The influence of antinomianism and
of antinomian sympathy in the new American version of Christianity represents a
significant threat to how well the Christian Church gives honor to her LORD.
False inferences about the place of the Law of God within the New Covenant have
led many to create a radically unbiblical dichotomy between genuine Christian
faith and commandment keeping. Today, in most American churches, and in the
mind of the overwhelming majority of those who profess to know and follow
Christ, there is essentially no sense of obligation whatsoever to keep the
commandments of God, to know and understand the commandments of God, or to even
consider the commandments of God in any way whatsoever. But the New Testament
Scriptures, those that come from the pen of God, the Holy Spirit, that
originate in Christ, tell a far different story about the place of the Law of
God and the commandments of God in the life of the true disciples of Christ.
Those who love God will not only love God’s commandments, they will keep them. And
those that despise God’s commandments, those who ignore them, those who live a
life defined by commandment breaking are described in Scripture as hating God.
Those whose lives are defined by commandment breaking, who claim to love God,
Scripture says quite emphatically, are liars. What does living the law of God
in the life and community of grace actually look like?
The translation, “commandment” appears 145
times in 138 verses in the NASB. In contradistinction to that, grace appears
122 times in 114 verses. I think most people would find this fact stunning
since modern American Christians are prone to talk about grace at a ratio no
less than 1000:1 in my experience. In fact, if you pay close enough attention
to people, even in our conservative, reformed churches, they often recoil at
examples of the harshness of divine wrath. But words like righteous, holy, and
just are still words that accurately describe attributes of the God revealed in
Scripture, the God that is. Contrary to the pop-Christianity of American
culture, God is still very interested in whether or not men are keeping His
commandments and He is especially concerned when those who claim to love Him
hardly give the divine fiat a wink and a nod, all in the name of grace. The
notion that Jesus Christ came to correct the Old Testament’s picture of God is
modern propaganda at best and a most pernicious deception hoisted on churches
by mostly unregenerate pastors hired by mostly unregenerate congregations to
tickle their unregenerate ears.
The Greek Imperative
The Greek imperative is used 1621
times in 1198 verses. As I pointed out to “Ted” in my recent exchange with him, the sheer volume of
imperatives appearing in the New Testament documents indicate that at the very
least, the authors thought they had some sort of authority and they expected
their audiences to submit to these imperatives. There isn’t a single book in
the entire NT Canon that does not have imperatives in it. The imperative is
used 845 times in the gospels. Paul uses it 420 times. The Catholic Epistles
employ the imperative 144 times. The Apocalypse uses it on 88 occasions. Finally,
Acts contains 124 instances of the imperative. In light of such basic
information, it is impossible to read the New Testament without recognizing
that these documents consider themselves to be binding on the reader. The Greek
imperative, while not always a command, was still the most common use of the
imperative in the New Testament. The imperative expresses an attempt to bring
about a desired action through the agency of another, that is, to impose one’s
will on another or to give another direction. (Young, Intermediate New
Testament Greek) Moreover, there were several other constructions used in the
New Testament to express the concept of command.
Μη
with the aorist subjunctive and ου
with the future indicative are two other examples. Suffice it to say that the
power, authority, and binding nature of Scripture is clearly expressed by
Scripture itself. In other words, we don’t need a complex philosophical
argument or a logical syllogism to see that the nature of Scripture is that it
stands over us with full authority in every sense of the word. Moreover, we do
not argue with young believers that the Scriptures are authoritative. We simply
teach it ipso facto from what
Scripture teaches about itself and expect them to embrace it. We also
graciously help the young person understand the consequences of rejecting such
basic teachings.
The Commandment and the Christian
With this information in hand, how
should Christians understand the divine commandments? How should we view the
practice of commandment keeping? I will ask you to do your best to ignore most
of what you have heard from modern evangelicals and engage the Scriptures to
see what they say about the subject.
Matthew 5:17-20 makes it abundantly
clear that Jesus did not come to abolish, destroy, or do away with the Law, but
rather to fulfill it. The Law of Moses is to be interpreted through the Christ
event for it was to Christ that Moses pointed. Jesus said that the great and
foremost commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And the second great
commandment is like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt. 22:37-39)
As we study the commandments in Exodus 20, we realize that they are
essentially, an explanation of the two great commandments referenced by Christ
in the NT. From this we conclude that Jesus was not hostile toward the practice
of commandment keeping and in fact, kept the commandments of God and expected
His disciples to do the same. Much more could be said about Christ’s commands
to His followers, but the nature of blogging just doesn’t support further
elaboration on this point.
Finally, we turn to Matthew 28 and
Christ’s great commission, which was given directly to his immediate disciples.
These original disciples turned apostles with all the author that such a term
carries, were commanded to make disciples of all nations as they went out, or
as they were going along their way. Second, they were to be baptizing these
disciples in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Third, they
were to be teaching these new disciples to obey and keep every single commandment He gave them. When was the last time you
heard a teacher, preacher, or pastor inform his audience that every Christian
has an abiding and urgent obligation in all places and at all times to obey
every single commandment that Christ gives us in the New Covenant? Commandment
keeping is just as much a part of Christian life as missionary work and as
baptism and as Christian teaching. But because of false teachings promulgated
by false teachers, grace has been abused and perverted to the point that
commandment keeping is no longer part of the Christian culture in most modern
American churches.
Paul wrote 13 of the documents that
make up the NT Canon. In those 13 documents, he employed the imperative mood
420 times. In 1 Corinthians 7:19, Paul said, “Circumcision
is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but what matters is the keeping of the commandments of God.” When was
the last time we heard that what matters is that we fear God and keep His
commandments? Paul thought it was important. Jesus taught that it was a
non-negotiable. Timothy knew that Paul was serious about commandment keeping
when he read, “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all
things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius
Pilate, that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the
appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Tim. 6:13-14) There is a lot more to
this conversation and space dictates that I save that for another time.
If the Scriptures are not
authoritative and binding, and they are not the infallible Word of God, then
Christianity reduces to just a component of one’s worldview. It may even
reflect a large component of a person’s worldview. But it cannot actually be their worldview. It can only be a
part of their greater worldview. And that is precisely what we see in men like
“Ted.” Men like Ted actually reject God’s word and along with, those
commandments that dictate Christian behavior.
- We allow young Christians to question whether or not a commandment is a commandment.
- We tolerate people who argue that the Bible is not the Word of God, that it is not authoritative, not binding, and not infallible.
- We debate people over the issue same-sex perversion without communicating that we reject their faith as genuine and view their arguments as a reflection of the spirit of antichrist in nature.
- We even debate whether or not murdering a baby in the womb is a woman’s right as a Christian.
- We tolerate people living together without being married.
- We wink at at-will divorce and refuse to bring discipline to bear on the sin of it.
I know God is a God of grace as
much as anyone. I have sinned against God since I was regenerated 36 years ago
in awful ways and far more often than I care to think about. But that is no
excise for me or anyone else to toss the ancient non-negotiable Christian
practice of commandment keeping out the window. To love law breaking is to hate
the law. To love violating God’s commandments is to hate God. Yet, we find
ourselves in these quibbles with men like “Ted” who obviously have no use for
the God revealed in Scripture, for God’s word, or for the sacred commandments.
It is this attitude that we must embrace toward all those who seek to weaken to
destroy the grip of Scripture on the life of the Christian.
Spurgeon spoke of this element in
his own day, “As for those whose ungodly lives stare them in the face, so far
from being saved by their pretended faith, they are trees twice dead, plucked
up by the roots. If they say they continue in sin that grace may abound, their
damnation is just. The salvation of Christ is not a salvation in sin, but a
salvation from sin. They who would be saved by him must come and trust him just
as they are, and he will enable them to forsake their sin; but while they
continue to say, "We will take pleasure in sin," there is no
salvation possible for them. God bring us to Christ, and nail our sins to his
cross, and give us life in our Savior's life. Amen.”
Jude warns his readers, “For
certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked
out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master
and Lord, Jesus Christ.” (Jude 4)
Returning to Paul, he wrote in
another place, “I am afraid that when I come again my God may humiliate me
before you, and I may mourn over many of those who have sinned in the past and
not repented of the impurity, immorality and sensuality which they have
practiced.” (2 Cor. 12:21)
