This article is the script of the author’s speech at the Family Day of First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church, Bulacan, Philippines, on April 18, 2025.
The speech has been edited for publication.

The Definitely Ordained Savior

In the mind of God, there are no contrasting thoughts. God is pure thesis. He knows how to operate according to whatever his good pleasure establishes. He knows exactly what to do. In him there is no plan B. There is only one plan because there is only one mediator, Jesus Christ. This mediator is central in God’s mind, central in every thought of God concerning his decrees and works in eternity and time. The mediator is the wisdom with whom God fellowships in eternity. That the mediator is the wisdom of God means that “he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Col. 1:17) and that “all things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).

As the mediator Jesus Christ was ordained as a prophet, priest, and king. Christ was ordained in principle in eternity, and when he assumed human flesh and received the Spirit, Christ’s ordination as the mediator was vindicated. The anointing of the Spirit was upon Christ as the mediator in the flesh. He never functions as mediator without the Spirit because the Spirit is the power by whom Christ performs all his mediatorial works. The blessedness of Christ as the mediator is the Spirit, who gives to Christ all the spiritual gifts without measure. Therefore, the Spirit gave to Christ all authority and power to consummate all things for the glory of Jehovah.

The goal of all things is always the glory of God. Christ was ordained in eternity to serve the glory of the most high God. In the blessed economy of the Trinity, Jesus Christ was ordained as the exact image of God by whom the blessed life of God would be revealed to the creatures. God’s establishment of his covenant with Jesus Christ as the mediator in eternity is called in theology the covenant of peace. This covenant is the mother of all God’s decrees. Jesus Christ was always first in the mind of God. Jesus Christ always had the preeminence as the mediator because he was ordained to reveal the one true God. This means that Jesus Christ is the one who speaks concerning who God is, what God is, what God does, and what God ordains.

We creatures cannot approach God or even know him in any sense except through revelation. Except God, as the incomprehensible one, makes himself known to us, we could never have any knowledge of him. His speech, or revelation, outside himself was not necessary—that is, God was not obligated to reveal himself to his creatures because he has the absolute freedom to conceal himself and leave his creatures in darkness. Even before sin God had the absolute freedom to make himself known or not to make himself known. He had the absolute freedom to leave Adam and Eve in darkness, in a vacuum of not knowing anything about him. Thus regardless of darkness and sin, which is now in the world, God had the freedom to establish the antithesis between light and darkness. He had that freedom before sin, and it is not surprising that he has that freedom from eternity to eternity. At his will God could have left his creatures in darkness, so that they never would have seen even a glimpse of God’s light. God does not need anyone to tell him what to do. He just needs himself; he is sufficient in himself. However, out of his sovereign will God chose to reveal himself to his creatures.

Therefore, God ordained Jesus Christ as the only possible way for the creature to know God. God created all things by Jesus Christ, the Word, and all creation reveals that God is the creator of heaven and earth, that he alone is God. Therefore, in a sense no one has the right to be an unbeliever. Everyone has the responsibility to worship God according to his revelation in creation. God will have all men be without excuse. Whenever God speaks outside himself to others, the only purpose is that those recipients of his revelation must worship him as God.

Because of sin the speech of God in creation became so destructive and painful. That speech is now of wrath and destruction. In his power and judgment, Jesus Christ speaks in creation against all sinners, revealing to them the invisible reality of God’s wrath. His revelation is not of mercy, so no one should go to creation and expect to find salvation. Though Christ is the mediator who reveals God to moral and rational creatures, Christ is not the mediator who reconciles all sinners to God. Even if it were true that Christ has a gracious speech to all sinners in his revelation in creation, that revelation in creation would not be enough to bring sinners to the true knowledge of God, who saves souls, because the revelation in creation does not reveal Jesus Christ as the object and substance of faith. Creation is not the end.

Now, coming from this argument, Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God is not a creature, for “no mere creature can sustain the burden of God’s eternal wrath against sin, so as to deliver others from it” (Heidelberg Catechism A 14, in Confessions and Church Order, 88). Though Jesus was born of a woman and took to himself a real human nature, Jehovah is not created, therefore, we have salvation in him. We are, as believers, created anew in his image, and that should end every conception that we have salvation in any sense in ourselves.

Every aspect of our lives as believers is created in Christ, and it goes without saying that we cannot find salvation in ourselves. Good works are creations of God. Faith is a creation of God to engraft us into Christ. Repentance is created in us, so that we are brought daily before God in humility. A new heart is a creation; the new man is a creation after the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. The law is a creation by the perfect penmanship of God. The point is this: If something is created, do not put your trust in it. It will surely fail. Only Jesus Christ has the preeminence over all creation, and he is not a mere creature; he is God the Son in the flesh, ordained by the triune God to be the mediator.

That moral and rational creatures can know God through creation does not mean their salvation. Actually, their knowledge of God is very much for their condemnation. There is absolutely no salvation in general revelation. There is only one way of salvation, Jesus Christ, the elect of God. Nevertheless, the point is this: Any pinch of the knowledge of God (whether by creation or by grace) should be communicated to us through Jesus Christ, for he is the mediator. Therefore, Jesus Christ, as the mediator, is the servant of Jehovah who reveals God, so that he can be known by his creatures but not fully comprehended by them regarding all the mysteries of the Godhead.

The prophecy of Isaiah concerning Jesus Christ as the mediator is fundamental in the understanding of Christ’s death. His death was not in any sense a mediatorial repair work of a damaged and corrupted heaven and earth through rebellion in the spiritual realm and the fall of Adam. The fall was not something that God reacted upon by giving the remedy through the promise of the seed of the woman. Rather, Christ’s death was a work of the servant of Jehovah, whom God had ordained to be his elect. The prophecy says, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles” (Isa. 42:1). In other words the fall of Adam happened in light of Christ’s election as the servant of Jehovah. The fall happened to serve the coming death of the servant of Jehovah.

The idea of being a servant of Jehovah is that Christ functioned as a prophet, priest, and king. He functioned as God’s ordained servant in the sphere of the covenant. This means that Christ’s relationship to God in the covenant was more than a king-servant relationship, but Christ’s relationship was also one of intimate fellowship with God. As a result, Christ’s life in all his being sought to glorify his Father. To be God’s servant is always to consider and perform God’s will and purpose in all your life.

Scripture sometimes refers to the physical nation of Israel as God’s servant. In a higher sense, in comparison to the physical nation, scripture refers to the spiritual Israel of God as the servant of Jehovah. Nevertheless, spiritual Israel was not the servant of Jehovah in the highest sense in comparison to the physical nation of Israel. This means that the physical nation as it existed in history had to point to the higher reality of God’s church. Israel as a physical nation established by God with laws and regulations, men who governed the nation, and many covenant promises was really a mere manifestation in history of God’s spiritual Israel that is composed of all the saints. These saints may be called the servants of Jehovah in scripture because they were elected in eternity as members of Jesus’ body. They are vessels of glory, that is, they were ordained to glorify God and to be face to face with God in the glory of his Son in the new heaven and the new earth. They are, in principle, the new Jerusalem, upon which the Spirit of Christ is bestowed without measure. They are united to Christ, and Jesus Christ is united to them by faith.

But in Isaiah 42:1, we, God’s people, his servants in the sphere of his covenant with us, are not the ones mentioned collectively as the servant of Jehovah because we cannot “open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house” (v. 7). Also, Jehovah makes it clear that his glory exclusively belongs to him, and he will not give his glory to another (v. 8), not even to us his servants. We cannot save others nor save ourselves. We cannot simply open our eyes to see the kingdom of God. Only God can open our eyes through regeneration. We cannot make satisfaction for sins and free ourselves from death and hell; only God by his outstretched arm can rescue us from the curse and divine wrath.

We should not err in our understanding regarding who Isaiah 42:1 refers to as the servant of Jehovah, especially since the verse begins with “behold my servant.” This is God, directing our faith to its object, whom he calls “my servant.” It is Jesus Christ; he alone is God’s servant par excellence. He is the servant of Jehovah. He is the ordained savior, who can “open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.”

When Jesus Christ is called the servant of Jehovah, this should be viewed in light of God’s foreordination because Christ is also the elect of God. The eternal counsel of God should never be slighted, but Jesus Christ personally, as the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity, was not a product of God’s eternal counsel. Christ was not begotten out of the bosom of God’s mind, but Jesus Christ, according to his person, is eternally generated by the Father as the eternal and natural Son of God. But as established in eternity according to God’s inscrutable wisdom, Christ as the servant of Jehovah was elected as having the preeminence in all things. Nevertheless, Christ’s election should not be viewed as an election unto life. That character of divine election should never be applied to him as the Son of God because he is life in himself personally, and the full, eternal manifestation of life dwells in him bodily.

Rather, Christ’s election was the result of God’s love for himself. God simply beheld himself as the only good, and he delighted in himself. His essence or being is adored in Isaiah 42:1 as the only good and praiseworthy God. Because the servant of Jehovah is not only the mediator of God’s covenant with his people, the revelator of God’s blessed life in himself, but also the express image of God’s being, Jehovah beholds himself in the face of Jesus Christ. He is Jehovah himself ordained to become the Son of man for the purpose of dying for the sins of God’s people.

The triune God elected Jesus Christ, and he became the elect of God in whom all the elect are chosen to partake of the life of Jehovah. Now comes the antithesis. The antithesis is the direct opposite of something being presented. Remember that divine election always has a dark side. In the one decree of eternal predestination, reprobation is the dark side of election. If God loves, then God hates. Nevertheless, hatred is not an essential virtue of God. Rather, hatred is an implication of God’s love. Considering reprobation, we can say that even before the fall God hated part of humanity. If election is unconditional, we can safely conclude that reprobation is also unconditional. “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth” (Rom. 9:11). Yes, even before the entrance of sin into the world, God eternally hated the reprobate wicked according to his decree of reprobation. I cannot answer all the questions concerning this, but one thing I know: God is absolutely free to do whatever he pleases to do. No one and nothing can hinder him from doing his good pleasure. If God is love itself, then he is absolutely free to reprobate out of his fierce anger and wrath.

Regarding the dark side of Christ’s election, I am not talking about the eternal destiny of a soul, whether one is saved or not. Like I said, Christ himself is life. He was not elected unto life, unlike our election, whereby we were elected unto life. Rather, his election implied that he stood against all creaturely possibilities of salvation. We can say that in the election of Jesus Christ, God hated any kind of salvation other than by Jesus Christ, God’s elect. God the Father in eternity was determined that the only way of salvation was through his own Son. God’s whole being is in Jesus Christ, so that God cannot deny himself. He alone has the power to save. Therefore, any other means of salvation should be reprobated. God hates other ways of salvation than that of his beloved Son.

Upon the election of Jesus Christ as savior, all creatures were rejected eternally but not necessarily unto eternal death and damnation in hell. Rather, their rejection was simply as if God were saying, “Christ, of whom I am well pleased, is the only way of salvation. If there were another way, that would be eternally rejected as long as I live.” All creaturely possibilities of salvation were divinely rejected.

You must understand that at stake in the election of Jesus Christ is God himself. When Christ was chosen, it was the activity of God by which he proved his aseity, his sufficiency. God cannot in any way, both in eternity and in time, depend on something created or conceived. That would make him dependent, which is utterly impossible. Rather, in the election of Jesus Christ, he was revealed as the most (and the only) definite savior. Besides him there is no savior to be conceived of or imagined. If God said “behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth,” we are not in the position to oppose that declaration either explicitly or implicitly. This is very clear, so that even a child can be certain that there is salvation only in Jesus Christ. Christ antithetically stands before all conceivable ways of salvation, and he triumphs over them because he alone is the elect of God, while other ways of salvation are altogether reprobated or rejected. Jehovah only accepts his Son, who was ordained to die for the sins of God’s people as the manifestation of his love for them.

The Definite Means of Death

The idea of death is that it is the opposite of God’s essential life in himself. God is pure being, and in him there is no antithesis or warfare. He is pure light. He exists in the harmonious fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three have life, and they live out that life in their respective properties as divine persons who subsist in the Godhead. Life permeates their fellowship. It is their perfect way of living. God in himself is life; therefore, he is the living God. There is no possibility of death in him, for he essentially is life. The source of life is God, and in that life he is pure energy. He always acts in love as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

All God’s decrees concerning his creation were established outside himself. This means that even without those decrees, God could have lived sufficiently in himself. Within God there is no lack. Thus the decrees concerning creation were the exercise of God’s sovereign will and power.

Thus no one in creation should exalt himself without suffering the penalty of death because any rebellion against God’s majesty must receive the penalty of death. Whatever death we are talking about, death is always the opposite of life, which is in God. Therefore, death is exactly God’s legal sentence against those who violate his covenant life. According to the prophecy of Isaiah, this death is the prison in which a soul is locked as a penalty for sin. You deserve that prison; I deserve that prison. If you are a sinner by nature, that prison legally holds you. You will remain there until someone redeems you and pays all your debts.

According to God’s inscrutable wisdom, death is inevitable. Death had to happen, but it had to happen in relationship to Jesus Christ as the mediator. God’s aim was always Jesus Christ, so that everything would come to pass to serve what God had established in eternity in Jesus Christ. And death had to happen as a penalty because sin entered paradise through the instigation of the devil. Adam would fall into misery with all his posterity, and the penalty was death. Death was the penalty for sin because God is just and righteous. He must punish sin with the maximum penalty of death in all its implications, whether physical, spiritual, temporal, or eternal. All sinners must be held legally guilty due to their transgressions, and death is their inescapable prison. Even babies are born into this life surrounded by death, and they also are found guilty and legally sentenced to death because they are sinners according to the transgression of Adam.

Fair enough, right? A just and holy God punishes sinners with death. He cannot but do that, so that his holiness will never be tainted with unrighteousness and ungodliness. It would be unjust to let sin and unrighteousness pass without punishment, especially since he has spoken his will to all creatures. He spoke to them with the law, and that law came with a threat that whoever disobeys the law will die. There you see how God separated light from darkness. He separated light and darkness in such a way that the recipients of revelation stand before him without excuse. In the light of day, the law comes with intelligible words regarding what God prescribes for the worship of God and thanksgiving. The law also comes with great burdens and responsibilities to keep the law and pronounces death as a sure penalty for transgressions. God’s holiness and majesty demand righteousness; his righteousness demands justice; and his justice demands death because the law consistently states, “Do this, do it perfectly, or you will die.”

The election of Jesus Christ and his ordination as the mediator have the aim of bringing forth judgment to the Gentiles. “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.” To be a Gentile is to be a sinner (Gal. 2:15). Not that the Jews are not sinners, but the Gentiles represent all those who deny God and his promises and those who are outside God’s covenant. They have no regard for the law of God and essentially are unclean. Their hearts are not circumcised. The work of the law is in their hearts, testifying against them, so that they stand before God without excuse.

By nature we are not Jews who have the law and the promises of God. According to man’s nature, which is sinful, there are no Jews or Greeks. All are Gentiles. All are sinners. Jesus Christ came to bring judgment to the Gentiles, to the sinners like you and me. What a terrible prophecy! We have now reason to dread because Jesus Christ was ordained to bring judgment. By nature we come before the tribunal of God with heavy hearts because we know that we will die almost instantly because of our sins.

Judgment is God’s righteousness. Jesus Christ came to reveal that God is perfectly righteous; that whatever God does, he remains the righteous one who speaks and acts according to his own nature and being; and that in God’s free and sovereign will, whatever he speaks and does becomes the standard of truth. All people will be meted out judgment according to that truth and standard of God. And by the law God’s will is revealed. The judgment of Jesus Christ also means that he imposes a penalty on every law-transgressor against their wills. Jesus Christ will judge all sinners according to the righteousness of God.

All sinners will be judged according to their works. As you and I stand before the just and holy God in our natures, we should never expect positive judgments. According to our natures, we expect the judgment of condemnation. We are guilty sinners, and we deserve hell because of that. From the womb to the grave, we are guilty sinners who are destitute of righteousness and holiness. Therefore, the penalty of death is a just execution of God upon everyone. There is no escape whatsoever.

When Jesus Christ brought judgment to the Gentiles, that only meant death to satisfy God’s justice. Bringing judgment means paying all the penalty of sin and suffering death to satisfy the justice of God, and bringing salvation by no other means than by the death of Christ. That is what God demands in order to satisfy his justice. Death is what God’s law demands as a consequence of transgressions.

But the text does not take away our hope. When the text speaks of Jesus Christ, who will bring judgment to the Gentiles, his death should never be slighted. Bringing judgment also means to be condemned by God. Jesus Christ was condemned to death because your and my sins were imputed to him. Because of that imputation of sins, Jesus had to die. But he could not die in any other way than on the cross because the cross was cursed. “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:13). Not only the cross but also “the death of the cross was accursed of God (Heidelberg Catechism A 39, in Confessions and Church Order, 99). A curse is the opposite of a blessing. To curse means to speak death instead of life, to speak war instead of peace. The curse is dreadful especially when it comes from a holy and just God. When God spoke the curse against Christ, Christ was silent. “He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street” (Isa. 42:2). He willingly received the curse of God on account of our sins, so that we will never receive such a curse but only blessing. Jesus Christ had to experience the bitter and shameful death of the cross as the only way of justification. God would be satisfied only when Christ died in the way that God had determined Christ to die. God could not have forgiven our sins if Christ had died any other way than the accursed way of the cross. We would not have been justified before God and in our consciences if Christ had not died on the cross.

The cross stands antithetically against all other means of death. Jesus would not die under the fierce anger of Herod because of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Christ would not be killed by stoning as the Jews wanted to do after Jesus had preached (John 8:5). Only the way of the cross could pay all the debts of God’s people and propitiate the angry God who had cursed sinners because of their sins. Only the cross for you and me.

By that cross Jesus Christ fulfilled all righteousness. On that cross he declared “it is finished” because he had satisfied God’s justice and righteousness by dying on the cross, not for his sins, for he is eternally and personally perfect, and he is a perfectly righteous man, but for our sins. Christ became a curse for us because God judged Christ to death. Because he is Jehovah himself in the flesh, he was personally preserved under the fierce wrath of God against him. And the grave could not hold Christ in death, but he arose triumphantly over death and sealed our justification before God.

The Definite People Christ Saved

The word “bring” in Isaiah 42:1 means to apply. Subjectively, Christ applies the judgment of God in our consciences. Peace! Peace to our souls. Therefore, our hope is in that bringing of God’s judgment to the Gentiles. Objectively, this means that we, unworthy sinners, are saved by what Christ accomplished for our justification. There on the cross, Christ died for our justification. His death is the basis of our righteousness. Though we are sinners and no different from the Gentiles, the righteousness of Christ clothed us to cover our nakedness before God. That is a wonder of grace that will forever be the basis for everlasting praise in the new heaven and earth.

That Jesus Christ came to bring judgment to the Gentiles does not mean that he was against the Gentile sinners. Did you notice that? Isaiah 42:1 is not in any sense against Gentile sinners but is for them because the Gentile sinners referred to in verse 1 will be freed from prison and have their eyes opened. Those acts are gracious. Who can deny that? But those gracious acts are never meant to be experienced by all sinners. Here we are to apply the other sense of election, that is, election unto life. Jesus Christ, as the elect of God, stands before God as the representative of all the elect, for they were elected in Christ before the foundation of the world. Christ’s election is the basis of their election. Because he was elected, the elect were also elected, not to be saviors themselves, but they were elected unto life—eternal life. Even before time the elect were in Christ, and he was in them. His mystical union with the elect is inseparable by time and history.

Therefore, the cross stands in history as a manifestation of God’s love for us, the elect. God did not begin to love us when Christ died; rather, Christ died because God loved us. That is election. That is the meaning of being foreknown by God even before the foundation of the world. God loved us already in Christ, and that is why Christ died for us. We sinners are loved by God, so that his Son had to die in our stead. That is substitutionary atonement, the atonement that is well-known in Calvinistic communities as particular redemption or limited atonement. But limited atonement is widely profaned by Presbyterian and Reformed churches because of their false doctrine of the well-meant offer of the gospel.

Substitutionary, limited atonement is the only atonement God knows. He does not know a Christ who died for all; God does know a Christ who died for the elect but desires to save the reprobate; God does not know a Christ who died on the cross but remained dead in the grave because there is something man must do yet for justification. No. The death of Christ is definite. Christ’s death was so well-ordained by God that every drop of Christ’s blood secured salvation for all those for whom his blood was intended. In Isaiah 42:24 God calls them Jacob and Israel. Christ died for Jacob, for elect sinners. And Christ died exclusively for them. But he also died for Israel, that is, his elect church. As one body, Christ always has his church in his mind.

Christ did not die for the reprobate wicked, and he did not desire their salvation. His death was for a definite people of Jehovah, for the elect. There is no Christ for those who are not in him, for the cross was the only thing that separated the elect from the reprobate. That surely will be revealed at the coming of Jesus Christ. The cross not only secured salvation and justification for the elect, but the cross also shut the door of heaven to the reprobate wicked because the cross was not meant for their salvation and justification. God will judge them according to their works. But the elect God will judge according to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, our works will come up on the day of judgment, but they will not be the basis of God’s judgment of us. Because of Christ’s death, we are righteous before God. We are perfect before him because of Christ’s righteousness. “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.” We surely are saved because the elect of God brought judgment to us elect sinners by suffering and dying on our behalf.

Thank you.