For several
decades now, there has been an antinomian attitude present in the teachings and
sermons of evangelical Christians. The antinomian mindset has reached so
alarming levels that Christians are routinely told and routinely think and
believe that Christians have no relationship whatsoever to divine law. The
Christian, through grace, is completely free in Christ. The idea of law in many
Christian circles has been mocked, vilified, characterized as legalism, and
ridiculed by most pastors within evangelicalism. The results have been more
than a little devastating. It is the purpose of this post to set the
relationship of the Christian and Divine law as it relates to the New Covenant
in its proper biblical frame.
The first area
to be investigated is the relationship between divine law and the New Covenant.
We have a new arrangement today that finds its ground in the sacrifice and
person of Jesus Christ. Jeremiah prophesied about this new arrangement several
hundred years prior to the Christ event. It is in the words of Jeremiah then
that we begin to understand how the New Covenant relates to divine law. Upon
investigating this relationship it is my hope that our understanding of the
unique relationship between divine law and the New Covenant will bear more
fruit so that we may have a better understanding of what our mindset ought to
be regarding the Christian, the gospel, and the law of God.
The explicit
promise of the New Covenant is located in Jeremiah 31:31-34. The components of
the covenant are as follows: 1) it will be a completely new covenant and
entirely different from the one God made at Sinai; 2) It will be with the house
of Israel and Judah; 3) God Himself will put His law within them and on their
hearts He will write it and they will be His people; 4) they will no longer
need an intermediary teacher; 5) each one will know the Lord directly; 6) sins
and iniquities will be forgiven, never again to be remembered. This is the
covenant that Jesus Christ came to enact some 2,000 years ago. Since the
purpose of this post is to trace the relationship between the New Covenant and
divine law, I will avoid chasing the distinctive characteristics of the New
Covenant and focus my attention on just one of those distinctions: the law that
God Himself writes on the heart.
The very first
point here that should not go unnoticed is the place of prominence given to the
law of God in the New Covenant. For so long now, certain antinomian theological
schemes have prevailed in popular evangelicalism that have resulted in not just
a misunderstanding of the place of divine law in the New Covenant, but in
addition, an outright hostility toward God’s law on the part of people who are
supposed to love God’s law. The situation is not just disturbing; it is
extremely alarming.
The New
Testament Church is governed by the New Covenant arrangement instituted by God
in the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus said in Luke 22:20, “This cup which is
poured out for you is the kaine diatheke,
new covenant in my blood.” Outside of the New Covenant arrangement, men cannot
relate to God in any way other than by way of hostilities. Peace with God comes
through the blood of Christ, which was spilled to establish the New Covenant.
Jesus was extremely clear that what Jeremiah had prophesied, He was here to
fulfill. Paul informs us that He has made us servants of a new covenant. (2
Cor. 3:6) According to the writer of Hebrews, Christ has obtained a more
excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant,
which is enacted on better promises. (Heb. 8:6) New Testament Christians are
members in the new covenant community. And this new covenant is the arrangement
that governs the new covenant believer’s relationship with the Triune God of
Scripture. The question then is what about divine law and its relation to the new
covenant and to the believer under the new covenant arrangement. What does the
Scripture actually say?
In Matthew
5:17, Jesus tells us that He did not come to abolish the Law of the Prophets but
to fulfill them. In v. 18 He informs us that the Law will have an abiding
presence in the kingdom of God. In Matthew 7:12 Jesus tells us to treat people
the way we want to be treated for this
is the Law and the Prophets. In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus tells us that the
greatest commandments are to love the Lord your with all your being and to love
your neighbor as yourself. The Law hangs on these two commandments. Paul says
that the Law is good, and the commandment is holy and good. (Rom. 7:12)
The question
that comes to mind is which law does Scripture mean when it speaks about the
law? At the Jerusalem Conference recorded in Acts 15, this very same question
came up. There was a sect of Pharisees who believed and who were also teaching
that Gentiles had to be circumcised and that they should keep the Law of Moses.
The apostles arrived at the decision that everyone, both Jew and Gentile were
saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus. Hence, it would seem here that Christians
are not obligated to keep the Law of Moses. In 1 Corinthians 9:20-21, Paul made
some very fascinating remarks regarding the Law of Moses and the Law of God.
Paul clearly tells the Corinthian Church that he is not under the Law of Moses
in v. 20. He could not be clearer in his statement. Paul then says that he is
not without the law of God but under the law of Christ in v. 21. We have to
conclude then that Christians are clearly under the Law, but they are not under
the Law of Moses. We are clearly under what is termed in the NT, the Law of God
or the Law of Christ. It is this Law that we must conclude is written on the
heart.
In order to
understand the Law of Christ, one must take the New Testament in its entirety.
The commandments found there are the commandments that make up the Law of
Christ which is itself an expression of the Law of God. We see components then
of the Law of God expressed in the Old Testament covenants and especially at
Sinai, but we see an even greater, clearer, and more precise expression of the
Law of God in the New Testament revelation, within the New Covenant
arrangement, in the Law of Christ written on the human heart through
regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit by the washing of water by the
Word. We see true Christians are those who have the Law of Christ, God’s law,
now written on the heart. That is the difference. Christianity is not a
religion whose essence consists of external religious ceremony. It is not a
religion whose essence consists in the mystical experience of the idolatrous
human heart. Christianity is the pure religion, the only pure religion whose
essence exists in a person. The essence of Christianity exists in the essence
of the person of Jesus Christ, God incarnate.
This essence of
the Christian religion, expressed in the person of Jesus Christ, is carried
into the life of the believer as we are in Christ and Christ’s Spirit, the Holy
Spirit who makes his abode in us. This is what Christianity refers to as the
Spirit-filled life. This is why the John says that Children of God and the
Children of the Devil are obvious, easy to see, evident, clearly
distinguishable.
In Matthew 18,
Jesus issues instructions to the Christian community related to how we must
deal with individuals in the Christian community that engage in lawless
behavior. The steps are very candid. They begin with a private discussion,
progress into a group confrontation, and then finally and public rebuke, ending
in excommunication. It is incredibly peculiar that modern versions of Jesus
complete ignore this aspect of the Christ they claim to love. In Acts 5, a
couple named Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit by lying to the
Church leaders. God executed both of them for this egregious violation against
His Law. Once again, the modern versions of Jesus and of Christianity are radically
different from this story. In 1 Corinthians 5, the apostle Paul reacts to a
couple in the Corinthian Church that had married under forbidden circumstances.
It is not permitted for a man to marry his father’s previous wife. That type of
relationship is regarded as incest. The Law of God strictly forbids Incest. The
couple ignored God’s Law under the guise of grace and Christian liberty. Paul’s
reaction was to have them excommunicated from the community immediately. The
concern that Paul displayed regarding lawless behavior in the Christian
community was both swift and severe. Paul’s attitude was that lawlessness is
like leaven, or a cancer, that if left unaddressed will spread through the body
eventually extinguishing any and all life that it infects. In Galatians 6:1
Paul commands the community to take action when anyone is overcome by sin or
lawless behavior. The Church is never to ignore the lawless attitude of those
in her community. Action is not an option. Inaction is not a viable course.
There are 1221
active imperative verbs in the GNT appearing in 952 verses. Clearly, the NT
writers had a very specific ethic that they issued from the start of the
Christian community. That a certain ethical and theological standard were
imposed on the Christian community is beyond controversy. Christians were
expected to adopt a certain set of beliefs and embrace a very specific ethical
standard. Refusal to do either one would not be tolerated.
John tells us
that anyone that claims to love God but that does not keep His commandments is
a liar. Jesus said that every branch that abides in Him bears much fruit. In
other words, just as lawlessness cannot abide in Christ, neither can a lawless
person abide in Christ. Lawless people must be identified, instructed, corrected,
rebuked, and they prove obstinate, they must be removed. There is no place in
the New Covenant for lawlessness. There is no such thing as a New Covenant
believer who has adopted a lawless lifestyle.
Contrary to
some radical versions of Christianity, the biblical form of Christianity, the
Christianity of the New Covenant is a Christianity, the core of which includes
God’s Law. Apart from the Law of Christ, there is no salvation. To despise
divine law is to despise God. Biblical Christianity teaches that men are
regenerated by the work of the Holy Spirit on their heart, their whole person
as it were. It is here that the Holy Spirit writes the Law of God, the Law of
Christ. The believer grows in their love for, appreciation of, and obedience to
the Law of God contrary to modern American Christianity, which seems to have
cultivated an attitude of disdain for that which they are supposed to love. In
short, modern American Christianity has produced record numbers of false
converts and false teachers who deny the essence of the New Covenant
arrangement. Spiritually speaking, these cavils are like wild dogs, trolling
the spiritual dumps, feasting on rotting and decaying matter of every sort.
Their stench rises to the nostrils of God whose wrath boils over against the
vile blasphemy hurled at his righteous name daily by these pompous vipers, who
in the midst of their vile and corrupt lives, smile on Sunday mornings claiming
to love Jesus and to know Him. They are the children of hell sent into the
community to deceive and to destroy and it is time the Church stop playing
games with them and show Christ the respect He is due by obeying His commands
to put these obstinate pigs out of the parlor.
