Then what about the law: What then was the purpose of the law?
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
I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”, ( Gen. 18:18 KJV; Gen. 22:18 KJV; Gen.26:4 KJV; Gen. 27:29, Ex 23:22; Num 24:9; Acts 3:25 KJV; Gal 3:8) Gen. 12:3
Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. Gal. 3:16 KJVFor all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. Gen. 13:15
And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. Gen. 17:8
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice. Gen. 22:18
Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Ga 3:19.
Inevitably, this leads to an inevitable question: “What, then, was the purpose of the law?” (Ga 3:19). The answer is complex, and, judging by what he says elsewhere (e.g. Rom 7), Paul makes no attempt to give a complete answer in Galatians 3. But intrinsic to its significance is its function in preparation for the coming of Christ “when the set time had fully come” (Ga 4:4), which is itself the fulfillment of the promise.
D. A. Carson, “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the Old and the New,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul, ed. Peter T. O’Brien and Mark A. Seifrid, 181st ed., vol. 2, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Tübingen: Baker Academic; Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 412.
Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say “and to seeds,” as though referring to many, but referring to one, and to your seed Gen. 12:7; 13:15; 17:8; 24:7, who is Christ. Gal. 3:16
For if the inheritance comes from the law, it no longer comes from the promise, but God granted it to Abraham through the promise. (Rom 4:14; 8:17) Gal. 3:18
Why the Law then? It was added because of trespasses, having been ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. Gal. 3:19 An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (Gen 12:3; 22:18; Ps 132:11; Isa 11:1; Lk 1:32; Jn 7:42; Acts 2:30; 13:23; Rom 1:3; Gal 3:16) Matt. 1:1
There are of course numerous details in Gal.3:6–29 that are hotly debated, but here again we should not allow such uncertainties to obscure what is fairly obvious. In the first place, the argument is held together by Paul’s concern to show who are the true descendants of Abraham, whether they are referred to as his “sons” at the beginning of the discussion (Gal.3:7) or as his “seed” at the end (Gal.3:29).
In the second place, the latter passage speaks of Abraham’s true descendants as “heirs according to the promise,” and it is evident that the theme of inheritance (a concept integral to the notion of sonship) plays a key role as well. Thus, although the noun κληρονομία-inheritance occurs only once (Gal.3:18), an allusion to inheritance is implicit whenever the apostle speaks of the promise.
Moisés Silva, “Faith Versus Works of Law in Galatians,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul, ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, 181st ed., vol. 2, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Tübingen: Baker Academic; Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 239.
for Paul, the Messiah represents his people. They are summed up “in him.” When God looks at the Christos, he sees all those who belong to him, who have come “into him” in baptism, who are “clothed with him,” who are “one in him”—and who, in particular, have died and risen with him, as in Gal.2:19-20.
To risk an overused word, he constitutes their identity. They are, in other words, “Israel,” Abraham’s family. Incorporation and participation are central Pauline ways of speaking about the church; for him, the church is Israel, and that identity is focused on Israel’s Messiah. N. T. Wright, “Messiahship in Galatians?,” in Galatians and Christian Theology: Justification, The Gospel, and Ethics in Paul’s Letter, ed. Mark W. Elliott et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 18.
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.
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
1 Cor. 15:56 .Yet death for Paul is not just an intrusion; in some sense it is also an intruder, a personal and cosmic, power who demonically reigns in this age (Rom.5:14, 17; cf. 1 Cor 15:25–26). In this respect it is like sin; indeed, death is the manifestation of sin’s reign (Rom.5:21). Here, of course, we see Paul employing the mythological language of apocalyptic to characterize a biological and ethical phenomenon as a cosmological tyrant.
To summarize, in the space of a relatively brief passage, Paul’s understanding of death exhibits the blending of no fewer than four different shades of meaning: death as the consequence and concomitant of sin, as a means of sacrificial atonement, as an intrusion into the order designed by God, and as an intruder that tyrannizes the present age.
This comparison affords Paul the opportunity to speak of the release of the Christian from the law by that death accomplished through participation in the body of Christ (Rom.7:1, 4). For Paul such a release is fundamental, because the law has been commandeered by sin: that is, by the power of sin...
the law has become an instrument whereby human beings strive to live to themselves and not to God
(cf. Rom.7:5), with the result that the law now actually increases the trespass and effects death (see Rom.5:20–21; 1 Cor. 15:56; 2 Cor 3:6).
Implicitly, therefore, death is also a power commensurate with sin, from under whose lordship believers have been transferred to the lordship of Christ (see Rom.7:6). Paradoxically, death is thus both the oppressor and the medium by which Christians are liberated from that oppression. We should be quite clear that Paul’s argument at this point is significantly different from later rabbinic conceptions. The latter, as we have observed, can depict death as atonement for transgression, even as does Paul.
But the idea of a transference of lordships, culminating in the law’s abrogation, is as foreign to rabbinic theology as it is fundamental to Pauline thought.
Thus Sanders (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 547): “The difference is between saying that one dies on account of transgression and that one dies to an enslaving power as a means of gaining liberty.”
For the point that he wishes to drive home here is similar to that which we witnessed in Rom.7:5: through sin’s deceitful use of the law to arouse human desires for life through legal fulfillment, humanity prior to Christ had become increasingly and unbridgeable estranged from God (Rom.7:7–8). C. Clifton Black II, “Pauline Perspectives on Death in Romans 5–8,” Journal of Biblical Literature 103 (1984): 421,426.
Unlike some Hellenistic views, death is not primarily an ontological imperfection with unfortunate physiological consequences from which release is sought. Nor is it a neutral process that entails no adjustment of values beyond the grave (the Epicurean view, to which many moderns are unknowingly indebted).
For the apostle, death is basically a moral fact, the tragic result of Adam’s transgression.
When believers die with Christ, that to which they die—that is, that from which they are released—is sin (Rom 6:2, 10–11; 8:13; cf. Rom 6:6b, 7, 8; 7:1, 4, 6; 8:10–11). This, in turn, marks an important transvaluation of certain traditional Jewish perspectives, to which many Christians today still cling: it is no longer a matter of behaving ethically in this life so that God will remember us at our death (which, after all, would be but another hubristic and futile exercise in justification by works).
Precisely the reverse is asserted by Paul: those who are members of the body of Christ ought to walk in ways of righteousness because already they have been brought from death to new life (see Rom.6:13, 19). C. Clifton Black II, “Pauline Perspectives on Death in Romans 5–8,” Journal of Biblical Literature 103 (1984): 432–433.
“Death with Christ” comes as a result of the believers’ death to sin Rom.6:2 and is one of the metaphors Paul uses to describe the transfer they experience when they leave the old aeon of death “in Adam” and enter the new aeon of life “in Christ.” Jonathan R. Pratt, “The Relationship between Justification and Spiritual Fruit in Romans 5–8,” Themelios 34, no. 2 (2009): 169.
O LORD, may you ordain peace for us, for indeed, all that we have done, you have done for us. Isa. 26:12 (Isa. 26:3, 64:8)
I. THE PECULIAR BLESSING OF THE GOSPEL. Salvation.
This implies a bondage, in which the whole human race is involved. Not content with its sway in this world, sin pursues the sinner even beyond the grave. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” In the midst of this universal corruption, the voice of the Eternal, re–echoed by the sinner’s conscience, rolls—“The soul that sins it shall die.”
“Cursed is every one that continues not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.” Is not this a yoke from which deliverance is essential? Yes! and from this the gospel proclaims deliverance: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us”; and His disciples are emancipated, not only from the guilt, but also from the power of sin.
II. THE CHANNEL THROUGH WHICH THIS BLESSING IS CONVEYED. “Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Salvation is not the reward of merit, but the gift of grace; not the purchase of man’s desert, but the unearned bounty of God’s free favor. As it is freely offered, so must it be freely accepted. No unbelieving doubts and hesitation on account of the magnitude of the gift and our own unworthiness to receive it; no Pharisaical standing–out upon conditions which, if required, could never be fulfilled; but a humbling sense of our own unworthiness, coupled with a grateful sense of God’s undeserved mercy.
Free grace shines conspicuous throughout the whole plan of man’s salvation. It was grace that planned the remedy before yet the disease was felt; it is grace that renders that remedy effectual. The Church was hewn out by grace, and by grace all its members are, as lively stones, built into a spiritual temple; and when the whole edifice shall be perfected, the Head–stone thereof shall be brought forth with shouting's, crying “Grace! grace!” unto it Zech.4:7. Unhumbled men will doubtless be offended at this, and rejecting salvation as a gift, will endeavor to earn it as a reward by seeking to establish some distinction between themselves and more vulgar sinners; but this is all labor in vain.
It has pleased God to pronounce, on the one hand, that “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight”; and on the other, that man is “saved by grace through faith.”
Salvation through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only salvation recognized in the Bible;
the only salvation that will either exalt the holiness, vindicate the justice, and magnify the mercy of God, or speak peace to the sinner’s conscience and assure him of acceptance with God. Such, then, is the peculiar blessing of the gospel. A salvation altogether of grace, decreed by the grace of God the Father, wrought out by the grace of God the Son, and applied and rendered effectual by the grace of God the Holy Ghost.
Joseph S. Exell, The Biblical Illustrator (Acts): Or Anecdotes, Similes, Emblems, Illustrations; Expository, Scientific, Geographical, Historical, and Homiletic, Gathered from a Wide Range of Home and Foreign Literature, on the Verses of the Bible (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 434–435.
Faith is therefore to be considered as the gift of God, not on account of its being offered by God to man, to be accepted or rejected at his pleasure, but because it is in reality conferred upon him, breathed and infused into him; nor even because God bestows the power or ability to believe, and then expects that man should by the exercise of his own free will consent to the terms of salvation and actually believe in Christ, but because...
He who works in man both to will and to work, and indeed all things in all, produces both the will to believe and the act of believing also
Historic Creeds and Confessions, electronic ed. (Oak Harbor: Lexham Press, 1997). Canons of Dordt ARTICLE 14
for by grace have you been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them American Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995), Eph 2:8–10.
Wherefore, the works here excluded by the apostle are those works which the Ephesians now performed, when they were believers, quickened with Christ; even the “works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them,” as he expressly declared, Eph 2:10. And these works he excludes, not only in opposition unto grace, but in opposition unto faith also: “Through faith; not of works.” Wherefore he doth not only reject their merit, as inconsistent with grace, but their co-interest on our part with, or subsequent interest unto faith, in the work of justification before God.
If we are saved by grace, through faith in Christ, exclusively unto all works of obedience whatever, then cannot such works be the whole or any part of our righteousness unto the justification of life: wherefore, another righteousness we must have, or perish for ever. Many things I know are here offered, and many distinctions coined, to retain some interest of works in our justification before God; but whether it be the safest way to trust unto them, or unto this plain, express, divine testimony, will not be hard for any to determine, when they make the case their own.
“If good works be thus excluded from our justification before God, then of what use are they? we may live as we list, utterly neglect them, and yet be justified.” And this very objection do some men continue to manage with great vehemency against the same doctrine. We meet with nothing in this cause more frequently, than that “if our justification before God be not of works, some way or other, if they be not previously required thereunto, if they are not a previous condition of it, then there is no need of them,—men may safely live in an utter neglect of all obedience unto God.”
And on this theme men are very apt to enlarge themselves, who otherwise give no great evidences of their own evangelical obedience. To me it is marvelous that they heed not unto what party they make an accession in the management of this objection,—namely, unto that of them who were the adversaries of the doctrine of grace taught by the apostle. John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 5 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 361–363.
That the confession of the counsel of God has often been abused in this way is most certainly true. Nor has it been since Augustine and Calvin alone that this abuse has been practiced. It happened already in the days of Jesus and the apostles.
For it is said of the Pharisees and scribes that they rejected the counsel of God against themselves which became apparent to them in the baptism of John, so that what should have served them as a means of conversion became in their hands an instrument for their doom (Luke 7:30).
The apostle Paul calls it blasphemy when he is charged with lauding the doing of evil in order that good might come out of it
(Rom. 3:8), and he puts a restraining hand on the mouth of puny man who dares find fault with God (Rom. 9:19–20). Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, trans. Henry Zylstra (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 251.
There are many Christians who, at least in their practical life, think very differently about this. They acknowledge that they are justified through the righteousness which Christ has accomplished, but they maintain or at least act as though they hold that they must be sanctified by a holiness that they must themselves achieve. If this were true, then we, in flat contradiction of the apostolic testimony, (Rom. 6:14; Gal. 4:31; 5:1, 13.) would not be living under grace in freedom but under the bondage of the law. Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, trans. Henry Zylstra (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 458.
When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He freed him from his natural bondage under sin; (Col. 1:13, John 8:34, 36) and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; (Phil. 2:13, Rom. 6:18, 22) yet so, that by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil. (Gal. 5:17, Rom. 7:15, 18–19, 21, 23)
The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only. (Eph. 4:13, Heb. 12:23, 1 John 3:2, Jude 24) Chapter IX, 4. This effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from any thing at all foreseen in man, (2 Tim. 1:9, Tit. 3:4–5, Eph. 2:4–5, 8–9) who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, (1 Cor. 2:14, Rom. 8:7, Eph. 2:5) he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it. (John 6:37, John 5:25) Chapter X, 2 . The Westminster Confession of Faith (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996).
Against the Roman Scholastics, Luther claimed that grace is not a created quality infused in the soul making it righteous. He held that grace is both a disposition in God and an activity of God.
Luther particularly scorned the Scholastic system of merits. “God has never given anyone grace and eternal life for the merit of congruity or the merit of condignity.” Law (with its call for works) and grace (as divine gift) are antithetic one to another.
“The law says ‘do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.”
Bruce A. Demarest, The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation, Foundations of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997), 66–67.
The Spirit’s convicting the world ‘about sin, righteousness and judgment’
We have already established that the ascended Messiah mediates the reign of the Father to the earth in the power of his Spirit. In one of his final interpretive acts of the Father’s will Christ Jesus indicated as much to his disciples as they gathered for the last Passover meal together. At that time Jesus spoke of the Spirit’s convicting the world ‘about sin, righteousness and judgment’.
The consequence of this activity will be that the general notion of sin according to the Law will be superseded by antagonism towards Christ Jesus: ‘they do not believe in me’ (John 16:9).
In complementary terms the concept of righteousness is now bound up in the relationship between the Father and the Son.
David A. Höhne, The Last Things, ed. Gerald Bray, Contours of Christian Theology (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2019), 172
The subjects come from all over the world (Isa.2:2) to the mountain of the Lord (Isa.24:23; 2:2, 3; 4:5; 11:9; 65:25). There they receive the gifts which only God can bestow: the destruction of death and the removal of the sorrow which accompanies it. This is the key to the richness of the feast—it is the food and drink of life (John 4:13–14; 6:35, 58; 7:37–38) John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1–39, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), 463.
Because he poured out the Spirit, it argued the merit of his righteousness; for otherwise he could not, in that manner, have given the Holy Spirit. And, indeed, that what is chiefly meant here is that righteousness of his by which we are justified, this may persuade us, that so many and so great things are spoken concerning it in the Holy Scriptures.
“My salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed:” Isa. 56:1 “To bring in everlasting righteousness:” Dan. 9:27, “This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness.” Jer. 23:6, And in the Epistles of the apostles, especially those of St. Paul, this righteousness is frequently and highly celebrated, seeming, indeed, the main and principal subject of the doctrines of the gospel.
let this serve for all; Rom. 1:17, “For therein” [viz. in the gospel] “is the righteousness of God revealed ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν, from faith to faith:”
The law teaches faith; that is, that we believe in God. But the gospel directs us to proceed ‘from faith to faith,’ viz. from faith in God to faith in Christ: for true and saving faith is not a mere naked recumbency immediately upon God [ a mere intellectual acknowledgment of God], which faith the Jews were wont to profess, but faith in God by the mediation of faith in Christ.
In the law the righteousness of God was revealed condemning, but in the gospel it was revealed justifying the sinner.
And this is the great mystery of the gospel, that sinners are justified not only through the grace and mere compassion and mercy of God, but through divine justice and righteousness too, that is, through the righteousness of Christ, who is Jehovah, “the Lord our Righteousness.”
And the Spirit of truth when he came did reprove and instruct the world concerning these two great articles of faith, wherein the Jews had so mischievously deceived themselves; that is, concerning true saving faith, faith in Christ; and also concerning the manner or formal cause of justification, viz. the righteousness of Christ. John Lightfoot, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica, Matthew-1 Corinthians: , Luke-John, vol. 3 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 408–409.
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.
And now let us reflect upon this passage of our Savior, “He that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” They agree with what he had said before to the Samaritan woman, chap. John.4:14; and both expressions are upon the occasion of drawing of water.
The Jews acknowledge that the latter Redeemer is to procure water for them, as their former redeemer Moses had done. But as to the true meaning of this, they are very blind and ignorant, and might be better taught by the Messiah here, if they had any mind to learn.
I. Our Savior calls them to a belief in him from their own boast and glorying in the law: and therefore I rather think those words, as the Scripture hath said, should relate to the foregoing clause, “Whosoever believeth in me, as the Scripture hath spoken about believing, ‘I lay in Sion for a foundation a tried stone: he that believeth,’ Isaiah 28:16; ‘The just shall live by his faith.’Habak. 2:4. And the Jews themselves confess, that six hundred and thirteen precepts of the law may all be reduced to this, “The just shall live by faith;” and to that of Amos 5:6, “Seek the Lord, and ye shall live.”
II. Let these words, then, of our Savior be set in opposition to this right and usage in the feast of Tabernacles of which we have been speaking: “Have you such wonderful rejoicing at drawing a little water from Siloam? He that believes in me, whole rivers of living waters shall flow out of his own belly.
Do you think the waters mentioned in the prophets do signify the law? They do indeed denote the Holy Spirit, which the Messiah will dispense to those that believe in him: and do you expect the Holy Spirit from the law, or from your rejoicing in the law? The Holy Spirit is of faith, and not of the law,” Gal. 3:2. John Lightfoot, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica, Matthew-1 Corinthians: , Luke-John, vol. 3 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 323–324.
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.
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.
These are the spirits who were thought to move the stars and, consequently, the universe. They lived in ‘the heavens’, (Eph.1:20; 3:10; Phil. 2:10), or in ‘the air’, Eph. 2:2, i.e. the space between the surface of the earth and the heaven where God lives. Some of them are among the ‘elemental principles of the world’, Gal. 4:3. They disobeyed God and want to enslave the human race to themselves in sin, Eph.2:2. We used to be their slaves but Christ came to free us, (Eph.1:19–21; Col 1:13; 2:15, 20), and if Christians are armed with the power of Christ, they will be able to fight them.
Henry Wansbrough, ed., The New Jerusalem Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 1990), 1939.
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.
If I have gazed at the sun when it was shining or at the moon moving in splendor (Dt 4:19; 17:3; Eze. 8:16), so that my heart was secretly enticed and I threw them a kiss, this would also be an iniquity deserving punishment, for I would have denied God above. Job 31:26–28
The significant role of the Moon-god in various forms of Yahwistic divination and astrology is underscored in other biblical passages. As Psa. 121:6 suggests, in certain Yahwistic circles the Moon-god was held to be an oracular god whose brightness could wreak havoc on its victims, rendering an individual a ‘lunatic’.
The psalmist on the other hand, claims that Yahweh possesses the power to restrain such ominous lunar forces. Isa. 47:13 refers to the making of astrological prognostications at the time of the new moons. According to the mantic wisdom reflected in Prov. 7:20, the moon’s waning was considered an unpropitious time for the conducting of business. In Jer. 2:24, the appearance of the new moon is intimately connected with menstruation.
The new moon also appears together with the sabbath as sacred times requiring restricted trade (Amos 8:5), special sacrifice (Isa. 1:13) or as a time especially conducive to the consultation of a prophet (2 Kgs. 4:23). In fact, should those religious practices deemed unacceptable by some Yahwistic prophetic circles become attached to the new moon festivals, certain prophets did not hesitate to condemn them (Amos 8:5; Hos. 2:11; Isa. 1:13).
B. B. Schmidt, “Moon,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 589–590.
The moon will be put to shame and the sun disgraced, because the LORD of Armies will reign as king on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and he will display his glory in the presence of his elders (Is 2:2–4; 1Co 15:54). Isaiah 25:1
When I blot you out, I will cover the heavens and make their stars dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light (Prov 13:9; Isa 13:10; 34:4; Joel 2:31; 3:15; Am 8:9; Mt 24:29; Rev 6:12, 13). All the shining lights of the heavens I will darken above you and put darkness on your land, says the Lord GOD. Ezekiel 32:7–8
As for the biblical prohibitions, the worship of the Moon-god Yareah is prohibited in three Deuteronomistic texts and in one prophetic text of Deuteronomistic orientation: Deut. 4:19; 17:3; 2 Kgs 23:5; Jer. 8:2 (cf. also Wis. 13:2). All four of these texts originate in the late pre-exilic period or thereafter. As mentioned previously, the illicit character of the lunar cult in Yahwistic religion is also dealt with in the post-exilic passage Job 31:26.
What developments created the need to address the specific issue of astral worship in Deuteronomistic circles?
2 Kgs 23:5 preserves a tradition in which priests burned incense not only to Baal, but also to the moon, the sun, and the constellations, that is, to all the hosts of heaven throughout Judah and the Jerusalem environs. This passage also recounts how king Josiah of Judah purged these priests from the region. In 2 Kgs 21:3–5, king Manasseh is accused of worshipping the hosts of heaven and building altars to them in the two temple courts.
In the light of 2 Kgs 23:5, the hosts of heaven in 2 Kgs 21:3–5 most likely include the moon along with the sun and stars or constellations. In any case, 2 Kgs 23:12 claims that Josiah tore down the altars in the temple courts that Manasseh had built, but notes that he also pulled down the roof-top altars on the upper chamber of Ahaz that had been built, not by Manasseh, but by ‘the kings of Judah’. This may be an echo of the lunar cult’s longstanding pervasiveness in ancient Judahite religion.
B. B. Schmidt, “Moon,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 590–592.
References to stoicheia occur seven times in the New Testament. The only instance that seems certain with respect to meaning is Hebrews 5:12, where stoicheia describes the law (“basic principles of the oracles of God”). When it comes to Paul’s use of the term (Col 2:8, 20; and Gal 4:3, 9), there is no consensus among scholars as to his meaning. The general context of Paul’s discussion in Galatians 4 and Colossians 2 includes spiritual forces—angels, principalities and powers, false gods—which suggests stoicheia may refer to such beings.
He is certainly contrasting stoicheia with salvation in Christ in some way. Since Paul is speaking to both Jews and Gentiles, he might be using the term in different ways with respect to each audience. With a Jewish audience in view in Galatians 4:1–7, Paul’s use of stoicheia in Gal.4:3 likely refers to the law and religious teaching (similar to Heb 5:12). But in Gal.4:8–11, where the audience shifts to Gentiles, it seems coherent to see stoicheia in Gal.4:9 as referring to spiritual beings—probably astral deities (the “Fates”). The reference to “times and seasons and years” (Gal.4:10) would therefore point to astrological beliefs, not the Jewish calendar.
Paul is therefore denying the idea that the celestial objects (sun, moon, stars) are deities. His Gentile readers should not be enslaved by the idea that these objects controlled their destiny.
In terms of the “Colossian heresy,” both Jews and Gentiles are likely in view; hence the term stoicheia would have had meaning for both audiences. Paul links what he says about stoicheia to the “worship of angels” (Col 2:18). Given that Paul and other New Testament writers have the Jewish law dispensed by angels (Gal 3:19; Acts 7:53; Heb 2:2), some scholars argue that, for Jewish readers, the stoicheia of Colossians may refer to a heresy that enslaved Jews to the law—including flawed worship of the angels associated with delivering the law to Israel.
For Gentiles, these “angels” and the ascetic “regulations” of Colossians 2:20–21 may speak to a heretical emphasis on keeping in sync with pagan rituals and celestial divinities, who were thought to be angered when those rituals were neglected.
Whatever the ultimate, precise meaning, the contrast with the gospel of grace was crystal clear.
Believers in Christ are no longer enslaved to spiritual forces of any kind. Legal demands and ritual obligations have been nailed to the cross (Col. 2:14), resulting in forgiveness and freedom.
Michael S. Heiser, The Bible Unfiltered: Approaching Scripture on Its Own Terms (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017), 198–199.
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.
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.
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.
Comments
Post a Comment