acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent.”

But if the gospel is that God justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:5) and acquits the guilty, how does He escape this denunciation? Here we see the twofold challenge that God faces.

In the first place, He is committed to proving to everyone that He is in fact just, righteous, and holy. But second, he also desires to justify sinful men and women.

How can He do both and declare as righteous people who have belittled Him and disregarded Him and despised Him? How can He be the one who justifies (3:26) fallen and rebellious people and at the same time be seen as just and righteous Himself?

The solution is found in the death of Jesus as our substitute. The just God requires the maximum punishment for those who have despised Him. And Jesus endures that punishment. He satisfies the demands of justice. He quenches the wrath of God.

And on that basis God is free to impute the righteousness of Jesus to us and declare us justified when we put our faith in Him. In Rom. 4:5 Paul describes God as the one “who justifies the ungodly.”

But how can God declare as godly those who are ungodly? God can do it because a righteous substitute, Jesus, has lived the sinless life that they should have lived and didn’t, and He died the sacrificial death that they should have died but now don’t have to.

When God set forth Jesus as a propitiatory sacrifice on the cross, He was, as it were, answering His critics.

The death of Christ was not only a substitutionary sacrifice for sinners; it was also the public vindication of the justice and righteousness of God Himself.

God is just; God is righteous; the wages of sin is death; the undeniable public proof of these is the propitiatory suffering of Jesus.”

–Sam Storms, Romans, ed. Craig S. Keener and Holly Beers, Word and Spirit Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2024), 55-56.

“Closing Numbers with the vision of Israel in the land, with each tribe’s inheritance divinely bounded and secured for all generations, recalls the splendorous third vision of Balaam, who, when he saw ‘Israel dwelling according to his tribes’, was overwhelmed by the Spirit of God to erupt with praise— the paradisal dwelling places of Israel, with their palm groves and riverside gardens, were a foretaste of Israel’s life in the land (24:1–6):

“When Balaam saw that it pleased the LORD to bless Israel, he did not go, as at other times, to look for omens, but set his face toward the wilderness. And Balaam lifted up his eyes and saw Israel camping tribe by tribe. And the Spirit of God came upon him, and he took up his discourse and said, “The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor, the oracle of the man whose eye is opened, the oracle of him who hears the words of God, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling down with his eyes uncovered: How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your encampments, O Israel! Like palm groves that stretch afar, like gardens beside a river, like aloes that the LORD has planted, like cedar trees beside the waters.” (Numbers 24:1-6)

The vision points God’s people to life in a new creation, lived before the face of God and the Lamb, where a pure river of life flows, feeding a tree of life that bears twelve kinds of fruits, twelve months of the year, and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations— when God’s people, adorned as a Bride for her Husband, will feast at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb (Rev. 21–22).

Uncover my eyes, that I may observe wonders out of your Torah,
And we will praise you, YHWH God of hosts,
To Whom be glory and eternal dominion!”

–L. Michael Morales, Numbers 20-36, ed. David W. Baker and Beth M. Stovell, vol. 4b, Apollos Old Testament Commentary (London: Apollos, 2024), 4b: 496. Morales is commenting on Numbers 36.

“In order to define ‘gospel’ we must look at how it is portrayed in its narrow, focused application and how it also extends to include everything that God has done in Christ to redeem the cosmos and make way for the inauguration of the new heaven and new earth.

So, in one sense, the gospel is the gloriously great good news of what our triune God has graciously done in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to satisfy his own wrath against us and to secure the forgiveness of sins and perfect righteousness for all who trust in him by faith alone.

Christ fulfilled, on our behalf, the perfectly obedient life under God’s law that we should have lived but never could. He died, in our place, the death that we deserved to suffer but now never will.

And by his rising from the dead, he secures, for those who believe, the promise of a resurrected and glorified life in a new heaven and a new earth in fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forever.

The gospel is fundamentally about something that has happened. It is an accomplished event, an unalterable fact of history. But as a settled achievement it also exerts a radical and far-reaching influence on both our present experience and our future hopes.

This gospel is not only the means by which people have been saved but also the truth and power by which people are being sanctified (1 Cor. 15:1–2); it is the truth of the gospel that enables us to genuinely and joyfully do what is pleasing to God and to grow in progressive conformity to the image of Christ.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the gospel is the gravitational center of both our individual experience and the shape of local church life. We see this in numerous biblical texts.

For example, the gospel is Christocentric: it is about Jesus, God’s son (Mark 1:1; Rom. 1:9). Both Mark (Mark 1:14) and Paul (Rom. 1:1; 1 Thess. 2:8) describe it as the gospel “of God”—he is its source and the cause of all that it entails.

Humans do not create or craft the gospel; they respond to it by repenting of their sins and believing its message (Mark 1:15) concerning what God has done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

The gospel, then, is “the word of truth” that proclaims our “salvation” (Eph. 1:13 ESV). It is marked by grace (Acts 20:24), which is to say that it is the message of God’s gracious provision, apart from human works, of all that is necessary to reconcile us to himself both now and for eternity.

The gospel is rooted in the call of Israel and is consummated in the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who is the fulfillment of the types and shadows of the old covenant (Rom. 1:1–6; 16:25–27).

As such, the gospel must never be thought of as an abstract, ahistorical idea, as if it were disconnected from or unrelated to the concrete realities of life on earth. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are thus to be seen as the pivotal chapter in the unfolding story of God’s redemptive purpose for humanity.

There are also multiple consequences of the gospel that extend beyond its impact on the individual and their relationship to God. The gospel invariably issues a call for human action.

Among the implications or results of the gospel are the cultivation of humility (Phil. 2:1–5), the pursuit of racial reconciliation (Eph. 2:11–22) and social justice (Philem. 8–20), a commitment to harmony and peace among people (Rom. 15:5–7; Heb. 12:14), and the demonstration of love for one another (1 John 3:16, 23).

But we must never confuse the content of the gospel with its consequences, or its essence with its entailments.

Finally, whereas the gospel is God’s redeeming act in Jesus on behalf of sinful men and women, we must not overlook the fact that it is only because of the gospel that we have a sure and certain hope for cosmic transformation.

The good news of God’s saving act in Christ is thus the foundation for our confidence in the ultimate triumph of God’s kingdom (1 Cor. 15:20–24), the end of physical death (1 Cor. 15:25–26; Rev. 21:4), the defeat of Satan (John 16:11; Col. 2:13–15; Heb. 2:14; 1 John 3:8), the eradication of all evil (Rev. 21:4, 8), and the removal of the curse that rests on our physical environment, followed by the consummation of God’s purpose for all creation in the new heaven and new earth (Rom. 8:18–25).”

–Sam Storms, Romans, ed. Craig S. Keener and Holly Beers, Word and Spirit Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2024), 6–8.

“I look up at that blue sky which bends so brightly over me. It is without a stain.

From the horizon to the zenith it is perfect in its beauty; there is no flaw in the whole stretch of its azure circle.

I cannot but admire it, and still more the mind that planned, as well as the hand that painted it. But is this all that it awakens in me?

If so, then I am like one admiring the fair-written characters of a language which I have no skill to interpret. Nay, but it is not all.

There is much more than this to be discovered there. That radiant arch is not only the indication of an infinite mind, but it is also the utterance of an infinite heart.

It is effulgent with love, it glistens with parental smiles. I dare not separate between the beneficence of God’s works and the benevolence of His heart.

In the former I cannot but read the latter. These heavens most plainly tell me what is the heart of Him who made me.

They show me how it beats towards me, and how it yearns over me with an intensity of affection and interest which it is impossible for me to overestimate or overprize.

And it is this that makes me glad; it is this that is the warmth of my spirit, the very pulse of my being. That blue arch that compasses me about seems like the infolding pressure of the everlasting arms.

Every gleam of it sends a thrill to my heart more joyous and satisfying than does the conscious possession of the tenderest love of earth.

Or, again, I walk forth by that mountainside, where the wildflowers blossom, without a hand to sow them, and scarce an eye to see them. I take up that tuft of heath that buds as gaily as if a thousand eyes were on it.

How beautiful, how perfect! But of what does it tell me? Of the wisdom of God. And is that all? No, surely. It speaks of something more than the mind, the understanding of him who clothed and coloured it so richly?

Does it not speak of His heart? We do not merely say, as we look upon its purple clusters, ‘If this be so passing beautiful, what must He be who is the fountain-head of all beauty?’

We say, also, ‘What must be the heart of Him who has taken such pains upon that world which He made for us, so that even its very wastes are fair and fragrant!’

In all that He has been doing He seems to have been thinking of us, of our comfort, of our happiness.

In every leaf, in every blossom, in every odour, in every colour, He seems to have been consulting always for us, thinking how He could make us happiest, how He could continue to pour out most of His heart upon those scenes in the midst of which He meant us to dwell.

When thus looking at His works as laying open His heart we get at their real meaning. We understand the story which they were meant to tell— a story about the heart of God.

It was this story of Divine goodness, as told upon earth by God, that made man so blessed. The happiness of the creature came directly from what he knew of this loving Creator.

It was not Eden, but the God whom Eden spoke of, that was his joy. It was not the fair sky of an unfallen earth that made his eye glisten as he looked up into its depths; it was the God whose goodness he saw shining there so richly.

Each object made him happy, by showing him GOD, and drawing him into fellowship with Him. Acquaintanceship with God was all lie needed for his blessedness. This acquaintanceship each scene around was fitted to increase.

Nor did he find his joy in thinking of himself, or contemplating his own excellencies. He did not say, ‘I am a holy being, I never sinned, I always obey God; surely I am entitled to be happy.’

No: his joy lay in God alone, and it was in thinking about God that this joy flowed into him. The more he knew of the Infinite One, the All, he was the happier.

To forget himself and remember God was his true delight. Every new insight into the heart of God was to him an increase of gladness, a new well-spring gushing forth in Paradise.

God’s favour was the sunshine of his being, and every thing that spoke more fully of that favour glistened with that sunshine, and poured new streams of life into his soul.

In Eden, as in heaven, God was ‘all and in all’ —God Himself, the living God, the personal Jehovah, in whom man lived and moved and had his being.

It is no mere name that man is called on to recognise in creation, no shadow clothed with what are termed attributes or perfections; it is the very life of the universe, the Being of Beings, the eternal I AM.

He it is with whom man met in Paradise, and of whom all things spoke so blessedly.

Reader, and especially young reader— for this scene of Eden-brightness seems to speak home to the young and opening heart— let me deal with you for a moment.

Is this Infinite Being your God?

Is His favor your life, His smile your treasure, His friendship your all?

Is it in HIMSELF that you have found your joy?

Are you using His works for the purpose of making you happier in Him?

Or are you perverting them to the awful end of making you happy without Him?

Do they bring Him into you, or do they shut Him out?

Are they prized for the discoveries which they afford you of Him, or because they help to fill up the void within, and make you no longer dependent upon Him for happiness?

He built those mountains, up whose slopes your young elastic step delights to climb.

He poured the clear water into those streams on whose banks you love to wander.

He made that glad day, with its bright sun, and that solemn night, with its ever-sparkling gems.

What, then, must He be who did all this for you?

What a portion must His favour be!

What endless gladness must be in His smile!

What a heaven upon earth must be enjoyed in fellowship with Him!

This was enough for your first father, when unfallen— it may well be enough for you!

He whose name is Jehovah is the one Being whose friendship would be infinite gain to you, and the loss of whose acquaintanceship would, of itself, be a hell as terrible as the region of the unquenchable fire.”

–Horatius Bonar, The Story of Grace: An Exhibition of God’s Love (Geanies House, Scotland: Christian Focus, 1848/2025), 24-28.

“Man, in Eden, was holy. He knew not what it was to sin, nor how such a thing as evil could find its way into a world so fair. He saw it excellent, and how it could lose its excellence, or become less perfect, he could not conceive.

Paradise was for him, and he for paradise; the dweller and the dwelling suited each other completely; the outer and the inner circle of being fitting in to each other in all their parts, and proportions, and motions.

God, too, was with him— the Maker of this wondrous earth and these infinite heavens—conversing with him, instructing him, blessing him with light and love. He had rested from His work, and came down to hold fellowship with man.

The seventh day’s dawn brought with it peace, the very peace of God. The calm of the Sabbath was there, a Sabbath like that which angels keep in heaven, a Sabbath such as earth has never since been gladdened with, but which we know it is yet to taste when the second Adam comes to make all things new.

It was then and thus that God began to tell the story of His goodness upon earth. ‘How great is His goodness!” was the living utterance coming forth from every thing created.

He had been telling that story in heaven from the time that there were any creatures to tell it to; that is, from the time that He peopled heaven with the blessed angels.

In what way He had been telling it there we know not; through how many ages it had been running, no record is given. But He had a purpose to tell it elsewhere, and to other beings besides the angels.

For this end He gave birth to the earth, that He might tell it there; that He might have another circle which it should traverse in a new form, and that thus He might make known more widely how glorious in GOODNESS He was.

For each happy scene on earth spoke aloud of this goodness. Each pure star above, and each rich flower below, told the story of this goodness. It was written over the whole earth in letters that all could see— it was spoken over earth in tones that all could hear.

Each scene distinctly breathed it; the sounds of sweet harmony, that went and came over the face of creation, had each a voice that articulately made known the story of this goodness.

“Day unto day uttered speech, and night unto night shewed knowledge.” (Psa. 19:2) What a story! How full, how vast, how varied!

Each hour, each moment, God was telling it to man, that man might rejoice more abundantly in Himself, and find what a portion for his soul is the favour of that infinite Being, out of whom all this goodness was pouring itself.

And each hour, each moment, man might have been singing:

“O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! who hast set Thy glory above the heavens.” (Psa. 8:1)

“Thou art, worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.” (Rev. 4:11)

“Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty.” (Rev. 15:3)

In all this it was not merely wisdom and power that God was displaying. It was goodness. It was His heart that God was opening up to man, for it was the knowledge of that, that alone, which could make him blessed.

Man might know much of God, but if he knew not this, he could have no enjoyment. Every thing depended upon his knowing that the heart of Him who made him beat lovingly towards him.

This was life, and, without it, life could not be. This was the charm of being, and, without it, existence could not but be a blank, nay, something more terrible— a curse!

It is not the works of God that can gladden us, however perfect, if separated from His heart. It is not the knowledge of His wisdom, or His greatness, or His majesty, that can fill our souls with peace.

If these are disjoined from His paternal feelings, they can only amaze or terrify us. It is God Himself, the Father of our spirits, that is our real portion.

His largest gifts are nought to us without Himself. They are precious in themselves, but apart from Him they cannot satisfy or bless.

It is the love of the Giver, not the beauty of His gift, that meets the cravings of the human spirit.”

–Horatius Bonar, The Story of Grace: An Exhibition of God’s Love (Geanies House, Scotland: Christian Focus, 1848/2025), 21-23.

“What is Jesus doing now?

He is sitting at the right hand of the Father appearing on our behalf. His work of redemption is complete. Nothing more needs to be done— by Him or by us— to reconcile us to God.

But although the work of redemption is complete, the work of the gospel progressing to the ends of the earth and the work of Christians continuing steadfast in Christ needs to continue.

And Christ (with the Father and the Spirit) is involved in this work. We have seen that He undertakes to ensure that the gospel continues to progress and He is involved in ensuring that Christians persevere to the end.

When we sin, we can remember that Jesus is sitting down, that His work is finished and that He is appearing in heaven on our behalf— that full atonement has been made.

When we struggle to persevere and are tempted to give up, we can remember that someone is always praying for us. And not just anyone but the risen and exalted Lord Jesus. Jesus is the one who is continually interceding that we will be saved to the uttermost.

Thus Christian hope, Christian life, Christian faith and Christian theology are all inextricably bound up with the exalted Christ.”

–Peter C. Orr, Exalted above the Heavens: The Risen and Ascended Christ, ed. D. A. Carson, vol. 47, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL; London: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press; Apollos, 2018), 202–203.

“Practical atheism is evidenced in envying the gifts and prosperities of others. Envy has a deep tincture of practical atheism and is a cause of atheism.

We are unwilling to leave God to be the proprietor and do what He will with His own, and as a Creator to do what He pleases with His creatures. We assume a liberty to direct God what portions, when and how, He should bestow upon His creatures.

We would not let Him choose His own favorites and pitch upon His own instruments for His glory—as if God should have asked counsel of us how He should dispose of His benefits.

We are unwilling to leave to His wisdom the management of His own judgments to the wicked and the dispensation of His own love to ourselves. This temper is natural; it is as ancient as the first age of the world.

Adam envied God a felicity by himself and would not spare a tree that he had reserved as a mark of his sovereignty. The passion that God had given Cain to employ against his sin he turns against his Creator; he was wroth with God (Gen. 4:5) and with Abel.

But envy was at the root, because his brother’s sacrifice was accepted and his refused. How could he envy his accepted person without reflecting upon the acceptor of his offering!

Good men have not been free from it. Job questions the goodness of God, that he should “shine upon the counsel of the wicked” (Job 10:3).

Jonah had too much of self in fearing to be counted a false prophet when he came with absolute denunciations of wrath (Jonah 4:2).

And when he could not bring a volley of destroying judgments upon the Ninevites, he would shoot his fury against his Master, envying those poor people the benefit and God the honor of His mercy.

And this after he had been sent into the whale’s belly to learn humiliation, which, though he exercised there, yet those two great branches of self-pride and envy were not lopped off from him in the belly of hell.

And God was fain to take pains with him, and by a gourd, scarce makes him ashamed of his peevishness.

Envy is not like to cease till all atheism be cashiered, and that is in heaven.

This sin is an imitation of the devil, whose first sin upon earth was envy, as his first sin in heaven was pride. It is a wishing that to ourselves which the devil asserted as his right, to give the kingdoms of the world to whom he pleased (Luke 4:6).

It is an anger with God because he has not given us a patent for government.

It utters the same language in disparagement of God as Absalom did in reflection on his father:

“If I were king in Israel, justice should be better managed; if I were lord of the world, there should be more wisdom to discern the merits of men and more righteousness in distributing to them their several portions.”

Thus we impose laws upon God and would have the righteousness of His will submit to the corruptions of ours and have Him lower Himself to gratify our minds rather than fulfill His own.

We charge the author of those gifts with injustice that He has not dealt equally, or with ignorance that He has mistook His mark. In the same breath that we censure Him by our peevishness, we would guide Him by our wills.”

–Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, ed. Mark Jones, Updated and Unabridged, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 1: 195-196