Sunday 31 December 2017
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The Paradoxical Love of the Cross
By Donald G. Bloesch
The most significant revelation of God's grace and God's love ever given to mankind is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The divine mystery, revealed openly in the cross of Christ, contains heights we cannot scale and depths we cannot plumb. It is a truly amazing paradox! Now, I choose the word "paradox" intentionally. By paradox I have in mind a reality or event that encompasses elements that appear to be contradictory. It is not a logical riddle but the breaking in of a new horizon of meaning that cannot be fully assimilated by the human intellect. When I speak of the cross as the revelation of God's paradoxical love, I mean the cross not simply as an event in past history but as an abiding reality that impinges upon human life in every age. Yet it always appears as something unexpected and out of the ordinary.
The Mystery of Agape
When I use the term "love" in this meditation I will be referring mainly to agape - the primary word for love in the Greek New Testament. Agape is a unique kind of love, a love that the natural person simply does not know. It is unconditional love - not dependent on the worth of the one who is loved. It is gratuitous love - given to the undeserving. In this sense it is close to the meaning of grace. It is a love that "does not seek its own" as Paul describes it (cf. 1 Cor. 13:5, KJV). It does not seek its own perfection or fulfillment. It is self-sacrificing, not self-regarding. It finds its fulfillment in the sacrifice of itself, in letting go of the self in order that others might live. It is the kind of love that creates value in the one that is loved, rather than the love that finds value.
Martin Luther, who rediscovered the meaning of agape - its depth and breadth as seen in the New Testament - astutely observed: "Sinners are beautiful because they are loved. They are not loved because they are beautiful." [1] This admirably sums up the essence of agape as the power of creative transformation.
This unique love, found perfectly in God, is often contrasted with another kind of love, eros. Eros is the spiritual love that the Greek philosophers and poets often celebrated. It is the love that seeks unity with the highest and aspires to fulfillment and perfection in union with God. This type of love has made a significant impact on Christian theology through the ages. It has been very important in the development of Christian mysticism.
I confess that I have a kind of love-hate relationship with mysticism. On the one hand, I appreciate so many of the classics of spirituality that have their source in Christian mysticism. Yet at the same time I cannot deny a tension, sometimes even a cleavage, between the claims of the mystics and the gospel of free grace. It is significant that the word eros does not appear in the New Testament.
Another Greek word for love, philia, refers to friendship or mutual love. It has an important role in cementing human relationships, but it is never unconditional. It has its rightful place in the Christian life, but it is not the supernatural love that we know as agape. Philia goes out to those who share common interests. Agape goes out to all, even to those who are our adversaries.
Agape, the paradoxical love of the cross, is a sign of both divine judgment and divine mercy. It reveals the powerlessness of Jesus Christ on the cross as the supreme power in the universe. It is a sign of judgment united with mercy, of power united with meekness. It slays even while it heals, it overcomes even while it submits. It perseveres even while it relents. It is both a crucified love and a conquering love.
The eminent German theologian Jurgen Moltmann in his book, The Crucified God, speaks of God's love as a crucified love. My primary criticism of Moltmann's book, and for that matter of his theological system in general, is that he tends to lose sight of this other dimension of love - that it is triumphant. To have a full Christian perspective we need more than a theology of the cross. We also need a theology of the resurrection and the ascension. Let us also say a theology of Pentecost. A theology of the cross has to be held in tension with a theology of glory. We not only suffer and die with Christ, but we also have a foretaste of the glory that is to be revealed on the last day.
Agape unites love as law and love as grace. In agape we see the paradoxical unity of obligation and permission. It lifts one upward even while it proceeds downward. I am sure most of you are familiar with that inspiring gospel song, "The Love of God," which speaks of God's love this way: "It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell." Love reaches both up and down.
I was brought up on German chorales of the former Evangelical Synod of North America. We had other hymns as well, but the chorales made an indelible impression on me. I still recall the words of one of those hymns:
In Thy service, Lord of mercy,
We would find our chief delight.
Show us then some place to labor
In Thy kingdom, Lord of light. [2]
This is indeed the love of the cross: finding delight in lowly service rather than in possession of the highest good. This love of the cross is both all inclusive and all exclusive. It is the first because it goes out to all people, to the elect and to the reprobate, to the lost and the saved, no matter what their race or creed. Yet it is also exclusive because it calls upon people to enter by the narrow gate and walk the straight way (Matt. 7:13-14). The costly road of discipleship is under the cross.
Metaphors for Love
There are a number of metaphors for love that we find in Scripture. One of these is a torrent of rain. This is also a metaphor for grace. God sends His rain, His grace, to fall upon us. We see this in the words of our Lord, "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:45, NIV). Here one discerns another metaphor for love - the shining of the sun. On the basis of his biblical study, Luther referred to love as a "furnace of fire."
Some metaphors for love are misleading. One example is an artesian well. You dig down and make contact. But love is not a power waiting to be tapped or released. It is not gained by digging deeper into the self. In evangelical Christianity love means getting out of yourself, getting away from yourself, getting into the needs, hopes and desires of others.
It is also a mistake to depict love as a magnet that draws all things to itself. This is the idea of love found in Buddhism, where we have the image of the Buddha under the Bo-tree with his enigmatic smile, a symbol of perfect equanimity or tranquility. The supposition is that such persons will draw other people to themselves by virtue of their inner achievement and inner contentment. This image of the perfected holy person conflicts with the New Testament portrayal of Christ, who is always active, even in prayer. He is the Good Shepherd seeking the lost sheep. He is compared to a woman who diligently seeks for the lost coin. Christ is Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven" who pursues sinners even into the darkness. In Buddhism, religion is a quest for inner peace, a peace that is apparent in specially holy persons. In Christianity, true religion is a witness - to what God has already done for us and for the whole world in the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Those of you who are conversant with process theology and philosophy will know that in these circles love is sometimes described in terms suggestive of a vacuum cleaner, which sucks in almost everything but leaves out the coarse material. Yet agape love does not leave out the coarse material; it sanctifies it.
Although agape is divine in its source, it is both human and divine in its goal. It is directed to God as well as to our neighbor in need. It is particular in its origin, but it is universal in its outreach. It is directed to God even while it is directed to our neighbor. Why? Because we meet God in our neighbor. When agape is directed to God it takes the 1161 form of up-welling joy, thanksgiving and praise. It is not a conscious effort to ascend upward mystically to God; it is being lifted into the very presence of God by free grace.
Some of you may be familiar with the Roman Catholic Carmelite nun of nineteenth-century France, Therese of Lisieux. She had considerable difficulty with the piety of her cloister - its orientation to merit and gaining security through human works. She finally discovered, through her private reading of Scripture, the message of free grace. This is why some of the other nuns felt threatened by her. Her vision represented an attack on the very foundation of their religious life as sisters. Therese expressed discomfort with the metaphor of the stairway to perfection, a product of mystical spirituality. It conveys the impression that heaven must be conquered, that salvation is attained by climbing upwards. She much preferred the metaphor of the lift to heaven - the elevator of free grace. All that is necessary is a simple act of faith. She had not read the Reformers, and if she had she probably would have been reprimanded. Yet she had studied holy Scripture and had come to discern its message. She made the grand discovery echoed in the old gospel song, "Love Lifted Me." We are lifted into the presence of God, into fellowship with Him, through love. [3]
Movements in Love
There are movements in love. There is an upward movement to God, and there is a downward movement. There is also an outward movement to both neighbor and the world. One of my difficulties with Anders Nygren's celebrated work Agape and Eros [4] is that he makes little if any place for love directed to God. In his interpretation agape is focused only on our neighbor, whereas faith is focused on God. My reading of Scripture tells me that love to God is as crucial as love to our neighbor, perhaps even more so.
The point is that in loving God we do truly love our neighbor. In seeking the glory of God we will seek the welfare of our neighbor. The ancient church father, Irenaeus, put it this way, "The glory of God is man fully alive." There is no separation then between serving God and serving our neighbor. God is glorified when we go out to the lost and forsaken. We need to remember the directive of General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army: "Go for souls and go for the worst." As we descend into the depths we are actually closer to God than if we would try to lift ourselves by works of merit up to the spiritual realm above the depths, i.e., above our material world. The wondrous story of the gospel is God's descent to earth in the person of His Son and in the person of His Spirit at Pentecost. Once we receive the grace of God that sets us free from the power of sin and death we are then motivated to offer our lives to God as a living sacrifice in thanksgiving for what God has done for us and in us. We are also motivated to share the good news of Christ's glorious coming with all with whom we come in contact. We reach up to clasp the hand of God in thanksgiving, and we reach out to clasp the hands of those who are perishing in order to bring them to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Problem of Self Love
What about self-love? Is there a place for such a concept in the Christian life? Many of those who have made accommodation to eros spirituality also make a prominent place for self-love. They will go so far as to say, "You have to learn to love yourself rightly before you can love God." They claim that self-love is actually the basis for all other kinds of love. Even the eminent theologian St. Augustine held that there is a wrong love of self and a right love of self. By the latter he meant the love of the spiritual self or the higher self, which is within us.
We seem to receive a divine sanction for self-love when Jesus gave the great commandment, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind ... And ... You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:36-39; Luke 10:25-28, NKJ). The question to be asked, however, is whether this is really an injunction to love ourselves or simply an acknowledgment that we naturally love ourselves, and thus we should love our neighbor with the same force that we apply to the service of ourselves.
My perception is that in the New Testament self-love is consistently something to be overcome. We are not commanded to love ourselves, though self-love is recognized as inherent in our very beings. The goal is to rise above this love of self into the love of neighbor and the love of God. When we do this we will have a sense of self-worth, a sense of dignity and of self-identity, but it is derivative worth, not an inherent worth. Our worth, our significance, our status all derive from God and depend completely upon God. We must not seek to advance; to adulate, or to exalt the self.
Invariably the question arises, "Does agape exclude hope?" When we talk about hope, we are, of course, referring to an abiding Christian virtue. Hope really means "hoping for ourselves." Biblical Christians would have difficulty with the French Quietist, Fenelon, who said that we are to "love God without fear and without hope." [5] God wants us to hope for our own salvation, and to hope for the salvation of others. He does not want us to hope for these things as ends in themselves, but rather as means to the advancement of God's kingdom and as means to God's glory. We should be willing to abandon self-salvation for the salvation of the world (cf. Rom. 9:3; Ex. 32:32). Here again we come to the paradox of true love (Matt. 10:39). By losing ourselves we find ourselves in the end. We actually gain our lives when we lose our lives.
Reinhold Niebuhr, who had some profound things to say on the subject of love, concluded that Christianity rules out self-love but not self-realization. [6] Self-realization, however, comes as the byproduct, never the goal. It is the consequence, not the purpose of Christian endeavor.
There is nothing inherently wrong with natural love, the love of self. But due to our sin all natural loves have become questionable, and therefore they must be redeemed. Philia and eros both need to be transformed. A true regard for self breaks self-centeredness! But this true regard for self is no longer self-love, but rather a love that rises above the self. The self, in my opinion, should never be the object of love. The self instead should be the channel of love, or the agent of love.
Love and Faith
In the Sixteenth-century debate on works and grace, a critical distinction was made between love and faith; The Roman Catholic side seemed to hold that we are justified by faith plus works of love. The Reformers argued that we are justified by faith, indeed only by faith, but it is never a faith without works of love. Another way to phrase this is that we are justified by faith alone and sanctified by faith working through love, or sanctified by works of love.
I would not want to leave the impression that justification by faith alone is the whole of the gospel. I would rather say that it belongs to the essence of the gospel. I make this point because it is important to affirm that the gospel includes sanctification. Luther seemed to say much the same when he warned his followers that Calvary must be supplemented by Pentecost. After the Reformation had crystallized he began to see that many of the people who had accepted his gospel of salvation by free grace alone were living more immoral lives than when they were Catholics. He realized that he had been leaving something out, namely, the power of Pentecost - the cleansing and purifying power of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost needs to be acknowledged, and preached in conjunction with the message of the cross. Faith and love are correlatives: they belong together. So we say of faith that it receives, while love descends. Faith relays, while love creates. God loves us, but we too love in the power of God's love. Our love, our agape love, corresponds with God's love. Our love is an echo of His love, a mirror of His love. Once it is separated from God, human love becomes simply mutual love. Mutual love is a good thing, for it is surely better than no love at all. Yet it is not redeeming love. We are redeemed only by God's love for us, not by our love for God or by our love for our neighbor. Yet our love for both God and neighbor is a sign of God's love for us.
Faith is the root, love is the fruit. Faith is the foundation, love is the flower that blooms, the evidence of whether our faith is false or genuine. Faith works through love, and love works from faith and toward faith. Love works toward faith because all who love will seek to share the gospel of redemption and reconciliation with those they meet. As I have already said, we are justified by faith, but we are sanctified by love.
Love and Hope
I wish now to delve more deeply into the mystery of the relationship of love and hope. The three theological virtues, so-called, are faith, hope and love. In evangelical Protestantism we do not actually see these three as virtues but rather as gifts from God. In another sense they are works. Why? Because faith means believing, and that is, in one sense, a work. Love means exercising or practicing something. Hope is a work, too, in the sense that hope involves actually hoping. Hope, furthermore, is a direct fruit of faith (Rom. 5:4-5).
Rudolph Bultmann, one of the twentieth century's most influential biblical scholars, had some profound insights into Paul's conception of hope. (I acknowledge that Bultmann's overall system was heretical, but we need to remember that there is a remnant of orthodoxy in every heresy, just as there is a taint of heresy in every orthodoxy.)
It is important to note the very real differences between natural hope and spiritual hope. Spiritual hope is centered in God. It is theocentric, not anthropocentric. Furthermore, spiritual hope has a social dimension. It is not just personal or individual. We hope not just for ourselves but for the coming of the kingdom and the triumph of the kingdom in the world. Luther said it well, "To give much is His delight and glory, and He is pleased if we expect much good from Him." [8]
God is pleased when we hope for ourselves, for others and for the triumph of His kingdom. Some years ago I asked one of my brightest students at Dubuque Theological Seminary to write a paper on hope. His paper contained this very profound statement: "Far from being anthropocentric this hope represents the very abandonment of the self and its center in favor of the Christocentric working of God's Spirit." I wholeheartedly agree!
This is precisely where I have another criticism of Anders Nygren. He speaks much about love and much about faith but leaves out the element of hope. I think he does this for a purpose. He wants to make agape completely theocentric, i.e., completely centered in God. Yet when one speaks of hope one really has to include the self in some way. A genuinely Christian perspective is really theoanthropocentric because Christian life is centered in God and humanity at one and the same time.
Paradoxical Aspects of Love
I would like now to examine more closely the paradoxes associated with agape. It is both submission and conquest. It is both self-emptying and self-fulfilling. It contains both sorrow and joy. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He went to the cross in sorrow, almost at the point of despair, yet the angels in heaven were singing because they saw in His cross the defeat of Satan. They witnessed the glory of the cross. Love is both upward and downward. It goes up to God and down to those in need.
Furthermore, love is both motivated and unmotivated. Anders Nygren spends much time insisting that agape is unmotivated. There is nothing that motivates God to love us. There is no worth in ourselves that wins His sympathy and favor. Yet we need to recognize that love has a motivation all its own. Its goal is to uproot sin and to make us holy, i.e., to transform us into God's very image. God loves us while we are still in our sins, but He loves us so much that He will not leave us in our sins. He lifts us up to a new foundation. He creates in us a clean heart. He cleanses us by His Spirit.
This paradoxical love of the cross that I have been speaking of is preeminently exemplified in Jesus Christ Himself. It is seen most gloriously in His sacrificial life and death. He was both victor and victim. He was both priest and sacrifice. He was both Lord and servant. He was and is both Lion and Lamb.
P. T. Forsyth, the Scottish Congregationalist preacher and eminent theologian, observed that "In Christ God did not send a message of His love which cost the messenger His life but Himself loved us to the death and to our eternal redemption." An insightful statement; isn't it? Christ is not merely the foremost example of love, the model of love. He is the Savior who delivered us by His love.
Finally, there is joy in agape love, joy in the practice of the love of the cross. There is joy in God's love for us, and there is joy in our love for God. There is joy in service to our neighbor as well. But we do not serve our neighbor in order to find joy and happiness. That would be to go back to the anthropocentric kind of thinking that we have already seen is detrimental to the life of faith. We serve simply out of love, simply because we care. We serve because the Holy Spirit has planted within us a caring concern for others. This distinction is supremely important. Joy and happiness come as the fruit, the by-product. They are the evidence of something deeper within us that is the gift of love. This gift is really the gift of Jesus Christ Himself, who lives within us by His Spirit.
Agape love is both unilateral and bilateral. By unilateral I mean that it proceeds outward, whether the other person responds or not. This is the key to understanding agape love. At the same time, agape does seek to create a relationship with the other person. There is, then, this bilateral dimension.
Paul Tillich, a mid-twentieth-century theologian and philosopher whose influence is still vast on the academic scene, sought to accommodate the gospel to Hellenism, to incorporate within the gospel both biblical and Hellenistic motifs. He tried to make a place for both agape and eros. In the end he regrettably subordinated agape to eros. Tillich basically defined love as the desire for union with the valuable. [10] By this he meant union with God, the being who has preeminent value. But is that what love is in the New Testament? Love is not desire at all. Love is the readiness to give and to serve, as the Holy Spirit moves within us and directs us. Luther was right in saying, "Good work is done when one neither intends nor knows it." [11] There is something spontaneous about agape love. You do not stop to reflect upon it, you simply do it. Agape love is always love in action.
Tillich saw the symbol of love as a flock of birds soaring off into the sky. But that again is not agape, it is eros. In the wider Platonic tradition love is sometimes depicted as an arrow shot into the sky toward heaven. But love is downward as well as upward. It is upward only when we are being lifted upward by the Spirit to God.
I take exception to Bernard of Clairvaux's assertion that the highest kind of love is the love of self for the sake of God. [12] Loving ourselves for the sake of God is not New Testament teaching. Bernard believed that we can attain a perfected love of self, but this is still remaining within the self. True love, Christian love, drives one out of the self into the needs and aspirations of one's neighbor, or it is simply not agape.
Moreover, I do not wish to say with the venerable theologian St. Augustine, "The more we love God the more we love ourselves." I would rather say, "The more we love God the more we will forget ourselves, especially as we concentrate on service to others."
May God give us clear insight to understand the nature of the wondrous love of Calvary, and may His Spirit move us to love both Him and our neighbor with the supernatural love of the cross.
Author
Donald G. Bloesch is professor of theology emeritus at Dubuque (Iowa) Theological Seminary. He has written numerous books, including Essentials of Evangelical Theology, The Future of Evangelical Christianity, The Struggle of Prayer and Freedom for Obedience. He holds a Ph. D. from the University of Chicago and has done postdoctoral work at the Universities of Oxford, Tilbingen and Basel. He is presently writing a seven-volume theology, of which three volumes are now available from InterVarsity Press under the theme "Christian Foundations."
Endnotes
The most significant revelation of God's grace and God's love ever given to mankind is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The divine mystery, revealed openly in the cross of Christ, contains heights we cannot scale and depths we cannot plumb. It is a truly amazing paradox! Now, I choose the word "paradox" intentionally. By paradox I have in mind a reality or event that encompasses elements that appear to be contradictory. It is not a logical riddle but the breaking in of a new horizon of meaning that cannot be fully assimilated by the human intellect. When I speak of the cross as the revelation of God's paradoxical love, I mean the cross not simply as an event in past history but as an abiding reality that impinges upon human life in every age. Yet it always appears as something unexpected and out of the ordinary.
The Mystery of Agape
When I use the term "love" in this meditation I will be referring mainly to agape - the primary word for love in the Greek New Testament. Agape is a unique kind of love, a love that the natural person simply does not know. It is unconditional love - not dependent on the worth of the one who is loved. It is gratuitous love - given to the undeserving. In this sense it is close to the meaning of grace. It is a love that "does not seek its own" as Paul describes it (cf. 1 Cor. 13:5, KJV). It does not seek its own perfection or fulfillment. It is self-sacrificing, not self-regarding. It finds its fulfillment in the sacrifice of itself, in letting go of the self in order that others might live. It is the kind of love that creates value in the one that is loved, rather than the love that finds value.
Martin Luther, who rediscovered the meaning of agape - its depth and breadth as seen in the New Testament - astutely observed: "Sinners are beautiful because they are loved. They are not loved because they are beautiful." [1] This admirably sums up the essence of agape as the power of creative transformation.
This unique love, found perfectly in God, is often contrasted with another kind of love, eros. Eros is the spiritual love that the Greek philosophers and poets often celebrated. It is the love that seeks unity with the highest and aspires to fulfillment and perfection in union with God. This type of love has made a significant impact on Christian theology through the ages. It has been very important in the development of Christian mysticism.
I confess that I have a kind of love-hate relationship with mysticism. On the one hand, I appreciate so many of the classics of spirituality that have their source in Christian mysticism. Yet at the same time I cannot deny a tension, sometimes even a cleavage, between the claims of the mystics and the gospel of free grace. It is significant that the word eros does not appear in the New Testament.
Another Greek word for love, philia, refers to friendship or mutual love. It has an important role in cementing human relationships, but it is never unconditional. It has its rightful place in the Christian life, but it is not the supernatural love that we know as agape. Philia goes out to those who share common interests. Agape goes out to all, even to those who are our adversaries.
Agape, the paradoxical love of the cross, is a sign of both divine judgment and divine mercy. It reveals the powerlessness of Jesus Christ on the cross as the supreme power in the universe. It is a sign of judgment united with mercy, of power united with meekness. It slays even while it heals, it overcomes even while it submits. It perseveres even while it relents. It is both a crucified love and a conquering love.
The eminent German theologian Jurgen Moltmann in his book, The Crucified God, speaks of God's love as a crucified love. My primary criticism of Moltmann's book, and for that matter of his theological system in general, is that he tends to lose sight of this other dimension of love - that it is triumphant. To have a full Christian perspective we need more than a theology of the cross. We also need a theology of the resurrection and the ascension. Let us also say a theology of Pentecost. A theology of the cross has to be held in tension with a theology of glory. We not only suffer and die with Christ, but we also have a foretaste of the glory that is to be revealed on the last day.
Agape unites love as law and love as grace. In agape we see the paradoxical unity of obligation and permission. It lifts one upward even while it proceeds downward. I am sure most of you are familiar with that inspiring gospel song, "The Love of God," which speaks of God's love this way: "It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell." Love reaches both up and down.
I was brought up on German chorales of the former Evangelical Synod of North America. We had other hymns as well, but the chorales made an indelible impression on me. I still recall the words of one of those hymns:
In Thy service, Lord of mercy,
We would find our chief delight.
Show us then some place to labor
In Thy kingdom, Lord of light. [2]
This is indeed the love of the cross: finding delight in lowly service rather than in possession of the highest good. This love of the cross is both all inclusive and all exclusive. It is the first because it goes out to all people, to the elect and to the reprobate, to the lost and the saved, no matter what their race or creed. Yet it is also exclusive because it calls upon people to enter by the narrow gate and walk the straight way (Matt. 7:13-14). The costly road of discipleship is under the cross.
Metaphors for Love
There are a number of metaphors for love that we find in Scripture. One of these is a torrent of rain. This is also a metaphor for grace. God sends His rain, His grace, to fall upon us. We see this in the words of our Lord, "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:45, NIV). Here one discerns another metaphor for love - the shining of the sun. On the basis of his biblical study, Luther referred to love as a "furnace of fire."
Some metaphors for love are misleading. One example is an artesian well. You dig down and make contact. But love is not a power waiting to be tapped or released. It is not gained by digging deeper into the self. In evangelical Christianity love means getting out of yourself, getting away from yourself, getting into the needs, hopes and desires of others.
It is also a mistake to depict love as a magnet that draws all things to itself. This is the idea of love found in Buddhism, where we have the image of the Buddha under the Bo-tree with his enigmatic smile, a symbol of perfect equanimity or tranquility. The supposition is that such persons will draw other people to themselves by virtue of their inner achievement and inner contentment. This image of the perfected holy person conflicts with the New Testament portrayal of Christ, who is always active, even in prayer. He is the Good Shepherd seeking the lost sheep. He is compared to a woman who diligently seeks for the lost coin. Christ is Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven" who pursues sinners even into the darkness. In Buddhism, religion is a quest for inner peace, a peace that is apparent in specially holy persons. In Christianity, true religion is a witness - to what God has already done for us and for the whole world in the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Those of you who are conversant with process theology and philosophy will know that in these circles love is sometimes described in terms suggestive of a vacuum cleaner, which sucks in almost everything but leaves out the coarse material. Yet agape love does not leave out the coarse material; it sanctifies it.
Although agape is divine in its source, it is both human and divine in its goal. It is directed to God as well as to our neighbor in need. It is particular in its origin, but it is universal in its outreach. It is directed to God even while it is directed to our neighbor. Why? Because we meet God in our neighbor. When agape is directed to God it takes the 1161 form of up-welling joy, thanksgiving and praise. It is not a conscious effort to ascend upward mystically to God; it is being lifted into the very presence of God by free grace.
Some of you may be familiar with the Roman Catholic Carmelite nun of nineteenth-century France, Therese of Lisieux. She had considerable difficulty with the piety of her cloister - its orientation to merit and gaining security through human works. She finally discovered, through her private reading of Scripture, the message of free grace. This is why some of the other nuns felt threatened by her. Her vision represented an attack on the very foundation of their religious life as sisters. Therese expressed discomfort with the metaphor of the stairway to perfection, a product of mystical spirituality. It conveys the impression that heaven must be conquered, that salvation is attained by climbing upwards. She much preferred the metaphor of the lift to heaven - the elevator of free grace. All that is necessary is a simple act of faith. She had not read the Reformers, and if she had she probably would have been reprimanded. Yet she had studied holy Scripture and had come to discern its message. She made the grand discovery echoed in the old gospel song, "Love Lifted Me." We are lifted into the presence of God, into fellowship with Him, through love. [3]
Movements in Love
There are movements in love. There is an upward movement to God, and there is a downward movement. There is also an outward movement to both neighbor and the world. One of my difficulties with Anders Nygren's celebrated work Agape and Eros [4] is that he makes little if any place for love directed to God. In his interpretation agape is focused only on our neighbor, whereas faith is focused on God. My reading of Scripture tells me that love to God is as crucial as love to our neighbor, perhaps even more so.
The point is that in loving God we do truly love our neighbor. In seeking the glory of God we will seek the welfare of our neighbor. The ancient church father, Irenaeus, put it this way, "The glory of God is man fully alive." There is no separation then between serving God and serving our neighbor. God is glorified when we go out to the lost and forsaken. We need to remember the directive of General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army: "Go for souls and go for the worst." As we descend into the depths we are actually closer to God than if we would try to lift ourselves by works of merit up to the spiritual realm above the depths, i.e., above our material world. The wondrous story of the gospel is God's descent to earth in the person of His Son and in the person of His Spirit at Pentecost. Once we receive the grace of God that sets us free from the power of sin and death we are then motivated to offer our lives to God as a living sacrifice in thanksgiving for what God has done for us and in us. We are also motivated to share the good news of Christ's glorious coming with all with whom we come in contact. We reach up to clasp the hand of God in thanksgiving, and we reach out to clasp the hands of those who are perishing in order to bring them to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Problem of Self Love
What about self-love? Is there a place for such a concept in the Christian life? Many of those who have made accommodation to eros spirituality also make a prominent place for self-love. They will go so far as to say, "You have to learn to love yourself rightly before you can love God." They claim that self-love is actually the basis for all other kinds of love. Even the eminent theologian St. Augustine held that there is a wrong love of self and a right love of self. By the latter he meant the love of the spiritual self or the higher self, which is within us.
We seem to receive a divine sanction for self-love when Jesus gave the great commandment, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind ... And ... You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:36-39; Luke 10:25-28, NKJ). The question to be asked, however, is whether this is really an injunction to love ourselves or simply an acknowledgment that we naturally love ourselves, and thus we should love our neighbor with the same force that we apply to the service of ourselves.
My perception is that in the New Testament self-love is consistently something to be overcome. We are not commanded to love ourselves, though self-love is recognized as inherent in our very beings. The goal is to rise above this love of self into the love of neighbor and the love of God. When we do this we will have a sense of self-worth, a sense of dignity and of self-identity, but it is derivative worth, not an inherent worth. Our worth, our significance, our status all derive from God and depend completely upon God. We must not seek to advance; to adulate, or to exalt the self.
Invariably the question arises, "Does agape exclude hope?" When we talk about hope, we are, of course, referring to an abiding Christian virtue. Hope really means "hoping for ourselves." Biblical Christians would have difficulty with the French Quietist, Fenelon, who said that we are to "love God without fear and without hope." [5] God wants us to hope for our own salvation, and to hope for the salvation of others. He does not want us to hope for these things as ends in themselves, but rather as means to the advancement of God's kingdom and as means to God's glory. We should be willing to abandon self-salvation for the salvation of the world (cf. Rom. 9:3; Ex. 32:32). Here again we come to the paradox of true love (Matt. 10:39). By losing ourselves we find ourselves in the end. We actually gain our lives when we lose our lives.
Reinhold Niebuhr, who had some profound things to say on the subject of love, concluded that Christianity rules out self-love but not self-realization. [6] Self-realization, however, comes as the byproduct, never the goal. It is the consequence, not the purpose of Christian endeavor.
There is nothing inherently wrong with natural love, the love of self. But due to our sin all natural loves have become questionable, and therefore they must be redeemed. Philia and eros both need to be transformed. A true regard for self breaks self-centeredness! But this true regard for self is no longer self-love, but rather a love that rises above the self. The self, in my opinion, should never be the object of love. The self instead should be the channel of love, or the agent of love.
Love and Faith
In the Sixteenth-century debate on works and grace, a critical distinction was made between love and faith; The Roman Catholic side seemed to hold that we are justified by faith plus works of love. The Reformers argued that we are justified by faith, indeed only by faith, but it is never a faith without works of love. Another way to phrase this is that we are justified by faith alone and sanctified by faith working through love, or sanctified by works of love.
I would not want to leave the impression that justification by faith alone is the whole of the gospel. I would rather say that it belongs to the essence of the gospel. I make this point because it is important to affirm that the gospel includes sanctification. Luther seemed to say much the same when he warned his followers that Calvary must be supplemented by Pentecost. After the Reformation had crystallized he began to see that many of the people who had accepted his gospel of salvation by free grace alone were living more immoral lives than when they were Catholics. He realized that he had been leaving something out, namely, the power of Pentecost - the cleansing and purifying power of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost needs to be acknowledged, and preached in conjunction with the message of the cross. Faith and love are correlatives: they belong together. So we say of faith that it receives, while love descends. Faith relays, while love creates. God loves us, but we too love in the power of God's love. Our love, our agape love, corresponds with God's love. Our love is an echo of His love, a mirror of His love. Once it is separated from God, human love becomes simply mutual love. Mutual love is a good thing, for it is surely better than no love at all. Yet it is not redeeming love. We are redeemed only by God's love for us, not by our love for God or by our love for our neighbor. Yet our love for both God and neighbor is a sign of God's love for us.
Faith is the root, love is the fruit. Faith is the foundation, love is the flower that blooms, the evidence of whether our faith is false or genuine. Faith works through love, and love works from faith and toward faith. Love works toward faith because all who love will seek to share the gospel of redemption and reconciliation with those they meet. As I have already said, we are justified by faith, but we are sanctified by love.
Love and Hope
I wish now to delve more deeply into the mystery of the relationship of love and hope. The three theological virtues, so-called, are faith, hope and love. In evangelical Protestantism we do not actually see these three as virtues but rather as gifts from God. In another sense they are works. Why? Because faith means believing, and that is, in one sense, a work. Love means exercising or practicing something. Hope is a work, too, in the sense that hope involves actually hoping. Hope, furthermore, is a direct fruit of faith (Rom. 5:4-5).
Rudolph Bultmann, one of the twentieth century's most influential biblical scholars, had some profound insights into Paul's conception of hope. (I acknowledge that Bultmann's overall system was heretical, but we need to remember that there is a remnant of orthodoxy in every heresy, just as there is a taint of heresy in every orthodoxy.)
Hope is the trust in God which turns away from itself and the world, which waits patiently for God's gift, and which, when he has given it, does not consider it to be a possession of one's own disposal but is confidently assured that God also will maintain what He has bestowed. [7]Both hope and faith look toward receiving. Eros, on the other hand, always looks toward obtaining. There is a proper altruism in true hope. When we hope, we should hope for the salvation of others as well as ourselves. We hope for our own salvation because this is God's will and this redounds to God's glory.
It is important to note the very real differences between natural hope and spiritual hope. Spiritual hope is centered in God. It is theocentric, not anthropocentric. Furthermore, spiritual hope has a social dimension. It is not just personal or individual. We hope not just for ourselves but for the coming of the kingdom and the triumph of the kingdom in the world. Luther said it well, "To give much is His delight and glory, and He is pleased if we expect much good from Him." [8]
God is pleased when we hope for ourselves, for others and for the triumph of His kingdom. Some years ago I asked one of my brightest students at Dubuque Theological Seminary to write a paper on hope. His paper contained this very profound statement: "Far from being anthropocentric this hope represents the very abandonment of the self and its center in favor of the Christocentric working of God's Spirit." I wholeheartedly agree!
This is precisely where I have another criticism of Anders Nygren. He speaks much about love and much about faith but leaves out the element of hope. I think he does this for a purpose. He wants to make agape completely theocentric, i.e., completely centered in God. Yet when one speaks of hope one really has to include the self in some way. A genuinely Christian perspective is really theoanthropocentric because Christian life is centered in God and humanity at one and the same time.
Paradoxical Aspects of Love
I would like now to examine more closely the paradoxes associated with agape. It is both submission and conquest. It is both self-emptying and self-fulfilling. It contains both sorrow and joy. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He went to the cross in sorrow, almost at the point of despair, yet the angels in heaven were singing because they saw in His cross the defeat of Satan. They witnessed the glory of the cross. Love is both upward and downward. It goes up to God and down to those in need.
Furthermore, love is both motivated and unmotivated. Anders Nygren spends much time insisting that agape is unmotivated. There is nothing that motivates God to love us. There is no worth in ourselves that wins His sympathy and favor. Yet we need to recognize that love has a motivation all its own. Its goal is to uproot sin and to make us holy, i.e., to transform us into God's very image. God loves us while we are still in our sins, but He loves us so much that He will not leave us in our sins. He lifts us up to a new foundation. He creates in us a clean heart. He cleanses us by His Spirit.
This paradoxical love of the cross that I have been speaking of is preeminently exemplified in Jesus Christ Himself. It is seen most gloriously in His sacrificial life and death. He was both victor and victim. He was both priest and sacrifice. He was both Lord and servant. He was and is both Lion and Lamb.
P. T. Forsyth, the Scottish Congregationalist preacher and eminent theologian, observed that "In Christ God did not send a message of His love which cost the messenger His life but Himself loved us to the death and to our eternal redemption." An insightful statement; isn't it? Christ is not merely the foremost example of love, the model of love. He is the Savior who delivered us by His love.
Finally, there is joy in agape love, joy in the practice of the love of the cross. There is joy in God's love for us, and there is joy in our love for God. There is joy in service to our neighbor as well. But we do not serve our neighbor in order to find joy and happiness. That would be to go back to the anthropocentric kind of thinking that we have already seen is detrimental to the life of faith. We serve simply out of love, simply because we care. We serve because the Holy Spirit has planted within us a caring concern for others. This distinction is supremely important. Joy and happiness come as the fruit, the by-product. They are the evidence of something deeper within us that is the gift of love. This gift is really the gift of Jesus Christ Himself, who lives within us by His Spirit.
Agape love is both unilateral and bilateral. By unilateral I mean that it proceeds outward, whether the other person responds or not. This is the key to understanding agape love. At the same time, agape does seek to create a relationship with the other person. There is, then, this bilateral dimension.
Paul Tillich, a mid-twentieth-century theologian and philosopher whose influence is still vast on the academic scene, sought to accommodate the gospel to Hellenism, to incorporate within the gospel both biblical and Hellenistic motifs. He tried to make a place for both agape and eros. In the end he regrettably subordinated agape to eros. Tillich basically defined love as the desire for union with the valuable. [10] By this he meant union with God, the being who has preeminent value. But is that what love is in the New Testament? Love is not desire at all. Love is the readiness to give and to serve, as the Holy Spirit moves within us and directs us. Luther was right in saying, "Good work is done when one neither intends nor knows it." [11] There is something spontaneous about agape love. You do not stop to reflect upon it, you simply do it. Agape love is always love in action.
Tillich saw the symbol of love as a flock of birds soaring off into the sky. But that again is not agape, it is eros. In the wider Platonic tradition love is sometimes depicted as an arrow shot into the sky toward heaven. But love is downward as well as upward. It is upward only when we are being lifted upward by the Spirit to God.
I take exception to Bernard of Clairvaux's assertion that the highest kind of love is the love of self for the sake of God. [12] Loving ourselves for the sake of God is not New Testament teaching. Bernard believed that we can attain a perfected love of self, but this is still remaining within the self. True love, Christian love, drives one out of the self into the needs and aspirations of one's neighbor, or it is simply not agape.
Moreover, I do not wish to say with the venerable theologian St. Augustine, "The more we love God the more we love ourselves." I would rather say, "The more we love God the more we will forget ourselves, especially as we concentrate on service to others."
May God give us clear insight to understand the nature of the wondrous love of Calvary, and may His Spirit move us to love both Him and our neighbor with the supernatural love of the cross.
Author
Donald G. Bloesch is professor of theology emeritus at Dubuque (Iowa) Theological Seminary. He has written numerous books, including Essentials of Evangelical Theology, The Future of Evangelical Christianity, The Struggle of Prayer and Freedom for Obedience. He holds a Ph. D. from the University of Chicago and has done postdoctoral work at the Universities of Oxford, Tilbingen and Basel. He is presently writing a seven-volume theology, of which three volumes are now available from InterVarsity Press under the theme "Christian Foundations."
Endnotes
- Quoted in Jurgen Moltmann in his The Crucified God, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 214. See Luther, Heidelberg Disputation, xxviii.
- E. Kockritz, "In Thy Service, Lord of Mercy," The Evangelical Hymnal, ed. David Bruening (St. Louis: Eden Publishing House, 1922), No. 322.
- The Autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul, trans. and ed. John Beevers (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 49, 56, 92, 114.
- Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip S. Watson, (philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953).
- In Gerald Heard, A Preface to Prayer (New York: Harper & Bros., 1944), 200. Cf. Francois Fenelon, Christian Perfection, trans. Mildred Whitney Stillman, ed. Charles F. Whiston (New York: Harper, 1947), 143.
- Reinhold· Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, (1935; reprint New York: Seabury/Crossroad, 1979), 33.
- Rudolf Btiltmann and Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, Hope, trans. Dorothea M. Barton (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1963), 37.
- What Luther Says, ed. Ewald M. Plass (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959), 2: 1089.
- P. T. Forsyth, "Faith, Metaphysic, and Incarnation," Methodist Review 97 (New York: September 1915), 708.
- Paul Tillich, Love, Power and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 30-31.
- In Heinrich Boehmer, Road to Reformation, trans. John W Doberstein and Theodore G. Tappert (philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1946), 163.
- Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works, trans. & ed. G. R. Evans (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 195-97.
Saturday 30 December 2017
Witnessing: The Progress of Revival
By James M. Boice
Many Christians think that the task of witnessing should be fulfilled primarily by ministers, but this is an error and a serious one at that. Witnessing is every Christian's job. An acceptance of this task was, I believe, the single most important factor in the astounding outreach and expansion of the early church. It was not simply that Paul and the other leaders carried the gospel to the farthest corners of the Roman world. Many of the so-called leaders were not particularly zealous about the missionary effort. It was rather that all Christians - small and great, rich and poor, slaves and freedmen - made it their consuming passion to tell others about the Lord.
Edward Gibbon was by no means sympathetic to our faith. Nevertheless, he chronicled the spread of Christianity until, as it was said, by AD. 49 the gospel had reached the shores of India and by AD. 61 even the distant borders of China. Tertullian, who was writing slightly before and after the year 200, declared to his contemporaries: "We are but of yesterday, yet we have filled every place among you - cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum - we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods" (Apology, ch.37).
How did this happen? Gibbon wrote that in the early church "it became the most sacred duty of a new convert to diffuse among his friends and relations the inestimable blessing which he had received" (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I, ch. XV). Adolf Harnack, the great church historian, declared: "We cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission of Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries" (The Expansion of Christianity, Vol. I, p. 460).
Informal missionaries! That is what tall Christians should be.
The Witness of John
In the first chapter of John's Gospel we have an outline of what our witness must be if we are to become "informal missionaries." The outline is given to us in verses 6-9: "There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light." If we outline these verses, we find that they contain three statements about John the Baptist's testimony:
No doubt there are many other important things that can be said about witnessing for Jesus Christ. Yet I believe that if only these three points are followed, the witness of any Christian, no matter how halting or weak it may be, will be effective. First, the believer must recognize in the depths of his being that he is not the answer to men's problems, that he is not the light. Second, he must know that Jesus is the light and must point men to Him. Third, he must do it all with the express intention of having men and women believe.
The Workman's Voice
The evangelist begins, then, by telling us of John's confession that he was not the Christ.
Apparently, the delegation from Jerusalem thought of three things John might claim to be, and the first of these quite obviously was the Messiah. We must remember as we read these words that the Jews were a people living under the dominion of Rome and that they were looking with great expectation for their deliverer, as any captive people would do. If we want a feeling of this from our own time, we need only think of the Philippines under Japanese rule during World War II. At the start of the war, General Douglas MacArthur had been in the Philippines, but he had been forced to abandon his base there in the face of the Japanese attack. As he left, however, he gave a speech in which he uttered the promise: "I shall return." It was a simple promise. MacArthur was not even a Filipino. Yet this promise sustained the island people during the days of the occupation as they waited for their deliverance. They remember MacArthur with these words today. In the same way, the Jews of John's day waited for the deliverer that had been promised to them in the Old Testament.
Moreover, there had been many Messianic pretenders. We know of some of them through such works as the Antiquities of Josephus or his account of The Jewish War. Other false messiahs are mentioned in the New Testament (Acts 5:36-37; 21:38). It would have been easy for John, who by this time had received quite an impressive following, to have announced that he was the Messiah. But not only did he reject the temptation, he even rejected it with the hint that the one who actually was the Messiah was present. By this time he knew that Jesus was there, for the baptism of Jesus by John must have taken place before the events that John the evangelist narrates. Hence, when he rejects the title "Messiah," John does so emphasizing the first person pronoun "I." It occupies a prominent place in the Greek text. It is as though John had said, "I am not the Messiah, but the one who is the Messiah stands among you."
The delegation of the priests and Levites next asked him whether he was Elijah. Why should they have asked him this? The answer is that the Jews of John's time believed that the prophet Elijah would appear on earth once more before the coming of the Messiah. This idea is evident from several passages in the Gospels. For instance, in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew there is an account of Christ asking the disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
They answer, "Some say John the Baptist [who had been killed by Herod in the interval]; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets" (Matt. 16:13-14). In the seventeenth chapter, after some of the disciples had seen the Lord glorified in the transfiguration, they asked Jesus, "Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?" (Matt. 17:10).
The Jews had a reason for their expectation. In Malachi 4:5-6, in the two last verses of the Old Testament, there was the promise:
Who was John then? John says that he was "a voice" who had come to prepare the way of the Lord, as Isaiah had prophesied.
This should be our pattern. If we are to witness for Jesus Christ, we must first of all forget ourselves - our likes, our dislikes, our needs, our personal interests, our free time, even at times our work or our ambitions - and we must think first of the other person and of his need for the Savior.
What is it that will make a person forget himself in order to point to Jesus? Only an awareness of Jesus' worth and glory! Some years ago an African convert became a great witness to Jesus in spite of the fact that he suffered from the painful disease known as elephantiasis. This is a terrible thing in many tropical countries. It causes the skin of a person to become coarse, thick and enlarged. This poor Christian had elephantiasis in his legs, so it was extremely difficult for him to walk. Nevertheless, he thought nothing of making his way around the village to introduce others to the one who had transformed his life.
After a period of several months, during which he had visited all of the huts in his village, this man began to take the gospel to another village that lay two miles away through the jungle. Every morning he started out painfully on his monstrous legs, and every night he returned, having visited as many of the homes in the second village as possible. After visiting these homes he remained in his own village for several weeks before becoming restless again.
He asked the missionary doctor if another village which he knew of and had visited as a child had heard the gospel. The missionary said it had not. The African Christian wanted to take the good news there, but the missionary advised against it because the village lay more than 12 miles away over dangerous jungle paths. The burden so grew upon this Christian that one day he slipped away quietly before the dawn. The missionary learned later that the elephantiasis convert had arrived in the new village some time after noon, his legs bruised and scratched, and had begun immediately to tell the people about Jesus.
He went to everyone in the village. Then at last, when the sun was sinking low in the sky, he began his dangerous trip back along the jungle paths toward home. At midnight he arrived; bleeding and almost unconscious, at the house of the missionary doctor who tended to him and dressed his feet.
Here was a man who had been sent by God to point men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ. He was effective because he had forgotten himself in serving his King.
A Verbal Witness
The second great principle for witnessing is that we must bear witness to the light, and this means that we must witness verbally. Our testimony must move out of the area of life and into words. If it does not, we will be like the young man who went from a Christian home to a secular college. His parents were concerned about him. So when he arrived home at Christmas they asked him anxiously, "How did you get along?"
He answered, "Oh, I got along great. Nobody even knows I'm a Christian."
I am not denying the importance of the Christian life. There must be the kind of upright character and true commitment to Christ that will back up the witness by words. But important as this is, the living of the Christian life - by itself is not enough for a witness. There must also be words.
Someone will say, "Oh, but isn't it true that many persons have been helped to Jesus Christ by the conduct of some Christian?" That is quite true; many have. The conduct of Christians has been an important step, even an essential step, in the salvation of many thousands of persons. But I am convinced that the matter has never stopped on that level and that these thousands would never have come to Christ unless the witness through the lives of Christians had not at some point moved beyond actions to a consideration of the person and claims of Jesus Christ as these truths were presented to them verbally.
If we are to bear a witness to Jesus Christ, we must know something about Him. We must have a message. What is our message? The major parts are suggested in our story. They are:
As you begin to witness, let me suggest that you begin here. Begin with Christ's claims about Himself. You might refer to John 5:18, which tells us that Jesus was calling "God His own Father, making Himself equal with God." Or John 10:30, where He said, "I and the Father are one." He told the disciples, "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Most non-Christians have never actually faced these claims; many have never even heard of them.
Second, we witness to what Jesus Christ has done. In one sense this is an overwhelming topic. If Jesus is God, then all that God does, Christ does. He has been active in the creation of the world, in guiding the history of redemption, in giving us the Old and New Testaments, in helping us today in temptation and in other things. Still there is a sense in which the work of Christ focuses in something much more limited and therefore much easier to share. The focus of Christ's work is to be found in His death on the cross. Hence, we want to share the meaning of His death when we try to tell others about Him.
In His day, John the Baptist did this by reference to the Jewish sacrifices. He said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (v. 29). For centuries Israel had known about the sacrificial lamb. They had learned about it first from the story of Abraham, who was the father of their nation, humanly speaking. At God's command Abraham had been on his way up the mountain to sacrifice when Isaac turned to him and asked, "Father ... the fire and wood are here ... but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham had answered, "God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering." Israel had also known about the lamb as a result of the institution of the Passover. On that occasion the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of the house was the sign for the angel of death to pass by. Moreover, they knew that daily in the services of the temple lambs and goats were sacrificed. They knew that in every instance the sacrifices meant the death of an innocent substitute in place of the one who had sinned.
On this basis John the Baptist then came along and exclaimed, "Look, the Lamb of God." He recognized that the sacrifices were to be fulfilled in Jesus and that He would bear our sin as Isaiah had said.
Thus far we have looked at two very important principles for witnessing, both illustrated by the witness of John the Baptist to Jesus Christ during the earliest days of Christ's ministry. The first is that John did not bear witness to himself. He confessed that he was not the light. The second is that he bore witness to the light. That light was Jesus. John bore witness to Him verbally. These two points lead now to a third great principle: John bore witness to Jesus, not to unload a certain amount of information (like a mountain climber putting down his pack) but to lead others to believe in Jesus personally. This means that he had their life and destiny in view when he was witnessing.
We see this in two ways. It is presented doctrinally, and it is illustrated by the narrative. The doctrinal statement is found in the verses we have already referred to several times previously: John 1:6-8. We read that John "came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through Him all men might believe." In Greek the flow of the thought is emphasized by a succession of relative clauses which build the thought in a characteristic Greek construction. The Greek says that John came for a witness in order that (as a specific and immediate object) he might identify the light and in order that (as a final and ultimate object) all men might believe. These were the two objects of his witnessing.
Then, no sooner is the witness of John given in the narrative section of the Gospel (vv. 29-34) than we find this doctrinal statement illustrated by the account of the conversion of those who actually did believe as the result of John's witness (vv. 35-51). They were Andrew and an unnamed disciple (who was probably the apostle John), then through their witness and the witness of Philip, also Peter and Nathanael.
The lesson at this point is that the witness-giving of John was immediately picked up by those who believed, so that Andrew and Philip and eventually John the Evangelist, Peter and Nathanael became the next witnesses. What is more, they followed the same pattern of witnessing that John the Baptist had followed. That is:
Family Evangelism
At this point we should mark the significance of this great witness. It was the witness of Andrew to his brother, a witness that began, as all true witnessing should begin, at home.
One commentator has written:
Charles Spurgeon once said,
But perhaps you are saying, "I have no brother. I have no sister. In fact, I am quite alone in this world." If that is the case, then you must see that the story of the opening week of Christ's ministry also includes the witness of Philip, who had no brother, but who brought his friend to Jesus. We are told that on the next day when Jesus was about to depart for Galilee He called Philip, saying, "Follow Me."
Philip, who did follow, went to his friend Nathanael with the report, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and about whom the prophets also wrote - Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
At first Nathanael was skeptical. "Nazareth! Can any good thing come from there?"
Philip replied, "Come and see." When Nathanael came and had his meeting with Jesus he then concluded for himself: "Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel" (vv. 43-49).
If you have no brother or sister (or any other family), then you must begin with your friend or neighbor. This is the one God has placed in your path. It is a witness to this one that God has most entrusted to your charge.
Come and See
If we are to witness successfully in the circles where we are best known, there must be a change in our manner of life. We must take second place so the ones we are witnessing to might see Jesus.
If you are sitting in a waiting room somewhere with a packet of tracts in your pocket and a person sits down next to you whom you do not know, you can witness to him and it will cost hardly anything. That is not difficult. But if you are going to witness effectively to your brother, there must be life changes. Because, unlike the man on the seat next to you, your brother knows you. He knows whether the thing you are professing has affected you personally. He knows whether you take your turn drying the dishes at home or whether you try to wiggle out of the responsibility. He knows whether you put thought into caring for the other members of the family. He knows whether or not you are touchy or anxious to defend your own interests. In short, he knows whether the faith you profess is real or ineffectual. He knows whether Christ occupies the highest point in your life or whether you do.
Andrew put himself second in order to bring others to Jesus. We do not know a great deal about Andrew. In the New Testament he is usually introduced as Simon Peter's brother. Everyone knew who Peter was; Andrew was only the man who was related to him. Yet Andrew was constantly introducing others to Jesus. There are only three stories in the Gospels in which Andrew plays a significant role. There is the story recorded here. There is the time he brought Jesus the lad with five loaves of bread and two fish (John 6:8- 9). There is the incident in which the Greeks were brought to Jesus (John 12:22). In each case Andrew put himself second in order to introduce others to the Savior.
How are we to become charged, as Andrew was? Andrew and the other disciple became witnesses after they had first spent time with Jesus. John tells us that they arrived at the place where Jesus was staying at about the tenth hour - that is, about four o'clock in the afternoon - and that they spent the night there. What do you suppose they talked about until nightfall? We are not told, but the story reminds us of the story in Luke in which Christ spoke to the Emmaus disciples, showing them from the Old Testament how it was necessary for Him "to suffer these things and then enter His glory," after which they confessed, "Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:26, 32). After such time spent with Jesus, when the heart burns, one is constrained to go out and find his brother.
Do you spend time with Jesus? Nothing can be a substitute for that. Only if you do that will you begin to show something of the character, particularly the love, of Him with whom you are spending time.
Fernando Vangioni is an evangelist with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He says that he was in South America for a series of meetings on one occasion, after which a woman came up to him. She said; "I wonder if you would take time to speak to a girl whom I am bringing to the meeting tomorrow night. She went to New York some years ago full of hope, thinking that America was the land of opportunity. Instead of doing well she went through terrible times in the city. She was used by one man after another. All treated her badly. Now she has returned to this country bitter and hostile to all forms of Christianity."
The evangelist said that he would speak to her.
On the next night the girl was there, but when they met there was not the slightest response to Mr. Vangioni's attempts to speak with her. He said that he had never looked into eyes so hard or listened to a voice so hostile. At last, seeing that he was making no progress, he asked, "Do you mind if I pray for you ?"
The girl said, "Pray, if you like, but don't preach to me. And don't expect me to listen."
He began to pray, and as he prayed he was greatly moved. Something in the tragedy of her life caused tears to run down his face. At last he stopped. There was nothing to add. He said, "All right, you can go now."
But the girl did not go. Touched by this manifestation of love for her she replied, "No, I won't go. You can preach to me now. No man has ever cried for me before."
This is the secret of all effectual witnessing. If we spend time with Jesus, then the other matters - knowing we are not the light, pointing to the light, desiring men and women to believe - these will come naturally. And we will find ourselves increasingly used of God as He sends revival to our land.
Author
Dr. James Montgomery Boice is senior pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA. He is the author of numerous books and articles, and has previously contributed to Reformation & Revival Journal. He also serves as an advisor to Reformation & Revival Ministries, Inc.
Many Christians think that the task of witnessing should be fulfilled primarily by ministers, but this is an error and a serious one at that. Witnessing is every Christian's job. An acceptance of this task was, I believe, the single most important factor in the astounding outreach and expansion of the early church. It was not simply that Paul and the other leaders carried the gospel to the farthest corners of the Roman world. Many of the so-called leaders were not particularly zealous about the missionary effort. It was rather that all Christians - small and great, rich and poor, slaves and freedmen - made it their consuming passion to tell others about the Lord.
Edward Gibbon was by no means sympathetic to our faith. Nevertheless, he chronicled the spread of Christianity until, as it was said, by AD. 49 the gospel had reached the shores of India and by AD. 61 even the distant borders of China. Tertullian, who was writing slightly before and after the year 200, declared to his contemporaries: "We are but of yesterday, yet we have filled every place among you - cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum - we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods" (Apology, ch.37).
How did this happen? Gibbon wrote that in the early church "it became the most sacred duty of a new convert to diffuse among his friends and relations the inestimable blessing which he had received" (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I, ch. XV). Adolf Harnack, the great church historian, declared: "We cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission of Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries" (The Expansion of Christianity, Vol. I, p. 460).
Informal missionaries! That is what tall Christians should be.
The Witness of John
In the first chapter of John's Gospel we have an outline of what our witness must be if we are to become "informal missionaries." The outline is given to us in verses 6-9: "There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light." If we outline these verses, we find that they contain three statements about John the Baptist's testimony:
- he was not the light, but
- was sent to bear witness to that light, in order that
- all men through him might believe.
No doubt there are many other important things that can be said about witnessing for Jesus Christ. Yet I believe that if only these three points are followed, the witness of any Christian, no matter how halting or weak it may be, will be effective. First, the believer must recognize in the depths of his being that he is not the answer to men's problems, that he is not the light. Second, he must know that Jesus is the light and must point men to Him. Third, he must do it all with the express intention of having men and women believe.
The Workman's Voice
The evangelist begins, then, by telling us of John's confession that he was not the Christ.
Now this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fall to confess, but confessed freely, "I am not the Christ." They asked him, "Then who are you? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" He answered, "No." Finally they said, "Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?"
John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, "I am the voice of one calling in the desert, 'Make straight the way for the Lord'" (vv. 19-23).These verses anchor the testimony of John firmly in the context of first-century Judaism, just as our testimony (if it is to be effective) must be anchored in our own century.
Apparently, the delegation from Jerusalem thought of three things John might claim to be, and the first of these quite obviously was the Messiah. We must remember as we read these words that the Jews were a people living under the dominion of Rome and that they were looking with great expectation for their deliverer, as any captive people would do. If we want a feeling of this from our own time, we need only think of the Philippines under Japanese rule during World War II. At the start of the war, General Douglas MacArthur had been in the Philippines, but he had been forced to abandon his base there in the face of the Japanese attack. As he left, however, he gave a speech in which he uttered the promise: "I shall return." It was a simple promise. MacArthur was not even a Filipino. Yet this promise sustained the island people during the days of the occupation as they waited for their deliverance. They remember MacArthur with these words today. In the same way, the Jews of John's day waited for the deliverer that had been promised to them in the Old Testament.
Moreover, there had been many Messianic pretenders. We know of some of them through such works as the Antiquities of Josephus or his account of The Jewish War. Other false messiahs are mentioned in the New Testament (Acts 5:36-37; 21:38). It would have been easy for John, who by this time had received quite an impressive following, to have announced that he was the Messiah. But not only did he reject the temptation, he even rejected it with the hint that the one who actually was the Messiah was present. By this time he knew that Jesus was there, for the baptism of Jesus by John must have taken place before the events that John the evangelist narrates. Hence, when he rejects the title "Messiah," John does so emphasizing the first person pronoun "I." It occupies a prominent place in the Greek text. It is as though John had said, "I am not the Messiah, but the one who is the Messiah stands among you."
The delegation of the priests and Levites next asked him whether he was Elijah. Why should they have asked him this? The answer is that the Jews of John's time believed that the prophet Elijah would appear on earth once more before the coming of the Messiah. This idea is evident from several passages in the Gospels. For instance, in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew there is an account of Christ asking the disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
They answer, "Some say John the Baptist [who had been killed by Herod in the interval]; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets" (Matt. 16:13-14). In the seventeenth chapter, after some of the disciples had seen the Lord glorified in the transfiguration, they asked Jesus, "Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?" (Matt. 17:10).
The Jews had a reason for their expectation. In Malachi 4:5-6, in the two last verses of the Old Testament, there was the promise:
See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and smite the land with a curse.This was the basis of their belief. John the Baptist was not an entirely unlikely candidate for the fulfillment of this prophecy. He was rugged like Elijah. He resembled Elijah in his work (cf. Matt. 17:12). Nevertheless, John was not Elijah, and he refused this designation. Finally, the interrogators asked him whether he was "the prophet." This was a reference to the prophet predicted by Moses in Deuteronomy 18: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him" (v. 15; cf. v.18). John denied that he was that prophet.
Who was John then? John says that he was "a voice" who had come to prepare the way of the Lord, as Isaiah had prophesied.
A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken" (Isa. 40:3.;5).You cannot see a voice. You can only hear it. No one looks much at the workman who is only preparing the roads for the coming of the king. Yet this was what John the Baptist declared himself to be: a voice and a workman. The last thing in the world that he wanted was for men to look at him. He said elsewhere; "He [Jesus] must become greater; I must become less" (John 3:30). John wanted men to forget him and see only the King.
This should be our pattern. If we are to witness for Jesus Christ, we must first of all forget ourselves - our likes, our dislikes, our needs, our personal interests, our free time, even at times our work or our ambitions - and we must think first of the other person and of his need for the Savior.
What is it that will make a person forget himself in order to point to Jesus? Only an awareness of Jesus' worth and glory! Some years ago an African convert became a great witness to Jesus in spite of the fact that he suffered from the painful disease known as elephantiasis. This is a terrible thing in many tropical countries. It causes the skin of a person to become coarse, thick and enlarged. This poor Christian had elephantiasis in his legs, so it was extremely difficult for him to walk. Nevertheless, he thought nothing of making his way around the village to introduce others to the one who had transformed his life.
After a period of several months, during which he had visited all of the huts in his village, this man began to take the gospel to another village that lay two miles away through the jungle. Every morning he started out painfully on his monstrous legs, and every night he returned, having visited as many of the homes in the second village as possible. After visiting these homes he remained in his own village for several weeks before becoming restless again.
He asked the missionary doctor if another village which he knew of and had visited as a child had heard the gospel. The missionary said it had not. The African Christian wanted to take the good news there, but the missionary advised against it because the village lay more than 12 miles away over dangerous jungle paths. The burden so grew upon this Christian that one day he slipped away quietly before the dawn. The missionary learned later that the elephantiasis convert had arrived in the new village some time after noon, his legs bruised and scratched, and had begun immediately to tell the people about Jesus.
He went to everyone in the village. Then at last, when the sun was sinking low in the sky, he began his dangerous trip back along the jungle paths toward home. At midnight he arrived; bleeding and almost unconscious, at the house of the missionary doctor who tended to him and dressed his feet.
Here was a man who had been sent by God to point men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ. He was effective because he had forgotten himself in serving his King.
A Verbal Witness
The second great principle for witnessing is that we must bear witness to the light, and this means that we must witness verbally. Our testimony must move out of the area of life and into words. If it does not, we will be like the young man who went from a Christian home to a secular college. His parents were concerned about him. So when he arrived home at Christmas they asked him anxiously, "How did you get along?"
He answered, "Oh, I got along great. Nobody even knows I'm a Christian."
I am not denying the importance of the Christian life. There must be the kind of upright character and true commitment to Christ that will back up the witness by words. But important as this is, the living of the Christian life - by itself is not enough for a witness. There must also be words.
Someone will say, "Oh, but isn't it true that many persons have been helped to Jesus Christ by the conduct of some Christian?" That is quite true; many have. The conduct of Christians has been an important step, even an essential step, in the salvation of many thousands of persons. But I am convinced that the matter has never stopped on that level and that these thousands would never have come to Christ unless the witness through the lives of Christians had not at some point moved beyond actions to a consideration of the person and claims of Jesus Christ as these truths were presented to them verbally.
If we are to bear a witness to Jesus Christ, we must know something about Him. We must have a message. What is our message? The major parts are suggested in our story. They are:
- who Jesus Christ is, and
- what He has done.
As you begin to witness, let me suggest that you begin here. Begin with Christ's claims about Himself. You might refer to John 5:18, which tells us that Jesus was calling "God His own Father, making Himself equal with God." Or John 10:30, where He said, "I and the Father are one." He told the disciples, "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Most non-Christians have never actually faced these claims; many have never even heard of them.
Second, we witness to what Jesus Christ has done. In one sense this is an overwhelming topic. If Jesus is God, then all that God does, Christ does. He has been active in the creation of the world, in guiding the history of redemption, in giving us the Old and New Testaments, in helping us today in temptation and in other things. Still there is a sense in which the work of Christ focuses in something much more limited and therefore much easier to share. The focus of Christ's work is to be found in His death on the cross. Hence, we want to share the meaning of His death when we try to tell others about Him.
In His day, John the Baptist did this by reference to the Jewish sacrifices. He said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (v. 29). For centuries Israel had known about the sacrificial lamb. They had learned about it first from the story of Abraham, who was the father of their nation, humanly speaking. At God's command Abraham had been on his way up the mountain to sacrifice when Isaac turned to him and asked, "Father ... the fire and wood are here ... but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham had answered, "God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering." Israel had also known about the lamb as a result of the institution of the Passover. On that occasion the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of the house was the sign for the angel of death to pass by. Moreover, they knew that daily in the services of the temple lambs and goats were sacrificed. They knew that in every instance the sacrifices meant the death of an innocent substitute in place of the one who had sinned.
On this basis John the Baptist then came along and exclaimed, "Look, the Lamb of God." He recognized that the sacrifices were to be fulfilled in Jesus and that He would bear our sin as Isaiah had said.
Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. ... He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed (Isa. 53:4-5).Belief in Jesus
Thus far we have looked at two very important principles for witnessing, both illustrated by the witness of John the Baptist to Jesus Christ during the earliest days of Christ's ministry. The first is that John did not bear witness to himself. He confessed that he was not the light. The second is that he bore witness to the light. That light was Jesus. John bore witness to Him verbally. These two points lead now to a third great principle: John bore witness to Jesus, not to unload a certain amount of information (like a mountain climber putting down his pack) but to lead others to believe in Jesus personally. This means that he had their life and destiny in view when he was witnessing.
We see this in two ways. It is presented doctrinally, and it is illustrated by the narrative. The doctrinal statement is found in the verses we have already referred to several times previously: John 1:6-8. We read that John "came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through Him all men might believe." In Greek the flow of the thought is emphasized by a succession of relative clauses which build the thought in a characteristic Greek construction. The Greek says that John came for a witness in order that (as a specific and immediate object) he might identify the light and in order that (as a final and ultimate object) all men might believe. These were the two objects of his witnessing.
Then, no sooner is the witness of John given in the narrative section of the Gospel (vv. 29-34) than we find this doctrinal statement illustrated by the account of the conversion of those who actually did believe as the result of John's witness (vv. 35-51). They were Andrew and an unnamed disciple (who was probably the apostle John), then through their witness and the witness of Philip, also Peter and Nathanael.
The lesson at this point is that the witness-giving of John was immediately picked up by those who believed, so that Andrew and Philip and eventually John the Evangelist, Peter and Nathanael became the next witnesses. What is more, they followed the same pattern of witnessing that John the Baptist had followed. That is:
- they did not attract attention to themselves,
- they bore a verbal witness to Jesus, and
- they did so in order that those to whom they were speaking might also believe in Him.
When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God!" When the two disciples heard him say this they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, "What do you want?"
They said, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are You staying?"
"Come." He replied, "and you will see." So they went and saw where He was staying, and spent that day with Him. It was about the tenth hour (vv. 36-39).We do not have a record of what was said that evening, but whatever it was it must have been tremendously exciting for these two original disciples. When morning came one of the two who had followed Jesus (Andrew) immediately set out to find Simon Peter, his brother. We are told that when he had found Peter he said to him simply, "We have found the Messiah." He then brought Peter to Jesus (vv. 41-42).
Family Evangelism
At this point we should mark the significance of this great witness. It was the witness of Andrew to his brother, a witness that began, as all true witnessing should begin, at home.
One commentator has written:
Oh it is true that the first generation of believers in any tribe come straight out of heathenism, generally by the witness of some foreigner who has brought the witness to that particular tribe. And so it is that most of church history is the story of some alien who entered a tribe with little knowledge of the language, and who preached Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that people were saved. Paul, the Greek Jew, took the gospel to the tribes of Asia Minor, to Macedonia and to Greece. Irenaeus, a Greek, was the first to take the gospel to Gaul, which is now France. A Latin from Rome, the second Saint Augustine, was the first missionary to England, while an Englishman, Boniface, was the first to carry the gospel to Germany. Young Patrick, of high family, was kidnapped by marauders and carried to Ireland at the age of 16, later to become the instrument of the conversion of Ireland. In modern times the list of similar instances crosses the world. Henry Martyn took the gospel to Hindustan and to Persia. We have Adoniram Judson of Burma; Hudson Taylor of China; Mary Slessor of Calabar; livingstone of Central Africa. ... and the list goes on until we have Betty Elliot of the Aucas, and Wycliffe Bible Translators in many another tribe.But in spite of all this list, which grows longer every year, these pioneers win but a small proportion of those who come to Christ. The informant who teaches his language to that strange creature, the missionary, usually ends up by coming to know the missionary's Savior. He has seen Christ in the missionary first of all, and then the informant goes and finds his own brother. That is a first in countless tribes. The God of Abraham became the God of Sarah, Abraham's wife, and then the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Household salvation is a very precious truth ("He First Found His Brother," in First Things First, pp 15-16).
Charles Spurgeon once said,
"Though grace does not run in the blood, and regeneration is not of blood nor of birth, yet it doth very frequently - I was about to say almost always - happen that God, by means of a household, draws the rest to Himself. He calls an individual, and then uses him to be a sort of spiritual decoy to bring the rest of the family into the gospel net.Has God used you in that way? Have you a brother or a sister still outside Christ? Do you have a husband who doesn't know Him? A wife? I do not see how you can ever consider yourself a true witness to the Lord Jesus Christ if you are not making a maximum effort to lead these whom you best know to Him.
But perhaps you are saying, "I have no brother. I have no sister. In fact, I am quite alone in this world." If that is the case, then you must see that the story of the opening week of Christ's ministry also includes the witness of Philip, who had no brother, but who brought his friend to Jesus. We are told that on the next day when Jesus was about to depart for Galilee He called Philip, saying, "Follow Me."
Philip, who did follow, went to his friend Nathanael with the report, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and about whom the prophets also wrote - Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
At first Nathanael was skeptical. "Nazareth! Can any good thing come from there?"
Philip replied, "Come and see." When Nathanael came and had his meeting with Jesus he then concluded for himself: "Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel" (vv. 43-49).
If you have no brother or sister (or any other family), then you must begin with your friend or neighbor. This is the one God has placed in your path. It is a witness to this one that God has most entrusted to your charge.
Come and See
If we are to witness successfully in the circles where we are best known, there must be a change in our manner of life. We must take second place so the ones we are witnessing to might see Jesus.
If you are sitting in a waiting room somewhere with a packet of tracts in your pocket and a person sits down next to you whom you do not know, you can witness to him and it will cost hardly anything. That is not difficult. But if you are going to witness effectively to your brother, there must be life changes. Because, unlike the man on the seat next to you, your brother knows you. He knows whether the thing you are professing has affected you personally. He knows whether you take your turn drying the dishes at home or whether you try to wiggle out of the responsibility. He knows whether you put thought into caring for the other members of the family. He knows whether or not you are touchy or anxious to defend your own interests. In short, he knows whether the faith you profess is real or ineffectual. He knows whether Christ occupies the highest point in your life or whether you do.
Andrew put himself second in order to bring others to Jesus. We do not know a great deal about Andrew. In the New Testament he is usually introduced as Simon Peter's brother. Everyone knew who Peter was; Andrew was only the man who was related to him. Yet Andrew was constantly introducing others to Jesus. There are only three stories in the Gospels in which Andrew plays a significant role. There is the story recorded here. There is the time he brought Jesus the lad with five loaves of bread and two fish (John 6:8- 9). There is the incident in which the Greeks were brought to Jesus (John 12:22). In each case Andrew put himself second in order to introduce others to the Savior.
How are we to become charged, as Andrew was? Andrew and the other disciple became witnesses after they had first spent time with Jesus. John tells us that they arrived at the place where Jesus was staying at about the tenth hour - that is, about four o'clock in the afternoon - and that they spent the night there. What do you suppose they talked about until nightfall? We are not told, but the story reminds us of the story in Luke in which Christ spoke to the Emmaus disciples, showing them from the Old Testament how it was necessary for Him "to suffer these things and then enter His glory," after which they confessed, "Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:26, 32). After such time spent with Jesus, when the heart burns, one is constrained to go out and find his brother.
Do you spend time with Jesus? Nothing can be a substitute for that. Only if you do that will you begin to show something of the character, particularly the love, of Him with whom you are spending time.
Fernando Vangioni is an evangelist with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He says that he was in South America for a series of meetings on one occasion, after which a woman came up to him. She said; "I wonder if you would take time to speak to a girl whom I am bringing to the meeting tomorrow night. She went to New York some years ago full of hope, thinking that America was the land of opportunity. Instead of doing well she went through terrible times in the city. She was used by one man after another. All treated her badly. Now she has returned to this country bitter and hostile to all forms of Christianity."
The evangelist said that he would speak to her.
On the next night the girl was there, but when they met there was not the slightest response to Mr. Vangioni's attempts to speak with her. He said that he had never looked into eyes so hard or listened to a voice so hostile. At last, seeing that he was making no progress, he asked, "Do you mind if I pray for you ?"
The girl said, "Pray, if you like, but don't preach to me. And don't expect me to listen."
He began to pray, and as he prayed he was greatly moved. Something in the tragedy of her life caused tears to run down his face. At last he stopped. There was nothing to add. He said, "All right, you can go now."
But the girl did not go. Touched by this manifestation of love for her she replied, "No, I won't go. You can preach to me now. No man has ever cried for me before."
This is the secret of all effectual witnessing. If we spend time with Jesus, then the other matters - knowing we are not the light, pointing to the light, desiring men and women to believe - these will come naturally. And we will find ourselves increasingly used of God as He sends revival to our land.
Author
Dr. James Montgomery Boice is senior pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA. He is the author of numerous books and articles, and has previously contributed to Reformation & Revival Journal. He also serves as an advisor to Reformation & Revival Ministries, Inc.
Friday 29 December 2017
Sola Fide: Does It Really Matter?
By John H. Armstrong
The sixteenth-century rediscovery of Paul's objective message of justification by faith came upon the religious scene of that time with a force and passion that totally altered the course of human history. It ignited the greatest reformation and revival known since Pentecost.
This Protestant movement was firmly grounded in the material principle of sola fide, so-called by Philip Melancthon. The Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone, powerfully revived in the life of the church, set off a movement of God which changed the religious landscape forever. It is time modern church leaders reconsidered the power of this truth. If it were unleashed again the consequences would undoubtedly amaze us.
Now, if the Fathers of the early church, so nearly removed in time from Paul, lost touch with the Pauline message, how much more is this true in succeeding generations? The powerful truth of righteousness by faith needs to be restated plainly, and understood clearly, by every new generation.
In our time we are awash in a "Sea of Subjectivism," as one magazine put it over twenty years ago. Let me explain. In 1972 a publication known as Present Truth published the results of a survey with a five-point questionnaire which dealt with the most basic issues between the medieval church and the Reformation. Polling showed 95 per cent of the "Jesus People" were decidedly medieval and antiReformation in their doctrinal thinking about the gospel. Among church-going Protestants they found ratings nearly as high.
Reading Scott Hahn's testimony in his book, Rome Sweet Home (Ignatius Press, 1993), I discovered the same misunderstanding. Here can be found a complete and total failure to perceive the truths of grace, faith and the righteousness of God. No wonder Hahn left his Presbyterian Church of America ordination behind to become a Roman Catholic. He did not understand the gospel in the first place, as his own words demonstrate.
I do not believe that the importance of the doctrine of justification by faith can be overstated. We are once again in desperate need of recovery. Darkness has descended upon the evangelical world in North America and beyond, much as it had upon the established sixteenth-century church. Luther said [in effect] "Upon this article the church is standing or falling ..." If this be so I believe this issue of Reformation & Revival Journal will show why much of the modern church is "falling."
But what, after all, is meant by the slogan sola fide?
Righteousness by Faith: Imputed or Imparted?
The apostle Paul wrote:
We must note that this righteousness is called "the righteousness of God" (Rom. 1:17). The apostle calls it "the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith" (Phil. 3:9). Why does he use this language? Because he intends to show that this is a righteousness that God provided. This is why the NIV translates this as "a righteousness from God."
Furthermore, in Romans 1:18-3:20 Paul shows that all men stand as guilty, empty-handed and with nothing at all to offer to a holy God. But, and this is what amazed the apostle, God intervened; cf. 3:21. Thus we have that great word, "But now ..," i.e., at the very point of man's utter destitution.
Recent biblical scholars have noted that "the righteousness of God" in Paul refers back to the Old Testament concept of the activity of God (Isa. 51:5). These saving acts were a manifestation of God's covenant loyalty and faithfulness - i.e., His righteousness.
The point of this observation is to observe that God's great redemptive activity in Christ is "the righteousness of God."
This is why Martin Luther was correct to say that this text refers to "the righteousness which God has provided." His observation plainly fits the evidence. Thus, as Romans 3:21 indicates, God's righteousness was apart from law, or anything that man could do.
All of this doctrinal teaching is grounded in the biblical idea of covenant. Man can never establish covenantal relationship with God. He has nothing to offer to God. He can only accept the graciousness of God or refuse it. This is why we insist that the act of God whereby He bridges the gap between man and Himself is both sola gratia and soli Deo gloria.
In addition to the above observations we should note that Romans 5:18-19 refers to "the righteousness of One" or "the obedience of One." This captures the essence of the Pauline argument. But this is not merely a Pauline doctrine. The apostle Peter writes that this is "the righteousness of ... Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:1).
Plainly, righteousness is the key word. The Old Testament bears remarkably clear testimony to the fact that Messiah will be righteous (Isa. 53:9,11; 42:1-4; 50:4-7; 52:13; 11:2-5; Jer. 23:5-6; 33:16).
These references are fulfilled in the One who truly fulfills all righteousness - Jesus Christ (Matt. 3:15; Luke 23:41,47; 4:34; 22:42; John 5:30; 17:4; Heb. 1:9; 4:15; 5:7-9; PhiL 2:5-9; Rom. 5:18-19).
One of the most important texts, and one most often attacked by unorthodox teachers over the years (e.g., Charles Finney and a host of his heirs), Romans 5:12-21, speaks in the plainest language of Christ as the second Adam, or the new man. As the first Adam failed, so the Second, Christ, did not.
Isaiah speaks prophetically of the Messiah as the righteous servant who keeps covenant with God. He is to be "The Servant of Yahweh." This Jesus clearly fulfilled in His saving person and work. John Calvin captured the idea when he wrote: "For if righteousness consists in the observance of the law, who will deny that Christ merited favor for us when, by taking that burden upon Himself, He reconciled us to God as if we had kept the law." [1]
Thus, "He [the Lord Jesus Christ] humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:8). It is for this reason that the Formula of Concord is correct when it says Christ's righteousness is "His entire course of obedience from the manger to the cross."
If we grasp any of this great and liberating teaching we shall never think again of righteousness as being something worked out inside of us. It is, and must always be, a once-for-all act. It is absolutely unrepeatable and cannot be given to us in any way except by imputation. Furthermore, this righteousness is both vicarious and infinite.
1) It is vicarious in that it was rendered to God in our nature (human). Christ assumed both our nature and our obligation so that in our stead He could do for us what we could not do for ourselves. To say this is vicarious means that it was done for us, not in us.
2) It is also infinite in that it was the righteousness carried out by an infinite person, the second person of the Godhead. Thus, "all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" in Christ (Col. 2:9). To say righteousness is infinite means it cannot be reduced to an intra-human experience. This is big - big enough for sinners to run to it and hide! It is eternally pleasing in God's sight, fully satisfactory for all of God's just claims against me.
Earlier we read in Romans 1:17 that the righteousness of God is "from faith to faith ...." That is, it is by faith from start to finish.
It is as if he were saying, "It is by faith and nothing but faith." I cannot think of a more clear statement of sola fide in all the New Testament. In addition to this the apostle later says it is "a righteousness apart from the law" (3:21). Paul further adds, it is "apart from works of the law" (3:28) and "apart from works'" (4:6). The attacks of Roman Catholic apologists notwithstanding we plainly do have sola fide revealed in the clearest way in the New Testament.
Read Romans 1:18-4:25 and note that faith and believe are used repeatedly. What is important here is that Paul connects them both with righteousness. He is not talking about the believer's holiness of life in these contexts. It is not until Romans 5-8 that Paul turns his attention to the righteousness that faith brings to us in our experience. Here he talks about the believer's life, a new life, a Spirit-filled life, a life lived by the gospel (e.g., Rom. 6:13,16-20 where Paul clearly is talking about the believer's actual righteousness of life lived out).
Interestingly, in the first section of Romans no mention is made of the Holy Spirit, while in the second the Spirit is the key to living the life of active faith (cf. Rom. 8:4). This proves, beyond reasonable doubt, two great truths that have always sparked reformation and revival:
The line of argument in the Roman epistle could be stated as follows:
1) "Faith alone" is our acknowledgment that the righteousness which God has provided and made known to us in the gospel is all-sufficient. It has been wrought out, presented to God on our behalf, and accepted. Faith does not bring this righteousness into existence but rather confesses its existence. "Faith alone" means that the righteousness of God's provision is everything necessary for our salvation, and nothing remains to be added to that perfect and finished work.
2) "Faith alone" means that the righteousness which God has provided for our salvation is "apart from the law," "apart from works of the law" and "apart from works " (cf. Rom. 3:21, 28; 4:5-6). Luther referred to this as "passive righteousness: precisely because here all our efforts, works, cooperation and participation are shut out."
This is why it is improper to speak of sanctification as being "by faith alone." Living a life of holiness depends on faith, but not "faith alone." The old Religious Tract Society published a little tract in 1840 that noted correctly, "True Protestants never maintained the absurd position that we are sanctified by faith only." Even Luther, often accused of not having an adequate doctrine of sanctification, called living a holy life "active righteousness."
The evangelical Anglican bishop, J. C. Ryle, once noted that "... not once are we told that we are 'sanctified by faith without the deeds of the law.'"
3) "By faith alone" means that only faith is counted for righteousness (cf. Rom. 4:3, 5-6; also 4:20-24). Faith is not our righteousness, as if it summed up all that is in love, hope, etc., but rather faith is God's gift given to us in order that we might accept the "righteousness of Christ" in the gospel. There are two sides to the transaction of the righteousness by faith:
1) The Human Side (Faith). The poor condemned sinner hears that God has acted for sinners in Christ, providing a perfect righteousness which is in His Son. He hears that Christ's sinless life, bitter sufferings and death were for sinners. God is prepared to count Christ's life and death as His own if we will accept them. But the sinner is so helpless that of himself he cannot believe. God calls him by the Word, enlightens him by the Holy Spirit, and enables him to believe savingly so that he cries out, to use Martin Luther's words: "Mine are Christ's living, doing, and speaking, His suffering and dying, mine as much as if I had lived, done, spoken, suffered, and died as He did."
2) The Divine Side of the Transaction (Imputation). Romans 5:18-19 says that this righteousness is "the righteousness of One" or "the obedience of One." The word impute (logizomm) means "to reckon or to account." It does not in itself change the object, but it changes the way the object is regarded. The believer stands before the bar of God as if all the works and deeds of Christ were His own.
Justification, then, is a decree; it is a judgment, a verdict of the Judge. Is this "legal fiction," as some have been prone to say?
Think about this for a moment. The law demands righteousness, and the sinner owes the law, which he is incapable of satisfying. By faith the righteousness of Christ - all that the law requires of him, the obedience of Christ - is placed to the sinner's account. He is made righteous by imputation, thus God declares him righteous. Strictly speaking, then, being justified is the result of becoming righteous (imputatively) by faith.
Romans 4:5 becomes the key text. What could be clearer than this word? "But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness."
Christianity is positively unique in this fact - it proclaims a perfectly holy and righteous God who justifies the ungodly through the activity of another.
This is why the Reformers did not hesitate to speak of this doctrine in terms of an "as if" idea. By this they meant two things:
All Christians, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, believe that Christ died for the ungodly. What all do not accept is this - that God justifies the ungodly solely on the basis of imputed righteousness based on the death of Christ for him. Not all of us understand that the believing sinner can be simul justus et peccator, "simultaneously sinful, yet righteous (just)."
There has been, and will continue to be, a temptation to ground God's verdict of justification on something within the person. We are tempted, even within present evangelical scholarship (as we will see within this issue), to avoid saying that a person is righteous, while at the same time he is not made righteous by something going on inside of him. (In theological categories this means that we are always in danger of confusing and synthesizing justification and sanctification.)
Justification: The Cardinal Doctrine of the Reformation
This great truth of imputed righteousness is the very heart of the Reformation and of true evangelical faith. Take this out and the church is removed from the gospel. For both Lutheran and Reformed evangelical belief this has always been the hinge upon which the door opens. Even within these confessing evangelical circles countless theologians are not quite so certain today, while multitudes of laymen are not even sure that there is any cardinal doctrine at all.
John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, devotes one chapter (in Book III) to the illumination of the Holy Spirit, one to faith, eight to the life of faith, and eight chapters to justification by faith. He then gives one chapter to liberty of conscience and another to prayer. Finally he writes three chapters on predestination. (So much for stereotypes!)
There is a grand recovery going on today of the theology of the great Reformers, Luther and Calvin. But there is a real danger in this recovery effort, and at this crucial point. What we need is Luther to balance Augustine, as one Presbyterian put it, and we need not only a theocentric recovery, as the Reformed properly insist, but also a Christocentric one, as Lutherans are more prone to note.
Martin Luther's Story
Perhaps no conversion is better known than that of Martin Luther, the Augustinian monk, yet it bears brief recollection at this point.
As a young student he vowed to be a monk. He feared that only in this way could he do enough to make God gracious to him, a sinner. He observed the rules of his order with strictness which won him great praise. He went to confession for hours a day. He faithfully partook of the sacraments. He sought to climb to heaven on the three ladders of mystical piety, scholastic theology, and practical devotion.
Try as he did, he found no peace, no assurance. With Paul he cried, "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7:24).
Then the Spirit of God opened to him the meaning of Romans 1:16-17 so that he was enabled to see that he could do nothing for himself but it had been done. He wrote on Romans 4:24: "Christ's death not only signifies, but also accomplishes the remission of sins as a most sufficient satisfaction." And on John 3:16, "Whoever believes in Him has rendered satisfaction through Christ alone."
Luther wrote:
John Bunyan, an immersionist in his view of the sacrament of baptism, wrote autobiographically of his understanding of this truth:
This truth of sola fide truly was the great doctrine of the First Great Awakening!
Even John Wesley once professed that here he agreed with Calvin:
How are we to preach this justifying work of Christ?
In view of a grand text such as Isaiah 6:1 I think it is appropriate to answer that we must preach the law and the gospel.
C. F. W. Walther, a wise American Lutheran theologian, once commented that "every sermon ought to have some of the law to humble the proud and some of the gospel to comfort the depressed."
It is important that we have some understanding of both Luther and Calvin at this point. Never have two students of Scripture understood more plainly these grand truths of the gospel, and particularly of justification by faith alone. Pastors, and serious lay leaders as well, would do well to give more time to Luther and Calvin (finding that they are not nearly as hard to understand as they may have thought) and less to Barna and Peretti.
Roman Catholic scholars in the sixteenth century were willing to concede that salvation was by grace through faith (but not alone). They said a man could be justified by faith if that faith were clothed with love. This is what is still said by Rome today.
But the Reformers countered this by noting that love is the fulfillment of the law; thus this was still a veiled attempt to support righteousness by the fulfillment of the law. Protestants, therefore, insisted on sola fide. They never denied the need for love, but always saw it as the fruit of man's experience of sanctification. (Cf. Rom. 5:1-5. Here love is clearly the fruit of justification!) Rome always countered this by insisting that justification was God "making a person righteous in his own person" by the work of the Spirit.
Rome, therefore, reasons this way: How can God pronounce a person righteous in His sight unless he really is righteous?
Rome answers: A man must be born again, transformed by God, and only then can he have right standing with God. He can never have real and lasting assurance since he never knows for sure if the Spirit has done enough in him to make him righteous enough before God.
Conclusion
Does this make much difference in our day, or is this historical tempest in a teapot?
I answer, "Yes, it has much to do with our time!"
This is particularly true when we begin to address the rampant subjectivism of our time. It will also be true when we seriously address the anti-intellectualism which fuels this subjectivist direction.
The Christian religion must always be seen as unique from all subjective religious plans and systems. Why? It is the only religion which proclaims a salvation based on concrete historical facts - namely, the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in human history. These acts were outside of my experience. This is, therefore, an objective reality.
The human tendency is always to forget these objective facts and to gravitate back to subjectivism. Failing to see the glory of the mystery of Christ in the gospel we will always look for an experience higher than the revelation of Christ crucified.
Several theological observations illustrate this tendency quite plainly:
1) The Holy Spirit is given on the basis of the atonement and Christ's finished work, not on the basis of anything that we do, attain, or experience. Yet most of the practical Christian life teaching of our time flies in the face of this truth. Whether it is the Promise Keepers men's movement or the next "deeper life" emphasis recycled, it makes no difference.
2) Miracles may or may not be given, but faith never rests on demonstrations of power, but on the promises of God which are revealed entirely in the Word by the Spirit. Almost every modern revival movement, without any serious exception, has fallen into this trap over and over again.
3) Modern Pentecostalism, especially toward the end of this century, is a complete denial of justification by faith alone. Why do I make such a strong accusation? Please note:
a) Justification, in modern movements of this kind, does not bring the Holy Spirit in fullness. If God's greatest gift doesn't bring the Spirit, then I ask, What does? Psychological gimmicks, i.e., the Pentecostal "letting go," or "emptyings," or "absolute surrender."
b) Something greater than and beyond justification which comes by faith. (It makes the down payment of the Spirit greater than the reality which is given!)
c) An unfortunate dichotomy created between receiving Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit. Anything that offers Christ plus something else is a new Judaizing theology.
d) It makes two kinds of Christians: ordinary (carnal) and extraordinary (spiritual).
4) Contemporary concerns for revival are essentially wrong and will land us in more trouble unless we recover this sola fide emphasis. In Luther's time the sects began to arise and wanted "more" and to "go higher" than the Reformers. Luther wrote:
Following the Reformation the church went into a time called "Protestant Orthodoxy." (This was, to some extent; a kind of "new scholasticism," as some have noted.) Some teaching, at times, became over intellectualized again. This is a constant danger. Reactions came in various ways, even as they still do in our time.
A good illustration of my point can be seen in the movement called German Pietism. Here earnest believers sought to get back the life of faith and personal trust in Christ in a living and vital relationship. Godly men were often clearly wrought upon by the Spirit. The problem was this - they consistently moved the church back toward subjectivism, thus further away from the gospel. This pietism actually recaptured much of the Catholic mysticism of another era. The end result was tragic!
Wesleyanism was another reaction. This reaction came to the deadness and formality of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. John Wesley taught, as we noted above, that justification was by faith alone, but his long suit became a unique doctrine of sanctification. He was determined to fight back against antinomianism. Correction was needed. He wanted to reform the church. His efforts left damage everywhere, even though there was immense blessing mixed with it.
Reinhold Niebuhr said it well, regarding Wesley:
One cannot disparage all of these movements as entirely bad, for that would be a stilted view of the matter, but my central point is clear: The objective nature and value of justification by faith alone and the forgiveness of God in Christ cease to be the center of the Christian life and thought whenever anything else is made central.
Some amazing comments about this can be found in some rather unusual places. Louis Bouyer, a Protestant turned Roman Catholic scholar, once noted that revivalism was the great open door back to Rome.
What does all of this mean for us as contemporary evangelicals?
We who minister the Word of God as preachers must labor in doctrine. We must "give ourselves to the Word and prayer." This is our full-time job! This is our calling of God. If we would be faithful to the gospel of grace then we must labor at making this great truth clearer and clearer to all who are under our ministry. It will surprise you how little people really understand if you seek to find out.
By this effort I believe ministers will be judged in the final day. The following might be the way you will be judged by the truth regarding your labors as a shepherd:
"How faithful were you in teaching and living out the implications of the gospel of My Son, Jesus Christ?"
End Notes
The sixteenth-century rediscovery of Paul's objective message of justification by faith came upon the religious scene of that time with a force and passion that totally altered the course of human history. It ignited the greatest reformation and revival known since Pentecost.
This Protestant movement was firmly grounded in the material principle of sola fide, so-called by Philip Melancthon. The Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone, powerfully revived in the life of the church, set off a movement of God which changed the religious landscape forever. It is time modern church leaders reconsidered the power of this truth. If it were unleashed again the consequences would undoubtedly amaze us.
Now, if the Fathers of the early church, so nearly removed in time from Paul, lost touch with the Pauline message, how much more is this true in succeeding generations? The powerful truth of righteousness by faith needs to be restated plainly, and understood clearly, by every new generation.
In our time we are awash in a "Sea of Subjectivism," as one magazine put it over twenty years ago. Let me explain. In 1972 a publication known as Present Truth published the results of a survey with a five-point questionnaire which dealt with the most basic issues between the medieval church and the Reformation. Polling showed 95 per cent of the "Jesus People" were decidedly medieval and antiReformation in their doctrinal thinking about the gospel. Among church-going Protestants they found ratings nearly as high.
Reading Scott Hahn's testimony in his book, Rome Sweet Home (Ignatius Press, 1993), I discovered the same misunderstanding. Here can be found a complete and total failure to perceive the truths of grace, faith and the righteousness of God. No wonder Hahn left his Presbyterian Church of America ordination behind to become a Roman Catholic. He did not understand the gospel in the first place, as his own words demonstrate.
I do not believe that the importance of the doctrine of justification by faith can be overstated. We are once again in desperate need of recovery. Darkness has descended upon the evangelical world in North America and beyond, much as it had upon the established sixteenth-century church. Luther said [in effect] "Upon this article the church is standing or falling ..." If this be so I believe this issue of Reformation & Revival Journal will show why much of the modern church is "falling."
But what, after all, is meant by the slogan sola fide?
Righteousness by Faith: Imputed or Imparted?
The apostle Paul wrote:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "But the righteous man shall live by faith" (Rom. 1:16-17).But what is this righteousness of faith? And how does it come to sinners? How are they to lay hold of it? Or, put another way, how does God give it to them? What relationship does this alien righteousness have to the believing sinner?
We must note that this righteousness is called "the righteousness of God" (Rom. 1:17). The apostle calls it "the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith" (Phil. 3:9). Why does he use this language? Because he intends to show that this is a righteousness that God provided. This is why the NIV translates this as "a righteousness from God."
Furthermore, in Romans 1:18-3:20 Paul shows that all men stand as guilty, empty-handed and with nothing at all to offer to a holy God. But, and this is what amazed the apostle, God intervened; cf. 3:21. Thus we have that great word, "But now ..," i.e., at the very point of man's utter destitution.
Recent biblical scholars have noted that "the righteousness of God" in Paul refers back to the Old Testament concept of the activity of God (Isa. 51:5). These saving acts were a manifestation of God's covenant loyalty and faithfulness - i.e., His righteousness.
The point of this observation is to observe that God's great redemptive activity in Christ is "the righteousness of God."
This is why Martin Luther was correct to say that this text refers to "the righteousness which God has provided." His observation plainly fits the evidence. Thus, as Romans 3:21 indicates, God's righteousness was apart from law, or anything that man could do.
All of this doctrinal teaching is grounded in the biblical idea of covenant. Man can never establish covenantal relationship with God. He has nothing to offer to God. He can only accept the graciousness of God or refuse it. This is why we insist that the act of God whereby He bridges the gap between man and Himself is both sola gratia and soli Deo gloria.
In addition to the above observations we should note that Romans 5:18-19 refers to "the righteousness of One" or "the obedience of One." This captures the essence of the Pauline argument. But this is not merely a Pauline doctrine. The apostle Peter writes that this is "the righteousness of ... Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:1).
Plainly, righteousness is the key word. The Old Testament bears remarkably clear testimony to the fact that Messiah will be righteous (Isa. 53:9,11; 42:1-4; 50:4-7; 52:13; 11:2-5; Jer. 23:5-6; 33:16).
These references are fulfilled in the One who truly fulfills all righteousness - Jesus Christ (Matt. 3:15; Luke 23:41,47; 4:34; 22:42; John 5:30; 17:4; Heb. 1:9; 4:15; 5:7-9; PhiL 2:5-9; Rom. 5:18-19).
One of the most important texts, and one most often attacked by unorthodox teachers over the years (e.g., Charles Finney and a host of his heirs), Romans 5:12-21, speaks in the plainest language of Christ as the second Adam, or the new man. As the first Adam failed, so the Second, Christ, did not.
Isaiah speaks prophetically of the Messiah as the righteous servant who keeps covenant with God. He is to be "The Servant of Yahweh." This Jesus clearly fulfilled in His saving person and work. John Calvin captured the idea when he wrote: "For if righteousness consists in the observance of the law, who will deny that Christ merited favor for us when, by taking that burden upon Himself, He reconciled us to God as if we had kept the law." [1]
Thus, "He [the Lord Jesus Christ] humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:8). It is for this reason that the Formula of Concord is correct when it says Christ's righteousness is "His entire course of obedience from the manger to the cross."
If we grasp any of this great and liberating teaching we shall never think again of righteousness as being something worked out inside of us. It is, and must always be, a once-for-all act. It is absolutely unrepeatable and cannot be given to us in any way except by imputation. Furthermore, this righteousness is both vicarious and infinite.
1) It is vicarious in that it was rendered to God in our nature (human). Christ assumed both our nature and our obligation so that in our stead He could do for us what we could not do for ourselves. To say this is vicarious means that it was done for us, not in us.
2) It is also infinite in that it was the righteousness carried out by an infinite person, the second person of the Godhead. Thus, "all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" in Christ (Col. 2:9). To say righteousness is infinite means it cannot be reduced to an intra-human experience. This is big - big enough for sinners to run to it and hide! It is eternally pleasing in God's sight, fully satisfactory for all of God's just claims against me.
Earlier we read in Romans 1:17 that the righteousness of God is "from faith to faith ...." That is, it is by faith from start to finish.
It is as if he were saying, "It is by faith and nothing but faith." I cannot think of a more clear statement of sola fide in all the New Testament. In addition to this the apostle later says it is "a righteousness apart from the law" (3:21). Paul further adds, it is "apart from works of the law" (3:28) and "apart from works'" (4:6). The attacks of Roman Catholic apologists notwithstanding we plainly do have sola fide revealed in the clearest way in the New Testament.
Read Romans 1:18-4:25 and note that faith and believe are used repeatedly. What is important here is that Paul connects them both with righteousness. He is not talking about the believer's holiness of life in these contexts. It is not until Romans 5-8 that Paul turns his attention to the righteousness that faith brings to us in our experience. Here he talks about the believer's life, a new life, a Spirit-filled life, a life lived by the gospel (e.g., Rom. 6:13,16-20 where Paul clearly is talking about the believer's actual righteousness of life lived out).
Interestingly, in the first section of Romans no mention is made of the Holy Spirit, while in the second the Spirit is the key to living the life of active faith (cf. Rom. 8:4). This proves, beyond reasonable doubt, two great truths that have always sparked reformation and revival:
- There is a righteousness which is of faith that is done for us, and,
- The righteousness of life is what is done inside of us.
The line of argument in the Roman epistle could be stated as follows:
1) "Faith alone" is our acknowledgment that the righteousness which God has provided and made known to us in the gospel is all-sufficient. It has been wrought out, presented to God on our behalf, and accepted. Faith does not bring this righteousness into existence but rather confesses its existence. "Faith alone" means that the righteousness of God's provision is everything necessary for our salvation, and nothing remains to be added to that perfect and finished work.
2) "Faith alone" means that the righteousness which God has provided for our salvation is "apart from the law," "apart from works of the law" and "apart from works " (cf. Rom. 3:21, 28; 4:5-6). Luther referred to this as "passive righteousness: precisely because here all our efforts, works, cooperation and participation are shut out."
This is why it is improper to speak of sanctification as being "by faith alone." Living a life of holiness depends on faith, but not "faith alone." The old Religious Tract Society published a little tract in 1840 that noted correctly, "True Protestants never maintained the absurd position that we are sanctified by faith only." Even Luther, often accused of not having an adequate doctrine of sanctification, called living a holy life "active righteousness."
The evangelical Anglican bishop, J. C. Ryle, once noted that "... not once are we told that we are 'sanctified by faith without the deeds of the law.'"
3) "By faith alone" means that only faith is counted for righteousness (cf. Rom. 4:3, 5-6; also 4:20-24). Faith is not our righteousness, as if it summed up all that is in love, hope, etc., but rather faith is God's gift given to us in order that we might accept the "righteousness of Christ" in the gospel. There are two sides to the transaction of the righteousness by faith:
- faith, and
- counted for righteousness by God.
1) The Human Side (Faith). The poor condemned sinner hears that God has acted for sinners in Christ, providing a perfect righteousness which is in His Son. He hears that Christ's sinless life, bitter sufferings and death were for sinners. God is prepared to count Christ's life and death as His own if we will accept them. But the sinner is so helpless that of himself he cannot believe. God calls him by the Word, enlightens him by the Holy Spirit, and enables him to believe savingly so that he cries out, to use Martin Luther's words: "Mine are Christ's living, doing, and speaking, His suffering and dying, mine as much as if I had lived, done, spoken, suffered, and died as He did."
2) The Divine Side of the Transaction (Imputation). Romans 5:18-19 says that this righteousness is "the righteousness of One" or "the obedience of One." The word impute (logizomm) means "to reckon or to account." It does not in itself change the object, but it changes the way the object is regarded. The believer stands before the bar of God as if all the works and deeds of Christ were His own.
Justification, then, is a decree; it is a judgment, a verdict of the Judge. Is this "legal fiction," as some have been prone to say?
Think about this for a moment. The law demands righteousness, and the sinner owes the law, which he is incapable of satisfying. By faith the righteousness of Christ - all that the law requires of him, the obedience of Christ - is placed to the sinner's account. He is made righteous by imputation, thus God declares him righteous. Strictly speaking, then, being justified is the result of becoming righteous (imputatively) by faith.
Romans 4:5 becomes the key text. What could be clearer than this word? "But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness."
Christianity is positively unique in this fact - it proclaims a perfectly holy and righteous God who justifies the ungodly through the activity of another.
This is why the Reformers did not hesitate to speak of this doctrine in terms of an "as if" idea. By this they meant two things:
- The Savior is treated "as if" He were a sinner on the cross, and
- The believing sinner is treated "as if" the sinless life and vicarious death of the Savior were his own.
For if righteousness consists in the observance of the law, who will deny that Christ merited favor for us when, by taking that burden upon Himself, He reconciled us to God as if all had kept the law. [2]And, further:
We define justification as follows: the sinner received into communion with Christ, is reconciled to God by His grace. While cleansed by Christ's blood, the sinner obtains forgiveness of sins, and clothed with Christ's righteousness as if it were his own, he stands confident before the heavenly judgment seat. [3]Rome has consistently rejected this doctrine, and still rejects it. We can't say what she will do in the centuries to come, if the Lord tarries, but there is little reason to think she will "go back" on the teaching she firmly committed herself to at the Council of Trent. This doctrine was, and still remains, as one has called it, "The rock of offense."
All Christians, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, believe that Christ died for the ungodly. What all do not accept is this - that God justifies the ungodly solely on the basis of imputed righteousness based on the death of Christ for him. Not all of us understand that the believing sinner can be simul justus et peccator, "simultaneously sinful, yet righteous (just)."
There has been, and will continue to be, a temptation to ground God's verdict of justification on something within the person. We are tempted, even within present evangelical scholarship (as we will see within this issue), to avoid saying that a person is righteous, while at the same time he is not made righteous by something going on inside of him. (In theological categories this means that we are always in danger of confusing and synthesizing justification and sanctification.)
Justification: The Cardinal Doctrine of the Reformation
This great truth of imputed righteousness is the very heart of the Reformation and of true evangelical faith. Take this out and the church is removed from the gospel. For both Lutheran and Reformed evangelical belief this has always been the hinge upon which the door opens. Even within these confessing evangelical circles countless theologians are not quite so certain today, while multitudes of laymen are not even sure that there is any cardinal doctrine at all.
John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, devotes one chapter (in Book III) to the illumination of the Holy Spirit, one to faith, eight to the life of faith, and eight chapters to justification by faith. He then gives one chapter to liberty of conscience and another to prayer. Finally he writes three chapters on predestination. (So much for stereotypes!)
There is a grand recovery going on today of the theology of the great Reformers, Luther and Calvin. But there is a real danger in this recovery effort, and at this crucial point. What we need is Luther to balance Augustine, as one Presbyterian put it, and we need not only a theocentric recovery, as the Reformed properly insist, but also a Christocentric one, as Lutherans are more prone to note.
Martin Luther's Story
Perhaps no conversion is better known than that of Martin Luther, the Augustinian monk, yet it bears brief recollection at this point.
As a young student he vowed to be a monk. He feared that only in this way could he do enough to make God gracious to him, a sinner. He observed the rules of his order with strictness which won him great praise. He went to confession for hours a day. He faithfully partook of the sacraments. He sought to climb to heaven on the three ladders of mystical piety, scholastic theology, and practical devotion.
Try as he did, he found no peace, no assurance. With Paul he cried, "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7:24).
Then the Spirit of God opened to him the meaning of Romans 1:16-17 so that he was enabled to see that he could do nothing for himself but it had been done. He wrote on Romans 4:24: "Christ's death not only signifies, but also accomplishes the remission of sins as a most sufficient satisfaction." And on John 3:16, "Whoever believes in Him has rendered satisfaction through Christ alone."
Luther wrote:
Whence, then, is our defense? Nowhere save from Christ and in Christ. For if there shall come some reproof, against the heart which believes in Christ, testifying against him for some evil deed, then it turns away from itself, and turns to Christ (ad Christum) and says: But He made satisfaction. He is the Righteous One: This is my defense. He died for me. He made His righteousness to be mine, and made my sins to be His own. Because if He made my sin His own, then I can have it now no longer, and I am free. If, moreover, He had made His righteousness mine, I am righteous with the same righteousness as He is. But my sin cannot swallow Him up, but is swallowed up in the infinite abyss of His righteousness since He is God, blessed forever. And so, God is greater than the accuser. God is the defender, the heart is the accuser. What, is that the proportion? So, even so it is .. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Nobody. Why? Because it is Jesus Christ, who also is God, who died, nay rather who is risen again. If God be for us, then who can be against us. [4]This same teaching is the doctrine of the Church of England, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, indeed, even the early Methodists.
John Bunyan, an immersionist in his view of the sacrament of baptism, wrote autobiographically of his understanding of this truth:
[in a woeful state of mind] this sentence fell upon my soul: Thy righteousness is in heaven. And I saw that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, today and forever. [5]Jonathan Edwards, in November 1734, saw a great awakening burst forth in his church in Northampton, Massachusetts. Edwards was preaching on this grand doctrine when revival mercies came with blessing upon his people. He commented once: "[While defending this doctrine in his pulpit] God's work wonderfully broke forth among us and souls began to flock to Christ in whose righteousness alone they hoped to be justified."
This truth of sola fide truly was the great doctrine of the First Great Awakening!
Even John Wesley once professed that here he agreed with Calvin:
... that the righteousness of Christ, both his active and passive righteousness, is the meritorious cause of our justification, and has procured at God's hand that, upon our believing, we should be accounted righteous by Him. [As Wesley lay dying he said] There is no way into the holiest but by the blood of Jesus. [6]More importantly the apostle Paul confessed his utter confidence in the same truth when he wrote:
. . . and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith" (Phil. 3:9).This prompted our century's greatest American Reformed theologian, B. B. Warfield, to call this "alien righteousness." Warfield correctly noted that justification by faith is not to be set in contradiction to justification by works. (This is a mistake many modern evangelicals make in their confused state!) Justification by faith, as Warfield noted, is properly to be set in contradiction to justification by our own works. It must always be understood as justification by Christ's works.
How are we to preach this justifying work of Christ?
In view of a grand text such as Isaiah 6:1 I think it is appropriate to answer that we must preach the law and the gospel.
C. F. W. Walther, a wise American Lutheran theologian, once commented that "every sermon ought to have some of the law to humble the proud and some of the gospel to comfort the depressed."
It is important that we have some understanding of both Luther and Calvin at this point. Never have two students of Scripture understood more plainly these grand truths of the gospel, and particularly of justification by faith alone. Pastors, and serious lay leaders as well, would do well to give more time to Luther and Calvin (finding that they are not nearly as hard to understand as they may have thought) and less to Barna and Peretti.
Roman Catholic scholars in the sixteenth century were willing to concede that salvation was by grace through faith (but not alone). They said a man could be justified by faith if that faith were clothed with love. This is what is still said by Rome today.
But the Reformers countered this by noting that love is the fulfillment of the law; thus this was still a veiled attempt to support righteousness by the fulfillment of the law. Protestants, therefore, insisted on sola fide. They never denied the need for love, but always saw it as the fruit of man's experience of sanctification. (Cf. Rom. 5:1-5. Here love is clearly the fruit of justification!) Rome always countered this by insisting that justification was God "making a person righteous in his own person" by the work of the Spirit.
Rome, therefore, reasons this way: How can God pronounce a person righteous in His sight unless he really is righteous?
Rome answers: A man must be born again, transformed by God, and only then can he have right standing with God. He can never have real and lasting assurance since he never knows for sure if the Spirit has done enough in him to make him righteous enough before God.
Conclusion
Does this make much difference in our day, or is this historical tempest in a teapot?
I answer, "Yes, it has much to do with our time!"
This is particularly true when we begin to address the rampant subjectivism of our time. It will also be true when we seriously address the anti-intellectualism which fuels this subjectivist direction.
The Christian religion must always be seen as unique from all subjective religious plans and systems. Why? It is the only religion which proclaims a salvation based on concrete historical facts - namely, the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in human history. These acts were outside of my experience. This is, therefore, an objective reality.
The human tendency is always to forget these objective facts and to gravitate back to subjectivism. Failing to see the glory of the mystery of Christ in the gospel we will always look for an experience higher than the revelation of Christ crucified.
Several theological observations illustrate this tendency quite plainly:
1) The Holy Spirit is given on the basis of the atonement and Christ's finished work, not on the basis of anything that we do, attain, or experience. Yet most of the practical Christian life teaching of our time flies in the face of this truth. Whether it is the Promise Keepers men's movement or the next "deeper life" emphasis recycled, it makes no difference.
2) Miracles may or may not be given, but faith never rests on demonstrations of power, but on the promises of God which are revealed entirely in the Word by the Spirit. Almost every modern revival movement, without any serious exception, has fallen into this trap over and over again.
3) Modern Pentecostalism, especially toward the end of this century, is a complete denial of justification by faith alone. Why do I make such a strong accusation? Please note:
a) Justification, in modern movements of this kind, does not bring the Holy Spirit in fullness. If God's greatest gift doesn't bring the Spirit, then I ask, What does? Psychological gimmicks, i.e., the Pentecostal "letting go," or "emptyings," or "absolute surrender."
b) Something greater than and beyond justification which comes by faith. (It makes the down payment of the Spirit greater than the reality which is given!)
c) An unfortunate dichotomy created between receiving Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit. Anything that offers Christ plus something else is a new Judaizing theology.
d) It makes two kinds of Christians: ordinary (carnal) and extraordinary (spiritual).
4) Contemporary concerns for revival are essentially wrong and will land us in more trouble unless we recover this sola fide emphasis. In Luther's time the sects began to arise and wanted "more" and to "go higher" than the Reformers. Luther wrote:
Whoever departs from the article of justification does not know God and is an idolater. For when this article has been taken away, nothing remains but error, hypocrisy, godlessness, and idolatry, although it may seem to be the height of truth, worship of God, and holiness. [7]These hyper-spiritual men in Luther's era cried out, "The Spirit, the Spirit," to which Luther once replied, "I will not follow their Spirit."
Following the Reformation the church went into a time called "Protestant Orthodoxy." (This was, to some extent; a kind of "new scholasticism," as some have noted.) Some teaching, at times, became over intellectualized again. This is a constant danger. Reactions came in various ways, even as they still do in our time.
A good illustration of my point can be seen in the movement called German Pietism. Here earnest believers sought to get back the life of faith and personal trust in Christ in a living and vital relationship. Godly men were often clearly wrought upon by the Spirit. The problem was this - they consistently moved the church back toward subjectivism, thus further away from the gospel. This pietism actually recaptured much of the Catholic mysticism of another era. The end result was tragic!
Wesleyanism was another reaction. This reaction came to the deadness and formality of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. John Wesley taught, as we noted above, that justification was by faith alone, but his long suit became a unique doctrine of sanctification. He was determined to fight back against antinomianism. Correction was needed. He wanted to reform the church. His efforts left damage everywhere, even though there was immense blessing mixed with it.
Reinhold Niebuhr said it well, regarding Wesley:
... [Wesley's] thought is rooted in the New Testament doctrine of forgiveness and justification. However, he regards justification in essentially Augustinian terms, as forgiveness for sins that are past; and he thinks of sanctification as the higher stage of redemption. [8]American revivalism, down to the present time, essentially follows this same course. Charles Finney, who blatantly attacked sola fide as you will see in this issue, is the greatest exemplar of this direction. His stress on experience resulted in emotional experience being made central again.
One cannot disparage all of these movements as entirely bad, for that would be a stilted view of the matter, but my central point is clear: The objective nature and value of justification by faith alone and the forgiveness of God in Christ cease to be the center of the Christian life and thought whenever anything else is made central.
Some amazing comments about this can be found in some rather unusual places. Louis Bouyer, a Protestant turned Roman Catholic scholar, once noted that revivalism was the great open door back to Rome.
What does all of this mean for us as contemporary evangelicals?
We who minister the Word of God as preachers must labor in doctrine. We must "give ourselves to the Word and prayer." This is our full-time job! This is our calling of God. If we would be faithful to the gospel of grace then we must labor at making this great truth clearer and clearer to all who are under our ministry. It will surprise you how little people really understand if you seek to find out.
By this effort I believe ministers will be judged in the final day. The following might be the way you will be judged by the truth regarding your labors as a shepherd:
"How faithful were you in teaching and living out the implications of the gospel of My Son, Jesus Christ?"
End Notes
- Calvin, John. Institutes, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960) Bk. 3, Ch. 17, sec. 5.
- Institutes, Bk. 3 Ch. 17, sec. 5.
- Institutes, Bk. 3, Ch. 17, sec. 8.
- Quoted by William C. Robinson in a lecture, "Justification: The Article of the Reformation," delivered October 24, 1975, at Columbia Theological Seminary. Published in Present Truth, Vol. No.4, July 1976, 8.
- Ibid., 9.
- Ibid., 9.
- What Luther Says, (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959), 702-704.
- Neibuhr, Reinhold. The Nature and Destiny of Man, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), 2:180.
Thursday 28 December 2017
What Is This Thing Called the New Covenant?
By Tom Wells
The only thing that all parties in the discussion agree upon is this: there is something called "the new covenant" spoken of in both the Old Testament and the New Testament (e.g., Jer. 31:31ff.; 2 Cor. 3:6; Heb. 8:8). What it is and when it prevails has been a point of endless controversy. This century has witnessed the following variations. First, some dispensationalists formerly held that there is not one but two new covenants in Scripture, one for the Jews and the other for Gentiles. This understanding, however, has been abandoned in recent years so we will not need to pursue it. [2] Other dispensationalists have held that the new covenant is still future. This position is also eroding among dispensationalists, although some still hold it. [3]
More pertinent to today's discussion is the view that the new covenant is simply an extension of an earlier covenant. In Reformed circles one often hears of "one covenant with two administrations," language that reflects the Westminster Confession (chap. 7, sec. 5) that says, "This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel. ..." Behind this language lies the idea of a single covenant that God has made in redeeming fallen man, the "covenant of grace." Arrangements between God and man that come later than the fall must be thought of as phases (administrations) of this single covenant. In the words of the Confession (chap. 7, sec. 6), "There are not, therefore, two covenants of grace differing in substance, but one and the same under various dispensations."
This language underscores an important truth: God has a single purpose of redemption running throughout history. History runs toward a single goal of a redeemed world populated by a redeemed people. More than that, this goal comes to fruition by a single Redeemer which means that in some important sense all Scripture is about Him and His work (Luke 24:27; John 5:46). These truths are of paramount importance and we must never lose our grasp on them. Nevertheless it now seems clear that a mistake has been made in speaking of this purpose as "the covenant of grace." We may agree in asserting the unity of God's purpose through the ages, but the selection of the word "covenant" to describe this unity lent itself to important misunderstandings.
The reason for this is simple: in the New Testament the word "covenant" is almost always used to assert discontinuity. The evidence for this is overwhelming, as fully 79 percent of the occurrences of "covenant" in the New Testament are demonstrably used to assert discontinuity and the percentage goes up a good deal further if implicit instances of "covenant" are added. [4] The remaining instances (Luke 1:72; Acts 3:25; Rom. 11:27; Gal. 3:17; Heb. 10:29; 13:20) cannot be determined with the same certainty, but not one of them demands a reference to a single comprehensive covenant. [5] This kind of inductive survey cannot prove, but strongly suggests, that no such covenant is referred to in the New Testament.
The New Testament leaves no doubt that there is indeed a new covenant. We are not at all shut up to the kind of statistical argument that I have presented above. Other factors that enter the discussion include the following:
First, we must not overlook the fact that the covenant under which Christians now live is called new.
Second, the terms in which it is announced in Jeremiah 31 emphasize its newness. No one, it would seem, could doubt that the prima facie impression made by this passage is the prediction of something new in history. But we are not left with mere impressions. Jeremiah says that the Lord's covenant will be "not like the covenant which I made with their fathers" (Jer. 31:32) at the Exodus. Whatever else this covenant may be, it will be unlike the Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant was one thing; this covenant is another.
Third, we need to remind ourselves that newness itself is not usually an absolute category. Many things are called "new" because that is the most accurate way to characterize them without asserting an absolute break with what has gone before. Flowing as it does from the mind and heart of the single, self-consistent God, the new covenant could not be novel in every respect. But within the constraints imposed by His own inner self-consistency, the Lord declares its substantive dissimilarity to the covenant that preceded it.
Fourth, the strong contrast between the Lord Jesus Christ, as the central figure in the new covenant, and His predecessors, argues strongly for a newness that recognizes a large measure of discontinuity. Before he takes up the new covenant directly, the writer of Hebrews signals the stance he will take in the following words: "In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2a).
At first glance one might take this to mean no more than that men and women in an earlier day had heard the Prophets, but we who were contemporaries of Jesus Christ heard Him. Such an understanding of these verses, focusing, as it does, only on the passage of time is utterly inadequate. To take the least important fact first, it seems likely that the writer of Hebrews never heard the Lord Jesus speak. That seems implicit in 2:3b where he speaks of Christian salvation "which was first announced by the Lord, [and] was confirmed to us [emphasis mine] by those who heard Him." As the NIV Study Bible says on this verse, "The author himself was apparently neither an apostle nor an eyewitness."
What does the writer mean then? He gives us three contrasts, all of which point to one great truth: a new era in the history of revelation has arrived. The first contrast has to do with time. In the past God spoke, but in these last days He has spoken once more. The second contrast has to do with those who received the revelation. God spoke to "our forefathers," but now He has spoken "to us." The third contrast has to do with God's instruments. Once God spoke through prophets, but now He has spoken "by His Son." [6]
There is much more here than the recognition that God has been revealing Himself over hundreds of years of time to different people simply because none lived long enough to receive all that He has said. We are here at the turning point of the ages. Earlier history has been marked off by covenants, and it will not come as a surprise if we meet a new one here. But we are not left to conjecture. Though I cannot pursue the subject here, in much of the book the writer reflects on the newness of the new covenant. [7]
By ignoring the common use of covenant in the New Testament, theologians have tended to subsume all the covenants under the single "covenant of grace," and have in the process largely ironed out the important differences between them. Nothing in the adoption of the phrase, "covenant of grace," demands this kind of leveling process, but it has certainly facilitated it once it was under way. Remove the two-administration language and the expectations of those coming to the biblical text will be changed somewhat. To speak of two covenants instead of two administrations of one covenant leads one to expect greater differentiation between the covenants than the two-administration language suggests.
It may be objected that theologians constantly make use of language in theology that does not exactly correspond to the language of the Bible. This objection overlooks the following:
First, when systematic theology uses language that does not appear in the Bible, it is usually for the reason that no suitable Bible word exists to express the concept. The word "Trinity" springs to mind here. It stands for a teaching of the Bible which cannot be expressed with any single Bible word. But all must agree that the Bible supplies the word "covenant" for what all sometimes call the old and new covenants. If this language is suitable for both Scripture and theology, the burden of proof must lie on those who would replace it.
Second, systematic theology has often confined a biblical word to one of its demonstrable meanings for the purpose of having a biblical term to use in talking about a biblical concept. The word "sanctification" is such a word. While it (or its cognates) has a number of uses in the Bible, in systematic theology it usually refers to the process of growth and development in the Christian life. The Bible clearly uses it that way, though that is not its only use. To use covenant in the over-arching sense in which a single covenant encompasses virtually all of history first requires a demonstration that it is so used in Scripture. This is especially true since other words were readily at hand.
If we grant the "newness" of the new covenant, we must also ask the question, "Precisely in what way is the new covenant new? Is there a central point at which the new covenant sets forth a fundamental break with the Mosaic covenant?" Until one examines the literature one might suppose that all exegetes would agree on this matter. In fact, that is not at all the case; the answers vary widely. Nevertheless the question is repeatedly addressed because it is forced on us by the Bible itself.
Some have found this newness in the inwardness of the words, "I will put my laws into their minds, and I will write them upon their hearts" (Heb. 8:10). But inwardness fails as the central point that sets apart the new covenant from all that preceded it, for the simple reason that inwardness has always been both a command and a characteristic of true biblical religion. We may (and must) recognize some quantitative advance under the new covenant to God's work in His people, but to draw the kind of absolute line suggested by denying inward inclination to individual Old Testament believers both as a command and an experience is ruled out of court by the Old Testament itself. [11]
Nor can we resolve its newness into the forgiveness of sins. "For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more" (Heb. 8:12). There is here, especially, an evident affinity with the death of Christ. Forgiveness and atonement go hand-in-hand. His "blood" (= sacrificial death) establishes the new covenant (Luke 22:20). Surely here, if anywhere, we may find the heart of the distinction between the covenants. But again, the Old Testament evidence is against us. While the forgiveness of those under the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants was in anticipation of the death of Christ, and hence in a real sense dependent on the new covenant under which His death occurred, the fact of their forgiveness is beyond doubt. Abraham, we remember, was justified (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3, 22), but that is a meaningless description without the forgiveness of sins. Though the blood of bulls and goats could not produce forgiveness (Heb. 10:4), nevertheless forgiveness was the privilege of Old Testament believers.
Where, then, is the heart of the difference?
It is suggested in a comparison of the comment of the writer of Hebrews 8 in verse 8 with the promise of verse 11. "For finding fault with them, He says, ... 'And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and everyone his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest of them.'"
In other words, God would form a people, a new nation, under the new covenant who would not break it, because all of them without exception would know the Lord. The people of the Mosaic covenant were not the kind of people who would keep the covenant, so the Lord could have done one of two things: either change the people or change the covenant. In the event, He chose to do both. He formed a new people and gave them a covenant in keeping with the people He formed and the time in redemptive history at which He formed them. The new people, as I hope to show shortly, is the church of Jesus Christ. The time in redemptive history that demanded a new covenant was the time in which "God spoke ... to us by His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2).
But was the church a new thing in history? Many have denied it, finding the church in the Old Testament all the way back to Adam. Covenant theology has often identified Israel and church, so that they could not exist sequentially. When, then, did the church begin?
The evidence for the New Testament founding of the church seems ample. In the mind of the Lord Jesus as revealed in Matthew 16 the church could not have preceded His ministry. The evidence here for the newness of the church falls along two lines. First, Jesus uses a future verb in speaking of His church, "I will build My church" (16:18). In His eyes the church appears to be yet future and this is almost certainly what He means. In view of the fact that many commentators hold that the church has existed throughout the history of fallen mankind, it is surprising how nearly unanimous they are on this point. H.N. Ridderbos, in commenting on Matthew 16:18, in the compass of two pages refers to the "future church" four times as well as speaking of the "future fellowship of believers," the "future community" and the "community that would replace Israel as the people of God." [12] William Hendriksen qualifies his endorsement of this future understanding only slightly: "The expression 'my church' refers, of course, to the church universal, here especially to the entire 'body of Christ' or 'sum-total of all believers' in its New Testament manifestation ..." (italics added). [13]
Something else in Matthew 16:18 also points to the newness of the church: the foundation - "this rock" - which was contemporary with the Lord Jesus. Precisely what or who Jesus had in mind in speaking of "this rock" has been the subject of controversy. We need not settle that here, however. We have only to look at the two popular alternatives, the confession of Peter or the person of Peter himself. (It is interesting to note in passing that each of these two understandings has a long history going back to the early days of the post-apostolic church.) [14]
If the confession of Peter is the rock upon which Jesus built His church, the church could not be earlier than the time when that confession formed in the minds of His followers. The confession is not "the church will be (or is) built on Christ." That confession might have been made centuries before Peter's confession, although even that would have had to be predictive. Rather, on this understanding, the church is built on the certainty that "You [i.e., Jesus of Nazareth] are the Christ, the Son of the living God." If that is the church's foundation rock, the beginning of the church awaited men and women who could make that confession.
We get the same result if we understand Peter himself to be the rock. However glorious was the old people of God under the old covenant, that people existed without having Peter as its foundation. For Jesus' church to rest in any sense on Peter, the church could not be older than Peter himself. Both the future tense of the verb and the words of Jesus describing the foundation he was about to lay demonstrate that the church of Jesus Christ was a product of the age of the new covenant.
The rest of the New Testament confirms this understanding. Think first of Ephesians 2:14-22. This passage is, of course, rich in descriptions of the church, "the two one," "one new man," "one body," "fellow citizens," "God's household" and "a holy temple." But the thing that interests us here is the foundation of the temple, which includes "apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone" (2:20).
The figure of the temple is intended to show the historical process that produced the church. [15] Paul is particularly concerned to describe the earliest layer in its composition, what we might call "the first generation" of "living stones" (cf. 1 Peter 2:4-5). Since the Lord Jesus is the cornerstone, these "stones" will have to be His contemporaries. There can be no question of this temple existing hundreds of years before He existed as "Jesus." The foundation consists of Himself and His apostles, all men of the first century. In addition, however, there are prophets. Is there here, in the foundation, at least one group of Old Testament believers? Clearly not. This building has no basement; the apostles and prophets are joined to Christ Jesus, as I have pointed out, as His contemporaries.
We tend to identify "prophets" with Old Testament times, but we must not forget that prophets also play a major role under the new covenant, in the pages of the New Testament. Whenever Paul uses "prophet(s)" of the Old Testament prophets he makes the connection with Jewish history (1 Thess. 2: 15) and the past indisputably clear (Rom. 1:2; 3:21; 11:2-3). Elsewhere he breathes the atmosphere of the New Testament situation, an atmosphere strange to us, where "prophets" was an everyday category both among the pagans (Titus 1:12) and within the church (Acts 11:27; 13:1; 15:32; 21:9-10). We who use that word largely for men and women of the Old Testament have a hard time placing ourselves into the social environment in which Paul constantly lived. To look no further than the Ephesian letter itself we see references to these New Testament prophets in 3:4-5 (note the contrast between "other generations" and the current "apostles and prophets"). Ephesians 4:8-11 describes the same persons as gifts "bestowed on the church by the ascended Christ; hence, prophets of the New Testament era ...." [16] According to Ephesians 2:20, then the church is a New Testament entity.
We find the same truth set forth in a different way:
Why does Paul speak of baptism in, with, or by the Holy Spirit? The answer seems straightforward; he alludes to the repeated and emphatic comparison between John the Baptist and Jesus contained in the four Gospels and in Acts. For example:
In Mark 1:8 and parallels John foretold the striking difference between his ministry and that of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 12 we have passed the point in salvation history where the prophecy of John has become reality and Paul refers to that fact.
This immediately clarifies one point. When Paul says, "We were all baptized," he does not specify the agent, but we see that the Lord Jesus is the One who does the baptizing. Why does He do it? To put us, as Paul says, "into one body," the body that he calls "Christ's body" in verse 27 and simply "Christ" in verse 12. We are looking here at Paul's account of the origin of the church from a different vantage point than he selected in Ephesians 2. There he was concerned with the corporate relation of believers to God as His temple. Here he is concerned with the corporate relation of believers to one another within the new thing called "the body of Christ," and "to explain how they, though many, are one body." [17]
One point remains: how did Christ do this? The answer to that question depends very much on how we translate the Greek behind the NASB's word "by" in the first phrase of verse 13. The options are either "by," "with" or "in," but, in my judgment, only the translation "in" does justice to the idea Paul is setting forth here. NASB's "by" seems to suggest that while Christ did the baptizing He did it by the agency of the Holy Spirit. But the truth set forth in the references in the Gospels and Acts is that the Holy Spirit, like the water in John's baptism, is the medium into which we are baptized; Christ baptizes us "in" the Spirit as John baptized his converts in water.
The image at the end of the verse, "and we were all made to drink of one Spirit," confirms this by introducing a complementary idea we find elsewhere in the New Testament, the idea that God is in His people and that they are also in Him. As the agent of Christ the Spirit surrounds and occupies God's people. We are immersed in the Spirit and yet, by our "drinking Him," He is also within us. John bears witness to the same truth in 1 John 4: 13: "We know that we live in Him [God] and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit." [18]
As a result we may paraphrase 1 Corinthians 12:13 as follows:
We may pause for a moment to see where we have been in trying to establish the character of the new covenant. After glancing at several contemporary views of when the new covenant prevails, we observed that its very name "covenant" points to discontinuity with what has gone before. This discontinuity is not absolute, but real, prominent in the New Testament and a feature that is ignored at the peril of the church. Finally, we asked in what that newness consists and concluded that its essential feature was a new people of God, called in the New Testament "the church" and "the body of Christ." The new covenant, then, is the bond between God and man, established by the blood (= sacrificial death) of Christ, under which the church of Jesus Christ has come into being. Many will agree to this definition, but others raise questions that we must address next. They concern Israel (the Old Testament people of God), the church's relation to her and the "law" that prevails in this new people.
Historically there has been no consensus on the relation of Israel to the church of Jesus Christ. On one extreme classical dispensationalists have tended to deny all connection between the two, [19] while on the other extreme classical covenant theologians have tended toward an identification of the two as one body. In each case I have used the words "tended to" because both systems have sometimes recognized typological connections between the two while not varying much from their basic positions. Both sides, in my judgment, have therefore touched on the truth but emphasized an understanding that is basically false. Though few dispensationalists today would defend the classical view of "no connections," they remain leery of anything that suggests too close a relationship. In particular they continue to deny that the church is in any sense either old or "new" Israel. Covenant theologians also remain close to their classical moorings. The evidence of both Testaments, however, points to the typological connection as more nearly basic. It will be possible here only to outline this evidence.
First, it is evident that the writers of Scripture read the terms of the Abrahamic covenant in two different ways. [20] Old Testament writers often see the promises as fulfilled to the literal nation of Israel while New Testament writers find their fulfillment in the church. A simple survey of those promises in Genesis 12-17 with the fulfillments noted in both Testaments will illustrate what I mean. [21] While we cannot pursue that in detail here, we may look at two biblical statements that point up this contrast. In Joshua 21:43-45, Joshua tells Israel: "So the Lord gave Israel all the land which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they possessed it and lived in it .... Not one of the good promises which the Lord had made of the house of Israel failed; all came to pass."
God had promised the land and other things to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Joshua records the fulfillment of all the Lord's good promises to the house of Israel. Here, without doubt, the physical nation is in view. In Joshua's judgment, speaking by the Spirit of God, the promises were given to ethnic Israel. We must read the Abrahamic covenant in that way. [22]
But here another biblical writer, this time from the New Testament, reflects on the Abrahamic promises. In Hebrews 11:39-40 we read: "And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect."
Here is a quite distinct view of the promises of God, that calls for several observations. While it is possible that Joshua and the writer to the Hebrews did not have precisely the same promises in view, they nevertheless are looking at the promises connected with the Abrahamic covenant and seeing them in quite different ways. Everything is fulfilled in Joshua; nothing is fulfilled in Hebrews. Clearly they are reading the evidence from differing perspectives. What is the basic difference? Earlier in chapter 11 the writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham went "to a place he was to receive for an inheritance" (11:8). This place was "the land of promise" and the promise extended to Isaac and Jacob who were "fellow heirs of the same promise" (11:9). So far the writer of Hebrews might well be laying the foundation for Joshua's statements on fulfillment. But the following verses show a very different understanding. We are told that Abraham had his eye on a different land altogether. [23] And he was not alone. All his faithful descendants died "without receiving the promises," and confessing "that they were strangers and exiles" on the very earth that contained the land of Canaan (11:13).
How can we make sense of this? By seeing the typological nature of the land of Canaan. It pictured the larger "country" which therefore was also contained in the promises. That will explain how they can be said not to have received the promises that took in "the land of promise."
Another evidence of this type/antitype connection between Israel and the church is found in the common names given them in the New Testament. A fair number of these exist, and this fact is probably one of the things which led covenant theologians to identify Israel and the church. If that identity is impossible, as it must be if the church is founded in the New Testament era, then to understand Israel as a type or picture of the church seems the most likely way to grasp their relationship. For example, the phrase "My people" (approx. 125 times in the Old Testament, of Israel) is either applied directly to the church (Rom. 9:24-25; 2 Cor. 6:14-18) or plainly adapted to it (1 Peter 2:9-10). This last reference falls in a group of Old Testament phrases, "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession," all of which are taken directly from the Old Testament and made descriptive of the church. The easiest explanation for this is the typological one. I may illustrate this by referring to a picture of my wife. If I showed you her picture I would say, "This is my wife, Luann." But if I had the privilege of introducing her to you in person I would say the same thing, "This is my wife, Luann." And that is what the New Testament writers do.
Further evidence of this typical connection is found in the rites, ceremonies and ordinances of the two Testaments. Such things as circumcision, the Passover, and the sacrifices on the one hand, and baptism, the Lord's Table and the New Testament "sacrifices" (Heb. 13:15; 1 Peter 2:5) along with the sacrifice of Christ are obviously both distinct and related. Typology explains this relationship.
Finally, we may think of the parallels between the Lord Jesus in His relation to His church, and various officers of ancient Israel. As Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon and others stood at the head of Israel in various capacities, so the Lord Jesus stands at the head of His church as One "greater than" any and all of these (Matt. 12:42; John 8:53ff. Cf. Matt. 12:6,41). (Compare the summary of the offices of Christ as Prophet, Priest and King, popularized by John Calvin but reaching back as far as Eusebius.) [24] The ancient nation was "baptized into Moses" at the decisive moment in its history (1 Cor. 10:1-2), i.e., they came under his leadership. But the new nation is baptized into Christ (Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27; 1 Cor. 12:12-13) and so has come under His direction.
Typology, however, does not quite exhaust the relation of Israel to the church. Covenant theologians have often insisted on an "organic" relation as well, and in one sense they are right. From the standpoint of eternity future, looking back, the church will prove to have been God's elect individuals from every era. We may illustrate this point by Paul's discussion of Israel and the olive tree in Romans 11, and, at the same time, see how it fits with the New Testament establishment of the church.
Paul starts the chapter by recognizing that Israel, God's ancient people, is made up of both believers and unbelievers. A godly remnant has always existed (vv. 1-6), but the masses stumbled and fell (vv. 7-11). So much is this the case that the nation itself is spoken of as stumbling, transgressing and suffering rejection by God (vv. 11-15). Paul proceeds:
The critical point in answering "what is the olive tree?" is to reflect on the unity of root and branches. The branches are obviously human beings; the root must be of the same kind, a person or persons. This conclusion is confirmed by the other analogy in verse 16, the comparison of the firstfruits of dough and the rest of the batch. Clearly whatever the firstfruits is, the batch must be as well. The root, then, as most commentators have held, is either Abraham or the Patriarchs. "Nothing is more natural than to call the ancestors the root, and their descendants the branches." [25] The olive tree stands as a whole for Israel as that nation has been derived from Abraham (cf. Jer. 11:16). This is in keeping with Paul's interest throughout Romans 9-11 to trace the history of salvation as it bears on the Jewish nation.
When does Paul think of the natural branches as being cut off? Is this, in Paul's mind, an ongoing process in Israel's history, or is there some definite point in their history where this "breaking off" occurred? Though few older commentators directly address this issue, implicit in their discussions is the idea that there came a time in history when this happened. The reason lies close at hand: for Paul, Israel's "rejection" (v. 15) comes at the time in salvation history in which God turned to the Gentiles. Their trespass and rejection "trigger the stage in salvation history in which Paul (and we) are located, a stage in which God is specially blessing Gentiles ..." [26] (cf. Matt. 21:43). With these points before us, we are now prepared to look at the relation of ancient Israel to the church.
Paul's figure of the olive tree reminds us that throughout her history ancient Israel was a mixture of believers and unbelievers. This has led some to call the tree "the visible church in the Old Testament." With Gentiles grafted in, it would presently stand for "the visible church as it now exists." This understanding, however, is not consistent with the figure itself, since there has been no time in history when unbelievers have been cut off from this assumed visible church. To the extent that the visible church idea is true, it is still an amalgam of believers and unbelievers. That "cutting off" awaits the final judgment. Instead, the olive tree is the church of God's effectually called elect, formed after the death of the Lord Jesus out of the true believers of the Jewish nation and believing Gentiles.
Paul decribes here the process by which the true church was formed. First, God stripped all Jewish unbelievers from the ancient nation, leaving only the spiritual children of Abraham. Then He added to them (starting at Pentecost) both Jews and Gentiles, as they were born again, to continually augment His new community, the church of Jesus Christ (cf. Acts 2:47b). Certain things follow from this. First, ancient Israel with her unbelieving branches was never the church of Jesus Christ. Second, Paul does not contemplate unbelievers being added to the olive tree. If God had intended that, He would have had no reason to strip off the unbelieving branches to begin with. Third, there is nevertheless an organic relation between the church and God's individually elect people from ancient Israel. We who are believers in Jesus Christ are now part, with them, of the olive tree as it exists today, i.e., the "invisible" or "universal" church of God. [27]
Finally, we must ask the question, "What law now governs the new covenant community, the church of Jesus Christ?" Here is the other major point of tension with some other understandings of the church. The answer to this question is not only difficult, but has suffered, perhaps more than any other related question, from severe misunderstandings among the parties; Let us see if we can clarify the subject. Two or three points will be in order. [28]
First, we must be absolutely clear that the category "law" is indispensable to the church. Much confusion has existed over what is intended by it, but the category itself is basic to the relation between God and man. [29]
Second, we must recognize that the New Testament speaks of "the law of Christ" as the rule of the Christian (1 Cor. 9:21; Gal. 6:2), whatever is intended by this phrase.
Third, we must also acknowledge that the New Testament offers US little exposition that directly explains what this law is. Nevertheless, we have the materials for determining the question in what I propose to call the logical priority of the Lord Jesus. Let me explain.
The Christian church has a long tradition of treating Christ as a lawgiver to His people going back at least to the Epistle of Barnabas (ca.70-100). [30] Among the Puritans this was a very popular idea, and rightly so. [31] To accept a law from someone means to accept that person as the authority within some limited sphere of life. Such authority, however, is never absolute except in a single case, that of God. There is no appeal from His authority, either by judicial trial, by the use of force or by any other means. Of such misguided efforts the Psalmist says, "The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them" (Ps. 2:4). All Christians agree to this fact, so it requires no argument.
Under the new covenant, however, it undergoes a subtle variation in that Christ sets Himself forward as the comprehensive Lord, a position that we understand can be accorded only to God himself. The justification for this remarkable claim by Christ is twofold: first, by very nature He was God and, second, His person as the God-man was awarded the full title "Lord" (= Yahweh) upon the completion of His mission in this world (Phil. 2:9-11). We should not be surprised, then, to hear Him say, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matt. 28:18). While we understand that even such "absolute" authority has a single limitation (1 Cor. 15:27), for us men there can be no appeal from the rule of Jesus Christ.
Certain things follow from this.
First, for us there is no competing authority in matters that pertain to God. There is nothing logically prior to Jesus Christ to which we must look for the regulation of our lives. (The word "logically" is very important here, signifying the necessity of coming to the Lord Jesus first for instruction, even if He quotes from law that comes from a time earlier than the time of His public ministry.) The authority of Jesus is such that this is true for all men since the ascension of Christ.
Second, what is true of all men is especially true for Christians who have consciously owned the lordship of Christ as the organizing fact around which their lives must revolve. That means they have no moral and ethical allegiance to anything, including the Old Testament and its laws, that is logically prior to Jesus Christ. That is what absolute authority claims, and that is what allegiance to absolute authority concedes. Whatever other authorities may exist in this world (and there are many others) each must be submitted to only out of the understanding that Jesus Christ lays such submission upon believers in Him. Any other acceptance of a prior claim is illegitimate. This is to say no more and no less than what is implicit in the confession, "Jesus Christ is Lord."
As radical as all this sounds, it is not new. It has played an important (though, sadly, often subsidiary) role in the consciousness of Christians from the very beginning. We may illustrate this point from the English Puritans: "Because of easily-recognizable differences between the relation of men to the Law before and after faith, it became customary to speak of the believer as related to the Law in the hands of Christ."' [32]
This is, of course, an assertion of the logical priority of the Lord Jesus in the direction of His people. More than a thousand years earlier the church father Origen illustrated the same point: "We who belong to the catholic church do not reject the law of Moses, but we welcome it, provided it is Jesus who reads it to us, so that as He reads we may lay hold of His understanding and interpretation." [33]
Once more, we see here the logical priority of the Lord Jesus in the moral and ethical instruction of His people, even where there is no rejection of "the law of Moses." It is this priority of Jesus that the New Testament is concerned to maintain against all competitors. It is the sense of this, which virtually every Christian feels when he first comes to the New Testament, that occasions the apparent devaluation of the Old Testament that many complain of. But the Old Testament remains the inspired Word of God while virtually all Christians recognize that the great mass of its legislation is no longer directly applicable to the practice of believers today.
It is this priority of the Lord Jesus that is so evident in the Sermon on the Mount. There is no consensus among scholars on the precise aim of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 5:21-47 where He quotes Old Testament law (or in one case, what apparently purported to be Old Testament law, 5:43b) and proceeds to comment on it. Clearly He is not abolishing this law (5:17-19), but is He modifying it, explaining it more fully, and/or delivering it from the perversions of the traditions to which the Pharisees were heirs? As interesting and important as this question is, however, it does not yet come to the central issue. Whatever Jesus is doing He is doing as the final authority on the subject, and He is doing what no other contemporary Jew would dare to do. His repeated "But I tell you" (5:22, 28, 34, 39, 44) shows the consciousness of an authority that transcends the work of all other interpreters.
Ned Stonehouse has captured the two points made above in the following paragraph:
Here Stonehouse repeatedly sets forth the impression left on the reader: "apparent impingement upon the abiding authority of the law," "seems to set his own pronouncements in antithesis" to the law of Moses, "not deriving the authority of his utterances from Scripture," and an authority which seems to carry with it the invalidation of the law of Moses.
From what do these impressions arise, if not from a desire to destroy Mosaic law? They arise from the priority which Jesus demands for Himself, even in handling the undoubted Word of God.
We come now to the final critical question: How does the priority of Jesus Christ work out in practice?
To answer this question we must first address a number of impressions often held in connection· with the Mosaic law. First, when many speak of "the law" they have in mind only the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. That meaning has an honored history in the church, but as far as I can see the Scripture does not use the phrase in that way. If it does, it is a rare and uncharacteristic use. Second, the idea that "the law" is the Ten Commandments is often associated with another idea, the conviction that, generally speaking, the New Testament regulations and rites that parallel those in the Old Testament are simpler under the new covenant. Since the Decalogue is itself a relatively short statement, when these two ideas are combined they produce a demand that some very compact summary must be given for the rule of Christ if the Decalogue is to be replaced.
We find a naive answer to this search for compactness in the popular notion that all God asks of us is that "we do as we would be done by," i.e., the "Golden Rule." More sophisticated answers make the presence of the Holy Spirit all we need or a serious effort to love God and our neighbor. This last solution comes to us on the firmest biblical ground, but represents an overly realized eschatology. In eternity future it will be a sufficient rule, but just now it is short on details. All of these solutions founder on the same fact: The New Testament contains a multitude of commands and demands, the very things that we normally call "law."
Can these rules and regulations, at least on their moral side, be reduced to the Ten Commandments? Or to put it another way, is "the law of Christ" identical to the Decalogue? There are important reasons for answering these questions negatively.
First, the highest and best revelation of God is found in the Lord Jesus Himself. Yet it is beyond dispute that the display of the excellencies of God found in Jesus Christ is primarily the display of His moral excellencies. Can we really believe that all of this is fully anticipated in the Decalogue? Second, only on the assumption that the Ten Commandments explicitly or implicitly contain all of this same revelation can we think of putting them on the same level as the Lord Jesus Himself.
Now it must be said in defense of many older scholars that they did, in fact, make this assumption. They did not mean to whittle morality down to ten rules or a hundred, to the neglect of all else. The Puritans, for example, repeatedly show that they believed that the Decalogue contained implicitly all the demands of God as reflected in His moral character. But the evidence for that fact was always wanting, as indeed it would have to be, if there is such a thing as progressive revelation. The only alternatives are to empty the word "implicit" of tangible content or reduce it to mean that whatever else would be revealed would be consistent with what had already been given. Given the fact of the self-consistent lawgiver, that is simply a truism.
Nevertheless the Puritans tried to hold the "implicit" view. There are a number of ways of seeing this. We find it in the individual Puritan authors [35] as well as in the more authoritative catechisms, such as the Westminster Larger Catechism in its exposition of the Ten Commandments. John Frame has written:
But what of the simpler, briefer Shorter Catechism? Look at its exposition of the fifth commandment, "Honor your father and your mother." The exposition features two questions concerning the meaning of the commandment:
Nor is that all. In the Mosaic law the penalty for breaking this command in some degrees was death (Ex. 21:15, 17; Lev. 20:9; 21:9; Deut. 21:18-21). It is difficult to see on what grounds this penalty could be avoided among all the other relations that are thought to be in this text. If it be argued that the case laws make this distinction, one comes very close, on this assumption, to setting the case laws against the fifth commandment itself.
The Ten Commandments, then, could not have functioned as a compact summary of all moral law. And they never did among the Jews. In a book written for the direct purpose of insisting that Christians must keep the Ten Commandments, we read: "The Jews did not divide up their Law into moral, judicial and ceremonial precepts. For them it was a whole, covering God's revealed will for all the areas of their common life. The Christians have had to divide it." [40]
As soon as we see that the demand for a compact rule of life is neither found in the Scriptures nor implied by them, we are prepared to receive from Christ a comprehensive law based on the new covenant documents. No slogan, even of Scripture, can contain it, but it is clearly there, as it must be if Jesus Christ is Lord.
Let me suggest its parameters. First, it consists of the commands of the Lord Jesus Himself in His public ministry as illuminated by His own example. Second, it consists of the demands laid upon believers in the books of the New Testament, the new covenant documents. These are the basic items, and both are subject to the further illumination of the Holy Spirit who has been given in greater measure, in part, for this very purpose. Finally, as a personal and secondary suggestion, I add the examination of the Old Testament law with the idea in mind of finding those things that are in keeping with the explicit demands of Christ in the New Testament. [41] In these, it seems to me, we have the law of Christ.
What is this thing called the new covenant? We may now sharpen the definition that we earlier gave with our findings on Israel and the law: The new covenant is the bond between God and man, established by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, under which all who have been effectually called to God in all ages have been formed into the one body of Christ in New Testament times, in order to come under His law during this age and to remain under His authority forever.
Author
Rev. Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, Ohio. He preaches widely as a conference minister and is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal. He is the author of a number of titles and is presently completing a book on the new covenant.
Endnotes:
The entire Mosaic law comes to fulfillment in Christ, and this fulfillment means that this law is no longer a direct and immediate source of, or judge of, the conduct of God's people. Christian behavior, rather, is now guided directly by "the law of Christ." This "law" does not consist of legal prescriptions and ordinances, but of the teaching and example of Jesus and the apostles, the central demand of love, and the guiding influence of the indwelling Holy Spirit. - Douglas J. Moo
There is perhaps no part of divinity attended with so much intricacy, and wherein orthodox divines do so much differ, as stating the precise agreement and difference between the two dispensations of Moses and Christ. - Jonathan EdwardsSince the present issue of Reformation & Revival Journal is devoted to the subject of the new covenant, we will need to grasp two things. First, we will have to have a clear idea of what the phrase "new covenant" refers to. [1] Following on that we will want to see in a rough way the points at which a "new covenant theology" comes into tension with other understandings of the same phrase, along with a brief defense of each of these points. Later articles will take closer looks at some of these points and offer more extensive exegetical underpinnings.
The only thing that all parties in the discussion agree upon is this: there is something called "the new covenant" spoken of in both the Old Testament and the New Testament (e.g., Jer. 31:31ff.; 2 Cor. 3:6; Heb. 8:8). What it is and when it prevails has been a point of endless controversy. This century has witnessed the following variations. First, some dispensationalists formerly held that there is not one but two new covenants in Scripture, one for the Jews and the other for Gentiles. This understanding, however, has been abandoned in recent years so we will not need to pursue it. [2] Other dispensationalists have held that the new covenant is still future. This position is also eroding among dispensationalists, although some still hold it. [3]
More pertinent to today's discussion is the view that the new covenant is simply an extension of an earlier covenant. In Reformed circles one often hears of "one covenant with two administrations," language that reflects the Westminster Confession (chap. 7, sec. 5) that says, "This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel. ..." Behind this language lies the idea of a single covenant that God has made in redeeming fallen man, the "covenant of grace." Arrangements between God and man that come later than the fall must be thought of as phases (administrations) of this single covenant. In the words of the Confession (chap. 7, sec. 6), "There are not, therefore, two covenants of grace differing in substance, but one and the same under various dispensations."
This language underscores an important truth: God has a single purpose of redemption running throughout history. History runs toward a single goal of a redeemed world populated by a redeemed people. More than that, this goal comes to fruition by a single Redeemer which means that in some important sense all Scripture is about Him and His work (Luke 24:27; John 5:46). These truths are of paramount importance and we must never lose our grasp on them. Nevertheless it now seems clear that a mistake has been made in speaking of this purpose as "the covenant of grace." We may agree in asserting the unity of God's purpose through the ages, but the selection of the word "covenant" to describe this unity lent itself to important misunderstandings.
The reason for this is simple: in the New Testament the word "covenant" is almost always used to assert discontinuity. The evidence for this is overwhelming, as fully 79 percent of the occurrences of "covenant" in the New Testament are demonstrably used to assert discontinuity and the percentage goes up a good deal further if implicit instances of "covenant" are added. [4] The remaining instances (Luke 1:72; Acts 3:25; Rom. 11:27; Gal. 3:17; Heb. 10:29; 13:20) cannot be determined with the same certainty, but not one of them demands a reference to a single comprehensive covenant. [5] This kind of inductive survey cannot prove, but strongly suggests, that no such covenant is referred to in the New Testament.
The New Testament leaves no doubt that there is indeed a new covenant. We are not at all shut up to the kind of statistical argument that I have presented above. Other factors that enter the discussion include the following:
First, we must not overlook the fact that the covenant under which Christians now live is called new.
Second, the terms in which it is announced in Jeremiah 31 emphasize its newness. No one, it would seem, could doubt that the prima facie impression made by this passage is the prediction of something new in history. But we are not left with mere impressions. Jeremiah says that the Lord's covenant will be "not like the covenant which I made with their fathers" (Jer. 31:32) at the Exodus. Whatever else this covenant may be, it will be unlike the Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant was one thing; this covenant is another.
Third, we need to remind ourselves that newness itself is not usually an absolute category. Many things are called "new" because that is the most accurate way to characterize them without asserting an absolute break with what has gone before. Flowing as it does from the mind and heart of the single, self-consistent God, the new covenant could not be novel in every respect. But within the constraints imposed by His own inner self-consistency, the Lord declares its substantive dissimilarity to the covenant that preceded it.
Fourth, the strong contrast between the Lord Jesus Christ, as the central figure in the new covenant, and His predecessors, argues strongly for a newness that recognizes a large measure of discontinuity. Before he takes up the new covenant directly, the writer of Hebrews signals the stance he will take in the following words: "In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2a).
At first glance one might take this to mean no more than that men and women in an earlier day had heard the Prophets, but we who were contemporaries of Jesus Christ heard Him. Such an understanding of these verses, focusing, as it does, only on the passage of time is utterly inadequate. To take the least important fact first, it seems likely that the writer of Hebrews never heard the Lord Jesus speak. That seems implicit in 2:3b where he speaks of Christian salvation "which was first announced by the Lord, [and] was confirmed to us [emphasis mine] by those who heard Him." As the NIV Study Bible says on this verse, "The author himself was apparently neither an apostle nor an eyewitness."
What does the writer mean then? He gives us three contrasts, all of which point to one great truth: a new era in the history of revelation has arrived. The first contrast has to do with time. In the past God spoke, but in these last days He has spoken once more. The second contrast has to do with those who received the revelation. God spoke to "our forefathers," but now He has spoken "to us." The third contrast has to do with God's instruments. Once God spoke through prophets, but now He has spoken "by His Son." [6]
There is much more here than the recognition that God has been revealing Himself over hundreds of years of time to different people simply because none lived long enough to receive all that He has said. We are here at the turning point of the ages. Earlier history has been marked off by covenants, and it will not come as a surprise if we meet a new one here. But we are not left to conjecture. Though I cannot pursue the subject here, in much of the book the writer reflects on the newness of the new covenant. [7]
By ignoring the common use of covenant in the New Testament, theologians have tended to subsume all the covenants under the single "covenant of grace," and have in the process largely ironed out the important differences between them. Nothing in the adoption of the phrase, "covenant of grace," demands this kind of leveling process, but it has certainly facilitated it once it was under way. Remove the two-administration language and the expectations of those coming to the biblical text will be changed somewhat. To speak of two covenants instead of two administrations of one covenant leads one to expect greater differentiation between the covenants than the two-administration language suggests.
It may be objected that theologians constantly make use of language in theology that does not exactly correspond to the language of the Bible. This objection overlooks the following:
First, when systematic theology uses language that does not appear in the Bible, it is usually for the reason that no suitable Bible word exists to express the concept. The word "Trinity" springs to mind here. It stands for a teaching of the Bible which cannot be expressed with any single Bible word. But all must agree that the Bible supplies the word "covenant" for what all sometimes call the old and new covenants. If this language is suitable for both Scripture and theology, the burden of proof must lie on those who would replace it.
Second, systematic theology has often confined a biblical word to one of its demonstrable meanings for the purpose of having a biblical term to use in talking about a biblical concept. The word "sanctification" is such a word. While it (or its cognates) has a number of uses in the Bible, in systematic theology it usually refers to the process of growth and development in the Christian life. The Bible clearly uses it that way, though that is not its only use. To use covenant in the over-arching sense in which a single covenant encompasses virtually all of history first requires a demonstration that it is so used in Scripture. This is especially true since other words were readily at hand.
With respect to God's intentions before time, the Scripture designates them comprehensively as "an eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph. 3: 11; see 1 Tim. 1 :9). This "purpose" of God is elsewhere called a "decree" (Ps. 2:7), a "determinate counsel" (Acts 2:23; 4:28), and "foreordination" (1 Pet. 1:20). Jesus called it His "Father's business" (Luke 2:49), "the work" given to Him by the Father (John 17:4), and "the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38; see Heb. 10:9). [8]Third, this kind of substitution not only runs the risk of creating confusion but actually invites it. It seems time, then, to replace the language of two administrations in one covenant with the biblical recognition of covenants. Fortunately a growing number of scholars are recognizing this fact as they come to insist upon biblical and exegetical theology. [9] Willem VanGemeren has written: "Reformed Theology has always been interested in continuity, but continuity must reflect the results of exegesis. Hence, it is not desirable that covenant be the overarching motif." [10] Systematic theology, as the crown of biblical investigation, can never come into its own until it is biblically based.
If we grant the "newness" of the new covenant, we must also ask the question, "Precisely in what way is the new covenant new? Is there a central point at which the new covenant sets forth a fundamental break with the Mosaic covenant?" Until one examines the literature one might suppose that all exegetes would agree on this matter. In fact, that is not at all the case; the answers vary widely. Nevertheless the question is repeatedly addressed because it is forced on us by the Bible itself.
Some have found this newness in the inwardness of the words, "I will put my laws into their minds, and I will write them upon their hearts" (Heb. 8:10). But inwardness fails as the central point that sets apart the new covenant from all that preceded it, for the simple reason that inwardness has always been both a command and a characteristic of true biblical religion. We may (and must) recognize some quantitative advance under the new covenant to God's work in His people, but to draw the kind of absolute line suggested by denying inward inclination to individual Old Testament believers both as a command and an experience is ruled out of court by the Old Testament itself. [11]
Nor can we resolve its newness into the forgiveness of sins. "For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more" (Heb. 8:12). There is here, especially, an evident affinity with the death of Christ. Forgiveness and atonement go hand-in-hand. His "blood" (= sacrificial death) establishes the new covenant (Luke 22:20). Surely here, if anywhere, we may find the heart of the distinction between the covenants. But again, the Old Testament evidence is against us. While the forgiveness of those under the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants was in anticipation of the death of Christ, and hence in a real sense dependent on the new covenant under which His death occurred, the fact of their forgiveness is beyond doubt. Abraham, we remember, was justified (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3, 22), but that is a meaningless description without the forgiveness of sins. Though the blood of bulls and goats could not produce forgiveness (Heb. 10:4), nevertheless forgiveness was the privilege of Old Testament believers.
Where, then, is the heart of the difference?
It is suggested in a comparison of the comment of the writer of Hebrews 8 in verse 8 with the promise of verse 11. "For finding fault with them, He says, ... 'And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and everyone his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest of them.'"
In other words, God would form a people, a new nation, under the new covenant who would not break it, because all of them without exception would know the Lord. The people of the Mosaic covenant were not the kind of people who would keep the covenant, so the Lord could have done one of two things: either change the people or change the covenant. In the event, He chose to do both. He formed a new people and gave them a covenant in keeping with the people He formed and the time in redemptive history at which He formed them. The new people, as I hope to show shortly, is the church of Jesus Christ. The time in redemptive history that demanded a new covenant was the time in which "God spoke ... to us by His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2).
But was the church a new thing in history? Many have denied it, finding the church in the Old Testament all the way back to Adam. Covenant theology has often identified Israel and church, so that they could not exist sequentially. When, then, did the church begin?
The evidence for the New Testament founding of the church seems ample. In the mind of the Lord Jesus as revealed in Matthew 16 the church could not have preceded His ministry. The evidence here for the newness of the church falls along two lines. First, Jesus uses a future verb in speaking of His church, "I will build My church" (16:18). In His eyes the church appears to be yet future and this is almost certainly what He means. In view of the fact that many commentators hold that the church has existed throughout the history of fallen mankind, it is surprising how nearly unanimous they are on this point. H.N. Ridderbos, in commenting on Matthew 16:18, in the compass of two pages refers to the "future church" four times as well as speaking of the "future fellowship of believers," the "future community" and the "community that would replace Israel as the people of God." [12] William Hendriksen qualifies his endorsement of this future understanding only slightly: "The expression 'my church' refers, of course, to the church universal, here especially to the entire 'body of Christ' or 'sum-total of all believers' in its New Testament manifestation ..." (italics added). [13]
Something else in Matthew 16:18 also points to the newness of the church: the foundation - "this rock" - which was contemporary with the Lord Jesus. Precisely what or who Jesus had in mind in speaking of "this rock" has been the subject of controversy. We need not settle that here, however. We have only to look at the two popular alternatives, the confession of Peter or the person of Peter himself. (It is interesting to note in passing that each of these two understandings has a long history going back to the early days of the post-apostolic church.) [14]
If the confession of Peter is the rock upon which Jesus built His church, the church could not be earlier than the time when that confession formed in the minds of His followers. The confession is not "the church will be (or is) built on Christ." That confession might have been made centuries before Peter's confession, although even that would have had to be predictive. Rather, on this understanding, the church is built on the certainty that "You [i.e., Jesus of Nazareth] are the Christ, the Son of the living God." If that is the church's foundation rock, the beginning of the church awaited men and women who could make that confession.
We get the same result if we understand Peter himself to be the rock. However glorious was the old people of God under the old covenant, that people existed without having Peter as its foundation. For Jesus' church to rest in any sense on Peter, the church could not be older than Peter himself. Both the future tense of the verb and the words of Jesus describing the foundation he was about to lay demonstrate that the church of Jesus Christ was a product of the age of the new covenant.
The rest of the New Testament confirms this understanding. Think first of Ephesians 2:14-22. This passage is, of course, rich in descriptions of the church, "the two one," "one new man," "one body," "fellow citizens," "God's household" and "a holy temple." But the thing that interests us here is the foundation of the temple, which includes "apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone" (2:20).
The figure of the temple is intended to show the historical process that produced the church. [15] Paul is particularly concerned to describe the earliest layer in its composition, what we might call "the first generation" of "living stones" (cf. 1 Peter 2:4-5). Since the Lord Jesus is the cornerstone, these "stones" will have to be His contemporaries. There can be no question of this temple existing hundreds of years before He existed as "Jesus." The foundation consists of Himself and His apostles, all men of the first century. In addition, however, there are prophets. Is there here, in the foundation, at least one group of Old Testament believers? Clearly not. This building has no basement; the apostles and prophets are joined to Christ Jesus, as I have pointed out, as His contemporaries.
We tend to identify "prophets" with Old Testament times, but we must not forget that prophets also play a major role under the new covenant, in the pages of the New Testament. Whenever Paul uses "prophet(s)" of the Old Testament prophets he makes the connection with Jewish history (1 Thess. 2: 15) and the past indisputably clear (Rom. 1:2; 3:21; 11:2-3). Elsewhere he breathes the atmosphere of the New Testament situation, an atmosphere strange to us, where "prophets" was an everyday category both among the pagans (Titus 1:12) and within the church (Acts 11:27; 13:1; 15:32; 21:9-10). We who use that word largely for men and women of the Old Testament have a hard time placing ourselves into the social environment in which Paul constantly lived. To look no further than the Ephesian letter itself we see references to these New Testament prophets in 3:4-5 (note the contrast between "other generations" and the current "apostles and prophets"). Ephesians 4:8-11 describes the same persons as gifts "bestowed on the church by the ascended Christ; hence, prophets of the New Testament era ...." [16] According to Ephesians 2:20, then the church is a New Testament entity.
We find the same truth set forth in a different way:
For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:12-13).In verse 12 Paul reflects on the interdependence of the organs of the human body and compares that body to the body of Christ. In verse 13 he explains how the body of Christ was formed.
Why does Paul speak of baptism in, with, or by the Holy Spirit? The answer seems straightforward; he alludes to the repeated and emphatic comparison between John the Baptist and Jesus contained in the four Gospels and in Acts. For example:
And he [John] was preaching, and saying, "After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals. I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit" (Mark 1:7-8; cf. Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16; John 1:28,33).Or, again, in Acts 1:5, this time from the lips of the Lord Jesus, "John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." It is in such words as these that we find the antecedents to Paul's language and thought in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13.
In Mark 1:8 and parallels John foretold the striking difference between his ministry and that of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 12 we have passed the point in salvation history where the prophecy of John has become reality and Paul refers to that fact.
This immediately clarifies one point. When Paul says, "We were all baptized," he does not specify the agent, but we see that the Lord Jesus is the One who does the baptizing. Why does He do it? To put us, as Paul says, "into one body," the body that he calls "Christ's body" in verse 27 and simply "Christ" in verse 12. We are looking here at Paul's account of the origin of the church from a different vantage point than he selected in Ephesians 2. There he was concerned with the corporate relation of believers to God as His temple. Here he is concerned with the corporate relation of believers to one another within the new thing called "the body of Christ," and "to explain how they, though many, are one body." [17]
One point remains: how did Christ do this? The answer to that question depends very much on how we translate the Greek behind the NASB's word "by" in the first phrase of verse 13. The options are either "by," "with" or "in," but, in my judgment, only the translation "in" does justice to the idea Paul is setting forth here. NASB's "by" seems to suggest that while Christ did the baptizing He did it by the agency of the Holy Spirit. But the truth set forth in the references in the Gospels and Acts is that the Holy Spirit, like the water in John's baptism, is the medium into which we are baptized; Christ baptizes us "in" the Spirit as John baptized his converts in water.
The image at the end of the verse, "and we were all made to drink of one Spirit," confirms this by introducing a complementary idea we find elsewhere in the New Testament, the idea that God is in His people and that they are also in Him. As the agent of Christ the Spirit surrounds and occupies God's people. We are immersed in the Spirit and yet, by our "drinking Him," He is also within us. John bears witness to the same truth in 1 John 4: 13: "We know that we live in Him [God] and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit." [18]
As a result we may paraphrase 1 Corinthians 12:13 as follows:
Christ has baptized all of His people in the Holy Spirit for the purpose of forming them into one body, the body of Christ. This body includes both Jews and Greeks, both slaves and free men and women. We also have had the Spirit put within us, so that the promise that God would be in us and we in God has been fulfilled.First Corinthians 12:12-13, then, confirms what we have previously seen in Ephesians 2, that is, that the church is a New Testament entity. In the Gospels and in Acts 1 the baptism in the Spirit is still a future prospect, though fully certain, but by the time Paul wrote to the Corinthians he could treat it as a past experience for every believer. "We were baptized," Paul says, and as a result we are part of the church which is Christ's body.
We may pause for a moment to see where we have been in trying to establish the character of the new covenant. After glancing at several contemporary views of when the new covenant prevails, we observed that its very name "covenant" points to discontinuity with what has gone before. This discontinuity is not absolute, but real, prominent in the New Testament and a feature that is ignored at the peril of the church. Finally, we asked in what that newness consists and concluded that its essential feature was a new people of God, called in the New Testament "the church" and "the body of Christ." The new covenant, then, is the bond between God and man, established by the blood (= sacrificial death) of Christ, under which the church of Jesus Christ has come into being. Many will agree to this definition, but others raise questions that we must address next. They concern Israel (the Old Testament people of God), the church's relation to her and the "law" that prevails in this new people.
Historically there has been no consensus on the relation of Israel to the church of Jesus Christ. On one extreme classical dispensationalists have tended to deny all connection between the two, [19] while on the other extreme classical covenant theologians have tended toward an identification of the two as one body. In each case I have used the words "tended to" because both systems have sometimes recognized typological connections between the two while not varying much from their basic positions. Both sides, in my judgment, have therefore touched on the truth but emphasized an understanding that is basically false. Though few dispensationalists today would defend the classical view of "no connections," they remain leery of anything that suggests too close a relationship. In particular they continue to deny that the church is in any sense either old or "new" Israel. Covenant theologians also remain close to their classical moorings. The evidence of both Testaments, however, points to the typological connection as more nearly basic. It will be possible here only to outline this evidence.
First, it is evident that the writers of Scripture read the terms of the Abrahamic covenant in two different ways. [20] Old Testament writers often see the promises as fulfilled to the literal nation of Israel while New Testament writers find their fulfillment in the church. A simple survey of those promises in Genesis 12-17 with the fulfillments noted in both Testaments will illustrate what I mean. [21] While we cannot pursue that in detail here, we may look at two biblical statements that point up this contrast. In Joshua 21:43-45, Joshua tells Israel: "So the Lord gave Israel all the land which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they possessed it and lived in it .... Not one of the good promises which the Lord had made of the house of Israel failed; all came to pass."
God had promised the land and other things to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Joshua records the fulfillment of all the Lord's good promises to the house of Israel. Here, without doubt, the physical nation is in view. In Joshua's judgment, speaking by the Spirit of God, the promises were given to ethnic Israel. We must read the Abrahamic covenant in that way. [22]
But here another biblical writer, this time from the New Testament, reflects on the Abrahamic promises. In Hebrews 11:39-40 we read: "And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect."
Here is a quite distinct view of the promises of God, that calls for several observations. While it is possible that Joshua and the writer to the Hebrews did not have precisely the same promises in view, they nevertheless are looking at the promises connected with the Abrahamic covenant and seeing them in quite different ways. Everything is fulfilled in Joshua; nothing is fulfilled in Hebrews. Clearly they are reading the evidence from differing perspectives. What is the basic difference? Earlier in chapter 11 the writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham went "to a place he was to receive for an inheritance" (11:8). This place was "the land of promise" and the promise extended to Isaac and Jacob who were "fellow heirs of the same promise" (11:9). So far the writer of Hebrews might well be laying the foundation for Joshua's statements on fulfillment. But the following verses show a very different understanding. We are told that Abraham had his eye on a different land altogether. [23] And he was not alone. All his faithful descendants died "without receiving the promises," and confessing "that they were strangers and exiles" on the very earth that contained the land of Canaan (11:13).
How can we make sense of this? By seeing the typological nature of the land of Canaan. It pictured the larger "country" which therefore was also contained in the promises. That will explain how they can be said not to have received the promises that took in "the land of promise."
Another evidence of this type/antitype connection between Israel and the church is found in the common names given them in the New Testament. A fair number of these exist, and this fact is probably one of the things which led covenant theologians to identify Israel and the church. If that identity is impossible, as it must be if the church is founded in the New Testament era, then to understand Israel as a type or picture of the church seems the most likely way to grasp their relationship. For example, the phrase "My people" (approx. 125 times in the Old Testament, of Israel) is either applied directly to the church (Rom. 9:24-25; 2 Cor. 6:14-18) or plainly adapted to it (1 Peter 2:9-10). This last reference falls in a group of Old Testament phrases, "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession," all of which are taken directly from the Old Testament and made descriptive of the church. The easiest explanation for this is the typological one. I may illustrate this by referring to a picture of my wife. If I showed you her picture I would say, "This is my wife, Luann." But if I had the privilege of introducing her to you in person I would say the same thing, "This is my wife, Luann." And that is what the New Testament writers do.
Further evidence of this typical connection is found in the rites, ceremonies and ordinances of the two Testaments. Such things as circumcision, the Passover, and the sacrifices on the one hand, and baptism, the Lord's Table and the New Testament "sacrifices" (Heb. 13:15; 1 Peter 2:5) along with the sacrifice of Christ are obviously both distinct and related. Typology explains this relationship.
Finally, we may think of the parallels between the Lord Jesus in His relation to His church, and various officers of ancient Israel. As Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon and others stood at the head of Israel in various capacities, so the Lord Jesus stands at the head of His church as One "greater than" any and all of these (Matt. 12:42; John 8:53ff. Cf. Matt. 12:6,41). (Compare the summary of the offices of Christ as Prophet, Priest and King, popularized by John Calvin but reaching back as far as Eusebius.) [24] The ancient nation was "baptized into Moses" at the decisive moment in its history (1 Cor. 10:1-2), i.e., they came under his leadership. But the new nation is baptized into Christ (Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27; 1 Cor. 12:12-13) and so has come under His direction.
Typology, however, does not quite exhaust the relation of Israel to the church. Covenant theologians have often insisted on an "organic" relation as well, and in one sense they are right. From the standpoint of eternity future, looking back, the church will prove to have been God's elect individuals from every era. We may illustrate this point by Paul's discussion of Israel and the olive tree in Romans 11, and, at the same time, see how it fits with the New Testament establishment of the church.
Paul starts the chapter by recognizing that Israel, God's ancient people, is made up of both believers and unbelievers. A godly remnant has always existed (vv. 1-6), but the masses stumbled and fell (vv. 7-11). So much is this the case that the nation itself is spoken of as stumbling, transgressing and suffering rejection by God (vv. 11-15). Paul proceeds:
For if their rejection be the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? And if the first piece of dough be holy, the lump is also; and if the root be holy, the branches are too. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you (11:15-18).In order to grasp Paul's extended figure we must ask two questions: first, what is the olive tree, and second, when does Paul think that some of the branches were broken off?
The critical point in answering "what is the olive tree?" is to reflect on the unity of root and branches. The branches are obviously human beings; the root must be of the same kind, a person or persons. This conclusion is confirmed by the other analogy in verse 16, the comparison of the firstfruits of dough and the rest of the batch. Clearly whatever the firstfruits is, the batch must be as well. The root, then, as most commentators have held, is either Abraham or the Patriarchs. "Nothing is more natural than to call the ancestors the root, and their descendants the branches." [25] The olive tree stands as a whole for Israel as that nation has been derived from Abraham (cf. Jer. 11:16). This is in keeping with Paul's interest throughout Romans 9-11 to trace the history of salvation as it bears on the Jewish nation.
When does Paul think of the natural branches as being cut off? Is this, in Paul's mind, an ongoing process in Israel's history, or is there some definite point in their history where this "breaking off" occurred? Though few older commentators directly address this issue, implicit in their discussions is the idea that there came a time in history when this happened. The reason lies close at hand: for Paul, Israel's "rejection" (v. 15) comes at the time in salvation history in which God turned to the Gentiles. Their trespass and rejection "trigger the stage in salvation history in which Paul (and we) are located, a stage in which God is specially blessing Gentiles ..." [26] (cf. Matt. 21:43). With these points before us, we are now prepared to look at the relation of ancient Israel to the church.
Paul's figure of the olive tree reminds us that throughout her history ancient Israel was a mixture of believers and unbelievers. This has led some to call the tree "the visible church in the Old Testament." With Gentiles grafted in, it would presently stand for "the visible church as it now exists." This understanding, however, is not consistent with the figure itself, since there has been no time in history when unbelievers have been cut off from this assumed visible church. To the extent that the visible church idea is true, it is still an amalgam of believers and unbelievers. That "cutting off" awaits the final judgment. Instead, the olive tree is the church of God's effectually called elect, formed after the death of the Lord Jesus out of the true believers of the Jewish nation and believing Gentiles.
Paul decribes here the process by which the true church was formed. First, God stripped all Jewish unbelievers from the ancient nation, leaving only the spiritual children of Abraham. Then He added to them (starting at Pentecost) both Jews and Gentiles, as they were born again, to continually augment His new community, the church of Jesus Christ (cf. Acts 2:47b). Certain things follow from this. First, ancient Israel with her unbelieving branches was never the church of Jesus Christ. Second, Paul does not contemplate unbelievers being added to the olive tree. If God had intended that, He would have had no reason to strip off the unbelieving branches to begin with. Third, there is nevertheless an organic relation between the church and God's individually elect people from ancient Israel. We who are believers in Jesus Christ are now part, with them, of the olive tree as it exists today, i.e., the "invisible" or "universal" church of God. [27]
Finally, we must ask the question, "What law now governs the new covenant community, the church of Jesus Christ?" Here is the other major point of tension with some other understandings of the church. The answer to this question is not only difficult, but has suffered, perhaps more than any other related question, from severe misunderstandings among the parties; Let us see if we can clarify the subject. Two or three points will be in order. [28]
First, we must be absolutely clear that the category "law" is indispensable to the church. Much confusion has existed over what is intended by it, but the category itself is basic to the relation between God and man. [29]
Second, we must recognize that the New Testament speaks of "the law of Christ" as the rule of the Christian (1 Cor. 9:21; Gal. 6:2), whatever is intended by this phrase.
Third, we must also acknowledge that the New Testament offers US little exposition that directly explains what this law is. Nevertheless, we have the materials for determining the question in what I propose to call the logical priority of the Lord Jesus. Let me explain.
The Christian church has a long tradition of treating Christ as a lawgiver to His people going back at least to the Epistle of Barnabas (ca.70-100). [30] Among the Puritans this was a very popular idea, and rightly so. [31] To accept a law from someone means to accept that person as the authority within some limited sphere of life. Such authority, however, is never absolute except in a single case, that of God. There is no appeal from His authority, either by judicial trial, by the use of force or by any other means. Of such misguided efforts the Psalmist says, "The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them" (Ps. 2:4). All Christians agree to this fact, so it requires no argument.
Under the new covenant, however, it undergoes a subtle variation in that Christ sets Himself forward as the comprehensive Lord, a position that we understand can be accorded only to God himself. The justification for this remarkable claim by Christ is twofold: first, by very nature He was God and, second, His person as the God-man was awarded the full title "Lord" (= Yahweh) upon the completion of His mission in this world (Phil. 2:9-11). We should not be surprised, then, to hear Him say, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matt. 28:18). While we understand that even such "absolute" authority has a single limitation (1 Cor. 15:27), for us men there can be no appeal from the rule of Jesus Christ.
Certain things follow from this.
First, for us there is no competing authority in matters that pertain to God. There is nothing logically prior to Jesus Christ to which we must look for the regulation of our lives. (The word "logically" is very important here, signifying the necessity of coming to the Lord Jesus first for instruction, even if He quotes from law that comes from a time earlier than the time of His public ministry.) The authority of Jesus is such that this is true for all men since the ascension of Christ.
Second, what is true of all men is especially true for Christians who have consciously owned the lordship of Christ as the organizing fact around which their lives must revolve. That means they have no moral and ethical allegiance to anything, including the Old Testament and its laws, that is logically prior to Jesus Christ. That is what absolute authority claims, and that is what allegiance to absolute authority concedes. Whatever other authorities may exist in this world (and there are many others) each must be submitted to only out of the understanding that Jesus Christ lays such submission upon believers in Him. Any other acceptance of a prior claim is illegitimate. This is to say no more and no less than what is implicit in the confession, "Jesus Christ is Lord."
As radical as all this sounds, it is not new. It has played an important (though, sadly, often subsidiary) role in the consciousness of Christians from the very beginning. We may illustrate this point from the English Puritans: "Because of easily-recognizable differences between the relation of men to the Law before and after faith, it became customary to speak of the believer as related to the Law in the hands of Christ."' [32]
This is, of course, an assertion of the logical priority of the Lord Jesus in the direction of His people. More than a thousand years earlier the church father Origen illustrated the same point: "We who belong to the catholic church do not reject the law of Moses, but we welcome it, provided it is Jesus who reads it to us, so that as He reads we may lay hold of His understanding and interpretation." [33]
Once more, we see here the logical priority of the Lord Jesus in the moral and ethical instruction of His people, even where there is no rejection of "the law of Moses." It is this priority of Jesus that the New Testament is concerned to maintain against all competitors. It is the sense of this, which virtually every Christian feels when he first comes to the New Testament, that occasions the apparent devaluation of the Old Testament that many complain of. But the Old Testament remains the inspired Word of God while virtually all Christians recognize that the great mass of its legislation is no longer directly applicable to the practice of believers today.
It is this priority of the Lord Jesus that is so evident in the Sermon on the Mount. There is no consensus among scholars on the precise aim of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 5:21-47 where He quotes Old Testament law (or in one case, what apparently purported to be Old Testament law, 5:43b) and proceeds to comment on it. Clearly He is not abolishing this law (5:17-19), but is He modifying it, explaining it more fully, and/or delivering it from the perversions of the traditions to which the Pharisees were heirs? As interesting and important as this question is, however, it does not yet come to the central issue. Whatever Jesus is doing He is doing as the final authority on the subject, and He is doing what no other contemporary Jew would dare to do. His repeated "But I tell you" (5:22, 28, 34, 39, 44) shows the consciousness of an authority that transcends the work of all other interpreters.
Ned Stonehouse has captured the two points made above in the following paragraph:
That Jesus' fulfillment of the Old Testament law involved far more than an affirmation of the validity of the law appears unmistakably in the illustrations of his interpretation of the law provided by the antitheses of the sermon on the mount. The accent on the authoritative new utterances of Christ in truth is so powerful that in certain instances an apparent impingement upon the abiding authority of the law is disclosed. Six times Jesus, completely on his own authority, and without any attempt to vindicate his categorical declarations, seems to set his own pronouncements in antithesis to "that which had been spoken," the deliverances consisting of, or at least including, in every instance a quotation from the law of Moses (Matt. 5:21ff., 27ff., 31ff., 33ff., 38ff., 43ff.). It was the absoluteness with which Jesus spoke, as possessing authority in his own right, and not deriving the authority of his utterances from Scripture or revered traditions like the scribes, that caused the crowds to express amazement at this teaching (Matt. 7:28). There had appeared on the scene a new self-confident voice, the voice of one who assumed an authority in no sense inferior to that of the commandments of God given through Moses.The sovereignty with which Jesus speaks is so absolute that his fulfillment of the law seems to carry with it the invalidation of the law of Moses. [34]
Here Stonehouse repeatedly sets forth the impression left on the reader: "apparent impingement upon the abiding authority of the law," "seems to set his own pronouncements in antithesis" to the law of Moses, "not deriving the authority of his utterances from Scripture," and an authority which seems to carry with it the invalidation of the law of Moses.
From what do these impressions arise, if not from a desire to destroy Mosaic law? They arise from the priority which Jesus demands for Himself, even in handling the undoubted Word of God.
We come now to the final critical question: How does the priority of Jesus Christ work out in practice?
To answer this question we must first address a number of impressions often held in connection· with the Mosaic law. First, when many speak of "the law" they have in mind only the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. That meaning has an honored history in the church, but as far as I can see the Scripture does not use the phrase in that way. If it does, it is a rare and uncharacteristic use. Second, the idea that "the law" is the Ten Commandments is often associated with another idea, the conviction that, generally speaking, the New Testament regulations and rites that parallel those in the Old Testament are simpler under the new covenant. Since the Decalogue is itself a relatively short statement, when these two ideas are combined they produce a demand that some very compact summary must be given for the rule of Christ if the Decalogue is to be replaced.
We find a naive answer to this search for compactness in the popular notion that all God asks of us is that "we do as we would be done by," i.e., the "Golden Rule." More sophisticated answers make the presence of the Holy Spirit all we need or a serious effort to love God and our neighbor. This last solution comes to us on the firmest biblical ground, but represents an overly realized eschatology. In eternity future it will be a sufficient rule, but just now it is short on details. All of these solutions founder on the same fact: The New Testament contains a multitude of commands and demands, the very things that we normally call "law."
Can these rules and regulations, at least on their moral side, be reduced to the Ten Commandments? Or to put it another way, is "the law of Christ" identical to the Decalogue? There are important reasons for answering these questions negatively.
First, the highest and best revelation of God is found in the Lord Jesus Himself. Yet it is beyond dispute that the display of the excellencies of God found in Jesus Christ is primarily the display of His moral excellencies. Can we really believe that all of this is fully anticipated in the Decalogue? Second, only on the assumption that the Ten Commandments explicitly or implicitly contain all of this same revelation can we think of putting them on the same level as the Lord Jesus Himself.
Now it must be said in defense of many older scholars that they did, in fact, make this assumption. They did not mean to whittle morality down to ten rules or a hundred, to the neglect of all else. The Puritans, for example, repeatedly show that they believed that the Decalogue contained implicitly all the demands of God as reflected in His moral character. But the evidence for that fact was always wanting, as indeed it would have to be, if there is such a thing as progressive revelation. The only alternatives are to empty the word "implicit" of tangible content or reduce it to mean that whatever else would be revealed would be consistent with what had already been given. Given the fact of the self-consistent lawgiver, that is simply a truism.
Nevertheless the Puritans tried to hold the "implicit" view. There are a number of ways of seeing this. We find it in the individual Puritan authors [35] as well as in the more authoritative catechisms, such as the Westminster Larger Catechism in its exposition of the Ten Commandments. John Frame has written:
The Larger is sometimes thought to be over-detailed, even legalistic, in its exposition of the law. One emerges with an enormous list of duties that are difficult to relate to the simple commands of the Decalogue. There is truth in such criticisms, but those who urge them often fail to realize the importance of applying scriptural principles authoritatively to current ethical questions. [36]To be fair to Frame we must carefully note his qualification, but the criticism, as he himself says, is just.
But what of the simpler, briefer Shorter Catechism? Look at its exposition of the fifth commandment, "Honor your father and your mother." The exposition features two questions concerning the meaning of the commandment:
Q. 64. What is required in the fifth commandment?
A. The fifth commandment requireth the preserving the honor, and performing the duties, belonging to everyone in their several places and relations, as superiors, inferiors, or equals ....
Q. 65. What is forbidden in the fifth commandment?
A. The fifth commandment forbiddeth the neglecting of, or doing anything against, the honor and duty which belongeth to everyone in their several places and relations. [37]What shall we make of this? Though this is excellent in itself, it is evident that unless someone already came to the commandment with the conviction that it had to be comprehensive of all human relations, one would never gather it from the simplicity of the command. [38] As evidence for the wider sweeping conclusion that everything moral is comprehended in one of these Ten Commands both the Larger and Smaller Catechism offer just three verses, Matthew 19:17-19. [39] This is, surely, much too narrow a base from which to draw such a comprehensive conclusion. Further than that, assuming that Matthew 19 contains the best evidence for this opinion, we must note that it was not available to Old Testament believers at all.
Nor is that all. In the Mosaic law the penalty for breaking this command in some degrees was death (Ex. 21:15, 17; Lev. 20:9; 21:9; Deut. 21:18-21). It is difficult to see on what grounds this penalty could be avoided among all the other relations that are thought to be in this text. If it be argued that the case laws make this distinction, one comes very close, on this assumption, to setting the case laws against the fifth commandment itself.
The Ten Commandments, then, could not have functioned as a compact summary of all moral law. And they never did among the Jews. In a book written for the direct purpose of insisting that Christians must keep the Ten Commandments, we read: "The Jews did not divide up their Law into moral, judicial and ceremonial precepts. For them it was a whole, covering God's revealed will for all the areas of their common life. The Christians have had to divide it." [40]
As soon as we see that the demand for a compact rule of life is neither found in the Scriptures nor implied by them, we are prepared to receive from Christ a comprehensive law based on the new covenant documents. No slogan, even of Scripture, can contain it, but it is clearly there, as it must be if Jesus Christ is Lord.
Let me suggest its parameters. First, it consists of the commands of the Lord Jesus Himself in His public ministry as illuminated by His own example. Second, it consists of the demands laid upon believers in the books of the New Testament, the new covenant documents. These are the basic items, and both are subject to the further illumination of the Holy Spirit who has been given in greater measure, in part, for this very purpose. Finally, as a personal and secondary suggestion, I add the examination of the Old Testament law with the idea in mind of finding those things that are in keeping with the explicit demands of Christ in the New Testament. [41] In these, it seems to me, we have the law of Christ.
What is this thing called the new covenant? We may now sharpen the definition that we earlier gave with our findings on Israel and the law: The new covenant is the bond between God and man, established by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, under which all who have been effectually called to God in all ages have been formed into the one body of Christ in New Testament times, in order to come under His law during this age and to remain under His authority forever.
Author
Rev. Tom Wells is pastor of King's Chapel, West Chester, Ohio. He preaches widely as a conference minister and is a regular contributor to Reformation & Revival Journal. He is the author of a number of titles and is presently completing a book on the new covenant.
Endnotes:
- For definitions of "covenant" see the standard lexical authorities plus O.P. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), chap. 1; Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), chap. 2.
- See Bruce A. Ware in Craig A. Blaising and Darrell L. Bock, eds., Dispensationalism, Israel and the Church, "The New Covenant and the People(s) of God" (pp. 91- 92) for the grounds of this abandonment.
- A vigorous defense of this position was given at the 1995 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Philadelphia by Ronald N. Glass.
- This is easily calculated by adding the instances in which "covenant" is modified by an adjective that stresses discontinuity to the instances that specify a single historical covenant not now in force and the instances in which "covenant" is plural. Carl Hoch has done a similar study of the implicit uses of "covenant" in Hebrews 8:7,13; 9:1,18 and 10:9 in Carl B. Hoch, Jr., All Things New (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 122-23.
- Hebrews 13:20, which speaks of "the eternal covenant," has often been cited as comprehensive. Something that is,eternal certainly might extend backwards into eternity past. But several things militate against this understanding. First, to place any covenant into eternity past ignores the fact that the covenants of Scripture are all initiated in time. Second, the reference to "the blood" of the covenant ties it immediately to the sacrificial death that establishes the new covenant (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25) Third, we may note that other "eternal" things in the Bible start within time and are eternal by virtue of extending into the future. This is true both of eternal punishment and eternal life (Matt. 25:46). For recent discussion and literature see Richard L. Mayhue, The Master's Seminary Journal, 7:2, Fall 1996, "Covenant of Grace or New Covenant?", 251-57.
- It is possible to read the last phrase as qualitative: "He has spoken to us by nothing less than a Son!" Either translation contains a strong contrast to God's Old Testament instruments.
- Elsewhere in this issue Carl B. Hoch discusses this subject at greater length.
- Jon Zens, Baptist Reformation Review, autumn, 1977, "Is There a Covenant of Grace?", 44.
- O. Palmer Robertson shows sensitivity to this issue in The Christ of the Covenants, though he retains the use of the word "covenant" to describe God's overarching purpose.
- John S. Feinberg, ed., Continuity and Discontinuity, "Systems of Continuity" (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, 1988), 52. In my judgment this seminal book, in which men from both sides of this controversy speak plainly, needs to be reissued, perhaps with some up-to-date revision.
- As for commands, very obvious is the tenth commandment of the Decalogue: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor" (Ex. 20:17; cf. Deut. 6:5-6). For experience see 1 Kings 9:4; 1 Chronicles 29:17-19; Psalms 9:1; 119:10-11; Isaiah 38:3. The following Old Testament verses mention the law of God in the heart: Psalms 37:31; 40:8; Isaiah 51:7.
- H.N. Ridderbos, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), 303-304.
- William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973), 648.
- For extensive documentation of this point see the older work by John Peter Lange, Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: The Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1960), 296-97. See especially the notes added by the American editor, Philip Schaff.
- Speaking of Paul's emphasis on growth here, Rudolph Schnackenburg (The Church in the New Testament [New York: Herder & Herder, 1965], 96) writes, "The edifice is no finished, well-constructed fortress equipped against attacks, but a structure that is still being built, striving towards heaven, led by inner forces towards completion."
- The words, including italics, are from William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1967), 142, on Ephesians 2:20. They are part of a larger argument which concludes: "[R]eference to the prophets of the old dispensation is definitely excluded .... " Hendriksen represents the consensus among modern commentators, though Lenski is an exception.
- Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 603 on 12:13. His entire discussion of this verse on pp. 603-606 is excellent.
- This is a repeated emphasis of the Johannine writings. See also John 6:56; 14:20; 15:5; 1 John 2:24 and 3:24.
- Ope thinks of Lewis Sperry Chafer's rejection of the word "parenthesis" to describe the church age on the grounds that a parenthesis is connected to what proceeds and follows. He spoke instead of the church age as an "intercalation." See his Systematic Theology, Dallas Seminary Press, 4:41.
- Typology is, in one sense, a part of the larger promise/fulfillment motif. In the following discussion the Abrahamic covenant contains the promise side of this motif; both with respect to ancient Israel and to the body of Christ.
- In speaking of the promises of the Abrahamic covenant I include the promises of Genesis 12 which precede the formal establishment of the covenant in Genesis 15. This is accepted by many scholars on the ground that they "have viewed the covenant as a vehicle by which the promise of God is formalized" (John Walton, Covenant: God's Purpose, God's Plan [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994], 15).
- Joshua, of course, is not alone in the Old Testament in this reading of God's promises. Cf. Jehoshaphat's prayer: "0 our God, did you not drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?" (2 Chron. 20:7).
- Though the text uses the word "city" in verse 10, verses 13-16 show that another country (with other cities?) is in view.
- See J.P. Baker in Sinclair B. Ferguson et aI, eds., New Dictionary of Theology, "Offices of Christ" (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 1988), 476.
- Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 366-67.
- Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, New International Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 696.
- I do not have the space to discuss here the question of who is the individual threatened with being yet "cut off" in Romans 11:21-22, if the reference is to God's elect. It seems to me best to take the representative view of this individual as seen in the commentaries of John Calvin, Charles Hodge and Everett Harrison, among others, on these verses. In the words of Hodge, "Paul is not speaking of the connection of individual believers with Christ ... but of the relation of communities .... There is no covenant or promise on the part of God, securing to Gentiles the enjoyment of these blessings through all generations, any more than there was any such promise to protect the Jews from the consequences of their unbelief" (op. cit., p. 370).
- Elsewhere in this issue Fred Zaspel discusses the subject of law in much greater depth.
- Examples of various uses include the Lutheran characterization of law (= commands) as the opposite of grace (= promises) and the common Puritan use which identified "the law" with the Decalogue.
- ANC, The Epistle of Barnabas, 1:138: "[God] has therefore abolished these things [i.e., incense, new moons, etc.], that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is without the yoke of necessity, might have a human oblation."
- Ernest Kevan marshalls the evidence in The Grace of Law (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976), 184-85. They did not, however, think of this law as a new law, but as the "moral law of God," which they identified with the Decalogue.
- Ernest Kevan, op. cit., p. 184.
- Quoted in Alec R. Vidler, Christ's Strange Work (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1944), 50, from Origen's In Josuam, ix, 8.
- Ned B. Stonehouse, The Witness of Matthew and Mark to Christ (philadelphia: Presbyterian Guardian, 1944), 198- 99.
- Thomas Vincent (The Shorter Catechism Explained from Scripture [Banner of Truth, repro 1980], 113), e.g., asks the question, "Is there, then, anything included, as commanded in the moral law, but what is expressed in the ten commandments?" Though he does not answer the question directly, it is clear that he intends a negative answer.
- In Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, "Westminster Catechism" (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 1168.
- Of the many sources for the Shorter Catechism I have chosen to quote from James Benjamin Green, A Harmony of the Westminster Presbyterian Standards (Collins/World, n.c., [repr.] 1976), p. 134. This is an outstanding presentation of the Standards with commentary by Green.
- See a similar criticism of this kind of treatment of the Decalogue in John Brown, Discourses and Sayings of Our Lord Jesus Christ (London: Banner of Truth, repro 1967), 1:197ff.
- See Green, op. cit., p. 117, Larger Catechism, Q. 98, and Shorter Catechism, Q. 4l.
- Alec R. Vidler, op. cit., p. 54.
- This idea is parallel to the suggestion heard in many places that the explicit types/antitypes of Scripture encourage us to seek out others that are not explicit. For discussion and literature cited, see an article by Scott Swanson in Trinity Journal, 17:1, No.1, 67-76.
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