Theonomy: Sanctified by Law reconstructionism; or the Tower of Babel
According to Rushdoony, “Man’s justification is by the grace of God in Jesus Christ; man’s sanctification is by means of the law of God” (Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 4). Again, “The law is the way of sanctification” (p. 3). These statements set law as the antithesis of grace. They present a theory of sanctification that is not by grace but by works of law. (Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms (Belfast; Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International, 2002), 367.)
For he who says: I shall be saved through my works, says nothing other than: I am Christ, since the works of Christ alone save as many as ever are saved.
Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God!: An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 96.
Theonomy: A Critical Assessment with Lane G. Tipton
Theonomy in its contemporary form was just beginning to emerge as Van Til’s career was ending. Bahnsen’s Theonomy in Christian Ethics did not appear until five years after Van Til’s retirement in the Spring of 1972. Therefore Van Til has no public account which permits us to determine how he evaluated Theonomy.
This surely accounts in part for the fact that both Theonomy and its detractors claim to be influenced by Van Til. The matters which we have considered indicate that, in our judgment, Van Til would have distinguished himself from Theonomy. Indeed, in private communication, Van Til indicated reticence to be associated with Theonomic ethics, at least insofar as it was manifest in his day:
Then too I am frankly a little concerned about the political views of Mr. Rushdoony and Mr. North and particularly if I am correctly informed about some of the views Gary North has with respect to the application of Old Testament principles to our day.
My only point is that I would hope and expect that they would not claim that such views are inherent in principles which I hold. Letter to C. Gregg Singer, May 11, 1972, procured from the archives at Westminster Seminary.
T. David Gordon, “Van Til and Theonomic Ethics,” in Creator Redeemer Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline, ed. Howard Griffith and John R. Muether (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 277.
Nowhere countenanced is the notion that the covenant community is to assume visible, earthly theocratic form before the parousia-return of the theocratic King, as held by the postmillennialists
Stated in terms of the principal antagonists, the church age interim is a time of continuous Har Magedon conflict between Christ and Satan. Satan opposes the advance of the gospel by persecution from without (through the institutional agency of the bestial imperial powers) and by perversion of the truth within (institutionalized in the apostate Babylon-church). Christ, enthroned above with all authority in heaven and earth, restrains Satan and the antichrist development.
Clearly, the enormity of the surge of evil world powers at the close of the church age contradicts the postmillennial expectation that all the nations will have been theocratized under the kingship of Christ during the millennium. As we shall be further observing below, the kingdom of glory comes only after the complete and final removal of all evil from the earth.
Latent in the Apocalyptic symbolism is an even more direct contradiction of dominion theology’s postmillennial eschatology. The melding of church with the state and its coercive power,
the arrangement which theonomic reconstructionism regards as the kingdom ideal to be attained during the millennium, is precisely what is anathematized in the Apocalypse as the harlot-Babylon church, the monstrous perversion of the true church.
Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 186.
Israel was unique among the nations because the Lord was its King, governing his covenant people by his gracious presence, righteous laws, and saving power. (Psa. 24:7–10; 68:24; Isa. 33:22; 43:15; 44:6.) Though some secularists mistakenly apply the label of “theocracy” to any attempt to apply biblical law and wisdom to civil government, theocracy requires the claim of direct involvement by God to constitute and rule a community through leaders to whom he gives special revelation and possibly also miraculous power.
Even a nation with a state-sponsored religion is not necessarily a theocracy. [Josephus knew that the Roman imperial government was very religious in its devotion to the Roman gods, cultic rites, and the adoration of the emperor, but he saw theocracy as unique to Israel]. The attempt by radical Anabaptists to turn Münster into a new Jerusalem (1534–1535) may be considered a tragic example of pretended theocracy. Today, a leader claiming to be divine or a prophet might try to set up a theocratic community, but it would be considered a cult. The New Jerusalem is in heaven (Gal. 4:26; Heb. 12:22). True theocracy will not come to earth until Christ returns to make all things new (Rev. 21:1–5).
Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Church and Last Things, vol. 4, Reformed Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 252–253.
For anyone who refused to obey the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy, as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and disdained the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to us. Heb. 10:28–29 NLT
Christian Reconstructionism, Theonomy, Dominion theology, are builders of the wall and the daubers of plaster (cp. Matt 23:27–28; Ezek. 13:10–12, 22:28; Lam 2:14). False preachers—“windbags”— “Speak to us falsehoods”, a Demonic Torah, (Isaiah 30:10). Builders of The Tower of Babel.
But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed. Jn. 7:49
Increasingly, the term served to express the religious and theological pride of the sects, who tried to draw a strict line of demarcation between themselves and the people, and whose attitude is typically depicted in the NT in the dealings between Pharisees and publicans. In Gk. ὄχλος is used for “people” in this disparaging sense, Jn. 7:49.
Certainly ἔθνη-people conveys a negative judgment from the Jewish standpoint. Yet even in the OT this judgment has no final validity in face of the promise of revelation to all peoples, and this is particularly so in the NT in face of the direction of the everlasting Gospel ἐπὶ πᾶν ἔθνος (Rev. 14:6) and the missionary command: μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη (“make disciples of all nations,” Mt. 28:19).
The princes (“commander”) of Judah are become like them that remove the landmark: I will pour out my wrath upon them like water. Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because in self-will he walked after the commandment of man. Ho 5:10–11. Darby Bible
The builders of the wall who followed (literally, “walked after”) the “commander.” The “commander” is the preacher about whom He (God or the prophet) said (Micah 2:6), “They shall surely preach.” ( Zadokite Fragments 4:19–20)
Who are the builders of the wall? Who is the commander or preacher? Clearly, they are the villains. Buried in the text are two biblical allusions that make these references clear. One is to Hosea 5:10–11: “The commanders of Judah have acted like shifters of field boundaries. On them I will pour out My wrath like water. Ephraim is defrauded, robbed of redress.” A different passage states, “ ‘Stop preaching!’ they preach. ‘That is no way to preach’ ” (Micah 2:6).
The commanders of Judah are equated here with Ephraim, a sectarian term for the Pharisees.
They are the builders of the wall who follow the teachings of the commander. This same commander is the one who preaches improperly, hence defrauding his listeners. The sect regarded the Pharisees as preaching falsely and misleading their followers.
Thereafter appears a series of laws with which the sectarians disagreed, constituting the views of the preacher who here again refers to the Pharisaic leader and the “builders of the wall.” The designation “builders of the wall” apparently derives from a concept found in the mishnaic tractate Avot, generally known as Ethics of the Fathers, which instructs, “Build a fence around the Torah” (M. Avot 1:1).
To “build a fence” refers to the Pharisaic-rabbinic concept of creating more stringent laws than those found in the Bible in order to safeguard biblical laws from violation.
We find another mention of the Pharisees’ lack of understanding, here again referring to them as “builders of the wall,” later in the Zadokite Fragments:
All these things the builders of the wall and the daubers of plaster (cp. Matt 23:27–28; Ezek. 13:10–12, 22:28; Lam 2:14) did not understand. For one who raises wind and preaches falsehood preached to them, because of which God became angry with His entire congregation. ( Zadokite Fragments 8:12–13; cf. 19:24–26)
As a result:
Since He hated the builders of the wall, He became angry. ( Zadokite Fragments 8:18; cf. 19:31)
When false preachers—“windbags”—stirred up the people with their false message, God’s anger blazed against them, causing the people of Israel to suffer.
Over and over again in the scrolls, the sect characterizes Pharisaic halakhah by its tendency to derive laws not directly from scriptural sources but through their own interpretations.
In this spirit the Pharisees are called dorshe ḥalaqot, literally “seekers after smooth things,” but correctly translated “interpreters of false laws.” This phrase is based upon the biblical expression “smooth things,” referring to lies or falsehood, as in “Speak to us falsehoods” (Isaiah 30:10).
Lawrence H. Schiffman and Chaim Potok, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1994), 249,250.
On the first page of the Admonition, the Zadokite Fragments clearly refers to the Pharisees when speaking of the followers of the Man of Scoffing, apparently some Pharisaic leader:
… they interpreted false laws (dareshu be-halaqot) and chose delusions, and sought out breaches (opportunities to violate the law), and chose luxury, and declared innocent the guilty and declared guilty the innocent; and they violated the covenant and annulled the law, and banded together against the soul of the righteous. ( Zadokite Fragments 1:18–20)
For our purposes here, one phrase in this text is extremely important. In the course of interpreting Nahum 3:4, “Because of the countless harlotries of the harlot … who ensnared nations with her harlotries,” cf. (Rev 17:1, 2; 18:3) Pesher Nahum states:
[Its] interpretation [con]cerns those who lead Ephraim astray, whose falseness is in their teaching (Talmud), and whose lying tongue and dishonest lip(s) lead many astray. (PESHER NAHUM 3–4 II, 8)
Elsewhere in this text we discover that Ephraim is a code word, symbolizing the Pharisees. (Menasseh represents the Sadducees.) There is no question that our author is referring to them in this passage.
At the beginning, the text refers to “those who lead Ephraim astray,” that is, the leaders and teachers of the Pharisees. The text likens them to the harlot mentioned in Nahum 3:4; their offense is teaching falsely.
The text refers to their teaching by the Hebrew term “talmud,” the same word later used to designate the “Talmud,” the rabbinic work also known as the Gemara, the commentary and discursive discussion on the Mishnah.
Lawrence H. Schiffman and Chaim Potok, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1994), 251.
Further to the right exists a group that goes by several names: Christian Reconstructionism, theonomy, dominion theology, and kingdom theology. By no means is it a cohesive movement but consists of several subgroups. While its roots are in Calvinist theology, it is an uneasy alliance of fundamentalists, charismatics, and miscellaneous evangelicals on the Christian Right. It consists of Christian splinter groups that are postmillennial and desire to take America and the world back to an Old Testament ethic.
As used by the Reconstructionists, the term theonomy refers to the abiding validity of God’s law throughout history.
Dominion theology points to Genesis 1:28 where Adam and Eve were to have dominion over every living creature. Christians thus are entitled to dominate the world’s institutions until Christ returns and rules the Earth.
[Bruce Barron, Heaven on Earth?: The Social and Political Agendas of Dominion Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992) 13–16; Anson Shupe, “The Reconstructionist Movement on the New Christian Right,” Christian Century, 4 October 1989, 880–81; Anson Shupe, “Prophets of a Biblical America,” Wall Street Journal, 12 April 1989, sec. 14, col. 3; William Martin, With God on Our Side (New York: Broadway, 1996) 353; Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: Norton, 2006) 37–38.]
The leaders of this movement include Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001), Gary North, Gary DeMar, David Chilton, George Grant, and Greg Bahnsen. While they may quarrel among themselves, they come together over the big picture, namely, the need to restore the nations of the world to Old Testament principles. Or from another perspective, many of these adherents regard Christian Reconstructionism as a resurrected Puritan movement.
There are several Christian Reconstructionist organizations but the key centers are as follows: Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, California; his son in-law Gary North’s Institute of Christian Economics in Tyler, Texas; and Gary DeMar’s American Vision organization in Atlanta, Georgia. [Anson Shupe, “Christian Reconstructionism and the Angry Rhetoric of Neo-Postmillennialism,” in Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem, eds. Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer (New York: Routledge, 1997) 197–98.]
Richard Kyle, Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 210–211.
Yet when positive law has no acknowledged source and standard in divine law, civil law is perceived only in terms of regulations that influential sectors of the community welcome for themselves and try to impose on others. Men and women are elected to office or are defeated, as the case may be, if they do or do not pledge to support programs advanced by labor, by multinational corporations, by Pro-Life or Pro-Choice movements, by the Black Caucus or by proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment. Alas, the candidate who pledges to vote only an informed mind and a good conscience is increasingly vulnerable to elimination. This is not to say that informed minds and good consciences are incompatible with a specific stand on particular issues, or that lack of issue-commitment is desirable in the U.S. party system.
But to allow a single issue to determine political fortunes may be the first symptom of a malfunctioning democratic process on the road to fragmentation and chaos.
Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 6 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 452.
To be sure, the apostle Paul notes that despite the knowledge that even the Gentiles possess of God’s severe justice, and despite their awareness that transgressors “deserve to die,” humans filled with “all manner of wickedness” (he details a catalogue of vices from malignity to murder) “not only do them but approve those who practice them” (Rom. 1:32).
The reminder that death is the penalty for a vast array of crimes and other sins anticipates the final consummation of all things when God will confront human injustice and unrighteousness with irreversible penalties.
But neither Paul’s teaching about Gentile conscience nor about civil authority provides a sound argument for reimposing theocratic jurisprudence in present-day society. The New Testament leaves to both rulers and the ruled the responsibility for formulating positive law and appropriate sanctions in the light of the revealed principles of social ethics. The task of civil government is to interpret God’s transcendent law, as expressed in universal principles, into political particularities.
Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 6 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 448–449.
Luther was even bolder with the law “after Christ.” The law did not disappear like smoke in thin air:
“the law in all eternity will never be abolished but will remain either to be fulfilled in the damned or already fulfilled in the blessed.”
Right there is the difference between being in heaven and being in hell—in hell the law remains forever ahead of you as something that needs yet to be done (like Sisyphus rolling his stone up and down without end); in heaven the law is past.
Steven Paulson, Luther for Armchair Theologians, Armchair Theologians Series (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 129.
Their Program
The Reconstructionists want nothing less than a complete transformation of the world, beginning first in America. Their program centers on six points. They are postmillennialists and see the Second Coming of Christ way into the future. Thus, they allow for a long gradual transformation of human society that will come largely by peaceful means. While theonomy focuses on many social and political issues, its structure has a great deal to do with eschatology.
Postmillennialism has been nearly totally eclipsed since the early twentieth century. Reconstructionism represents a return to postmillennialism and insists that the kingdom is now and comes in the form of the “Church Very Militant.”
They do not deny the doctrine of the Second Coming but represent a “realized eschatology.” Neither do they reject the concept of a future millennium, as do the amillennialists, but say the millennium is now. Humankind is not living in the end times, but in the middle times and it may take hundreds or even thousands of years for the righteous kingdom to be established. Christians thus are not to pray for Christ’s return but for the world to be ready for this event.
Two, every human institution of every nation must be reclaimed from the Satanists and humanists. In this they will not compromise, as they believe the Christian Right has done. Thus, in their mind, Christian Reconstructionism is not one option but the only choice.
“Our goal is world dominion under Christ’s lordship, a ‘world takeover’ if you will,” says David Chilton. “We are the shapers of world history.”
Richard Kyle, Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 212.
As most of the proponents of this viewpoint do not hesitate to say, a theonomic social order is a theocratic social order, and a theocratic social order is a Christian social order. (Some theonomists prefer “Christocracy” to theocracy.) Bible law requires a radical decentralization of government under the rule of the righteous. Private property rights, especially for the sake of the family, must be rigorously protected, with very limited interference by the state and the institutional church.
Restitution, including voluntary slavery, should be an important element of the criminal justice system. A strong national defense should be maintained until the whole world is “reconstructed” (which may be a very long time). Capital punishment will be employed for almost all the capital crimes listed in the Old Testament, including adultery, homosexual acts, apostasy, incorrigibility of children (meaning late teenagers), and blasphemy, along with murder and kidnapping.
There will be a cash, gold-based economy with limited or no debt. These are among the specifics broadly shared by people who associate themselves with the theonomic viewpoint. A critically important feature of theonomy is that it represents a return to postmillennialism after almost a century of its near-total eclipse. Although their analysis of the shape of the world is typically bleak,
the theonomists insist that the kingdom is now, if only the true believers have the boldness to take dominion (hence “dominion theology”).
In urging the reconstruction of the righteous commonwealth, theonomists frequently proclaim their teaching as something breathtakingly new. Much of their literature is marked by a sense of novelty, as though they are addressing great questions for the first time, as though such issues had been inexplicably neglected in two thousand years of Christian history
Of course contemporary theonomists, who wish to think of themselves as conservative, resist the comparison with the liberal Social Gospel and with leftwing Evangelicals, not to mention liberation theology. But the analogies are inescapable. The policy specifics may be dramatically different, but the theological rationale is strikingly similar.
The different thing in theonomy is not its postmillennialism but its understanding of biblical law. Acts. 15 describes the convening of what might be described as the first ecumenical council in order to answer the “Judaizers” among the early Christians who insisted that non-Jewish believers must be circumcised and instructed to keep the law of Moses, or else they would not be saved. That position was rejected by the apostles, who decided,
“For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden that these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.” The Judaizers of that time claimed that the gentiles, in order to be saved, must enter Judaism under Mosaic law;
the theonomists of today claim that Mosaic law has departed Judaism in order to reconstruct, and thus save, the nations under the rule of “the saints.”
Richard John Neuhans, “Why Wait for the Kingdom? The Theonomist Temptation,” First Things, no. 3 (1990): 14–16.
For Paul the Mosaic law reached an end in Christ (Rom. 10:4). The word telos here can also be taken to mean that Christ is called the goal toward which the law was directed in the providence of God. This idea may be present, too, but it does not rule out that with Christ’s coming the age of the law has ended. This, at least, is where the main accent lies.
Why did the law come to an end with Christ’s coming? Because in Jesus Christ, namely, in his vicarious death for sin (Rom.3:25), God demonstrated his covenant righteousness, and we can respond only by faith, not by works of the law (Rom.3:22). Hence we are (now) righteous before God only by faith, not by works of the law (Rom.3:28; cf. Gal. 2:16).
Those who reject faith in God’s action in Jesus Christ cannot profit from any works of the law because they refuse obedience to the righteousness of God,
not responding to it, then, by what they themselves do (Rom. 10:3). (Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 61–63.)
Moreover, theonomy is a “top-down” intellectual movement with the ideas being generated by a few individuals. Furthermore, the theonomists have little time for democracy and when their goals are implemented, there will be few freedoms—political, religious, or personal. Still, what modifies Reconstructionism’s dogmatism and its autocratic demeanor is its organizational structure. It is more of an alliance of like-minded individuals than a tight-knit movement. And they frequently quarrel with each other, sometimes in an acrimonious manner.
Richard Kyle, Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 213.
A reconstructed world ruled by future Rushdoonyites will not, needless to say, be democratic. Rushdoony is straightforward in condemning democracy as a “heresy.” He writes that he is in agreement with John Dewey on the proposition that
“supernatural Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies.”
Nor is it sufficient to say that Rushdoony’s animus toward democracy is simply toward the absolute democracy or raw majoritarianism of the vox populi, vox dei variety. His opposition to democracy and any form of legally protected pluralism is unprincipled, as it should be in the argument of a reflective theocrat. The free exercise of religion, for example, must be only for the free exercise of true religion. As Rushdoony says,
“The right have rights,” thus echoing the Roman Catholic dictum of an earlier day that “error has no rights.”
Richard John Neuhans, “Why Wait for the Kingdom? The Theonomist Temptation,” First Things, no. 3 (1990): 18.
Its Implementation
If the Christian Reconstructionists had their own way, nearly every aspect of American life would be dramatically transformed. Society will not be reformed. It will be razed to the ground and rebuilt. All government props will be gone:
social security, welfare, minimum wages, government regulation of business, public education, and all taxes except a ten percent income tax.
What will replace this government assistance? Private schools and home schooling will provide education. The elderly would be cared for by their children and a private retirement plan.
After the harvest has been completed, the poor would be allowed to glean from the fields.
America would return to a gold-and-silver monetary standard and, because the Bible prohibits usury, loans would be valid for only seven years. Labor unions would be abolished. The Reconstructionists desire to take America back to the world of radical libertarian economics, a decentralized political system, and social Darwinism. [Shupe, “Reconstructionist Movement,” 881; Martin, With God on Our Side, 352; Barron, Heaven on Earth?, 135–49; Shupe, “Prophets of a Biblical America,” sec. 1, p. 14; Rausch and Chismar, “The New Puritans and Their Theonomic Paradise,” 723.]
In respect to morals and religion, the transformation will be just as radical. The family will be run by strict patriarchal principles.
Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home. In some cases they may lose their citizenship.
Indentured servitude will solve many problems: unemployment, prison overcrowding, and idle teenagers. Old Testament laws will be strictly enforced. Homosexuals, adulterers, blasphemers, Sabbath breakers, habitual criminals, and disobedient children will be harshly punished—perhaps by stoning. Religious pluralism and toleration will be a thing of the past.
There will be no place in America for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, humanists, feminists, secularists, and even non-Reconstructionist Christians.
The First Amendment guaranteeing such freedoms will be gone and the government will not be neutral toward religion. Rather, it will enforce a biblical faith based on the Old Testament. [Shupe,“Reconstructionist Movement,” 881; Martin, With God on Our Side, 352; Barron, Heaven on Earth?, 135–49; Shupe, “Prophets of a Biblical America,” sec. 1, p. 14; Rausch and Chismar, “The New Puritans and Their Theonomic Paradise,” 723.]
Richard Kyle, Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 214–215.
The idea of “pressing for the King’s laws to be obeyed” makes many people, including Christians, uncomfortable. They object that it will lead to theocracy (God-rule) or theonomy (“God’s law”). So some careful distinctions need to be made. Theonomists believe that the Old Testament law as a whole, including penalties like stoning, is still in force today unless the New Testament has explicitly stated otherwise.
Theonomists want Gentile nations to use the Old Testament to establish their laws.
(Greg Bahnsen, By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 2008), 3–6.) Leading theonomist Greg Bahnsen has written, “We must recognize the continuing obligation of civil magistrates to obey and enforce the relevant laws of the Old Testament, including the penal sanctions specified by the just Judge of all the earth.” (Ibid., 4.)
Like Luther, Bultmann is of the opinion that the Torah was given to the Jewish people and reveals the will of God. But as the revelation of the will of God, it also applies to all of humanity, even though God’s will is not concretized in the specific form of the Torah for non-Jews, and the purpose of the law was originally to lead humanity to life. Had humanity been able to keep the entire law, this would have led to justification and thus to salvation.
The problem, of course, is that no one can fulfill what God demands, which is why the law cannot lead anyone to life—only to death.
As a consequence of the law being impossible to keep, Bultmann claims that no one should even attempt to achieve salvation by means of the law, which is the reason why Judaism embodies the most basic sin of all—the striving for self-justification. This, according to Bultmann, is Paul’s main criticism of the Judaism he abandoned.
Magnus Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul: A Student’s Guide to Recent Scholarship (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), 75.
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Philippians 3:4–6
The word “faultless” does not at all reflect any illusion regarding sinlessness; rather, it must be viewed as a fairly standard way of expressing exemplary conformity to the way of life prescribed by the OT. One thinks particularly of Zacharias and Elizabeth, who are described as “walking in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord without fault [amemptoi]” (Luke 1:6).
We could use the word external to characterize the obedience in view, but unfortunately that term has come to suggest mere formality or even hypocrisy. Such a negative connotation is certainly not in view either in Luke 1:6 or in Phil. 3:6. Yet in both cases the obedience is external in the sense that it is the only kind that can be observed by human beings and thus verified.
“Paul, then, was in the judgment of men holy and free from all blame” (so Calvin, who distinguishes between literal and spiritual righteousness). Accordingly, “the righteousness which is in the law” describes an observable standard of conduct, that is, the righteous way of life prescribed by the OT.
This peculiar form of expression anticipates the deeper issue that the apostle is about to discuss:
Is such a way of life identical with the righteousness that God requires?
The answer will be given in verse Phil. 3:9.
More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith. Philippians 3:8–9
Moisés Silva, Philippians, 2nd ed., Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 151–152.
But theonomists have made a grave mistake: not even Christians, much less the unsaved, are bound by the Mosaic law today as their covenant. The Mosaic law has been replaced by the New Covenant (cf. Rom. 7:4–6; 1 Cor. 9:21; 2 Cor. 3:3). It is therefore wrong to seek to impose the Mosaic Covenant with its penalties on Gentile nations. Theonomists are also too optimistic about Christians’ ability to transform the world. The New Testament promises suffering and persecution for God’s people in the present age (cf. 2 Tim. 3:12).
In 1 Corinthians 9:20, Paul indicates that as a Christian he was not under the Mosaic law. Hebrews 8:13 teaches that the New Covenant made the old Mosaic Covenant “obsolete” and “ready to vanish away.”
But neither Paul nor the author of Hebrews (if he was someone other than Paul) is teaching that the Christian is free from all law. Paul hastens on to say that he wasn’t “outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21). And the New Covenant in Hebrews quotes God’s promise, “I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts” (Heb. 8:10).
Mark Ward, Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption, ed. Mark L. Ward Jr. and Dennis Cone (Greenville, SC: BJU Press, 2016), 276,277.
The Law Prepares Sinners for the Gospel. No one can receive eternal salvation by works of the law (Gal. 2:16) because none perfectly keeps the law (Rom. 3:23), and violation of any part of it makes one guilty of the whole (James 2:10; cf. Rom. 2:25; Gal. 3:10). Instead, salvation is a gift obtained by faith, not works (Rom. 4:4–5; Eph. 2:8–10; Phil. 3:9). Nonetheless, the law was meant to lead us to Christ (Gal. 3:24). It makes the sinner conscious of sin (Rom. 3:20; 7:7; 1 John 3:4). It provokes and incites rebellion (Rom. 5:20; 7:13), thereby making one fully accountable before God for violation of God’s moral requirements (Rom. 3:19; 4:15; 5:13; 7:8–10).
By this means, the law shows sinners their need for a mediator to redeem them from the law’s condemnation (Gal. 3:13). Hence, the law is an essential prerequisite in preparing sinners for the gospel.
Joe M. Sprinkle, “Law,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, electronic ed., Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 470.
This is the largest string of OT quotations in the NT, and with it Paul shows the timeless truth that all people—without exception—are sinful before God.
Romans 4:3 (and Romans 4:9) / Genesis 15:6
In Romans 4, Paul presents an explicit case that salvation is through faith alone, not through works of the Mosaic Law. But this is not just a NT truth. Paul quoted Genesis 15:6 in Romans 4:3 to prove his point: “For what does the Scripture say? ‘ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.’ ” Genesis 15:6 reveals that Abraham was considered righteous through his faith. Paul presents Abraham as the paradigm of faith for everyone (see Rom. 4:11–12). Thus, Paul appeals to a timeless principle that salvation has always been through faith apart from Law. Paul will also quote Genesis 15:6 in Romans 4:9 to again emphasize that salvation is through faith alone for both Jews and Gentiles:
Is this blessing then on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, “FAITH WAS CREDITED TO ABRAHAM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.”
These two quotations of Genesis 15:6 in Romans 4 emphasize the point that salvation is through faith alone apart from works of the Law. On this matter, both the OT and NT agree.
Romans 4:6–8 / Psalm 32:1–2
Paul quoted Psalm 32:1–2 in Romans 4:6–8 to show that David also is an example that being right with God is based on faith alone:
Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
“BLESSED ARE THOSE WHOSE LAWLESS DEEDS HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN, AND WHOSE SINS HAVE BEEN COVERED. BLESSED IS THE MAN WHOSE SIN THE LORD WILL NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT.”
Paul cited Psalm 32:1–2 to emphasize the timeless theological point that salvation has always been through faith alone.
Michael J. Vlach, The Old in the New: Understanding How the New Testament Authors Quoted the Old Testament (Woodlands, TX; Sun Valley, CA: Kress Biblical Resources; Master’s Seminary Press, 2021), 110–111.
Various scholars have insisted that a form of ‘works righteousness’ is to be found in the PE-Pastoral Epistles, and that faith no longer has the consistently central position which it occupies in Paul. This verdict flies in the face of the evidence. In 2 Tim 1:9 and Tit 3:4–7 we have pivotal statements which assert that the basis for God’s saving action lay not in works done by human beings but in his own gracious purpose. The language reflects tradition (cf. especially Eph 2:8–10), but the way in which it is put together is the work of the author himself. Here grace and works are placed in sharp contrast in an opposition which goes even deeper than the faith/works contrast which is characteristic of Paul’s Hauptbriefe-(German word meaning “chief letters.” to refer to Galatians, Romans, and 1 and 2 Corinthians as genuinely written by Paul.
I. Howard Marshall and Philip H. Towner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, International Critical Commentary (London; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004), 216
To begin with, since Christians were living in expectation of the end of the world, they had neither the inclination nor the ability to initiate an ethical renewal of a world which seemed to be doomed for destruction.
As the years passed, however, everyday problems required with ever increasing urgency a Christian answer from the churches. However, the ethical directives of Jesus—the only materials of their own with which the Christians could supply the need—by no means covered all the areas of life and culture for which decisions had to be made. (Martin Dibelius and Heinrich Greeven, James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 3–4.)
When I was starting for Macedonia, I urged you to stay on at Ephesus. You were to command certain persons to give up teaching erroneous doctrines and studying those interminable myths and genealogies, which issue in mere speculation and cannot make known God’s plan for us, which works through faith. The aim and object of this command is the love which springs from a clean heart, from a good conscience, and from faith that is genuine. Through falling short of these, some people have gone astray into a wilderness of words. 1 Tim. 1:3–7
They set out to be teachers of the moral law, without understanding either the words they use or the subjects about which they are so dogmatic.
The heresy is Jewish in character. Its promoters “desire to be teachers of the law” 1 Tim. 1: 7. Some of them are “they of the circumcision” (Tit. 1:10). It consists in “Jewish fables” (Tit. 1:14). The questions which it raises are “fighting's about the Law” (Tit. 3:9).
We are told both in the text and in the Epistle to (Titus 1:14; 3:9) that it deals in “fables and genealogies.” It is “empty talking” ( 1Tim 1: 6), “disputes of words” (1 Tim. 6:4), and, “profane babblings” (1 Tim. 6:20). It teaches an unscriptural and unnatural ascetism (1 Tim. 4:3, 8). It is “Gnosis falsely so called” (1 Tim.6:20).
Alfred Plummer, “The Pastoral Epistles,” in The Expositor’s Bible: Ephesians to Revelation, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, vol. 6, Expositor’s Bible (Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton Co., 1903), 395.
Lastly, these vain imaginings are a different doctrine. They are not only empty, but untrue, and are a hindrance to the truth. They occupy the ground which ought to be filled with the dispensation of God which is in faith... These fables are baseless; they have no foundation either in revelation or in human life. Moreover they are vague, shifting, and incoherent. They ramble on without end. But the Gospel is based on a Divine Revelation, tested by human experience. It is an economy, a system, an organic whole, a dispensation of means to ends.
Its sphere is not unbridled imagination or audacious curiosity, but faith.
Alfred Plummer, “The Pastoral Epistles,” in The Expositor’s Bible: Ephesians to Revelation, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, vol. 6, Expositor’s Bible (Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton Co., 1903), 396.
For most early Christians from the NT era onward, the law of Moses was in some respects obsolete, and hence no longer binding, at least not in the same manner as it was before the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ (Melito).
To read the vast sweep of Torah regulations as if they were all still to be carried out literally was to commit a—or perhaps even the—capital hermeneutical error, inasmuch as to do so would be a failure to grasp the pivotal significance of the paschal event, and its aftershock, the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, for the divine economy of salvation.
Patristic authors were also inclined to underline both the limited aims and the limited efficacy of the law’s pedagogy. With respect to its aims, the morality promoted by the law was imperfect when compared to that required by the law of Christ (Ambrose).
For instance, Tertullian notes how the Mosaic law allowed for vengeance while the new law of Christ promotes peace. The law of Moses’ aims were also soteriological limited. God did not give the law in order to justify (Augustine) or to foster faith (Ambrosiaster, comm. in Gal. 3.12).
Cyril of Alexandria offers one of the most thorough patristic accounts of the manifold salvific goods that the law could not pretend to provide:
true knowledge and vision of God, intimate access to God’s presence, and sanctification.
B. Lee Blackburn Jr, “Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, ed. Paul M. Blowers and Peter W. Martens, First Edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 563,564.
The faithlessness of Israel is due to its inability to understand and keep the law in terms of God’s promise.
And that inability is confirmed by their rejection of Christ (Rom. 10:3, 18–21). Thus the law condemns Israel and provides no “life.” Israel can be “Israel” only when it lives by God’s promise as confirmed by Christ. “Christ is the end of the law” (Rom.10:4) both in terms of its goal and its termination, for the law constitutes Israel’s self-aggrandizement and boasting in its rebellion against God.
Jewish Christianity owes its priority to God’s promise alone and not to any ethnic pride or boasting in the Torah.
A Jewish Christianity that does not live by grace alone has in fact returned to Judaism in its rebellion against God: “But of Israel he says, ‘All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people’ ” (Rom.10:21, Cited from Isa. 65:2).
J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 91.
For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was handed on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “The dog turns back to its own vomit,” and, “The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud.” 2 Peter 2:21–22
If Peter is indeed condemning Judaizers and Jewish opponents of Christianity, his descriptions of them are sharply ironic. Reversion to the “world” (2 Pet.2:20) is a reversion to the world of the Old Covenant order, to a world of corruption that is about to be destroyed, to the practices and life of the “fleshly” covenant of the Jews.
Far from being a clean and holy people, Peter is describing Judaism as a polluted and polluting world—whitewashed tombs that appear harmless but spread contagion of death. Phthora connotes physical corruption and again is an ironic description of Jews who believed that through keeping Torah they were avoiding contamination of decay. The references to dog’s vomit and pig’s mire reinforce this theme of the pollution of Judaism (2 Pet. 2:22; cf. Prov. 26:11), particularly since dogs and pigs were peculiarly unclean in the eyes of first-century Jews. Far from holding to the “holy commandment” by reverting to Judaism, they are turning from it (2 Pet.2:21).
Peter J. Leithart, The Promise of His Appearing: An Exposition of Second Peter (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2004), 63–64.
Even the pagans (ἔθνη) who stand in something of the same relation to Judaism as the “barbarians” did to Hellenistic culture, enjoy the benefits which the Law is supposed to offer. All of them have the knowledge of the divine will written in their hearts and sometimes do what the Law demands. Some of them truly obey God by the work of the Spirit apart from instruction in Torah.
In both cases, when he ascribes the capacity for Torah-obedience to pagans, Paul challenges in a startling and direct way the view that conformity to the divine will comes through knowledge of the Law.
Mark A. Seifrid, “Unrighteous by Faith: Apostolic Proclamation in Romans 1:18–3:20,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul, ed. D. A. Carson and Peter T. O’Brien, 181st ed., vol. 2, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Tübingen: Baker Academic; Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 107. 129,130
Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses?
Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. How foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? Ga 3:2–3.NLT.
The Law was given through an intermediary; the promise came directly from God.
Henry Wansbrough, ed., The New Jerusalem Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 1990), 1927
you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it. Ac 7:53. cf.(Ac 7:38; Gal 3:19; Heb 2:2) What is the use of the Law? It was given later to show that we sin. But it was only supposed to last until the coming of that descendant (Lit. seed; Jesus) who was given the promise.
In fact, angels gave the Law to Moses, and he gave it to the people. There is only one God, and the Law did not come directly from him. Gal. 3:19–20.
In this regard Heb 1:14 is decisive: the angels are “ministering spirits sent to serve those about to inherit salvation.”
Christ’s accomplishment of salvation brings to an end this defining role for the angels in relation to God’s people.
The verse places the entire catena into an eschatological context, with angels as the ministers of the old age and Christ as the one who inaugurates the new. Heb. Chapter 1 thus pictures the “passing of the guard” from the angels as mediators to God’s people on earth to Christ as a heavenly mediator who provides direct access to God. Hebrews 2:5 picks up this thread and confirms the eschatological orientation of the author’s thought regarding the angels.
Kenneth L. Schenck, “A Celebration of the Enthroned Son: The Catena of Hebrews 1,” Journal of Biblical Literature 120 (2001): 480.
Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. Heb. 2:5
What is this “world to come” of which Hebrews speaks? It is not heaven or a future millennium or the new heavens and new earth after the general resurrection. Rather, it is the world of the New Creation and of the New Covenant, which was established through Jesus’ suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, but which overlapped for a time with the Old Creation and the Old Covenant. James Jordan explains:
The New Creation began at Pentecost, when the ascended and enthroned Jesus sent the Spirit to enable us to disciple the nations and in that sense to rule the world. The Old Creation did not end at that time, however, because God gave the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles a period of time to make the transfer from the Old to the New. According to Matthew 23:34–38, all the sins and crimes of the Old Creation were to be rolled up and judged with the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened in AD 70.
Jesus receives dominion at His ascension, and Christian tradition has wisely taken Psalm 8 as an Ascension Day psalm. Ephesians alludes to Psalm. 8, when it says that God raised Christ
from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. (Eph 1:20–22 NKJV)
Jesus, Paul says, has been exalted over “all principality and power,” titles given to angels in the Bible. He is enthroned over everything, “not only in this age but also in that which is to come”—that is, not only in the time Paul is writing but also in the age after AD 70, after the end of the Old Creation and Old Covenant.
John Barach, “The Glory of the Son of Man: An Exposition of Psalm 8,” in The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift in Honor of James B. Jordan, ed. Peter J. Leithart and John Barach (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 23–24.
Heavenly signs are part of the world under the stoicheia, the elementary principles of the world, the world under angels.
Now that human beings have reached majority in Christ, there is no longer any need for such portents, and the heavens no longer play this role.
There is no mediator between God and man but the man Jesus.
The meaning or meanings Paul attached to ta stoicheia (tou kosmou) elementary principles in the four instances in which he used it (Gal 4:3, 9; Col 2:8, 20; cf. Heb 5:12; 2 Pet 3:10, 12) has been a matter of exegetical debate. Interpreters have usually understood Paul’s usage to fall into one of the following semantic fields: (1) basic principles of religious teaching such as the Law; (2) essential, rudimentary substances of the universe such as earth, water, air and fire; or (3) personal spiritual beings of the cosmos such as demons, angels or star deities.
Daniel G. Reid, “Elements/Elemental Spirits of the World,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 229.
But the close association between angels and stars in Scripture (e.g., Rev 9:1, 11; 12:4) suggests that rule over the moon and stars implies rule over the angels as well. Second, we should bear in mind that moon and stars are associated with night. Night is the time of transition, the time of waiting for the new day (or new creation) to dawn (e.g., Ps 130:6; Isa 60:1–3). Passover, for instance, happens at night; the new day brings the Exodus.
In a sense, the whole period of the Old Creation up to the coming of Jesus is nighttime. When Jesus comes, it is a new dawn, as the “Sun of Righteousness” arises “with healing in His wings” (Mal 4:2 NKJV; cf. Rev. 1:16b NKJV, where Jesus’ face is “like the sun shining in its strength”). When the Sun rises, the glory of the moon and stars fades away and disappears.
The Old Creation night has passed away, and now it is New Covenant day
Finally, the exaltation over “moon and stars” has liturgical significance. The heavenly lights were for “seasons” (Gen 1:14), and that term refers to festival times. There were new moon festivals (e.g., Num 29:6); Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles were all on a certain day of the month, counting from the new moon (Lev 23:5–6, 34; Num 28:11–14; 2 Chr 8:13; Ps 81:3). One result of being exalted over the moon and over the Torah given by angels is that our worship times are no longer governed by the heavenly lights. “In the New Covenant, we are no longer under lunar regulation for festival times (Colossians 2:16–17). In that regard, Christ is our light” (Jordan, Through New Eyes, 54,56-57).
Peter J. Leithart and John Barach, eds., The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift in Honor of James B. Jordan (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011).
For this reason we must pay closer attention to the things we have heard, or we may drift away, because if the message spoken by angels was reliable, and every violation and act of disobedience received its just punishment, how will we escape if we neglect a salvation as great as this? It was first proclaimed by the Lord himself, and then it was confirmed to us by those who heard him, Heb 2:1–3. ISV.
And you are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: Col. 2:10
And you are complete in him. He adds, that this perfect essence of Deity, which is in Christ, is profitable to us in this respect, that we are also perfect in him. “As to God’s dwelling wholly in Christ, it is in order that we, having obtained him, may possess in him an entire perfection.”
Those, therefore, who do not rest satisfied with Christ alone, do injury to God in two ways, for besides detracting from the glory of God,
by desiring something above his perfection, they are also ungrateful, inasmuch as they seek elsewhere what they already have in Christ.
Paul, however, does not mean that the perfection of Christ is transfused into us, but that there are in him resources from which we may be filled, that nothing may be wanting to us.
John Calvin and John Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 183.
See that you do not disregard him that speaks. For since they did not escape, when they disregarded him who warned them on earth, much rather shall not we, if we turn away from him who is from the heavens; whose voice then shook the earth, but now he hath proclaimed, saying, “Once more I will shake not the earth only, but also the heaven.” And this “Once more” signifies the removal of the things shaken, as of things made by hands, so that the things not shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that can not be shaken, let us be thankful, so as to offer service acceptable to God with reverent fear and awe; for, “our God is a consuming fire.” Hebrews 12:25-29
What, then, is the great catastrophe symbolically represented as the shaking of the earth and heavens? No doubt it is the overthrow and abolition of the Mosaic dispensation, or old covenant; the destruction of the Jewish church and state, together with all the institutions and ordinances connected therewith. There were ‘heavenly things’ belonging to that dispensation: the laws, and statutes, and ordinances, which were divine in their origin, and might be properly called the ‘spiritual’ of Judaism—these were the heavens, which were to be shaken and removed.
There were also ‘earthly things:’ the literal Jerusalem, the material temple, the land of Canaan—these were the earth, which was in like manner to be shaken and removed. The symbols are, in fact, equivalent to those employed by our Lord when predicting the doom of Israel. ‘Immediately after the tribulation of those days [the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem] shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken’ (Matt. 24:29).
James Stuart Russell, The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord’s Second Coming (London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1878), 289–290.
Everything that proclaims something about our sin and God’s wrath is the proclamation of the law, however and whenever it may take place.
On the other hand, the gospel is the kind of proclamation that points to and bestows nothing else than grace and forgiveness in Christ. (Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 583.)
Even before sin, God threatened Adam with death and so with a law. In sin, God gives the law in the first place to curb sin by threat of punishment. In this, while restraining sinners outwardly, it ultimately failed to make people righteous inwardly.
But second, the chief office of the law is to reveal original sin and the evil that comes from it.
Only the gospel may then free sinners from sin, death, and devil. The gospel is the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh and was crucified for our trespass, raised for our justification (Rom. 4:25), and established as Lord of a new realm whenever this is preached for the ungodly.
The proper function of the gospel is to forgive sins in the form of a promise that functions differently than a command.
The promise depends upon God’s faithfulness and the power of God’s Word to accomplish what it says and make sinners into believers, persons who trust in God.
Steven D. Paulson, “Law and Gospel,” in Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017), 415.
How should such Men be Mistaken? which is a poor Argument; and a great Reproach it is to such Persons:
For their Faith, it seems, stands in the Wisdom of Men, and not in the Power of God, or certain Testimony of his holy Word.
Benjamin Keach, The Ax Laid to the Root, Parts I & II (London: John Harris, 1693).
“I will destroy,” it is said, “the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.” 1 Cor. 1:19. The true wisdom must destroy the false, and, although the foolishness of preaching 1 Cor. 1:21 is inseparable from the Cross, Paul speaks “wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come to naught,” but he speaks “the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world.” 1 Cor. 2:6,7.
God’s wisdom is Christ, for Christ, we are told, is “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Cor. 1:24.
He is the wisdom which is hidden in a mystery, of which also we read in the heading of the ninth psalm “for the hidden things of the son.” In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He also who was hidden in a mystery is the same that was foreordained before the world. Now it was in the Law and in the Prophets that he was foreordained and prefigured.
For this reason too the prophets were called seers, 1 Sam. 9:9 because they saw Him whom others did not see. Abraham saw His day and was glad. Joh. 8:56. The heavens which were sealed to a rebellious people were opened to Ezekiel. “Open thou mine eyes,” saith David, “that I may behold wonderful things out of thy Law.” Ps. 119:18.
For “the law is spiritual” Rom. 7:14. and a revelation is needed to enable us to comprehend it and, when God uncovers His face, to behold His glory.
Jerome, “The Letters of St. Jerome,” in St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. W. H. Fremantle, G. Lewis, and W. G. Martley, vol. 6, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1893), 98.
The modern idea that natural evolution and the efforts of man in the field of education, of social reform, and of legislation, will gradually bring in the perfect reign of the Christian spirit, conflicts with everything that the Word of God teaches on this point. It is not the work of man, but the work of God to bring in the glorious Kingdom of God.
This Kingdom cannot be established by natural but only by supernatural means. It is the reign of God, established and acknowledged in the hearts of His people, and this reign can never be made effective by purely natural means.
Civilization without regeneration, without a supernatural change of the heart, will never bring in a millennium, an effective and glorious rule of Jesus Christ. It would seem that the experiences of the last quarter of a century should have forced this truth upon the modern man. The highly vaunted development of man has not yet brought us in sight of the millennium.-L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 718–719.
Kline’s exposition of covenant theology suggests that an appropriate place to begin a biblical-theological formulation of the doctrine of God is John 4:24, where we read of Jesus instructing the Samaritan woman in the true nature of God and in the worship of God.
“God is Spirit, and they who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth” (cf. Jn 6:63).
The eschatological contrast is between the provisional Aaronic institution of Israelite worship and true (“abiding”) worship in the Spirit (cf. Jn 15:4, 26 and 14:15–17): the contrast is between old and new economies of redemption, between types and shadows on the one hand and truth (in the Johannine sense) and reality on the other.
The restoration of man’s communion with God is explained in terms of the substance and reality of the new covenant, namely, Jesus the Christ (cf. Lk. 24:13–47). Jesus portrays this (“Spiritual”) blessing of redemption as the satisfying of man’s thirst with the water of life flowing from him who is life-giving Spirit (cf. Jn. 7:37–39; 1 Cor. 15:45; and 2 Cor. 3:18).
Mark W. Karlberg, “Reformed Theology as the Theology of the Covenants: The Contributions of Meredith G. Kline to Reformed Systematics,” in Creator Redeemer Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline, ed. Howard Griffith and John R. Muether (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 241.
What is that righteousness, which in the spiritual armor answers to the cuirass-coat of mail? Many say it is our own righteousness, integrity, or rectitude of mind. But this is no protection. It cannot resist the accusations of conscience, the whispers of despondency, the power of temptation, much less the severity of the law, or the assaults of Satan.
What Paul desired for himself was not to have on his own righteousness, but the righteousness which is of God by faith; Phil. 3:8, 9.
And this, doubtless, is the righteousness which he here urges believers to put on as a breast-plate. It is an infinitely perfect righteousness, consisting in the obedience and sufferings of the Son of God, which satisfies all the demands of the divine law and justice; and which is a sure defense against all assaults whether from within or from without.
Charles Hodge, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1858), 383–384.
How infinitely does the glorious Gospel of God transcend the impoverished thoughts and schemes of men! How immeasurably superior is that “everlasting righteousness” which Christ has brought in (Dan. 9:24) from that miserable thing which multitudes are seeking to produce by their own efforts.
called everlasting, or the righteousness of ages, of ages past; the righteousness by which the saints in all ages from the beginning of the world are justified; and which endures, and will endure, throughout all ages, to the justification of all that believe; it is a robe of righteousness that will never wear out; its virtue to justify will ever continue, being perfect; it will answer for the justified ones in a time to come, and has eternal life connected with it;
But Israel is saved by the LORD
with everlasting salvation;
you shall not be put to shame or confounded
to all eternity. Is 45:17.
Trust in the LORD forever,
for in the LORD GOD
you have an everlasting rock. Is 26:4.
John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 6, The Baptist Commentary Series (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1810), 344.
Greater far is the difference between the shining light of the midday sun and the blackness of the darkest night, than between that “best robe” (Luke 15:22) which Christ has wrought out for each of His people and that wretched covering which zealous religionists are attempting to weave out of the filthy rags of their own righteousness
I will greatly rejoice in the LORD;
my whole being shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness... Is 61:10
It is not that the justified soul is now left to himself, so that he is certain of getting to Heaven no matter how he conducts himself—the fatal error of Antinomians.
No Indeed. God also imparts to him the blessed Holy Spirit, who works within him the desire to serve, please, and glorify the One who has been so gracious to Him.
“The love of Christ constraints us … that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14, 15). They now “delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Rom. 7:22), and though the flesh, the world, and the Devil oppose every step of the way, occasioning many a sad fall—which is repented of, confessed, and forsaken—
nevertheless the Spirit renews them day by day (2 Cor. 4:16) and leads them in the paths of righteousness for Christ’s name’s sake. (Arthur Walkington Pink, The Doctrine of Justification (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2005).
His sacrifice has introduced the age of the Holy Spirit, when all acceptable worship must be spiritual, that is, Spirit-inspired (John 4:23–24; Phil. 3:3), and the ‘spiritual sacrifices’ of Christians (1 Pet. 2:5; cf. Rom. 15:16) include acts of worship, such as praise and prayer (Heb. 13:15; Rev. 5:8; 8:3),
but also acts of witness and service, such as evangelism, gifts to the ministry and gifts to the poor (Rom. 15:16–17; Phil. 4:18; Heb. 13:16), and comprehensive attitudes and expressions of devotion, such as faith (Phil. 2:17), the consecration of one’s life to the will of God (Rom. 12:1) and the laying down of one’s life for the sake of the gospel (Phil. 2:17; 2 Tim. 4:6; Rev. 6:9).
The priests who present these sacrifices are those who give them, i.e. Christians (1 Pet. 2:5, 9; cf. also Is. 61:6; Rom. 15:17; Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6), and the sanctuary where they present them is not the temple in Jerusalem, but heaven, to which after the rending of the veil, those who are in the Spirit already have access (John 4:21–24; Heb. 10:19–25).
R. T. Beckwith, “Sacrifice,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 761.
Running your race got twisted in the church to mean that God set up a distant goal of virtue and provided the means for you to reach it through two gifts: one a created free will and the other the law as a guide.
The old trope is all about two things: the free will and the law as guide.
Salvation is not the progress of a spiritual athlete for whom practice in the law makes perfect. It is not even like a sick person getting well on the medicine of grace, for those pictures of Christian life leave Christ on the sidelines while human free will takes center stage. Such notions leave Christ idle, displacing him by the star of that drama, the free will that dreams of becoming ever more holy under the law.
Why then the cross?
Did Christ come simply to remind people of the law that Moses already gave, or even to give an improved version of the tablets of stone?
Is Christ to be patient while you try to solve the puzzle of God’s law? The story of Scripture, Luther began to understand, is not how we make our way up the mountain by getting grace and then topping it off with love and works.
Scripture is the story of how God came down to meet us—while we were yet sinners. Christ is the mover and shaker, the active subject, the star of the show. And when Christ comes the law ends.
Luther coined a phrase—crux sola nostra theologia (the cross alone is our theology)—and put it in capital letters to stand out boldly as the chief truth he found while lecturing on Psalms for the first time.
Steven Paulson, Luther for Armchair Theologians, Armchair Theologians Series (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 62–63.
And how is it that this faith that is made by God as righteousness apart from the law comes? It comes by a simple promise. Reason is bewildered at this.
It comes apart from deeds, apart from judging and giving to each according to what is due; it comes apart from merit, wrath, punishment, and the law; it is apart from harmonies, various participations in God’s being, equalities of material and spiritual goods, virtues, morality, orders, systems, and reason itself.
The Father makes right in this old world only by raising his crucified Son from the dead and giving that Son to his enemies as a gift that comes in the form of a simple promise “for you.”
Nothing could remain the same if that were true—not the identification of a self, or of God, or of what is “good” or “true” or “right” or, for that matter, what the course of history itself is.
Faith in Christ’s promise, not works of the law, alone saves. But we will have to be very careful, since the word “faith” is one of the most abused words in our vocabulary.
It does not mean for Luther “accepting,” or “deciding for,” or “committing oneself to Christ,”
or any of the misuses this word has received. Faith is perfect passivity (that is, they do absolutely nothing at all) for Luther—being done unto by God, or simply suffering God.
It is literally being put to death as a sinner and raised as a saint, which is decidedly God’s own act through preached words.
Steven Paulson, Luther for Armchair Theologians, Armchair Theologians Series (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 49,51–52.
Man, with all his powers, including reason, Luther holds, is a creature of God and has some knowledge of God. Reason, therefore, is naturally aware of God’s law, and knows that we ought to do good and to worship and serve God.
What it does not understand, however, is how and why we ought to do these things.
It is with reason as with the rest of our powers, for they are all corrupted by sin. The flesh, for instance, is a creature of God, yet it is not inclined to chastity, but to unchastity; and the heart is a creature of God, yet it is not inclined to humility and the service of its neighbors, but to pride and self-love.
In a similar way, reason, knowing that good is to be done and God is to be served, imagines the good to be that which pleases itself, and thinks to serve God by rites, ceremonies and observances, which it elects to regard as ‘good works’.
It is of interest at this point to refer to what some of his critics have been pleased to regard as Luther’s most infamous words—his well-known, but little understood, description of reason as ‘the devil’s whore’.
In the light of what has just been said, his meaning is not very difficult to perceive.
If reason opposes Christ with His message of grace, then it espouses the cause of His adversary, it prostitutes itself to the service of the enemy of God.
Because God is the God of the law, men assume that He must deal with them on a legal basis of merit and reward, and they seek to establish their own relationship with Him accordingly. They seek to gain His approval by performing what they elect to regard as ‘good works’.
For this [says Luther] is the imagination of them all:
If I do this work, God will have mercy upon me: if I do it not, He will be angry.
And therefore every man that revolted from the knowledge of Christ, must needs fall into idolatry, and conceive such an imagination of God as is not agreeable to His nature: as the Charterhouse monk for the observing of his rule, the Turk for the keeping of his Alcoran-Koran, hath this assurance, that he pleases God, and shall receive a reward from Him for his labor.
Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God!: An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 87–90.
Your opening statement is flawed: {Rushdoony} “The law is the way of sanctification” (p. 3). These statements set law as the antithesis of grace. They present a theory of sanctification that is not by grace but by works of law. (Alan Cairns)
ReplyDeleteWhat is sanctification? Answer: it is the work given ‘by the Holy Spirit by Christ’ to the spiritual cleansing IE; prayer, loving/lifting others up and our ‘Spiritual Gifts’ given to us ‘from Him (1 Corinthians 12:4-11!’ 🔥👑❤️
Just as there is no works performed (even our faith) in our Rebirth (John 3:3, 5&6) it is the same as the ‘Resurrection of the Believer.’ IT IS ALL BY THE HOLY SPIRIT, Even to the Obeying of God’s Law! (Theonomy)
Thank you for your comment: you replied Your opening statement is flawed: it's not my belief its there's (Theonomy). They present a theory of sanctification that is not by grace but by works of law. Not sure what you mean by "Even to the Obeying of God’s Law! " But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Gal. 5:18; I don’t turn my back on God’s undeserved kindness. If we can be acceptable to God by obeying the Law, it was useless for Christ to die. Gal. 2:21;
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