The Law of Christ: believe and love

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13580053.post-8756399665808157132008-04-23T09:35:00.009-04:002008-04-24T00:37:13.447-04:00The Law of Christ: believe and loveMy, my… when the cat’s away the mice will make like Paris and Lindsay. :-) Rather than contribute to <a href="http://breusswane.blogspot.com/2008/04/van-til-heathen-yet-have-enough.html">any already long comments section</a>, here’s a reply to a couple of questions posed last week. Brian: >NCT teaches that nine of the ten commandments are repeated (although not as OC law but >rather something else) in the NT. *Some* NCT teaches this… NCT is a catch-all for those who aren’t either CT or dispy; at present, some of us have identified 3 different streams of NCT. The most prominent stream (because it has done more blogging and publishing than the others) is In-Depth Studies (Steve Lehrer and Geoff Volker). The hermeneutic that focuses on "the nine out of ten" is dispensationalist in different clothing, IMHO. >Do you agree with this? Nope. :-) There are three ways this principle historically has been expressed, all of which, IMHO are problematic and should be avoided. The positive expression of the principle is this: "if it is repeated in the new, it is necessarily valid." Both CT and some NCTers *generally* affirm this principle. But dispensationalists and some NCTers have gone further than the above in the negative expression of the above: "if it is not repeated in the new, it is necessarily invalid" (it is on this point that I believe some NCT is nothing more than warmed over dispensationalism because they are sharing virtually the same hermeneutic). Covenant theology denies the second expression, but adds to the first, saying "if it is not rescinded in the new, it is still valid" (and this is equally problematic). And it is this addition that has been the identity for CT, especially as it manifests itself in paedobaptism. All three expressions are problematic in that, more often than not, the implications of the impact on ethics of the Christ event, i.e. the intrusion of heaven into time and space via the incarnation, is either understated or ignored. The first and third expressions presume the Decalogue itself has not been altered. The second denies the organic progression of revelation and redemptive history. We must account for the abrogation of the entire law AND the organic continuity and progression of revelation and redemptive history. >If so, what is substantively different in the NT application of these imperatives from the OT >law? I think Steve F. has answered this a bit. We have to remember that the OT commands were not just functioning as *law*, but also as *revelation*. IMHO, *law as revelation* is a fundamental consideration that both Covenant Theology and many NCTers either ignore or deny. CT affirms law as revelation, but because the law keeps its enforcement characteristics as eternally binding, law as revelation is all but eclipsed. Revelation changes through the course of redemptive history, increasingly adding to what was known previously. So much more is now known about The Standard for holiness in our lives. In running back to Moses for sanctification, CT settles for what is not only a primitive standard, but one that was a shadow. But some in NCT also ignore this “law as revelation” reality… they are so focused on making sure the law has been abrogated, it forgets that the law was telling us something about God’s unchanging character. NCT, IMHO, has not done very well in accounting for the fact that the law was divine revelation even as it functioned as a national constitution. It does not follow that because the law was primarily a national constitution, that the divine revelation inherent to it was limited to that national constitution. The codified law was both shadow and type of the law/covenant that was to come: Christ himself. While CT is wrong to confuse the Decalogue with what they call the "moral law", CT is attempting to account for the reality that lays behind the law giving rise to it... a reality that transcends codification. I agree with that “accounting”, but CT trips up on reading the "eternalness" of the "law" found in various passages as if it is the decalogue itself. It is true that there are elements of the law that transcend law itself... which is why our CT brethren set themselves up to stumble. In an effort to account for those things that transcend the law, they create hard and fast categories that are not always hard and fast, and as a result pull shadow into the NC. While CT makes the mistake of equating God’s eternal attributes with the temporal form in which it manifested itself to Israel, some in NCT fail to acknowledge the temporal form was manifesting God’s eternal attributes, eternal attributes that impose themselves on the creature (1 John 1:5). It’s in this area that some formulations of NCT tend to be functionally dispy, IMHO. So… even as the New Testament is revealing to us the ethic of the New Covenant, those Old Covenant commands that reflect God’s character are informing the ethic. We must keep in mind that Augustine’s “Old Concealed, New Revealed” hermeneutic. Just as the Old Testament shadows provide us with a fuller, greater, and richer picture of Christ and His work on our behalf (don’t think for a moment the Passover lamb doesn’t inform our understanding of *what* Christ’s atonement accomplished), so too the law – as a shadow – provides us with a fuller and richer picture of the *why’s* and *wherefore’s* of the New Testament ethic. IMHO, looking for which commandments are repeated misses the point of the redemptive historical trajectory of the Old Covenant, including the law. The question is backwards. Rather than looking for repetition, we should be looking for fulfillment… where in the New Covenant do I find the radical fulfillment and transformation of these shadow laws? To what (or whom) did they point? Reading the law is no different than reading a narrative passage in Genesis or Exodus. When we read narrative with the understanding that Christ is the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament, we should always read with an eye to fulfillment in the New Testament… i.e. how is this passage treated in the NT? Where are the quotes or allusions? What did the NT authors understand this OT passage to be saying and how are they interpreting this passage in light of the Christ event? Going directly to the Old Testament to find out how we are supposed to live (or even understand the scriptures) without consideration of the radical nature of Christ’s intrusion into time and space and its impact on both the indicative and imperative of the OT creates all sorts of problems and is fundamental to *legalism* (Paul deals with this specifically in Gal. 3-4 and Col. 2). This is why CT’s so-called “third use of the law” – the law as binding on believers – must be rejected. Some of CTers would argue that they do account for the cross and resurrection because they affirm it is now possible for the covenant member to obey the law, whereas before the coming of the Spirit, obedience was impossible. This is what I’ve called here “enablement theology” with the difference between the law in the OC and the NC is that the NC member has now been “enabled” to obey it. Nevermind “enablement theology” fails to account for Paul’s suggestion in Romans 7 that the law negatively works on believers that place themselves under it, the point here is that they misunderstand the eschatological *change*, not just to obedience, but to the law itself. The law is a type of Christ, and like everything else in the OT, there has been a typological fulfillment in Christ that radically alters the relationship between the law and covenant members. Russ Kennedy, Pastor of Preaching and Spiritual Formation at <a href="http://www.clearcreekchapel.org/">Clearcreek Chapel</a>, has created a graphic to help illustrate this hermeneutical problem. I used it in my sermon on baptism. I’m pasting it here, but if it doesn’t come through (if you don’t use html in your email), <a href="http://www.clearcreekchapel.org/Documents/Pulpit/Series/Community/The%20Entrance%20into%20Community-Baptism.pdf">here’s the link</a>... look for the section entitled “Flow: Old and New Covenants”: <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192434912227575330" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_vKkR-trpeZ0/SA88Cr6pRiI/AAAAAAAAAVc/wmiFd-C427U/s320/typologyflow.bmp" border="0" /> Notice the dotted line between the Old Testament types and New Testament realities... that is the invalid way of understanding the law in the New Covenant. The most obvious “invalidities” in this regard are patriarchy and theonomy. But this is also what happens when Decaloguians attempt to go back to the OT and apply commands directly in the New Covenant with no regard to the Christ event. They are interpreting the OT without consideration that the NC has changed how those precepts function, if not done away entirely. This doesn’t mean that the law has absolutely nothing to say to us now. The green arrow doesn’t stop at Christ, but moves through him. The law does not come through Christ’s fulfillment unaltered. There is a new form and new substance. Christ himself is now The New Torah, The Law applied to the hearts of New Covenant members as the Holy Spirit on hearts of flesh. ALL 10 “words” have been transformed by the One who kept the law perfectly and died to it. New Covenant members are not under the law, but under the law of Christ (the antithetical contrast drawn in 1 Corinthians 9:21.) That means the application to the New Covenant believer is not the Mosaic law, though the shadowy Mosaic law may inform the application. The application is the law of Christ (because the Law *is* Christ). The parallel in contrast between "through Moses" and "through Christ" in John 1:17 is unmistakable. Christ is the one who is presented as the New Covenant and New Torah. To be united to Christ is to be united to the law of Christ or Christ, the law. As the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ, it is also he who united us to the law of Christ or Christ, the law. Because of our union in Christ through the Spirit, the Holy Spirit *functions* as the law written on our hearts. Which leads into Brian’s next question… Brian: >Also, it appears the law of Christ is to love and serve one another, if I'm understanding your >reply correctly. Is that a fair summary? Generally speaking, I think that is a fair summary, though John in 1 John adds something that I think is often overlooked, but certainly comports with Hebrews 11:6 in terms of what it is that pleases God. 1 John repeats John 13:34-35’s mandate but then adds this: “believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ”. That added element places John 6:29 and John 20:31 squarely within the purview of the Law of Christ. The law of Christ is 1. to believe in him and 2. to love each other as He has loved us. “Bearing one another’s burdens” is a Pauline paraphrase of #2. Of course I realize that CTers will jump on those two elements as the two greatest commandments, which also are summaries of the two tables, in modified language. But that’s precisely the point… modification has taken place. There’s a reason that “believe” and “love” don’t show up in the Decalogue: it was a Covenant of Works. Now that the Covenant of Works has been fulfilled in Christ, we are no longer under the Decalogue, we are under Christ and His grace. In removing the curse of the law, the law itself is removed (one cannot have one without the other). Christ now stands in the Law’s stead. The Law is now resident in a Person. Our subjection is to Him, a subjection that is characterized by “believe” and “love”. That kind of change is radical. This notion that there is a one-to-one correlation between the “law of Christ” and the “Decalogue” cannot be justified by the text. In all of the passages I cited, nowhere is the law of Christ equated with the Decalogue, even in the language used. And even in the passage where the law of Christ is mentioned in close proximity to the Decalogue (James 1:25 and 2:12), the royal law or law of liberty is juxtaposed over against the Decalogue. The “Law of Christ” is not a new an improved version of the Decalogue. The Law *is* Christ. His Law, then, has its own reality, its own characteristics, and its own “demands”. Again, that's a radical change from the Old to the New. The text simply won't allow us to move from the Decalogue to "believe" and "love"... to do so does violence to how the NT authors understood the nature and the function of the law of Christ in the New Covenant. One caveat... this "newness" of the law of Christ doesn’t mean that the “law of Christ” is brand new. It just means the fulfillment of what was old and is now gone has radically transformed the nature of law, lawkeepers, and lawkeeping. -- crbBreuss Wanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880337516584157981noreply@blogger.com