The Law our former primary school teacher

In Galatians (3:25) Paul says that the law of Moses was a pedagogue, a schoolmaster / tutor / guardian for the people of God in their infancy to lead them to Christ, in whom they find maturity and come into their inheritance.

Thinking of the law as our one-time primary school teacher might help us to understand how we should relate to it today. For example, if you met your old teacher today you would not put yourself under his regime of try to re-enroll in his class, but there would still be much to learn from a wise teacher.

Adults do not expect their former teachers to tell them to sit up straight, be quiet, put their fingers on their lips and raise their hand if they have something to say. Neither does the teacher want to treat his former pupils in this way. The point of all that primary school stuff is that the lessons might be learned and internalized. The school aimed to produce the habits of self-discipline, respect, politeness, good order and so on which the specific rules of the classroom embodied for little people at that time.

Similarly, the OT Law does not legislate for every eventuality but gives case law to teach patterns and principles which need to be applied anew, not least in the changed circumstances of maturity in Christ under the (re)New(ed) Covenant.

(Thanks to my STMTC group and especially Phil for thinking through this stuff with me).

Sabbath

Further to my recent sermon on the Sabbath (see church website), which I also spoke on to the leaders at camp, I agree with Mr Newman, here:

Sabbath-keeping

By way of postscript, it has often been used as an argument against Christian sabbath-keeping (and indeed the Christian calendar as a whole) that Paul points to the observation of days and months and seasons and years as evidence of turning back to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world (3.9-10). I do not think that charge sticks. Paul is talking about observation of the Jewish calender, which is precisely what Christians are not doing. Christians keep the first day of the week as the Sabbath, and they order their year around the events of Christ’s life. Moreover, they are not doing so in order to be marked out as God’s people. The sabbath principle, of one day in seven consecrated for rest and blessing is, like marriage, embedded in the creation before the giving of the law (Genesis 2.3). Just as the coming of Christ has not abolished marriage, even though the relationship between Christ and the church is the ultimate reality of which marriage was created as a picture, so too the sabbath day is not abolished though Christ brings the rest of which the sabbath is a picture. As for the Christian calendar as a whole, Paul expressly gives permission for us to observe days in honour of the Lord (Romans 14.6).

Why I am a legalist!

I said, "Pah! Lutherans! "Oh, how I hate your law", eh? Antinomians!"

Revd Glen Scrivner said (oh, I paraphrase a little bit, maybe): "Huh! If they are antinomian law-haters, are you willing to be called a legalist who thinks the law is the end of Christ?!"

I said (smiling): "Okay then, you bet! Why not?! Yeah. Bring it on. As long as I'm allowed to distinguish and ask "in what sense?""

So why I am a legalist:

Of course we are not saved by good works of the law. What a stupid blasphemous idea. How impossible.

The law is holy, righteous and good.

Some rules are good and happy: e.g. do not get drunk on much wine, do not have sex with people you are not married to.

Laws are not antithetical to relationship. They can express and shape and grow out of relationship.

Lots of the Bible is law.

Law is one of the main ways God relates to us.

Law (torah) is best understood as God's loving fatherly wisdom to his redeemed, saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone etc., children. We imagine ourselves sat on Daddy's knee as we read Ex 20.

And the law is the end of Christ. Yes. He did not come to abolish it: he fulfills it, he brings us a renewed, glorified law. The law leads us to Christ and Christ leads us back to the crucified and risen law. We keep the royal law of Christ, the law of love. We are saved for good works of the law-keeping. Sin is lawlessness.

27 Theses on law, faith, works, obedience, covenants etc.

(v6) Updated: 5/3/07 - Nos 33 - new today

Fascinating discussion in post-graduate seminar today of some of these issues.

There seemed to be a growing consensus of insights from the New Perspectives on Paul, Covenantal Objectivism and Biblical Theology but an unwillingness to re-join Rome just yet.

So another look at the perhaps somewhat repetitious, numbered for convenience not logical order theses:

See also Tuesday, February 06, 2007 and Monday, Feb 26th: Law, Faith, Works, Obedience & Justification (versions 1 & 2); (v5) Updated: 2/3/07 - Nos 28- new today

1. No one has ever been or will ever be justified by what they do on the basis of merit (with the possible exception of the Lord Jesus Christ, though even in his case we may distinguish).

2. Justification is only ever in union with Christ alone, in the Spirit, through faith alone.

3. The Old Testament law could be kept in the sense that one could be a faithful covenant keeping member of the people of God and blameless because of the grace of God and forgiveness of sin under the terms of the covenant (sacrifice etc).

4. The Old Testament law could never be kept by human sinners in the sense that once could attain sinless perfection and merit salvation.

5. The Old Testament law always had 3 purposes:
(a) Mirror / sword - to reveal sin and condemn
(b) Telescope / signpost - to point to salvation by the sacrifice of Christ
(c) Light / blueprint - to show God's people how to live
and continues to fulfil each of those functions today.

6. Present justification is God's verdict of the future announced in the present on the basis of trust in Christ; future justification will be according to works as a genuine (evidential) non-meritorious ground on the basis of a whole life fundamentally lived on God's side.

7. The Old Testament law is not abolished or abrogated by Christ but fulfilled, transformed and renewed.

8. The (propitiatory) sacrificial and Aaronic priesthood ends with Christ (and AD70) in the sense that it is not to be set up again today in the Jerusalem temple.

9. The Mosaic administration is ended and the Covenant is now in its (re)newed administration.

10. All God's laws have lasting force but must be applied according to local circumstances and in a manner appropriate to the stage of salvation history.

11. Attempting to be justified by supposedly meritorious human works legalistic righteousness was always and is an abuse of the law.

12. Christians are not under the Mosaic law in the same sense that Mosaic believers where; Christians are under the law of Christ which is the Mosaic law renewed.

13. Christian believers keep the law / terms of the new covenant by a faithful life empowered by the Spirit.

14. Mosaic saints were marked out by visible obedience to the law (e.g. circumcision); New Testament believers are defined and marked out more obviously by baptism and allegiance to Jesus as the badge of New Covenant membership.

15. The active and explicit command to the all nations to repent and trust in Jesus is a new element of the New Covenant since the risen Jesus is now enthroned as king of the world in a new way, though this is anticipated in the Old Covenant.

16. Under the Old covenant everyone of all nations ought to have attached themselves as much as they could to God and his people. People could participate e.g. in the Davidic covenant without being fully under the Mosaic law as full Israelites.

17. Being grounded in the nature and will of God, the Torah is a manifestation of God’s Law which applies more generally, a particular instance from which we may generalise.

18. “Being under the law” (of Moses) can be a particular technical term for having the law of Moses promulgated to you at Sinai.

19. “Law” in the Bible almost always means something like Torah, God’s Fatherly instruction to his people, especially as in the law of Moses of the Pentateuch.

20. Faith is true covenant loyalty, submissive obedience. All real faith is obedient faithfulness which perseveres in good works.

21. Good works function as evidence of faith(fullness) for God in a rather different way than they would for a finite human judge, but part of their character is as public legal vindication of God’s accurate assessment that these are his people who are in the right and should be declared so.

22. Deuteronomy is primarily concerned with the national life of Israel and prophesies the inevitable death of the nation as covenant breakers.

23. The covenants should be understood in both individual and corporate terms: a corporate view tends to include individuals and individuals tend to make up a body.

24. Inability to keep a law does not show a law to be deficient in itself. Israel’s inability to keep the covenant does not mean that the New Israel cannot keep the covenant since the Spirit is now poured out in a new way to ensure that it is kept by God’s elect.

25. Christ keeps the law perfectly for his people but they also keep it truly in him and adequately though not perfectly in their own experience, through the strength that he gives.

26. We may distinguish civil, ceremonial and moral aspects of the law and of many individual laws but the Law does not easily divide up in this way.

27. Both Old and New covenants have inner and outer, visible and invisible, subjective and objective aspects. One can participate in the covenant (in some senses and degree) without finally saving faith / election.

28. It seems historically doubtful that the law of Moses was every strictly applied "as is" or that it was ever intended to be so. It is not statute law or even quite case law in our modern sense. Much of it is story. It embodies principles which need to be applied in differing contexts in different ways. Some of the stipulations are culture specific, though easily transferable: we need not fence our roofs but we might fence our swimmin pools.

29. The law of Moses probably give maximum penalties.

30. We must destinguish crimes with legal and/or divine covenantal sanctions from sins, which may result in loss of blessing but not criminal or civil disabilities or the status of covenant breaker. The law gives the floor (minimum requirements for life in the covenant, e.g. no murder) and ceiling of full perfection (love the Lord your God with all your heart etc. and love your neighbour as yourself).

31. The law is a present standard and a future aspiration (e.g. there shall be no poor among you...)

32. The law is given for an imperfect sinful context to tell you what to do in the situation of sin and in reaction to it (e.g. sacrificial system, crimial codes esp. e.g. rape laws). The law does not always lay out an ideal but takes account of hardness of heart (e.g. write her a certificate of divorce).

33. Under both old and new covenants, those professing faith and having duly recieved the sacrament of initiation into the covenant (circumcision in the Old Covenant and baptism in the New) must be treated as members of the covenant in a full, objective, real, legal way, unless they are covenant breakers under legal church discipline. They enjoy all the genuine rights and privileges of outward membership of the covenant including participation in the sacraments though they may not be believers and may be damned at last.

34. Under both Old and New Covevants, any child of a believer is entitled to covenant membership and to the sacraments and is to be treated as a believer, unless they prove to be a covenant breaker.

35. Under both Old and New Covenants the sacraments have a real objective significance and affect those who participate in them, though they are always to be recieved with faith if benifit rather than condemnation is to be recieved.

36. It is never possible to tell with certainty whether or not someone is a believer and it is not our business to judge the servants of the Lord in that way. We must proceed on the basis of a person's profession and his visible legal status with regard to the covenant. If someone commits covenant breaking crimes, he should be subject to a public legal process of church discipline.

Theses on faith, law, works, justification etc. (v3)

See also Tuesday, February 06, 2007: Law, Faith, Works, Obedience & Justification (version 2)

Somewhat repetiously, perhaps, and in no great order:


1. No one has ever been or will every be justified by what they do on the basis of merit (with the possible exception of the Lord Jesus Christ, though even in his case we may distinguish).

2. Justification is only ever in union with Christ alone, in the Spirit, through faith alone.

3. The Old Testament law could be kept in the sense that one could be a faithful covenant keeping member of the people of God and blameless because of the grace of God and forgiveness of sin under the terms of the covenant (sacrifice etc).


4. The Old Testament law could never be kept by human sinners in the sense that once could attain sinless perfection and merit salvation.

5. The Old Testament law always had 3 purposes:
(a) Mirror / sword - to reveal sin and condemn
(b) Telescope / signpost - to point to salvation by the sacrifice of Christ
(c) Light / blueprint - to show God's people how to live
and continues to fulfill each of those functions today.

6. Present justification is God's verdict of the future announced in the present on the basis of trust in Christ; future justification will be according to works as a genuine (evidential) non-meritorious ground on the basis of a whole life fundamentally lived on God's side.

7. The Old Testament law is not abolished or abrogated by Christ but fulfilled, transformed and renewed.

8. The (propitiatory) sacrificial and Aaronic priesthood ends with Christ (and AD70) in the sense that it is not to be set up again today in the Jerusalem temple.

9. The Mosaic administration is ended and the Covenant is now in its (re)newed administration.


10. All God's laws have lasting force but must be applied according to local circumstances and in a manner appropriate to the stage of salvation history.

11. Attempting to be justified by supposedly meritorious human works legalistic righteousness was always and is an abuse of the law.

12. Christians are not under the Mosaic law in the same sense that Mosaic believers where; Christians are under the law of Christ which is the Mosaic law renewed.

13. Christian believers keep the law / terms of the new covenant by a faithful life empowered by the Spirit.