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Evangelism Training Day - 13 October 2011
This coming Saturday, 15 October, I’m going to be leading an evangelism training day at Pantiles Baptist Church, Sevenoaks, Kent. 10 am – 4 pm. A mixture of talks and seminars, practical training and experience. Ping me an email if you’re free and you want to come along.
Beautiful wives and masculine husbands - 10 June 2011
Douglas Wilson on masculinity and femininity: “Masculinity [is] to be understood as authority, sacrifice, responsibility and initiative.” “Femininity is submission, obedience, gratitude and responsiveness.” (For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, p. 41, 44.)
For more, check out the recordings of the 2011 Emmanuel Family Conference.
The showcase of Christian unity - 6 May 2011
The Bible teaches that all believers are one in Christ, and that this unity testifies to the world about him (John 17:20-21).
If our churches are warm, unified communities of people who love and care for each other, there’s a good chance that the world will start to realise there’s something special about Jesus. But if, on the other hand, our churches degenerate into hotbeds of gossip and bitterness, it’s hardly likely that the world will be attracted to our Saviour.
Within this context, marriage is perhaps the relationship that matters most. For the unity between a husband and a wife is of a different order from that which exists even between fellow-believers in Christ. If Christian marriages don’t speak to the world about Christ, our other relationships hardly stand a chance.
“Marriage,” you might say, “is the showcase of Christian unity” (For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, p. 6.)
Hear more from Douglas Wilson at the Emmanuel Family Conference, Saturday 7 May. Book now.
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Emotional pornography - 2 May 2011
“In just the way lust is artificially provoked (and inadequately satisfied) through pornography, so a woman’s emotions can be artificially stirred (and inadequately satisfied) by a steady diet of sappy romance novels and sappier chick flicks. Just as a man can be tempted to mental unfaithfulness by a pornographic image, so a wife and be tempted to emotional infidelity by over-the-top sentimentalism.” (Douglas Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, p. 77.)
Hear more from Douglas Wilson at the Emmanuel Family Conference, Saturday 7 May. Book now.
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Hell on earth - 29 April 2011
“Marriage is intended to be a glorious picture of the gospel, and marriages grounded elsewhere regularly create a small hell on earth.” (Douglas Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, back cover.)
Hear more from Douglas Wilson at the Emmanuel Family Conference, Saturday 7 May. Book now.
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Washing up - 29 April 2011
“Helping is not effeminate. If a man’s masculinity washes off in dishwater, then it was a pretty superficial masculinity. If a man does not know how to be a help around the home, instead of being a lump on the couch, then he has a thin view of his own calling.” (Douglas Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, p. 73.)
Hear more from Douglas Wilson at the Emmanuel Family Conference, Saturday 7 May. Book now.
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Pretty dresses and outboard motors - 27 April 2011
“A wife is the adornment of her husband, and therefore it is important for the husband to adorn her. The desire to be adorned is not to be dismissed as mere vanity or frippery. Of course, if it gets out of balance it may become that, but the fact remains that God requires husbands to clothe their wifes. And doing this should be a higher priority for him than buying a new outboard motor.” (Douglas Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, p. 49.)
Hear more from Douglas Wilson at the Emmanuel Family Conference, Saturday 7 May. Book now.
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Cheap women - 26 April 2011
“Many fathers, for example, are not nearly jealous enough when it comes to how their daughters dress. And they might be surprised to discover how much it costs to have a daughter look that cheap.” (Douglas Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, p. 18.)
Hear more from Douglas Wilson at the Emmanuel Family Conference, Saturday 7 May. Book now.
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Your spouse is also your neighbour - 24 April 2011
In marriage, just like everywhere else, familiarity breeds contempt. Picture the scene:
It’s a hectic Sunday morning. The kids are bouncing off the walls, you’re in a rush to get to church. Gradually the marital temperature rises, until it either erupts into a steaming row or descends into icy monosyllables.
Drive to church. In silence.
Then arrive at church, and with a mighty effort of self-discipline, manage to be civil, polite, friendly, warm and encouraging to fifty or so people in the congregation. Laughter, handshakes and hugs.
Then back home again, and once more into the marital hurricane or the emotional freezer.
Why is it that we often find it hardest to be loving to those closest to us? Or, better: What would it take to display in our marriages the same level of give-and-take that we display in all our other relationships?
Well, for a start, remember that your spouse is also your neighbour. “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Mat 22:39).
For more, take a look at Douglas Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, pp. xvii-xx.
For even more, book a place at the Emmanuel Family Conference, Saturday 7 May.
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New ways of sinning - 23 April 2011
“Discontent leads to certain obvious sins, including sins that can plague a marriage …The great problem is that discontented people … are the most unteachable people on earth.”
“Discontented married people are often former discontented unmarried people … And if you are unteachable, marriage does not alter what you are, but rather amplifies what you are. If you are discontented, marriage will provide you with little more than newer and more complex ways of getting into sin.” (Douglas Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, p. xii.)
Hear more from Douglas Wilson at the Emmanuel Family Conference, Saturday 7 May. Book now.
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The wrong kind of spiritual leadership - 23 April 2011
Douglas Wilson on the wrong way for a wife to desire “spiritual leadership”:
“Many a wife desperately wants her husband to be a ’spiritual leader,’ but only to the extent that he leads where she thinks he should be going. … ‘He is not much of a spiritual leader. I would be submissive if he would start leading right.’” (For a Glory and a Covering: A practical theology of marriage, p. 75.)
Hear more from Douglas Wilson at the Emmanuel Family Conference, Saturday 7 May. Book now.
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These Are Two Covenants (2) - 30 October 2010
More notes from Tim Gallant’s illuminating book These Are Two Covenants.
2. Not Under Law
- This doesn’t mean what you might think.
- Since Torah refers (almost always, in Paul) to the Mosaic law, “under law” means “subject to the Mosaic covenant, in which the Mosaic law held sway.” Consequently, “We are not under law” is a salvation-historic statement, meaning “we are no longer living in the Mosaic order of things.”
- The transition from old order to new order is embodied in Christ. He was born “under the law,” and as “the representative of the old creation” he was “condemned” at Calvary (p. 16). Then, as “the representative of the new creation,” he was “vindicated through the resurrection life of the Spirit” (p. 16). Thus Christ’s death and resurrection represent and accomplish “the redemptive-historical movement from one age to another” (p. 16).
- All those who are in Christ participate with him in the Spirit-empowered resurrection life of this new age. Such participation entails renunciation of the old age, and this requirement lies behind Paul’s critique of the Judaizers in Galatians.
Removal of Torah in Galatians
- Peter’s withdrawal from table fellowship with Gentiles was objectionable not because he was trying to earn salvation by doing good deeds (thought of course that would have been objectionable, and it still is), but because it represented an attempt to cling to the Torah of the old order of things. Exactly how Peter’s actions represented such an attempt is one of the trickier things to understand, since Torah never actually required Jews to eat separately from Gentiles. Perhaps Peter saw his actions as a necessary extension of Torah, given that Gentiles would not have been very bothered about eating Kosher food.
- Paul objected to Peter’s actions because they reflected a denial of the gospel, since they implied that Christ had not, after all, succeeded in putting the old order to death at the cross and inaugurating the new order in his resurrection. Thus this “conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel” (Gal 2:14).
- The underlying thought in Paul’s mind throughout his “anti-Torah argument in Galatians” (see pp. 18-28) is that “Christ and Torah are two mutually exclusive covenants” (p. 27). You can’t just overlay Christ on top of Moses, and any attempt to cling to Moses entails abandoning Christ.
These Are Two Covenants - 7 April 2010
Some notes on Tim Gallant’s These Are Two Covenants: Reconsidering Paul on the Mosaic Law, available online from Pactum Reformanda.
This probably isn’t the book to read if you’re completely new to the debates about Paul and the Law. However, if you’ve read a few things in the past, and if you want a thought-provoking, insightful reading of Paul that moves fast and deals with the text rather than with endless debates about the text, and which doesn’t spend 100 yawn-inducing pages covering all-too-familiar ground, then Tim Gallant’s book is for you.
Foreword (Rich Lusk)
4 great things about this book:
- Paul’s principle concern with salvation history, and consequently with individual soteriology
- The application of the “fulfilment principle” to Christian ethics
- “The law’s place within the eschatological purposes of God comports with sola fide” (p. 4)
- An exporation of oft-neglected aspects of the doctrine of justification “without giving up any ground the Protestants gained in the Reformation” (p. 5)
Preface; Introduction
“These Are Two Covenants is … an attempt to paint a new portrait of Paul’s view of Torah (the Hebrew for what we call law) with attention to features in his writings that are frequently ignored or misunderstood” (p. 6).
“I have attempted to derive my interpretation from the structure of Paul’s own arguments, rather than through the grid of either a traditional or NPP understanding of first century Judaism” (p. 9).
What Law?
Against the idea of “law” as a timeless, universal principle, “Paul very frequently places the law into temporal contexts, showing that for him, nomos is something that is introduced into history at a particular time” (p. 10), e.g. Gal 3:15-25; Rom 5:13-14.
Nomos “is also placed within ‘national’ contexts … something which Israel is under, but not the Gentiles” (p. 11), e.g. Rom 2. Rom 3:19 doesn’t broaden the focus of the law to include Gentiles; rather, it completes the picture of universal condemnation, presupposing the condemnation of Gentiles established in Rom 1.
Torah (in Paul, as distinct from Gospels / Acts) cannot easily refer to oral tradition. Cf. Paul’s polemic against circumcision – a Torah requirement; Torah as covenant; Paul’s solution to “the problem of nomos” (p. 13).
“Nomos in Paul, then, generally refers to the Mosaic law,” though not “every appearance of nomos in the Pauline epistles is identical” (p. 13). In particular, law as Scripture; law as covenant.
Just in case you want to check Gallant’s thesis against the NT, here are all the occurrences of nomos in Paul. As Gallant says (p. 10, n. 5), nomos as “principle” is possible in Rom 3:27; 7:31, 23; 8:2. But elsewhere the idea is considerably less compelling.
Rom 2:12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.
14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God
18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law;
20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth-
23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law.
25 For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision.
26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?
27 Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law.
Rom 3:19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-
27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.
28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
31 Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
Rom 4:13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.
14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.
15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
16 That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring- not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all,
Rom 5:13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.
20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,
Rom 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
Rom 7:1 Or do you not know, brothers- for I am speaking to those who know the law- that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?
2 Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.
3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.
7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead.
9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
Rom 9:31 but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law.
Rom 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
Rom 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
1Co 9:8 Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same?
9 For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned?
20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law.
1Co 14:21 In the Law it is written, “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.”
34 the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.
1Co 15:56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
Gal 2:16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.
21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
Gal 3:2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
5 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith-
10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”
11 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”
12 But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.”
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us- for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”-
17 This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.
18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.
21 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.
23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
Gal 4:4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?
Gal 5:3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.
4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.
14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Gal 6:2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
13 For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.
Eph 2:15 by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,
Phi 3:5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;
6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless.
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-
1Ti 1:8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully,
9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers,
Rom 2:12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.
14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God
18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law;
20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth-
23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law.
25 For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision.
26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?
27 Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law.
Rom 3:19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-
27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.
28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
31 Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
Rom 4:13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.
14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.
15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
16 That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring- not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all,
Rom 5:13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.
20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,
Rom 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
Rom 7:1 Or do you not know, brothers- for I am speaking to those who know the law- that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?
2 Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.
3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.
7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead.
9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
Rom 9:31 but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law.
Rom 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
Rom 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
1Co 9:8 Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same?
9 For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned?
20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law.
1Co 14:21 In the Law it is written, “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.”
34 the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.
1Co 15:56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
Gal 2:16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.
21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
Gal 3:2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
5 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith-
10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”
11 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”
12 But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.”
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us- for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”-
17 This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.
18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.
21 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.
23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
Gal 4:4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?
Gal 5:3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.
4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.
14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Gal 6:2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
13 For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.
Eph 2:15 by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,
Phi 3:5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;
6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless.
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-
1Ti 1:8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully,
9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers,
Another good book on Hebrews - 3 October 2009
Simon J. Kistemaker, Hebrews (NTC). Energetic, insightful, non-technical, less detailed than Bruce or Lane, but very readable.
Here’s a quick taster. Having observed the faith-hope-love triad in Heb 10:22-25 (p. 286), he says:
One of the first indications of a lack of love toward God and the neighbor is for a Christian to stay away from worship services. He forsakes the communal obligations of attending these meetings and displays the symptoms of selfishness and self-centredness. (p. 290)
Only by faith - 18 August 2009
Paraphrase of Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone, pp. 151ff.
Having considered what justification is, let’s think now about what it means to say that justification is only by faith. Then we’ll think about what it means to say that justification is not by our own goodness.
The problem with understanding the meaning of ‘justification by faith’ is that it’s hard to pin down what ‘by’ means.
Some have tried to clarify matters ‘by saying that faith is the condition of justification’ (p. 152). Though this is true in one sense, it doesn’t get us very far, because the word ‘condition’ is itself ambiguous. It can mean subtly different things in different contexts, and these differences can cause great confusion.
For example, in one sense, ‘Christ alone performs the condition of our justification’ (p. 151). So how can our faith be a further ‘condition’ of justification?
More confusingly still, if we take ‘condition of justification’ to mean ’something indispensable, without which we shall not be justified, and with which we shall be justified’, then lots of other things could legitimately be called ‘conditions of justification’ as well. The Bible says that ‘love to God’, ‘love to our brethren’, ‘forgiving men their trespasses’ (p. 152), and many other things besides, are also conditions of justification in this sense. Clearly the phrase ‘condition of justification’ is inadequate to describe the ‘particular influence that faith has’ (p. 153) in justification.
Others have tried to clarify the relationship between faith and justification by calling faith ‘the instrument of our justification’ (p. 153). Unfortunately, this explanation has been misrepresented and ridiculed by others, who have wrongly understood it to mean that faith is the instrument God uses to justify us, rather than the instrument we use to receive justification.
On the other hand, perhaps some confusion is understandable. For those who describe faith as the instrument by which we receive justification also identify faith as the act of receiving justification. That doesn’t work. It’s a bit like confusing your journey to work (the act) with the car you drive in (the instrument).
In any case, even those who describe faith as an ‘instrument’ speak of it, strictly speaking, as ‘the instrument by which we receive Christ’ rather than ‘the instrument by which we receive justification’ (p. 153). But we’re in danger of getting ahead of ourselves.
So then, what does ‘by’ mean in the phrase ‘justified by faith’? Let’s take a step back for a moment. God has sent ‘a Mediator’, Christ, who ‘has purchased justification’ (p. 153). Surely the most obvious thing to say is this: Faith is the thing that makes it right in God’s sight that some people (i.e. believers; those with faith) rather than others (i.e. unbelievers, those without faith) should have justification assigned to them. Faith is the ‘qualification’ (p. 153) that makes it appropriate in God’s sight that ‘we should be justified’ (p. 154).
God doesn’t do anything randomly. Everything in the way that God has set up the world fits together perfectly in line with his wisdom. And God in his wisdom says that faith and justification ‘match’. They fit together, so to speak, such that it is right (i.e. ‘proper’, ‘meet’, ‘fit’, p. 154) for those who have faith to be justified.
This distinguishes faith from all the other things which can rightly be described as conditions of justification (love for God, love for other believers, and so on). For though all these things are ‘inseparably connected with justification’ (p. 154), only faith qualifies us for justification in this special and unique sense.
Setting the wheels in motion - 17 August 2009
Paraphrase of Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone, p. 149ff.
We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue of goodness of our own.
In the following pages we’ll explore this statement in five steps:
1. Explain what this statement means.
2. Prove that this statement is true.
3. Show what place ‘evangelical obedience’ (p. 149) has in justification.
4. Answer objections.
5. Reflect on why this issue matters.
Let’s begin with what justification is. ‘A person is said to be justified when he is approved of God as free from the guilt of sin, and its deserved punishment, and as having that righteousness belonging to him that entitles to the rewards of life’ (p. 150).
Justification has both positive and negative aspects. Negatively, it means that a person is regarded as being not guilty of sin. Positively, it means that a person is righteous in God’s sight, and is therefore ‘entitled to a positive reward’ (p. 150).
Justification therefore includes the forgiveness of sins, but it’s more than this. After all, Scripture says that a person can be ‘either justified or condemned’ (p. 150) – there’s no middle ground. Justification leaves us in the right with God, not in some kind of neutral moral ground.
For an illustration, consider Adam. In order to be justified, he would have needed to ‘[finish] his course of perfect obedience’ (p. 150). Only then would he have ‘fulfilled the righteousness of the law’ (p. 150). He wasn’t justified when he was first created, and it would not have been enough for him to hang around doing nothing!
Or, for another illustration, consider Christ. He ‘was not justified until he had done the work the Father had appointed him, and kept the Father’s commandments, through all trials’ (p. 150-151). He was finally justified ‘in his resurrection’ (p. 151).
Let’s think a bit more about the resurrection as Jesus’ justification. 1 Peter 3:18 says that Jesus was ‘quickened by the Spirit’; 1 Timothy 3:16 says he was ‘justified in the Spirit’ (p. 151). This was the moment when Jesus’ suffering and humiliation ended, when his exaltation began, when God granted his ‘reward’ (p. 151).
Now, what happens when a believer is justified? Simply this: we share in the justification of Jesus. We are ‘admitted to communion’ (p. 151) with him, and so we share in his reward. For Jesus did not die and rise merely as a private individual; he is the head and representative of all who believe in him. So he was raised to life not merely for his justification, but also ‘for our justification’ (p. 151; Romans 4:25).
X-ray questions - 13 August 2009
One of the most perceptive chapters in David Powlison’s Seeing With New Eyes, appropriately entitled ‘X-ray Questions’, contains a series of questions designed to expose what’s really going on in our hearts. The idea is to mull over each question (honestly) for a while, and then look up the Bible references that follow. As you’d expect, there’s plenty of food for thought.
It’s tempting to think that exercises like this are really only for ‘desperate cases’ – Christians suffering under really serious trials, or stuck in patterns of really destructive ungodliness. But this is a mistake. It would do none of us any harm to chew over questions like these from time to time.
Here’s an example.
1. What do you love? Hate? (p. 130)
So, what’s the first thing that pops into your head? Honest, now. Love – proper cappuccino with an extra shot; hate – cheap instant with powdered UHT. Or maybe (this’d probably be better): love – talking to people who really understand me? Playing with the kids at church? Or maybe better still: love – a good solid sermon; the book of Ephesians. All good things. Great things. Really great Christian things.
And then you look up the Bible references.
And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39)
It’s not that we don’t believe it. It’s not that we don’t really love God. It’s just, well, we just didn’t think of it. Mention ‘love’, we don’t immediately think ‘the Lord our God’. We think ‘creation’; the Bible says ‘Creator’. We think ‘provisions’; the Bible says ‘Provider’. We think ‘good Christian stuff to enjoy and do and be blessed by’; the Bible says ‘The One who gives to all people life and breath and everything else’.
And then the ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ bit. Here ‘love’ means something subtly different from ‘love’ when we say ‘I love coffee’ or ‘I love Ephesians’. When I ‘love’ Ephesians, I love what I receive from/through/in it. Not bad, obviously – that’s what it’s there for. But when I love my neighbour, I’m giving what (s)he needs from me. In the one case, I love to get; in the other, I love to love.
Seeing through new eyes - 13 August 2009
David Powlison understands a good deal about what makes Christians tick. More to the point, he understands how to help us tick better. He understands how to help us grow in maturity and Christlikeness, whether through particular trials, specific crises of ungodliness, or just the normal ups and downs of the Christian life.
Powlison’s book Seeing with New Eyes is unsettlingly insightful. It’s basically about bringing the Bible to bear on our all-too-human messed-up-ness.
He’s brutally honest in the way he refuses to ignore the issue of human sin, even when addressing the trials of the Christian life. This sets apart genuinely Christian counselling from every secular alternative. Here he is quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. (Powlison, Seeing, p. 12)
Painful. But ultimately liberating. Once we face our hidden ungodliness head-on, we’ll be able to start thinking clearly about living as disciples of Jesus in what is, after all, a fallen world.
It’s not that there’s some simplistic connection between sin, on the one hand, and trials, unhappiness, or whatever on the other (You’re having a hard time, so you must have done something really bad). Nope (Luke 13:2-5; John 9:2-3).
Rather, the point is that Jesus Christ is always trying to re-shape us more in his image. Our heavenly Father loves us so much, and loves us so wisely, that he values our sanctification infinitely more than our comfort. He ‘disciplines the one he loves’ (Hebrews 12:6), and occasionally discipline hurts a bit. But if we’re alert to what God is doing, then we’ll be best placed to take advantage of even the most painful situations to grow more like Jesus, which wouldn’t be a bad thing (James 1:3-4).
Edwards on justification by faith alone - 11 August 2009
I was talking with a friend the other day about this and that, and was reminded how much I love Jonathan Edwards’s Justification by Faith Alone.
Written in 1738 to counter the growing threat of Arminianism in New England, it is a work of theological genius. It combines many of Edwards’s greatest gifts – theological precision, philosophical sophistication, thoughtful exegesis – with an additional trait not displayed in some of his other works: it’s short. Well, short-ish.
You can even read it free online at the Jonathan Edwards Center.
In this and a few future posts, we’ll be working through Edwards’s work by paraphrasing/summarising a chunk at a time. Text in quotes is taken directly from the Yale edition; page references in brackets.
Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone, p. 147ff.
‘To the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness’ (Romans 4:5).
Four important things flow from this verse:
1. When God justified a person, he doesn’t have regard for any moral goodness in that person. For God ‘justifies the ungodly‘ (Romans 4:5). So, ‘immediately before’ (p. 147) God justifies us, he obviously isn’t looking at us and thinking, ‘Hey, look at how godly (s)he is!’ It’s like when God gives sight to the blind: immediately before they receive their sight, they can’t see.
2. When this verse talks about ‘the one who does not work’ (Romans 4:5), it not just talking about the ceremonial law. It’s talking about all ‘works of morality and godliness’ (p. 148), because ‘the ungodly’ and ‘the one who does not work’ clearly mean the same thing.
3. The ‘faith’ (Romans 4:5) spoken of here is not just another word for obedience. Striving for obedience in order to be justified is a very different from trusting in a God who justifies the disobedient.
4. The very fact that the justified person’s faith is ‘counted’ (Romans 4:5; i.e. ‘imputed’) ‘for righteousness’ (p. 148) demonstrates that God regards the justified person as having no righteousness in himself. Yet the consequences of this imputation for the justified person ‘are the same as if he had righteousness’ (p. 148). The context points in precisely this direction (v. 4 – the ‘gift’; v. 6 – ‘righteousness apart from works’; vv. 7-8 – ‘blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven … against whom the Lord will not count his sin’).
This all boils down to a simple one-liner: ‘We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue of goodness of our own‘ (p. 149).
Crank it up, John - 28 June 2009
Having arrived, a little exhausted, at the end of chapter 7 of John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker, you might be forgiven for expecting a gentle drift to the conclusion. Not a bit of it.
Chapters 8 to 12 crank up the pace about 3 gears, as Lennox moves from DNA and genetics to the science uniquely equipped to analyse it – a science for which he, as a mathematician, is admirably equipped as a guide – the science of information.
For a living cell is not merely matter. It is matter replete with information. (p. 126).
Or again, Bernd-Olaf Küppers (yup – his real name):
The problem of the origin of life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information. (p. 139).
And that information, says Lennox, must have come from somewhere.
Particularly striking is Lennox’s potent demonstration of the question-begging so rampant in many contemporary analogies for evolution (pp. 156ff.). Richard Dawkins, for example, in his book The Blind Watchmaker, attempts to demonstrate how evolution can produce incredibly improbably biological structures by drawing an analogy with a team of monkeys typing at random to produce a ‘target phrase’, in this case Shakespear’s ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’. Dawkins succeeds, at a first glance, in showing how the probability of producing this phrase can be reduced from 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (yup – 40 zeroes) to around 1 in 43. Neat, huh? Suddenly writing plays for a living looks like a workable career option.
Well, not quite – don’t give up your day job. Listen to Lennox:
What … does he mean by introducing a target phrase? A target phrase is a precise goal which, according to Dawkins himself, is a profoundly un-Dawinian concept … the very information that the mechanisms are supposed to produce is apparently already contained somewhere within the organism, whose genesis he claims to be simulating. The argument is entirely circular. … For their plausibility, then, Dawkins’ analogies depend on introducing to his model the very features whose existence in the real world he denies. (pp. 158-159).
Oops.
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