Theonomy: Sanctified by Law reconstructionism; or the Tower of Babel
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.
Common Sense Philosophy was for a time (until about 1850) a distinctively national philosophy. It had a great appeal to many Scottish ministers who liked its emphasis on intuitive principles and self-evident truth. Both moderates and evangelicals in the Church of Scotland readily espoused it and saw it as a powerful tool against skepticism. They held that God planted self-evident truth in man.
Indeed, some went on to say that God was one of the self-evident truths. That God exists is a self-evident truth that any rational person, not blinded by prejudice, would accept.
Therein is the weakness of the theory. Where in all the world is there an unregenerate man not blinded by his own sin?Totally depraved men have their understanding darkened. The light that is in them is darkness.
The principles the Realists sought to establish were real enough, but not self-evident to the depraved and darkened mind of fallen man. (Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms (Belfast; Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International, 2002), 102.)
In the nineteenth century, natural theology almost completely disappeared from Germany. For Schleiermacher (1768–1834), it deserved nothing but ridicule:
“the malady of fragments put together from metaphysics and morality that one labels reasonable Christianity.”
Joar Haga, “Natural Theology,” in Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017), 537.
Justified By Grace, Sanctified by Law.
Theonomy reaches to the Christian’s personal life and then to the nations of the world through the church’s work and witness.
On the personal level, reconstructionism strikes a welcome note against the antinomianism inherent in much of modern evangelicalism, particularly in dispensationalism. But it goes too far.
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.)
The builders of the Tower of Babel attempt/desire to make a name for themselves (Gen.11:4), a thing only God can do for his people through Abraham (Gen.12:2)
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.
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).
Unfortunately, the conclusions of natural knowledge are sometimes combined with Christianity. The notion that God can be known in his power and majesty and appeased, even manipulated, to respond favorably to our earthly struggles and sufferings through human religious activity is called a theology of glory.
It seeks God on human terms. Inherent in this teaching is the notion that human actions such as rituals, prayers, works, or sacrifices can appease God’s wrath, and that human beings have the ability to solve the great problems in nature and society.
God is reduced to act in ways that make sense to us. Questions such as “Why is there suffering in the world?” or “Why do believers suffer?” lay demands on God from our point of view alone. The answers are sought in human deductions, not in his word.
Steven P. Mueller, ed., Called to Believe, Teach, and Confess: An Introduction to Doctrinal Theology, vol. 3, Called by the Gospel (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 31.
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.
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 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.
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.)
Theistic arguments are at best like the law that convicts but cannot save. They cannot lead anyone to salvation apart from the gospel of Christ (Rom. 10:13–17). The Canons of Dort link the “light of nature” with “the law,” and then state,
“What therefore neither the light of nature, nor the law could do, that God performs by the operation of the Holy Spirit through the Word or ministry of reconciliation, which is the glad tidings concerning the Messiah, by means whereof it hath pleased God to save such as believe, as well under the Old, as under the New Testament.”
Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Revelation and God, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 241.
sensus divinitatis: sense of the divine; viz., a basic, intuitive perception of the divine existence; it is generated in all persons through their encounter with the providential ordering of the world. The sensus divinitatis is therefore the basis both of pagan religion and of natural theology.
Because of the fall, the religion that arises out of this sense of the divine, or seed of religion (semen religionis,), is idolatrous and incapable of saving or of producing true obedience before God.
Our sensus divinitatis, thus, is capable only of leaving us without excuse in our rejection of God’s truth.
Then only and only so long is it regenerate as it follows the light of the Word, and judges concerning the mysteries of the faith, not by its own principles, but by the Scriptures.
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.
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.
The New Testament retains this office of the law and teaches it, as Paul does and says, in Romans 1:18: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all” people. Also, Romans 3:19–20: “So that … the whole world may be held accountable to God” and “no human being will be justified in his sight”; and Christ says in John 16:8: the Holy Spirit “will convict the world of sin.”
Now this is the thunderbolt of God, by means of which he destroys both the open sinner and the false saint and allows no one to be right but drives the whole lot of them into terror and despair. This is the hammer of which Jeremiah speaks:
My word is a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces” Jer. 23:29. This is not “active contrition,” a contrived remorse, but “passive contrition,” true affliction of the heart, suffering, and the pain of death. (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), 312.)
Before proceeding with the interpretation of the Law, the fulfilment of which would enable men to bring forth ‘good works’ and qualify them for membership in the Kingdom, our Lord explains to the disciples, in words probably suggested by Dt. 4:2, that, notwithstanding His new program for them as a distinctive community and His seeming opposition to traditional piety, He does not come as a new Legislator, but, like Moses, the ‘first redeemer’ (Dt. 1:5, where the Hebrew word translated ‘declare’ means ‘to make clear’), as an Interpreter of the old revelation.
He has not come to ‘annul’ the divine Will expressed in the Law and the Prophets, but to bring out the full divine purpose contained in them.
The scribes and Pharisees, in spite of their eagerness to keep the letter of Dt. 12:32, casuistically either ‘loosened,’ i.e. evaded, certain commandments, or added innumerable laws of their own.
P. P. Levertoff, “Special Introduction,” in A New Commentary on Holy Scripture: Including the Apocrypha, ed. Charles Gore, Henry Leighton Goudge, and Alfred Guillaume, vol. 3 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1942), 138–139.
Gentry and Wellum also seem to recognize the uniqueness of the Israelite Covenant as a temporary picture anticipating the later work of Christ as...
“in God’s overall plan the Mosaic law-covenant should be viewed as more of a parenthesis or something temporary, leading us to what the old covenant was ultimately pointing forward to, namely, the dawning of the new covenant in Christ”
(Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 99). Further illustrating the temporary uniqueness of the Israelite Covenant, Gentry and Wellum also observe that
“the term ‘everlasting covenant’ occurs sixteen times in the Old Testament: two times of the covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:16a; Isa. 24:5), four times of the covenant with Abraham (Gen. 17:7, 19; Ps. 105:10; 1 Chron. 16:17), once of the covenant with David (2 Sam. 23:5; cf. 2 Chron. 13:5), six times of the new covenant (Isa. 55:3; 61:8; Jer. 32:40; 50:5; Ezek. 16:60; 37:26), and three times of covenant signs (Gen. 17:13; Ex. 31:16; Lev. 24:8). (pp. 475–76).
Nowhere in the Old Testament is the Israelite covenant at Sinai called an everlasting or permanent covenant”
The Westminster Theological Journal 77, no. 1 & 2 (2015).
For things which were incredible and seemed impossible with men, these God predicted by the Spirit of prophecy as about to come to pass, in order that, when they came to pass, there might be no unbelief, but faith, because of their prediction.
Justin Martyr, “The First Apology of Justin,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 174.
When the thing comes about of which the sketch was a type,that which was to be, of which the type bore the likeness,
then the type is destroyed, it has become useless,
it yields up the image to what is truly real.
What was once valuable becomes worthless
when what is of true value appears.
To each then is its own time:
the type has its own time,
the material has its own time,
the reality has its own time.
So the type was valuable in advance of the reality
and the illustration was wonderful before its elucidation.
So the people were valuable before the Church arose,
and the law was wonderful before the illumination of the gospel.
But when the Church arose and the gospel came to be,
the type, depleted, gave up meaning to the truth:
and the law, fulfilled, gave up meaning to the gospel.
In the same way that the type is depleted,
conceding the image to what is intrinsically real,
and the analogy is brought to completion through the elucidation of interpretation,
so the law is fulfilled by the elucidation of the gospel,
and the people is depleted by the arising of the Church,
and the model is dissolved by the appearance of the Lord.
And today those things of value are worthless,
since the things of true worth have been revealed.
Melito of Sardis, On Pascha: With the Fragments of Melito and Other Material Related to the Quartodecimans: Translation, ed. John Behr, trans. Alistair C. Stewart, Second edition, vol. 55, Popular Patristics Series (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2016), 60–62.
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command (Dt.18:15; Isa 51:16; Jn 4:25, 26). Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. Dt. 18:18–19 Be attentive to him and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him. Ex. 23:21.
While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” Mt. 17:5.
O that there was such an Heart in them! He knew well their great Inability and Averseness to do whatsoever he required.
Jesus is telling them in Jn. 5: 38, “You have not kept that ancient promise.” They did not believe God’s representative, whether Moses (Jn. 5: 46–47), John (Jn. 5:33), or the Word himself who has become flesh and speaks as a human sent by God.
Jesus does a prophet’s job of reproving the LORD’s people: “You do not have his word abiding in you” (Jn. 5: 38), “you do not have the love of God in yourselves” Jn.5: 42). That is, they have not kept the great commandment of Deut. 6:5–10, in which Moses commands Israel to love God with a whole heart and to keep the words Moses is commanding them on their hearts (i.e., that his word should abide in them). Further, they are commanded to listen to God’s prophet (Deut. 18:18–19), and they have not kept that.
John 5:39 is similar to Jn. 5:46 in that Jesus is speaking of the Scripture’s testimony to himself: “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life. Yet it is these that testify about me.” Again, it is easy to assume that the scriptural testimony to Jesus comprises a relatively few messianic passages that speak of a savior to come in the future.
Is that what Jesus means, or does he mean the same thing as I suggested for Jn. 5: 46, that the Scriptures testify to the God of Israel, to whom Israel must come to find eternal life? John 5:40, when compared to Isa 55:3 and its rendering in Tg. Isa, provides us a clear answer:
Receive my Word, listen, so that your soul may live. Tg. Isa. 55:3
Neither our kings nor our princes,Our priests nor our fathers,
With which You testified against them. Ne 9:34 NKJV.
Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us, for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our ancestors, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God. ” Jer. 3:25.
John Ronning, The Jewish Targums and John’s Logos Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 159–161.
Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope Jn. 9:28; Rom. 2:17. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me Gen. 3:15; Lk. 24:27; Acts 26:22. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?” Jn. 5:45–47
the final condemnation will come from Moses himself—again ironic, since Moses is the very one the Jewish authorities have trusted in (placed your hope) John 5:45. This is again ironic if it is occurring at Pentecost, which at this time was being celebrated as the occasion of the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai.
There is evidence that some Jews of the 1st century looked on Moses as their intercessor at the final judgment (see W. A. Meeks, The Prophet King [NovTSup], 161). This would mean the statement Moses, in whom you have placed your hope should be taken literally and relates directly to Jesus’ statements about the final judgment in John 5:28–29. (Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible, Second Edition. (Denmark: Thomas Nelson, 2019)
As we know from Exod. 19:16 fire was a prominent feature of the theophany in the description of the giving of the Torah. According to b. Megillah 31a the first chapter of Ezekiel was the reading from the prophets for this particular festival.
Indeed, reference to tongues of fire is often found in rabbinic legends about the exposition of the Torah.
(Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2002), 368.)
In other words, in Matt. 5:17, Jesus is claiming to be the eschatological messenger of God, the promised prophet like Moses (Deut. 18:15, 18), Cf. John 6:14; 7:40 who brings the final revelation and therefore demands absolute obedience.
In fact, this claim of Jesus that he brings the concluding revelation is to be found throughout his sayings. It is expressed particularly clearly in the antithetic pattern of Matt. 5:21–48. This pattern belongs to the bedrock of the tradition, since it involves a conflict with the Torah, something unheard of in the atmosphere of the period.
Jesus proclaims that the divine will in the basileia-Kingdom stands above the divine will as expressed in the time of the Old Testament (Mark 10:1–12).
Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1971), 84–85.
This ἐγώ, “But I [Jesus] say to you.” used in pronouncements with authority, is also to be found in the words of command in the healing stories (Mark 9:25 ἐγὼ ἐπιτάσσω σοι; cf. Mark 2:11 par. σοὶ λέγω), in the sending out of the messengers (as in Matt. 10:16 ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἀποστέλλω ὑμᾶς), Cf. also Luke 10:19 and in words of encouragement (like Luke 22:32: ἐγὼ δὲ ἐδεήθην περὶ σοῦ).
This ἐγώ is associated with ἀμήν- “Truly (ἀμήν, amēn), I say to you.” and thus, claims to speak with divine authority; it lays claim to the twofold royal ἐξουσία-authority; power of God, amnesty and legislation.
It requires devotion beyond all other ties, in complete exclusiveness. Even father and mother are not excepted (Matt. 10:37 par. Luke 14:26). It claims that in its actions the basileia-Kingdom is at work (Luke 11:20 par. Matt. 12:28) and that deliverance at the last judgment will be decided by a man’s public acknowledgment of its authority (Matt. 10:32f. par.).
It takes the place of the Torah: in contemporary Judaism, it was said, ‘The person who hears the words of the Torah and does good works builds on firm ground’; here we have, ‘The person who hears my words’ (Matt. 7:24–27 par.). The emphatic ἐγώ indicates that the person who uses it is God’s representative.
‘Whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me’ (Mark 9:37, often repeated: Matt. 10:40; Luke 9:48, cf. 10:16; John 12:44; 13:20). In the three parables of the lost things (Luke. 15), the parable of the generous employer (Matt. 20:1–15) and the parable of the two men at prayer (Luke 18:9–14), Jesus justifies his conduct by that of God; he acts so to speak as God’s representative.
At the same time, however, his subordination to God’s will is preserved (Mark 14:36 par.). This emphatic ἐγώ permeates the whole tradition of the sayings of Jesus and cannot be eliminated by literary-critical methods. It is without parallel in the world of Jesus. (Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1971), 253,254.)
It is worthy of observation, that the word fulfil, among the rabbis, signifies not only to fulfil, but also to teach... And this meaning of the word gives the clear sense of the apostle’s words, Col. 1:25. Whereof I am made a minister, πληρωσαι τον λογον του Θεου, to fulfil the word of God, i. e. to teach the doctrine of God. (Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible with a Commentary and Critical Notes, New Edition, vol. 5 (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife Corporation, 2014), 69.)
Five specific prophecies had been fulfilled in the birth narrative (Matt. 1–2) (See Matt. 1:22–23 (Isa. 7:14); Matt. 2:5–6 (Mic. 5:2); Matt. 2:15 (Hos. 11:1); Matt. 2:17–18 (Jer. 31:15); Matt. 2:23 (Judg. 13:5; Isa. 11:1). and in first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount...
Jesus will teach his disciple how they might fulfil the Law of Moses (and I refer here to the so-called antitheses) and so give evidence of a righteousness that ‘exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees’ (Matt.5:20).
The Law (ὁ νόμος), like the Prophets (οἱ προφῆται), is to be fulfilled. Matthew 5:17–48 expands on this conviction by providing five examples of how Jesus’ interpretation of the Law—in contrast to the deficient understanding and practice of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt.5:20)—fulfilled the Law.
The discontinuity between Jesus and the teachers of the synagogue is due to the law’s fulfilment, not its abandonment.
There is no question that Jesus transgressed the oral law; but the written law, understood in the light of the whole of Scripture, he fulfilled.
The relationship of Jesus’ coming to the law and to the prophets is a watershed issue for the interpretation of Matthew and for biblical theology. The contrasting terms “abolish” and “accomplish their purpose” (lit. “fulfill”) set the agenda for a general statement (Mat.5:17–20) that is expanded in the six so-called “antitheses” In NT studies, the six contrasts between Moses’ and Jesus’ teaching presented in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:21–48.
Each antithesis is introduced by the formula, “You have heard that it was said,” followed by the antithetical response, “But I [Jesus] say to you.” that take up the rest of the chapter. The mention of the law and the prophets here and in the summary statement of Mat. 7:12 is an inclusio, which brings the main body of the Sermon full circle. The metaphorical use of “abolish” (lit. “destroy”) may be illustrated by its literal use in (Mat. 24:2; 26:61; 27:40.)
The meaning of “accomplish” (lit. “fulfill”) must be examined in light of its frequent usage in OT introductory formulas: (Mat.1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 26:54, 56; 27:9.) Other significant uses are Mat.3:15 and Mat.23:32.
Jesus does not contradict or abrogate the law and the prophets, but neither does he merely reaffirm them. He fulfills them or brings them to their divinely intended goal because they point to him.
David Turner and Darrell L. Bock, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol 11: Matthew and Mark (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2005), 85.(antitheses Arthur G. Patzia and Anthony J. Petrotta, Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 12.)
With respect to doctrine, we must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority of the law: for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must, therefore, be as unchangeable, as the justice of God, which it embraced, is constant and uniform.
With respect to ceremonies, there is some appearance of a change having taken place; but it was only the use of them that was abolished, for their meaning was more fully confirmed.
The coming of Christ has taken nothing away even from ceremonies, but, on the contrary, confirms them by exhibiting the truth of shadows: for, when we see their full effect, we acknowledge that they are not vain or useless.
Let us therefore learn to maintain inviolable this sacred tie between the law and the Gospel, which many improperly attempt to break. For it contributes not a little to confirm the authority of the Gospel, when we learn, that it is nothing else than a fulfilment of the law; so that both, with one consent, declare God to be their Author. (John Calvin and William Pringle, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 277–278.)
‘The gospel is the explanation and fulfilment of the law, and the Church is the place where the law comes true’. Melito, Hom. 34:
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, vol. 1, International Critical Commentary (London; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004).
It is written (Mat. 5:17): Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets. Commenting on these words, Chrysostom says: He fulfilled the Law, … in one way, by transgressing none of the precepts of the Law; secondly, by justifying us through faith, which the Law, in the letter, was unable to do.
I answer that, Christ conformed His conduct in all things to the precepts of the Law... And Christ, indeed, wished to conform His conduct to the Law, first, to show His approval of the Old Law. Secondly,
that by obeying the Law He might perfect it and bring it to an end in His own self, so as to show that it was ordained to Him.
Thirdly, to deprive the Jews of an excuse for slandering Him. Fourthly, in order to deliver men from subjection to the Law, according to Gal. 4:4, 5: God sent His Son … made under the Law that He might redeem them who were under the Law.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, vol. 9 (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, n.d.), 569.
But if this saying is intended simply to assert the permanence of the law, why is a second “until” clause added?
Some interpreters assert that the second “until” clause merely repeats the sense of the first and speaks of the (unimaginable) end of the world, but in that case why is the thought repeated before and after the main clause, and why is it expressed in terms of something “happening” (ginomai) when the point of the first clause was to propose something which could not happen (heaven and earth passing away)?
“Everything happening” is rather the language of eschatological fulfillment (as in the similar saying of Mat.24:34), and if we were right to understand the “fulfilling” of the law and the prophets in terms of a future situation to which the law pointed forward, this clause could be saying that the smallest details of the law would be valid only until the time of fulfillment arrived.
The jots and tittles are there to be fulfilled, not discarded, and that is what Jesus has come to do. They are not lost, but taken up into the eschatological events to which they pointed forward.
The second “until” then, is not speaking of the time of their abandonment but of their intended goal.
The double “until” is admittedly awkward, but we might paraphrase the whole saying as follows:
“The law, down to its smallest details, is as permanent as heaven and earth and will never lose its significance; on the contrary, all that it points forward to will in fact become a reality.” Now that that reality has arrived in Jesus, the jots and tittles will be seen in a new light, but they still cannot be discarded.
(Keener, 178, attributes to J. P. Meier and to my 1985 commentary the view that “Jesus’ death and resurrection is the ‘goal of the world,’ thus allowing the law to be set aside as fulfilled,” and rightly complains that such a view “violates the whole thrust of the passage.” Meier must speak for himself, but I neither stated nor implied that fulfillment involves “setting aside,” which would indeed directly contradict Mat.5:17.
My comment was that
“The law is unalterable, but that does not justify its application beyond the purpose for which it was intended.” To speak of a change in application of the law is not to regard it as now discarded).
It will be the function of Mat.5:21–47 to illustrate how they may function in this new situation in which they serve not as simple rules of conduct but as pointers to a “greater righteousness” which Jesus has brought into being and which supersedes the old type of law-keeping.
R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publication Co., 2007), 185,186.
It is not legal righteousness, the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 5:20), but the righteousness of the Kingdom, God’s righteousness (Matthew 6:33). The contrast is most clearly and sharply expressed in Romans 10:3 and Philippians 3:9, for instance, where man’s righteousness and God’s are represented as mutually exclusive, and the latter alone is able to form the basis of the religious relationship. (Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God!: An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000).)
‘But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you’. Matt. 6:33: Seeking righteousness recalls the beatitude of Mt. 5:6. Coupling the quest for righteousness to the kingdom brings the preaching of Jesus and Matthew’s interests together.
To seek righteousness is also to seek the kingdom. This pithy admonition sums up the essence of Jesus’ message, especially as it is heard in Matthew’s Gospel, in which emphasis is placed on righteousness (as seen, for example, in Mt. 5:6, 10). God’s ‘righteousness’ has been defined in the antitheses in Mt. 5:21–48.
Craig A. Evans, “Fulfilling the Law and Seeking Righteousness in Matthew and in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Jesus, Matthew’s Gospel and Early Christianity: Studies in Memory of Graham N. Stanton, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner et al., vol. 435, Library of New Testament Studies (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2011),103,106,107
Because righteousness is a matter of immediate, personal concern between the soul and God, it can rest on nothing else than the divinely revealed commandments, and no human tradition can bind the conscience: “Every plant which the heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up,” Matt. 15:13.
Finally, what alone can impart value in the sight of God to any act of obedience is the sincerity of the heart from which it proceeds. Righteousness must be fruit, the organic product of the life and character, exponential of what is within, (Matt. 7:16, 20; 21:43).
All this was the result of bringing men face to face with God as the righteous Lawgiver and King, personally cognizant of every man’s conduct. In view of it, it is hardly necessary to observe that our Lord also represents God as the supreme Judge of the moral life.
To be righteous is strictly speaking equivalent to being justified of God.
Jesus, who derived so many evangelical ideas from the last-mentioned source, may have had these prophecies in mind, when in the Sermon on the Mount he spoke of such as hunger and thirst after righteousness, Is. 55:1.
At any rate the other beatitudes show that the state of mind here described is a receptive rather than a productive one.
The hungering and thirsting stand on a line with the poor and the meek, they are conscious of not possessing the desired good in themselves and look to God for supplying it.
When they are satisfied, this is due not to their own effort but to an act of God.
The same thought is indirectly expressed in the “seeking” of righteousness commanded in Matt. 6:33. In the parable of the Pharisee and publican the term “justification” is applied to an acceptance of man by God not based on self-righteous works, but on penitence and trust in the divine mercy.
It would be historically unwarranted to read into these utterances the whole doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ. It was impossible for Jesus to develop this doctrine with any degree of explicitness, because it was to be based on his own atoning death, which still lay in the future.
Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church, ed. John H. Kerr, Second Edition, Revised (New York: American Tract Society, 1903), 110–116.
For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Mt. 5:20 NRSVue
is obviously meant to be taken ironically. The ‘righteousness’ of the scribes and Pharisees was pre-eminently external and without moral dynamic. It could be practiced without much spiritual or moral effort. For the connection between ‘righteousness’ and entering ‘the Kingdom of heaven’ cf. (Dt. 9:4, 5, 6 and Isa. 60:21).
P. P. Levertoff, “Special Introduction,” in A New Commentary on Holy Scripture: Including the Apocrypha, ed. Charles Gore, Henry Leighton Goudge, and Alfred Guillaume, vol. 3 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1942), 139.
Again, addressed to the Apostles as teachers. The union of doing and teaching is essential. It was the grave sin of the Pharisees that they taught without doing. See Mat. 23:2,3. This explains the for of next verse. (A. Carr, The Gospel according to St Matthew, with Maps Notes and Introduction, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1893), 58.)
pursuing the statement of Matt. 5:19 NRSV (cf. ‘therefore’) insists that this re-born Law will be enforced with no less rigor. The Christian disciple is perforce always a teacher by his example, Matt. 5:13–16: neglect even of the minutiae will be noticed and will do damage.
The new order is to be distinguished by the perfection of its inward spirit, Matt. 5:21–48, but it will not dispense with external works. By its exacting standards the careless disciple will be accounted less than his more scrupulous brother.
The ‘kingdom’ in this and the following verse would appear to be the new kingdom of Christ on earth in which the Law and the Prophets find their goal and their deepest sense. Matt. 5:20. Membership of this kingdom imperatively demands a sanctity more generous than that of the leading exponents of the Mosaic Law because its ideals are higher and its spirit more profound.
A. Jones, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to St Matthew,” in A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, ed. Bernard Orchard and Edmund F. Sutcliffe (Toronto; New York; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1953), 861.
When the disciples are exhorted to let their light shine before men that these may see their good works and glorify the Father in heaven, this thought is expressed in terms of fatherhood, but the conception of glory involved is closely allied to that of kingship.
In the Lord’s Prayer the petition “Thy kingdom come” naturally leads on to the petition “Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth,” so that the fulfilment of the will of God is obviously regarded as one of the principal forms in which his kingship is realized.
Its consummate expression this principle finds in the commandment: “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Matt. 5:48.
The sayings just quoted affirm not merely that the norm of righteousness is to be found in God, they likewise imply that the aim of righteousness, the final cause of obedience, lies in God.
Righteousness is to be sought from the pure desire of satisfying him, who is the supreme end of all moral existence.
Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church, ed. John H. Kerr, Second Edition, Revised (New York: American Tract Society, 1903), 105–106.
Otherwise, the precepts of Moses are easy to obey; Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not commit adultery. The very greatness of the crime is a check upon the desire of committing it; therefore the reward of observance is small, the sin of transgression great.
But Christ’s precepts, Thou shalt not be angry, Thou shalt not lust, are hard to obey, and therefore in their reward they are great, in their transgression, ‘least.’
It is thus He speaks of these precepts of Christ, such as Thou shall not be angry, Thou shalt not lust, as ‘the least;’ and they who commit these lesser sins, are the least in the kingdom of God; that is, he who has been angry and not sinned grievously is secure from the punishment of eternal damnation; yet he does not attain that glory which they attain who fulfil even these least. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM
It is a mistake to interpret the perisseuein (the “surpassing” of Pharisaic righteousness) in terms of a quantitatively larger fulfillment of the law’s demands than that which the scribes and Pharisees achieve.(This despite Oepke’s contention that “perisseuein in Mt. 5:20 is a quantitative rather than a qualitative term” (TDNT, 4: 621n.88).
Windisch was at least on the right track when he commented that “The righteousness which opens the kingdom is here won through repentance, which the Baptist proclaimed Mat.21:32. cf. Mat.3:1–2” He would have been even more on target had he referred to the proclamation of Jesus as well as that of John, for Jesus demanded repentance not only in the light of the coming of the kingdom of God in the future but also in the face of the new thing that God was doing in the present—
repentance that entailed a radical commitment “in the fulness of surrender to God’s will.”
It was this kind of repentance and faith to which Jesus pointed when speaking about receiving the kingdom of God as a child, for it is only when the kingdom is approached in this fashion that the required obedience—of a sort of the scribes and Pharisees did not know Matt. 23:3 —becomes possible.
To respond wholeheartedly to the message of Jesus is to know that “eschatological superabundance” which issues in a righteousness acceptable to God and entrance into the kingdom of God in the last day.
G. R. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle, Cumbria: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; The Paternoster Press, 1986), 178.
Jesus was teaching something that was not yet completely possible for people to follow. It is good to say, “People should move from external obedience to an obedience motivated by the law written upon the heart.”
But this is an impossibility until the heart is transformed and the very person of God himself, along with his righteous character as expressed in the law, comes to abide in one’s heart. What Jesus taught would become a reality in the lives of God’s people after his death sealed the new covenant and made possible the promised internal transformation. (Stuart K. Weber, Matthew, vol. 1, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 63–64.)
For you are not a true Jew just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the ceremony of circumcision. No, a true Jew is one whose heart is right with God. And true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by the Spirit. And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people. Rom. 2:28–29 NLT
On circumcision is of the heart see (Lev. 26:41; Deut. 10:16; 30:6 Jer. 4:4; Ezek. 44:9.) The NET Bible
For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did. Ro 8:3 LEB
In the message of Christ, we thus have the power of God which is the power of salvation. The power of God in the Gospel consists in the fact that it mediates salvation, that by the Gospel God delivers man from the power of darkness and translates him into the kingdom of His dear Son.
The δύναμις θεοῦ-power of God, which is the Gospel, is not an empty word. It is grounded in the divine act of deliverance in the Christ event, which overcomes the rule of Satan, and which works itself out in the continued, factual deliverance accomplished by the preaching of the Gospel The power of salvation.
The fact of Christ answers afresh the question of the power of salvation. the disciples ask Jesus in Mt. 19:26, thus raising the question of the ability and power to effect deliverance. The answer given by Jesus is the familiar reference to the omnipotence of God:
The answer contains a double insight: first, that no power to save or to deliver is given to man, nor is it possible for man to attain such a power; and second, that such a power is grounded in the omnipotence of God alone and must proceed from this. This insight is shared by the NT generally.
Paul speaks of the impossibility in Rom.8:7. In these words there is the sharpest possible criticism of the saving power of Jewish belief, i.e., the saving power of the Torah. But Paul goes further. Adopting the Jewish expression for the Torah, he adds the criticism: 1 Cor. 15:56.
By the Torah and its power, the indefinite state of sin is actualized as transgression of the Law, and the dominion of death is established as the wages of sin. For this reason, Paul calls it the impossible the law Rom. 8:3 LEB that it does not overcome sin and death.
The Torah has no power of life, and therefore no salvation proceeds from it: Gal.3:21.
Heb. finds a similar impotence in the Jewish cultus. Even sacrifice has no power to effect salvation. Heb. speaks of sacrifices Heb.10:11, and states: For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins Heb.10:4.
In relation to the achievement of salvation it is said of sacrifices: In fact, the law is only a shadow of the good things to come, not the actual realization of those things Heb.10:1 EHV. The general verdict of Jn. is: (Joh.3:3; 3:5).
There is needed a new creation of man’s existence by God. This new creation, which consists in faith in Christ, is wholly the affair of God: (Joh.6:44; and 6:65).
Jesus discloses the reason for man’s impotence: (Joh.8:43f.).The superiority of demonic and satanic power is the basis of man’s inability to save himself.
Only God has the power to save, and he puts forth his power in Jesus (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:18). This power is not that of mystical initiation or of a mere direction to salvation; it is the power of the word of the cross.
It grants salvation by liberating us from the power of darkness and putting us in the kingdom of God’s dear Son. It is grounded in the saving act of the Christ event, i.e., in God’s mighty work in history. (Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985), 190.)
Walter Grundmann, “Δύναμαι, Δυνατός, Δυνατέω, Ἀδύνατος, Ἀδυνατέω, Δύναμις, Δυνάστης, Δυναμόω, Ἐνδυναμόω,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 308–309.
But—a Jew will protest—why does the law oppose rather than confirm and sanction the promise? Is not the Torah itself the document of the promise? At this point, Paul divorces what the Jew conjoins. And Paul does so because Christ is the key to Scripture: Christ ratifies the promise by removing the law from the scene
Although the relation of the law to Scripture is complicated in Paul, it demonstrates a new departure for a specifically Christian hermeneutic of Scripture. Despite the fact that Scripture in all its parts is the inspired, authoritative document of God’s revelation to Israel, Paul makes its authority subject to Christ as the hermeneutical key to Scripture: 2 Cor. 3:15–17.
“To this day, whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”
Christ is the canon within the canon, so that Paul, in certain contexts, makes distinctions within Scripture between the letter and the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:6, 7; Rom. 2:29[?]), between the law and Scripture (Gal. 3:21, 22), and between the promise and the law (Gal. 3:15–21). He can even quote Scripture against Scripture when he contrasts the works of the law to faith-righteousness (Rom. 10:5–9; Gal. 3:11–12). (J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 251–252.)
In sharp contrast to Rom.7:7–24 but in elucidation of Rom.7:25, Rom. 8:2–4 characterize the new life of the Christian as grounded in the act of salvation and standing in the sphere of the Spirit, in which the will of God is actually fulfilled as it could not be under the rule of the law.
This does not mean that the law as such is restored by the Spirit or—an even greater error—that it is replaced by a Christian variation on natural law. It concerns the circumstances described in Rom.2:26ff.
Exposition deriving from Western and Gentile-Christian tradition does not usually make it clear that for the apostle the moral and ceremonial law in the Torah of Moses forms an indissoluble unity (Enslin, Ethics, 85).
Only when one reduces this to a moral law can one postulate its ongoing validity in the church and adduce as proof of this the sayings of Jesus, Gal. 6:2, and exhortation in general. To do this, however, is to understand not only the law but the Spirit, too, otherwise than Paul does. Rom.8:5–8 are not a digression. A predominantly negative basis is offered for Rom.8:4.
What is done by bearers of the Spirit after the change of aeons was not yet possible for the flesh. Here one sees yet again that Paul does not oppose law and Spirit abstractly.
Since powers are at issue, what both of them involve can be appropriately defined through their relation to the one ruled by them.
The anthropology of the apostle has a verifying function, as was clear already in Rom.7. Rom.8:9–11 correspond to Rom 8:5–8. The Spirit effects eschatological life in righteousness and simultaneously gives assurance of bodily resurrection, which is anticipated in the new obedience made possible by him.
He is the power of the new creation of the end-time and as such links the present of faith to the future consummation. He does this by claiming bodily existence for God.
The law of the Spirit is nothing other than the Spirit himself in his ruling function in the sphere of Christ. He creates life and separates not only from sin and death but also from their instrument, the irreparably perverted law of Moses.
In this regard Paul agrees with the enthusiasts. God’s will is learned only through the Spirit. An essential part of Christian freedom is that it does not stand under a new law and that its obedience is oriented in the last resort, not to the Torah, but solely to the Kyrios.
The anacolouthon sharpens the “by grace alone” and presents the paradox of Rom.5:15ff.; 1 Cor. 1:21, according to which God begins where the earthly reaches its end. The ὁ θεός of Rom.8:3c, which is put first for emphasis, shows that there can be no bridge from the one to the other.
With the Christ event eschatological action brings another reality in which the Spirit does not simply make possible a better or an original understanding of the law but replaces it.
Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, ed. and trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, First edition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 215–216.
If God representatively on the cross judged and condemned sin in the fleshly sphere, the Spirit is for the apostle the power which sets us under the cross and under the judgment executed there. In so doing he rescues us from our autonomy and illusions and manifests the Crucified as the end of our own possibilities and the beginning of the wonderful divine possibilities by which we shall henceforth live the life of grace.
He does not do this by continuing the religiosity and morality which are demanded by the letter, and which are possible even in the old aeon. He does it by fashioning a new creature under the sign of the fulfilment of the divine will.
Only the Spirit gives freedom from the powers of sin and death. Since the Torah has been perverted by the flesh it cannot enable us to fulfil God’s will, without which that freedom does not exist.
As he releases us from the dominion of the powers, the Spirit evokes the new obedience and thus establishes the rights of the divine will which had been originally manifested in the law. The Christological interpolation, however, stands in the way of the natural assumption that the Spirit is simply the law correctly understood by illumination and restored to its original meaning, and thus the principle of Christian life and morality.
The Spirit is the supernatural power of grace which is based on the act of salvation and constantly directs us to it. God alone fulfils what he demands.
He does it paradoxically on the cross with the sending of his Son as a sin-offering, and therefore apart from and even in opposition to our cooperation If this interpretation is correct, the motif of the justification of the ungodly, as in Rom.4:17ff., is taken up in and maintained by that of the fashioning of a new creature.
There can be no talk of mystical relations, which is usually associated with the common but obscure and dangerous idea that union with Christ is the true work of the Spirit.
The Spirit points us back to the cross of Christ as the place of salvation.
He thus continually actualizes justification, sets us unceasingly in the sphere of power of the Crucified, and is the earthly presence of the exalted Lord. If the motif of union is to be used at all, it must be precisely understood as incorporation into the lordship of the Crucified.
Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, ed. and trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, First edition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 218,219.
“Unless we understand our task as ministers of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, in the midst of the great debate around us today, we cannot effectively make the Christ of God to be seen to be different from the false Christs of modern theology.
The Christ of Scripture, the Christ Paul preached, was an offense to the Greeks-this Christ condemned them as sinners and demanded their repentance. Our Christ-the Christ of Paul, if he is proclaimed truly-will similarly be an offense to modern, sophisticated, twentieth century man; but thanks be to God-to some he will be a savor of life unto life, the very power of God unto salvation to those who by grace believe.” (Eric D. Bristley, A Guide to the Writings of Cornelius Van Til 1895–1987., Electronic ed. (Olive Tree Communications: Chicago, 1995).)
Like Jesus, Paul teaches that the kingdom of God is both present (Rom. 14:17; 1 Cor. 4:20; Col. 1:13; 4:11) and future. It presents its saving power through the Spirit (1 Cor. 4:20 cf. Mt. 12:28; Lk. 11:20). It will be “inherited” not by natural, sinful people (1 Cor. 15:50; Gal. 5:21) but only by the righteous or those who are worthy of the kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Thess. 2:12; 2 Thess. 1:5; Gal. 5:21; cf. Mt. 5:20, 10) or by those who have been made God’s children and are so privileged to call God abba (Rom. 8:15–17; Gal. 4:6–7; cf. Mk. 10:15 par.).
Paul’s emphasis on divine grace corresponds to Jesus’ emphasis on the kingdom’s transcendental and grace character exhibited in his language of the kingdom “coming,” and on God’s “giving” it and people’s “receiving” or “inheriting” it. It is also seen in Jesus’ parables of the kingdom (Mt. 20:1–16; Lk. 7:36–50; 15:11–32; 18:9–14; Mk. 1:40–45).
Jesus’ summary of the Law in terms of the double commandments of love for God and for one’s neighbor, his critique of the contemporary Jewish understanding of the Law, and his disregard for the laws of the Sabbath, fasting, purity, table-fellowship, etc., find their close correspondence in Paul’s teaching on the Law and his criticism of the “works of the Law” as the means of justification.
Jesus’ blessing the poor and helping the outcasts—the “sinners” according to the Law—who respond to his kingdom preaching is not only continuous with Paul’s outreach to the Gentiles but also with his doctrine of the “justification of the ungodly” sola gratia
Paul’s soteriology, owe an explanation as to why Paul replaced the language of kingdom chiefly with the language of justification. Certainly the reason must be seen against the background of
“righteousness” being a central concern of the Jews, whether they were trying to earn salvation or remain in a saving covenant relationship with God by keeping the Law...
Further, it is connected also with his own conversion from a zeal for Law-righteousness to receiving God’s righteousness in Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:13–16; Phil. 3:4–11). From that experience, Paul saw clearly God’s saving act in Jesus Christ as God’s righteousness, and he realized also that righteousness/justification was the best category for bringing out the grace character of salvation over against the Jewish conception of Law-righteousness-salvation.
Seyoon Kim, “Jesus, Sayings Of,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 483–484.
“When a man dies with Christ, he dies to all the social groupings of the old age and is raised as a member of the body of Christ …, incorporated into the new fellowship and the new family..., For Minear, body of Christ, new family, Israel, and new man are not expressions of distinct ecclesiology's but complementary images for the same reality.
Further, the church is as exposed to the assaults of Satan as were Jesus and his first disciples. Indeed, “all the sins of the world: ambition and apathy, greed and hate, caste prejudice and adultery—yes, the whole repertoire of the devil’s lusts” are found in it.
“Therefore, the Church finds its solidarity in the need for forgiveness, not in the achievement of a stated level of righteousness.… Any judgment of the tares [alluding to Matt 13:24–30] that proceeds from self-righteousness simply conceals the sins of the judges”.
Still, each member “becomes a bearer of historical destiny,” just as Christ’s church is a “corporate bearer of historical destiny, with a mission for the whole world”. Important, then, is not what century we live in but whether we live in the old age or the new, for the battles and the issues are the same; “apart from faith, [we] belong to the same old age as did the unbelievers [in the first century]”.
Leander E. Keck, “Foreword,” in Images of the Church in the New Testament, ed. C. Clifton Black, John T. Carroll, and Beverly Roberts Gaventa, The New Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), xxiv–xxv.
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