The Spirit's Power for Living

My initial impression in reading the 8th chapter of "By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today" is as if I am taking a pneumatology class. The only difference is the wealth of biblical references and is particularly focused on Christian behavior. 

Chapter 8 is the third and last part of Dr. Greg Bahnsen's trinitarian approach in proving the continuing validity of God's law. In this chapter he provided the summary of the previous two chapters. After providing the summary, Dr. Bahnsen shifts to the role of the Holy Spirit by explaining the common work of the Triune God, the meaning of life by the Spirit, sanctification, the law of God, the prevailing attitude towards the law of God, and the real answer to legalism. 

Summary of the Last Two Chapters

"We have seen previously that God's holy character, of which the law is the transcript, is unchanging and beyond challenge; accordingly God's holy law cannot be altered today or brought. into criticism by men's traditions. We have also observed that Christ's perfect obedience, which is the model for the Christian's behavior, was rendered to every detail and facet of God's commandments; accordingly, every believer who makes it his aim to imitate the Savior must be submissive to the law of God as honored by Christ. The character of God the Father and the life of God the Son both point to the law of God as morally binding for Christians today" (p. 62).

The Trinity Work as One (pp. 62-63)

• The work of God the Spirit cannot be viewed as in any way detracting from our obedience to God's law; otherwise the unity of the Triune Godhead would be dissolved and we would have three gods (with separate wills and intentions, diverse attitudes and standards) rather than one. 

• The truth is, as presented by Scripture, that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit "of God" (1 Cor. 2: 12) and is given by the Father (John 14:16; 15:26; Acts 2:33). 

• He is likewise designated the Spirit "of the son" (Gal. 4:6; cf. Phil. 1:19; Rom. 8:9) and is sent by Christ (John 15:26; 16:7; 20:22; Acts 2:33). 

• The Holy Spirit does not work contrary to the plans and purposes of the Father and Son but rather completes them or brings them to realization. The harmony of His workings with the Father and Son is illustrated in John 16:15, where we read that everything possessed by the Father is shared with the Son, and in turn whatever is possessed by the Son is disclosed by the Spirit. 

• The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work as one. They are not in tension with each other. Consequently, we should not expect that the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives would run counter to the character of the Father and the example of the Son. We should not expect that this Spirit, who inspired the writing of God's holy law, would work contrary to that law by undermining its validity, replacing its function, or leading us away from obedience to it. 

Life By The Spirit (pp. 63-64)

Dr Bahnsen summarized Biblical ethics as living a "Spirit-filled," or "Spirit-led" life or simply "living by the Spirit." And then he enumerated the qualities of this kind of life:

• The Holy Spirit gives new life to us (John 3:3-8), renews us (Titus 3:5-6), and enables us to make profession of faith in Christ (1 Cor. 12:3); pp. 63-64

• Without the work of the Spirit, a person cannot be a Christian at all (Rom. 8:9; Gal. 3:2). 

• The Holy Spirit illumines the believer (Eph. 1:17), leads him (Rom. 8:14), and writes God's word upon his heart (2 Cor. 3:3); 

• By the Spirit we can understand the things freely given to us by God (1 Cor. 2:12-16). 

• The Spirit seals the believer (Eph. 1:13; 4:30), indwells him with inner refreshment as an ever-flowing river of living water Uohn 14:17; Rom. 8:9; 1 Cor. 3:16; John 7:38-39), and constitutes the down payment from God on our eternal inheritance (Eph. 1:14). 

• The "Spiritual" man - the believer as subject to such influences of God's Spirit - will show the dramatic effects or results of the Spirit's ministry in his life. By the Spirit he will put to death the sinful deeds of his body (Rom. 8:13), for the Spirit produces holiness in the lives of God's people (2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2). 

• Being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), the believer's life will manifest worship, joyful praise, thanksgiving, and submission to others (vv. 19-21). 

• Christians are to walk by the Spirit (Gal. 5:16), thereby evidencing the harvest of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (vv. 22-24). 

Sanctification (pp. 64-65)

The other biblical term to describe the Christian life is sanctification. 

• The believer in Christ is not only saved from his moral guilt before God, but he is also saved from the moral pollution in which he formerly lived. Christianity is not merely a matter of believing certain things and anticipating eternal comfort; it does not start and end with forgiveness for our sins because we have come to Christ as Savior. Christianity likewise requires living continually under the Lordship of Christ, eliminating indwelling sin, and walking righteously before God. 

• The Christian is one who has been freed not only from the curse of sin but from the bondage of sin as well. Christian experience extends beyond the moment of belief and pardon into the daily exercise of pursuing sanctification without which no one will see God (Heb. 12:14). 

• It entails life in the Holy Spirit, which can only mean progressive holiness in one's behavior. We are saved by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8-9)-unto a life of obedience: "we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works" (v. 10). 

• If living by the Spirit indicates that salvation must bring sanctification, then it means that salvation produces a life of glad obedience to God's law.

Leading of the Holy Spirit and the Law of God (pp. 64-66)

• Salvation frees one from sin's bondage so that he can walk lawfully (James 1:25; Gal. 5:13-14), which is to say lovingly (cf. 1 John 5:1-3), for the leading evidence of the Spirit's work in one's life is love (Gal. 5:22). 

• Those who have been saved by faith must be diligent to exercise the good works of love (Titus 3:5-8; James 2:26; Gal. 5:6), and the standard of good behavior and loving conduct is found in God's revealed law (Ps. 119:68; Rom. 7:12,16; 1 Tim. 1:8; John 14:15; 2 John 6). p. 65

• The Holy Spirit works in the believer to bring about conformity to the inspired law of God as the pattern of holiness. The "requirement of the law" is "fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Rom. 8:4). 

• When God puts His Spirit within a person it causes that person to walk in the Lord's statutes and keep His ordinances (Ezk. 11:19-20). 

• Therefore, since salvation requires sanctification, and since sanctification calls for obedience to the commandments of God, the New Testament teaches us that Christ "became the author of eternal salvation unto all those who obey Him" (Heb. 5:9). This does not contradict salvation by grace; it is its inevitable outworking.

Undermining God's Law (pp. 66-67)

• Sadly, the church today often tones down the demands of God's law out of a misconceived desire to exalt God's grace and avoid any legalism wherein salvation is grounded in one's own law-works. 

• Rather than finding the proper place for God's law within the plan of salvation and pursuing its function within the kingdom of Christ, the church frequently promotes an "easy believism" which does not proclaim the need for heart-felt repentance, clearly manifest the sinner's utter guilt and need of the Savior, or follow up conversion with exhortation and discipline in righteous living. 

• Without the law of God which displays the unchanging will of God for man's attitudes and actions in all areas of life, there is a corresponding de-emphasis on concrete sin for which men must repent, genuine guilt which drives men to Christ, and specific guidelines for righteous behavior in the believer. 

• Taking Paul out of context, some churches and teachers would make their message "we are not under law but grace." They would present evangelism and Christian nurture as though mutually exclusive of concern for God's righteous standards as found in his commandments. They would focus on the extraordinary work of the Spirit in a supposed second blessing and the charismatic gifts. 

• As a result, the whole of the Biblical message and Christian life would be cast into a distorted, truncated, or modified form in the interests of a religion of pure grace. 

• However, God's word warns us against turning" the grace of God into an occasion or cause of licentious living (Jude 4); it insists that faith does not nullify God's law (Romans 3:31). One has to be deceived, Paul says, to think that the unrighteous could possibly inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10). Those who demote even the slightest requirement of God's law will themselves be demoted in the Lord's kingdom (Matt. 5:19).

The Answer to Legalism (pp. 67-69)

• The answer to legalism is not easy believism, evangelism without the need for repentance, the pursuit of a mystical second blessing in the Spirit, or a Christian life devoid of righteous instruction and guidance. 

• Legalism is countered by the Biblical understanding of true "life in the Spirit." In such living, God's Spirit is the gracious author of new life, who convicts us of our sin and misery over against the violated law of God, who unites us to Christ in salvation that we might share His holy life, who enables us to understand the guidance given by God's word, and who makes us to grow by God's grace into people who better obey the Lord's commands. 

• The precise reason that Paul asserts that we are under grace and therefore not under the condemnation or curse of the law is to explain how it is that sin does not have dominion over us-to explain, that is, why we have become slaves to obedience and now have lives characterized by conformity to God's law (Rom. 6:13-18). 

• It is God's grace that makes us Spiritual men who honor the commandments of our Lord.

• The answer to legalism is not to portray the law of God as contrary to His promise (Gal. 3:21) but to realize that, just as the Christian life began by the Spirit, this life must be nurtured and perfected in the power of the Spirit as well (Gal. 3:3). 

• The dynamic for righteous living is found, not in the believer's own strength, but in the enabling might of the Spirit of God. We are naturally the slaves of sin who live under its power (Rom. 6:16-20; 7:23); indeed, Paul declares that we are dead in sin (Eph. 2:1). However, if we are united to Christ in virtue of His death and resurrection we have become dead to sin (Rom. 6:3-4) and thus no longer live in it (v. 2). Just as Christ was raised to newness of life by the Spirit (1 Tim. 3:16; 1 Pet. 3:18; Rom. 1:4; 6:4,9), so also we who have His resurrected power indwelling us by the life-giving Spirit (Eph. 1:19-20; Phil. 3:10; Rom. 8:11) have the power to live new lives which are freed from sin (Rom. 6:4-11). The result of the Spirit freeing us from sin is sanctification (v. 22). 

• The gracious power of the new and righteous life of the Christian is the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit. Here is the antidote to legalism. We must observe in this regard that the Holy Spirit does not replace the law of God in the Christian's life, nor does He oppose the law of God in our behavior. The gracious Spirit who empowers our sanctification does not speak for Himself, giving a new pattern for Christian behavior (John 16:13). Rather He witnesses to the word of the Son (John 14:23-26; 15:26; 16:14). The Spirit is not an independent source of direction or guidance in the Christian life, for His ministry is carried out in conjunction with the already given word of God (cf. 1 Cor. 2:12-16).

• In terms of our sanctification this means that the Spirit enables us to understand and obey the objective standard of God's revealed law. It does not mean that Christians who are indwelt by the Spirit become a law unto themselves, spinning out from within themselves the standards by which they live. What the Spirit does is to supply what was lacking in the law itself- the power to enforce compliance. "What the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Rom. 8:3-4).

Conclusion

"God's law is still the blueprint for sanctified behavior. This is completely unaffected by the Spirit's ethical ministry in the believer. The Holy Spirit does not oppose that law in the slightest degree but, instead, empowers obedience to it. "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances" (Ezk. 36:27). Whereas the letter of the law brought death to man because he was unable of himself to comply with it, the Spirit of God enlivens men so that they can conform to God's standards (2 Cor. 3:6). Therefore the sure test of whether someone has the Spirit abiding in him or not is found in asking if he keeps the commandments of God (1 John 3:24). A Biblical view of the work of the Holy Spirit reinforces the validity of God's law for the Christian, showing how the law (as pattern) and the Spirit (as power) are both indispensable to sanctification" (p. 70). 

Source: Bahnsen, G. L. (1985). By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics.

A Reformed Christian Social Consciousness

Abraham Kuyper's "Christianity and the Class Struggle" was published by Piet Hein Publishers in 1950. Though 64 years away from us, I find the message of the first chapter relevant to contemporary social issues. In it, he dealt issues like economic inequity, socialism and state interventionism (of course he did not use this last term but the essence is there). In this article, I just want to share the growing recognition during Kuyper's time for the lack of social consciousness among Christians, Kuyper's lament for delayed response, and his suggested form of Christian social consciousness. 

Absence of Social Consciousness

John Gritter honestly accepted that many Christians including the Reformed community "seem to realize absolutely nothing of the implications of their religion in the social realm" (p. 7). This is despite of their zeal for Christian Education and Christian Mercy. He believed that "the application of Christian principles to the social problems is sorely needed!" (ibid.). He was not alone in that conviction. Many intelligent young people who were "impressed with the beauty and the urgency" of Calvinism confirmed that the absence of such application was indeed a serious situation (ibid.). And so for John Gritter, the appearance of Abraham Kuyper's book was timely. 

"In the political sphere we are doing almost nothing; in the matter of social justice we are not doing much better. We have a principles also in the social sphere, will have to start again from the bottom up. We are as yet pretty much at sea as to just how we are to proceed. We are baffled by many practical questions to which we have no answer. In seeking such answers Kuyper can help us. The thoughts expressed in this book were first set forth almost sixty years ago, but they are today as fundamental as they were at that time. Many of the practical questions which Kuyper faced are with us now" (pp. 8-9). 

It was Gritter's prayer that this little book would find its way to receptive readers and would somehow result into a movement for social change. 

"May it be widely read and earnestly studied. May the assimilation of it produce an urgent consciousness of our calling, our God-given duty, to apply the truth of God also in the social sphere. May it blossom forth in a strong movement to fling out the banner of our Lord also in that domain of life" (p. 9).

Kuyper's Lament for Late Response

In the opening pages of the first part of the book, Kuyper described the gathering of Christian leaders in the Netherlands to discuss the economic issues of that time. Kuyper acknowledged that none of the delegate was an expert in economics. However, despite of their limitation, their goal was to seriously tackle what they should do about the social ills of their time. His regret was that compared to Christian leaders in other parts of Europe, their response in Netherlands was delayed. 

Christian leaders outside Netherlands held their own meetings in search for solution to the social challenge. Instances of these were the meetings of Christian Workers Party in Berlin, Christian Socialists in London under certain Rev. Headlam, Christian Society for Social Economy in Geneva and the Catholic initiative under the influence of Le Play and Von Ketteler. They held series of congresses in Germany, France and Belgium. Also Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical about this issue. 

And then Kuyper recalled the past. He reminded the delegates that delayed response was not a usual feature of Dutch Christianity. Under the intellectual contribution of Bilderdijk, Da Costa and Groen van Prinsterer, they had always been ahead when there was a social problem. Bilderdijk, an advocate of traditional liberalism, exposed the false theory of charity as early as 1825. Kuyper quoted him saying, "'Whenever a people is destined to perish in sin. It's in the church that the soul-leprosy begins'" (p. 15). Da Costa, in his Song of 1840, denounced Plutocracy, the "'rule of money'" (ibid.). For him, Luxury turns into a "'sap-destroying like a cancer, and as it were, destroying the balance between the classes'"(ibid.). He actually lead a meeting for this issue "at London in 1864 a quarter of a century before Karl Marx" (ibid.). Groen van Prinsterer in 1853 called Dutch Christians to extinguish the fire of socialism believing that "'socialism finds its source in the French Revolution'" and "'is conquerable only by Christianity'"(p.16).

Kuyper continued his lament that Dutch Christian leaders had been positioned in the "rear guard" not only by other Christian leaders in other parts of Europe but also "by the Socialists themselves, who constantly appeal to Christ in support of their Utopias..." (ibid.). He described these Socialists as continually holding "serious mottoes from the Holy Word..." and had "not hesitated to present Christ Himself as the great prophet of Socialism..." due to what they believe to be a strong bond between "the Socialist need and the Christian religion..." (ibid.). 

And then Kuyper expressed the uneasiness of a certain Adolphe Naquet also from a traditional liberal school the way Socialism is advancing Christianity. Naquet said, "'You do the work of religion. . . when you put in the foreground exactly those problems in whose solution Christianity is so closely involved'" (p.17). Kuyper saw in this statement a commendation of the power of Christianity to aid the social ill. 

Kuyper then introduced a most illuminating statement from Fichte.

"'Christianity conceals in its womb a much greater treasure of rejuvenation than you surmise. Until now it has exerted its power only on the individual and only indirectly on the state. But anyone who, as believer or as unbeliever, has been able to spy out its secret dynamic, must grant that Christianity can exert a wonderful organizing power on society also; and not till this power breaks through will the religion of the cross shine before the whole world in all the depths of its conception and in all the wealth of the blessings which it brings'" (ibid.).

Dr. Kuyper concluded his litany by embracing the undeniability of the connection between the social question and the Christian religion. He affirmed, "...Christian religion and the social question, are intertwined. The conviction that such a relation exists is not enough. It must also take on form and shape for us. Only so can it speak to our consciousness." Again, his only regret was that the Dutch Christian leaders have not spoken louder and have not acted earlier. He was so ashamed for such inactivity. 

The Need for a Christian Social Consciousness

Kuyper then started to expound about his idea of a "form" or "shape" social Christian consciouness by explaining the "antithesis" between nature and art. He ascribes power to both. By nature, he meant the power that lies beyond human reach. By art, he meant the power derived from human will to properly utilize nature. He gave several examples of this such as the breeding of horses, irrigation and the education of our children. The goal is "to unlock the power concealed in nature," (p. 19). and he believes that God is pleased with such exercise of the will. 

Unfortunately, man did not properly use this higher power derived from human will. Instead of experiencing peace and happiness through the appropriate use of such art, its misuse brought countless miseries. Kuyper describes this misuse as "series of misdirected actions" (p. 20) originating from "two-fold unchanging cause, error and sin" (ibid.). 

Concerning error, Kuyper explains, "Error insofar as there was ignorance as to the essence of man and his social attributes, and ignorance equally as to the laws which govern on the one hand human association and on the other, the production, distribution and use of material goods" (ibid.). And regarding sin, Kuyper mentions greed and ambition. These two "disturbed or opposed the sound growth of human society, whether through force or through vicious custom and unjust law, and sometimes for centuries abetted a very cancerous development" (ibid.). And then through time, both error and sin "joined forces to enthrone untruthful principles, which did violence to our human nature ; and out of these false principles to build systems which licensed injustice . . ." (ibid.).

Kuyper described such social ills with another name, "reckless play" (p. 21) that is done by the intellectuals and the wealthy, and through their influence, found way through the government. From this point, we read that Abraham Kuyper was not uninformed about the evils of statist interventionism though he did not use the term. 

". . . . actually there has never been a government in any land of the world which did not in various ways dominate both the course of social life and its relations with material wealth. It did this through the various enactment of civil laws ; through trade laws ; and indirectly through its criminal law and penal code; and as far as concerns the relation to material wealth, more particularly through inheritance laws, through the system of taxation, through regulation of exports and imports, codes for purchase and rent, agrarian regulations, colonial rule, control of coinage, and much more" (ibid.).

Kuyper further described the social and economic results from such a "fixed rule" (p. 22) used by those who are stronger for their own advantage. 

"The ineradicable inequality between men gave the stronger an advantage over the weaker, and as though an animal rather than a human society were involved, produced a world in which the fixed rule prevails that the stronger devours the weaker; and the stronger, almost without exception, have always known how to bend every usage and magistral ordinance so that the profit was theirs and the loss was for the weaker. Men did not literally eat each other like the cannibals, but the more powerful exploited the weaker by means of a weapon against which there was no defense. And whenever the magistrate did come forward as a servant of God to protect the weaker, the more powerful class of society soon knew how to exercise such an overpowering influence on the government that the governmental power which should have protected the weaker became an instrument against them. And this was not because the stronger class was more evil at heart than the weaker; for no sooner did a man from the lower class rise to the top than he in his turn took part just as harshly, and indeed more harshly, in the irreligious oppression of those who were members of his own former class" (ibid.). 

Kuyper ended the first chapter of his book with a solemn warning based on Biblical material.

"No, the cause lay in this, that men regarded humanity apart from its eternal destiny, did not honor it as created in the image of God, and did not reckon with the majesty of the Lord, who alone is able to hold in check, through His grace, a race sunk in sin. This unjust situation was already born in ancient times of which the Preacher so movingly complains (Eccl. 4:1) : "So I returned and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of the oppressors there was power, but they had no comforter. " It is a situation like that when Naboth was murdered so that Jezebel might add his acre to the royal park of Ahab; or, if you will, a state of affairs once and for all typified by our Lord in the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus; and against which James hurls his apostolic ban when he writes: "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. You gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth' (p.23). 

Kuyper, A. (1950). Christianity and Class Struggle. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Piet Hein Publishers.

The Model Righteousness of Jesus

Reading the 7th chapter of By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today, is like having a crash course in Christology, biblical law, and Christian ethics. This is the 2nd part in Bahnsen's trinitarian approach to prove the continuing validity of biblical law. 

After reading the chapter, I was impressed with the wealth of exegetical insights and biblical material. I think this is a good material for teaching the adult Sunday School. And so I decided to reorder this chapter into an outline format. In doing this, I place a couple of paragraph here and there under the section, which I think is most suitable. 

The theme of the whole chapter is Jesus' model of righteousness. Dr. Greg Bahnsen structured the chapter's content under three major divisions:

• The centrality of Jesus throughout the Bible

• Jesus' life is in complete conformity to the law of God

• Christian life understood as imitating Christ means following the same moral standard

The Centrality of Jesus Throughout the Bible

1. From creation to the promise of His coming as the Messiah

• He was as the Word of God, active at the creation of the world (John 13)

• He providentially upholds all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). 

• He was the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). 

• The entire Old Testament prepares for His coming as the prophet (Deut. 18:15-19), priest (Ps. 110:4), and king (Isa. 9:6-7).

2. The New Testament speaks of the centrality of Jesus. 

• The Gospels tell of His life and saving ministry

• Acts tells us of the continuation of His work through the presence of the Holy Spirit in the church

• The epistles are His letters through His chosen servants (for example, Galatians 1:1) to his elect people

• The book of Revelation is His revelation 

• His church now labors to make all nations His disciples (Matt. 28:18-20)

• At the consummation of history, He will return again to judge all mankind (Acts 17:31). 

• From beginning to end, the Bible speaks of Jesus Christ who is "the Alpha and the Omega" (Rev. 22:13).

• He is the key to God's special revelation and the one who should have preeminence in our lives (Col. 1:18).

Jesus' Life, in Complete Conformity to the Law of God

Under this section, Rushdoony discussed the relationship between Jesus and the law of God. The life of Jesus is described as a life of perfect obedience to the perfect moral standard of God.

"A short survey of Biblical teaching discloses that God does not save His chosen people by lowering His moral standards; the very reason why those people need His saving mercy is because they have violated His moral standards. If such standards were expendable or arbitrary, then God could choose to ignore their transgression and save people by sheer fiat or decree of pardon. However, the law could not be thus ignored. To save His people, God sent His only-begotten Son to die sacrificially in their place. In order to qualify as the Savior, Christ lived a life of perfect obedience to the commandments of God. In order to atone for sins, Christ died in alienation from the Father to satisfy the law's demand for punishment. Consequently in His life and death Christ perfectly obeyed the law of God, and this has unavoidable implications for Christian ethics - for imitating the Christ portrayed throughout the Bible."

The Scriptures regard the work of Christ as that of perfect obedience:

• In defining the purpose of His Messianic advent, Christ said "I have come down from heaven to do the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38). 

• The pivotal event in the accomplishment or redemption was Christ's laying down His life and taking it up again - His death and resurrection; in these things Christ· was obeying His Father's commandment (John 10:17-18). 

• His work of atonement was performed in the capacity of a suffering servant (cf. Isa. 52:13-53:12). As such He was subjected to the law (Gal. 4:5) and justified us by His obedience (Rom. 5:19). Obedience to the will and commandment of God was therefore crucial to the life and ministry of our Savior. 

• As our great High Priest He was sacrificed to discharge the curse of the law against our sin (Gal. 3:13; Heb. 2:17 -3:1; 4:14-5:10). 

• As the prophet of the law, Christ rendered its proper interpretation and peeled away the distorting traditions of men (Matt. 5:17-48; 15:1-20). 

• And because He obeyed the law perfectly and hated all lawlessness, Christ has been exalted as the anointed King (Heb. 1:8, 9). 

We see here that Christ's saving work and His three-fold office are determined by His positive relation to the law of God, the permanent expression of His holy will.

• Since Christ is the exact representation of God's nature (Heb. 1:3) and since the law is a transcript of the holiness of God, Christ embodied the law perfectly in His own person and behavior. 

• Christ challenged His opponents with the stunning-virtually rhetorical-question, "Which of you convicts me of sin?" (John 8:46). Of course, no one could, for Christ alone was in a position to declare, "I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love" (John 15:10).

• Christ was tempted at every point with respect to obeying the commands of God, yet He remained sinless throughout (Heb. 4:15). 

• Because He kept the law perfectly, Christ had no need to offer up sacrifice for His own sins (Heb. 7:26-28). Instead He offered Himself up without spot to God, a lamb without blemish as the law required, in order to cleanse us of our sins (Heb. 9:14). 

• The Old Testament had foretold, "righteousness will be the belt about His loins" (Isa. 11:5), and the Messiah could declare, "Thy law is within my heart" (Ps. 40:7-8; Heb. 10:4-10).

• We read in Galatians 4:4 that "when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law."

• Christ was neither lawless nor above the law; He submitted to its every requirement, saying "it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness" (Matt. 3:15). 

• He directed the healed to offer the gift commanded by Moses (Matt. 8:4), kept the borders of his garments (9:20; 14:36), paid the temple tax (17:24-27), attended to the purity of the temple (21:12-17), etc. 

• He directed His followers to do those things which conformed to the law's demand (Matt. 7:12), told the rich young ruler to keep the commandments (19:17), reinforced the Old Testament law by summarizing it into two love commandments (22:40), indicted the Pharisees for making God's commandments void through traditions of men (Mark 7:6-13), and insisted that even the most trite or insignificant matters of the law ought not to be left undone (Luke 11:12).

• Jesus severely warned His followers not even to begin to think that His coming had the effect of abrogating even the slightest letter of the law; teaching that even the least commandment had been annulled would eventuate in one's demotion in the kingdom of God (Matt. 5:17-19). 

• Christ submitted to the law of God even to the very point of suffering its prescribed penalty for sin. He died the death of a criminal (Phil. 2:8), taking upon Himself the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13) and cancelling thereby the handwriting which was against us because of the law (Col. 2:14). "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.... Jehovah has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:4-6).

• Sin cannot avoid the dreadful judgment of God (Nahum 1:2-3; Habakkuk 1:13), and therefore God does not save sinners without righteousness and peace kissing each other (Ps. 85:9-10).

• Jesus remains just, while becoming the justifier of His people (Rom. 3:26). Accordingly the law's demands could not be arbitrarily pushed aside. Christ had to come and undergo the curse of the law in the place of His chosen people; He had to satisfy the justice of God. That is why it can be said that the death of Christ is the outstanding evidence that God's law cannot be ignored or abrogated. 

• According to the law there is no remission of sin apart from the shedding of blood (Heb. 9:22; Lev. 17:11). "Therefore it was necessary that Christ offer up himself in sacrifice for sin" (Heb. 9:23-26). The necessity of the law's continuing validity is substantiated by the saving death of Christ on our behalf.

• For us to be saved, it was necessary for Christ to live and die by all of the law's stipulations. Although our own obedience to the law is flawed and thus cannot be used as a way of justification before God, we are saved by the imputed obedience of the Savior (1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9). Our justification is rooted in His obedience (Rom. 5:17-19). By a righteousness which is alien to ourselves - the perfect righteousness of Christ according to the law - we are made just in the sight of God. "He made the one who did not know sin to be sin on our behalf in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5:21).

• It turns out, then, that Christ's advent and atoning work do not relax the validity of the law of God and its demand for righteousness; rather they accentuate it. Salvation does not cancel the law's demand but simply the law's curse: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13). He removed our guilt and the condemning aspect of the law toward us, but Christ did not revoke the law's original righteous demand and obligation. Salvation in the Biblical sense presupposes the permanent validity of the law. 

Throughout His life and teaching, and even up to the point of death, Jesus upheld the law's demands in the most exacting degree.

Imitating Christ

• At many times in the history of the church, Christian living has been understood most generally as "the imitation of Christ." 

• Because Christ is the central personage of the Bible, there is a sense in which Biblical ethics can likewise be summarized as imitating Christ - striving to be like Him, taking His behavior as the model of Christian ethics. Indeed, to take upon oneself the name of "Christian" is to be a disciple or follower of Christ (cf. Acts 11:26). Believers take their direction from the example and teaching of Christ. Accordingly, Biblical ethics is the same as Christian ethics.

• Christian ethics is a matter of imitating Christ, and for that reason it does not call us to flee from the law but to honor its requirements. We are to have in ourselves the attitude which was in Christ Jesus, who humbled himself and became obedient (Phil. 2: 5, 8). We are to follow in His steps of righteous behavior (1 Pet. 2:21), showing forth righteousness because the Holy Spirit unites us to Him (1 Cor. 6:15-20). Therefore the Biblical ethic is the Christian ethic of following after the example of Christ's obedience to God's law. John expresses this point clearly: "Hereby we know that we are in Him: he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked" (1 John 2:5-6). 

• Christians should therefore be the last people to think or maintain that they are free from the righteous requirements of God's commandments. Those who have been saved were in need of that salvation precisely because God's law could not be ignored as they transgressed it. 

• The Holy Spirit indwelling all true believers in Jesus Christ makes them grow in likeness to Christ - "to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13, 15; cf. Gal. 4:19).

Christ walked according to the commandments of God. Therefore, we cannot escape the conclusion that Christian ethic is one of obedience to God's law, for Christ's perfect righteousness according to that law is our model for Christian living.

• Jesus therefore must have the supremacy in Christian life. Because of our sinful disobedience to God's commandments, Christ came to atone for our offenses and become our eternal Savior. As such, He deserves our undying devotion and gratitude.

• As the resurrected and ascended Son of God, Christ is Lord over all and deserves our obedience and service. Thus the lifestyle and ethic of those who have been redeemed by Christ as Savior and Lord will naturally center or focus on Him

Conclusion

From beginning to end the Bible centers on Jesus Christ. From beginning to end His life was lived in conformity to the law of God. And from beginning to end the Biblical ethic of imitating Christ calls us likewise to obey every command of God's word.

Source: Bahnsen, G. L. (1985). By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics. 

Uniqueness of the Apostles' Creed and Its Implications

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

What is so unique with Apostles' Creed compared to creeds of other world religions? And why is this uniqueness so important?

Rousas John Rushdoony answered the above questions in chapter 1 of his book, "The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church." He claims that the Apostles' Creed compared to creeds of other religions is unique in at least two ways: nature of its assent and activity. This uniqueness carries with it important implications that embrace the whole of life. 

Unlike the creeds of other religions, the Apostles' Creed's assent is not to a body of ideas and concepts. Instead, "it offers a synopsis of history" (p. 5), and Rushdoony describes the creed as "a declaration concerning history" (p.6). 

"The Apostles' Creed is unlike all other creeds of other religions, whether humanist, Buddhist, Moslem, Hindi, or otherwise. The faith of all other religions is in a body of ideas or claims concerning reality. It may be a belief in the ultimacy of man, or the ultimacy of nothingness, in the office of a man (Mohammed as prophet), or an ultimate dualism or monism, but, in any event, it demands a belief in certain ideas or claims. The Apostles' Creed is radically different: it offers a synopsis of history, created by God the Father Almighty, requiring salvation by Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, who entered, lived, died, and was resurrected, and is now the Lord and Judge of history. His holy congregation is operative in history, which culminates in the general resurrection and everlasting life. The whole creed therefore is a declaration concerning history"(pp.5-6).

One immediate implication of this kind of conception of the Apostles' Creed is the rejection of any "dialectical separation of faith and history" (p.6). He considers the application of such dialecticism in understanding Jesus foreign to Christianity. In fact, he bluntly describes it as pagan.

"Nothing then can be more alien to the creed, and to Biblical faith, than the dialectical separation of faith and history. To contrast the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of history is to talk the language of paganism, not of Christianity." (p. 6.).

Another uniqueness of the Apostles' creed compared to the creeds of other world religions is in terms of activity. Rushdoony narrates, "Non-biblical creedalism is active: it involves the individual's decision concerning a set of ideas and concepts." In contrast to this, Biblical creedalism due to its affirmation of "God's creation, redemption, and government" (p.8) is therefore passive. The nature of its passivity is in view of the fact that man is a recipient of grace due to "an act of redemption by the triune God" (ibid.). However, this passivity is the basis of genuine activity. Rushdoony explains it best:

"But this passivity is the ground of true activity: man under God moves now in terms of true law, in terms of the canon of Scripture, to exercise dominion over the earth in the name of the triune God. Christian creedalism is thus basic to Western activism, constitutionalism, and hope concerning history" (ibid.). 

The opening sentence of the Apostles' Creed affirms the doctrine of creation as a historical fact. Someone who accepts such affirmation could never escape the implication of other corollary doctrines such as God's sovereignty and eternal decree. 

"Implicit in this declaration that God the Father Almighty is maker of heaven and earth is the claim of God to be the law-giver, determiner, and sustainer of heaven and earth and of all history. He is its maker, and it is totally subject therefore to Him. An assertion of the doctrine of creation is also an assertion of the doctrine of sovereignty and of the eternal decree, of predestination" (p.6).

Other implications are also derived from the declaration that God is the Almighty Creator. This includes implications for ethics, law, and society.

"The Creed thus has vast implications concerning history because of its declaration that God is the creator of all things. This declaration immediately makes God the source of all ethics, of all morality, and of all law. In all non-Christian systems, the source of ethics and law is the state; it is the polis, the empire, or the kingdom. . . . Either God is the true source of morality and law, or the state is. If God is the true source, then the Word of God must be harkened to by the church, state, school, and every sphere of life as the one authoritative source of morality and law. " (p.6).

Source: Rushdoony, R. J. (1968). The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church. Vallecito, California.

The Perfect Holiness of the Father

Chapter 6 of "By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today," Dr. Bahnsen starts his Trinitarian approach in arguing for the continuing validity of God's law. In this chapter, he focused on God's perfect holiness as the standard revealed in the law. He began the chapter with distinction between two kinds of "God-likeness" - a likeness of God that violates the law and a likeness that faithfully obeys the law. The first likeness is seen in the disobedience of our first parents in the Garden oof Eden. This is counterfeit likeness; it is Satanic. The other likeness, which is genuine is fully seen in the total obedience of Christ to the law even up to the point of death on the Cross. The chapter ends with the Puritan example in their zeal to obey the law of God in all aspects of life.

Here is the excerpt from the book with few revision and additional sub-headings for easy comprehension: 

Two Kinds of God-Likeness 

There is a sense in which the aim of every man's life is to be like God. All men are striving to imitate God in one way or another. Of course not all attempts to be like God are honored by the Lord and rewarded with His favor, for there is a radical difference between submitting to the Satanic temptation to be like God (Gen. 3:5) and responding to Christ's injunction that we should be like God (Matt. 5:48). The first is an attempt to replace God's authority with one's own, while the second is an attempt to demonstrate godliness as a moral virtue. 

Counterfeit God-Likeness - Lawlessness 

The basic character of godly morality was made manifest in the probation or testing placed upon Adam and Eve in the garden. God had granted them permission to eat of any tree of the garden, save one. They were forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but not because its fruit was injected with some literal poison. This was rather a test of whether they would live solely under the authority of God's word to them. God had forbidden it. Would they, despite their empirical research and personal desires, submit to his command on His simple say-so? Would they do their duty on the sheer basis that it was their duty? Or would they evaluate the command of God on the basis of some external standard of reasonableness, practicality, and human. benefit? 

The outcome of the story is all too well known. Satan beguiled Eve, denying what God had told her. She was led to assume the authoritative, neutral position of determining for herself whether God's "hypothesis" or Satan's "hypothesis" was true. Satan implied that God's commands were harsh, too stringent, unreasonable. He in effect condemned the supreme, absolute, and unchallengeable authority of God. He went on to suggest that God is in fact jealous, prohibiting Adam and Eve from eating of the tree lest they become like Him -lest they become rivals to Him in determining what is good and evil. 

Thus our first parents were led to seek a lifestyle which- was not bound by law from God; thus they were tempted into deciding for themselves what would count as good and evil. Law would not be laid down to them by God, for they would lay it down for themselves. Demonstrating sin's lawlessness (1 John 3:4) they became "like God"-law-givers of their own making and authority. God's law, which should have been their delight, became burdensome to them. 

Genuine God-Likeness - Total Obedience to the Law  

By contrast, the second Adam, Jesus Christ, lived a life of perfect obedience to the laws of God. When Satan tempted Him to depart from the path of utter obedience to God's commands, the Savior replied by quoting from the Old Testament law: you are not to tempt the Lord your God, you are to worship and serve Him alone, and you are to live by every word that proceeds from His mouth (Matt. 4:1-11). Here we have the very opposite of Adam and Eve's response to Satan. Christ said that the attitude which is genuinely godly recognizes the moral authority of God alone, does not question the wisdom of His dictates, and observes every last detail of his word. This is man's proper path to God-likeness. To live in this fashion displays the image or likeness of God that man was originally intended to be (Gen. 1:27), for it is living "in righteousness and true holiness" (Eph. 4:24). Genuine godliness, as commanded in the Scripture, is gained' by imitating the holiness of God on a creaturely level- not by audacious attempts to redefine good and evil in some area of life on your own terms. 

Jesus concluded His discourse on God's law in the Sermon on the Mount by saying, "Therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). Those who are not striving to become rivals to God by replacing His commands according to their own wisdom will rather endeavor to reflect His moral perfection by obeying all of His commands. John Murray has said, 

"God expects of His people nothing less than full conformity to his holy character in all of their thoughts, words, and deeds. They must emulate His perfection in every aspect of their lives. As Murray says, this standard of ethics ever binds the believer and never ceases to be relevant. This standard is just as authoritative and valid today as it was in the Old Testament."

God's Perfect Holiness 

According to the Old Testament ethic, God's holiness is the model for human conduct: "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2). This is also the precise model of moral conduct for the New Testament believer: "... but like the Holy one who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy' " (1 Peter 1:15-16). There has been no alteration or reduction of the standard of moral behavior between the Old and New Testaments. God's permanent requirement over all of life is God-imitating holiness. In all ages, believers are required to display, throughout their lives, the holiness and perfection of their God. They ought to be like God, not in the Satanic sense which amounts to lawlessness, but in the biblical sense which entails submission to God's commands. 

Obviously, if we are to model our lives on the perfect holiness of God, we need Him to tell us what the implications of this would be for our practical behavior. We need a perfect yardstick by which to measure holiness in our lives. The Bible teaches us that the Lord has provided this guide and standard in his holy law (cf. Rom. 7:12). The law is a transcript of the holiness of God on a creaturely level; it is the ultimate standard of human righteousness in any area of life, for it reflects the moral perfection of God, its Author. 

The intimate relation which the law bears to the very person of God is indicated by the fact that it was originally written by the finger of God (Deut. 9:10) and deposited in the ark of the covenant which typified the throne and presence of God in the Holy of Holies (Deut. 10:5). Moreover, this law must be acknowledged to have a very special place or status because it has the exclusive qualities of God himself attributed to it. According to Scripture, God alone is holy (Rev. 15:4) and good (Mark 10:18). Yet God's law is likewise designated holy and good (Rom. 7:12, 16; 1Tim. 1:8), and obedience to it is the standard of human good (Deut. 12:28; Ps. 119:68; Micah 6:8). God is perfect (Deut. 32:4; Ps. 18:30; Matt. 5:48), and the law which He has laid down for us is accordingly perfect (Ps. 19:7; James 1:25). Every statute revealed by God authoritatively defines the holiness, goodness, and perfections which God's people are to emulate in every age. 

The Puritan Example 

The Puritans were zealous to live in the moral purity which reflects God's own. Consequently they upheld the honor and binding quality of every command from God. The feeling of Thomas Taylor was typical of them: "A man may breake the Princes Law, and not violate his Person; but not God's: for God and his image in the Law, are so straitly united, as one cannot wrong the one, and not the other" (Regula Vitae, The Rule of the Law under the Gospel, 1631). If God turned back His law, said Anthony Burgess, He would "deny his own justice and goodnesse" (Vindiciae Legis, 1646). Thus the Puritans did not, like many modern believers, tamper with or annul any part of God's law. "To find fault with the Law, were to find fault with God" (Ralph Venning, Sin, the Plague of Plagues, 1669). Therefore, in Puritan theology the law of God, like its author, was eternal (cf. Edward Elton, God's Holy Minde Touching Matters Morall, 1625), and as such "Christ has expunged no part of it" (John Crandon, Mr. Baxters Aphorisms Exorcized and Anthorized, 1654). 

Unlike modern theologians who evaluate God's requirements according to their cultural traditions and who follow the Satanic temptation to define holiness according to their own estimate of moral purity, the Puritans did not seek schemes by which to shrink the entire duty of man in God's law to their preconceived notions. Venning concluded, "Every believer is answerable to the obedience of the whole Law." 

As usual, the Puritans were here eminently scriptural. God's holiness is the standard of morality in Old and New Testaments, and that holiness is reflected in our lives by obeying His every commandment. "Sanctify yourselves, therefore, and be ye holy, for I am the Lord your God. And ye shall keep my statutes and do them" (Lev. 20:7-8). And a life that is truly consecrated to God, one which is genuinely holy, respects every dictate from God. He says that the way to "be holy to your God" is to "remember to do all My commandments" (Num. 15:40). To lay aside any of God's law or view its details as inapplicable today is to oppose God's standard of holiness; it is to define good and evil in that area of life by one's own wisdom and law, to become a rival to God as a law-giver. 

Of course this suppression of God's own standard of moral perfection - the law's transcript of His holiness- is a blow at the very heart of biblical ethics. It is to be "God-like" in exactly the wrong way. It is to seek moral perfection for some aspect of life which was originally covered by God's law but is now defined according to one's own determination of good and evil. This was the untoward character of Adam's rebellion against God's holy word: His own law replaced God's. 

Conclusion 

The law reflects the holiness of God, and God's holiness is our permanent standard of morality. Moreover, God's character is eternal and unchanging. "I am the Lord, 1 change not" (Mal. 3:6). There is no variableness in Him (James 1:17). From everlasting to everlasting He is God (Ps. 90:2). Therefore, because His holiness is unchanging, the law which reflects that holiness cannot be changed. Whether we read in the Old or New Testaments, we find that a man's attitude toward God's law is an index of his relationship to God himself (Ps. 1; Rom. 8:1-8). As John so plainly says, "The one who says 'I have come to know Him,' and does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (1 John 2:4). God's unchanging holiness and thereby His unchanging law is an abiding standard of knowing Him and being like Him.

We cannot suppress the generic character of this statement, 'Ye therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.' It covers the whole range of divine perfection as it bears upon human behavior, and it utters the most ultimate consideration regulative ofhuman disposition and conduct. The reason of the biblical ethic is God's perfection; the basic criterion of ethical behavior is God's perfection; the ultimate goal of the ethical life is conformity to God's perfection.... And shall we say that this standard can ever cease to be relevant? It is to trifle with the sanctities which ever bind us as creatures of God, made in his image, to think that anything less than perfection conformable to the Father's own could be the norm and the goal of the believer's ethic. 

Source: Bahnsen, G. L. (1985). By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics. 

The Uniformity of God's Moral Standard

Chapter 5 of "By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today" argues about the uniformity of God's moral standard in both Testaments. This speaks a lot about the dependability of God's character and His word. Dr. Greg Bahnsen elaborated this subject by explaining that the New Testament did not abolish God's moral standard, that there are manifold administrations of God's covenant of grace, and that the Mosaic covenant itself is gracious. He then explained what's new in the New Covenant, and concluded with God's prohibition about the use of double-standard. 

God's Unchanging Moral Standard 

Read Psalm 89:34; 111:7-8; Matthew 5:19; Luke 16:17; 

If something was sinful in the Old Testament, it is likewise sinful in the age of the New Testament. Moral standards, unlike the price of gasoline or the changing artistic tastes of a culture, do not fluctuate.

Unlike human lawmakers, God does not change His mind or alter His standards of righteousness. When the Lord speaks, His word stands firm forever. His standards of right and wrong do not change from age to age.

Even the coming of God's righteous Son did nothing to change the righteous character of God's laws, even the least of them, for then they would be exposed as unjust and less than eternal in their uprightness. The advent of the Savior and the inauguration of the New Age do not have the effect of abrogating the slightest detail of God's righteous commandments. God has not changed His mind about good and evil or what constitutes them.

God Sticks by His Word

Read Psalm 19:1-14; 33:4-11; Isaiah 51:4-8; John 10: 35

The authority of His word for human life is as permanent as that word by which He created and governs the world. If God's word to us were not as stable as this, if He were subject to moods and changed His mind from time to time, then we could not rely on anything He told us. If God's law has a fluctuating validity, then so might His promises! If we say that a commandment given by God in the Old Testament is no longer a standard of righteousness and justice for today, then we can equally anticipate that a promise of salvation given by God in the New Testament will in some future day no longer be a permanent guarantee of His favor toward us. But praise the Lord that His word is stable! He never lets us down as did our human parents and human rulers with commands that are unfair and promises that are not kept.

The New Testament Did Not Abolish God's Moral Standard

Read Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25; 

The division of the Bible into two "Testaments" is better understood in the biblical sense as two "Covenants." Prior to the coming of Christ men lived under the Old Covenant which anticipated the Messiah and His work of salvation; after the coming of Christ and His saving work we live under the New Covenant.

Within the "Old Covenant" scriptures we find a few particular covenants, such as those made with Abraham and with Moses. The Abrahamic covenant is often characterized in terms of promise, and the Mosaic covenant is remembered for its strong element of law. Now some people would say that New Covenant believers are under the Abrahamic covenant of promise today, but not the Mosaic covenant with its laws. However, that is far from the outlook of the scriptural writers. In Galatians 3:21 Paul addresses this question to those who speak of being under one or the other covenant: "Is the law contrary to the promises of God?' And his inspired answer is "May it never be!" The fact is that all of the covenants of the Old Covenant (that is, all of the Old Testament covenants) are unified as parts of the one overall covenant of grace established by God. Paul spoke of Gentiles who were not part of the Old Covenant economy which included the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants as "strangers to the covenants of the promise" (Eph. 2:12).

Manifold Administrations of a Single Covenant 

Read Hebrews 8:6-13; John 1:17

The various covenants of the Old Covenant were all part of one program and plan. Not only were they harmonious with one another, but they are unified with the New Covenant which was promised in Jeremiah 31 and is enjoyed by Christians today. There is one basic covenant of grace, characterized by anticipation in the Old Covenant and by realization in the New Covenant. Given the unity of God's covenant throughout history and the Bible, then, is it true that Christians living under the New Covenant are not obliged to keep the Old Covenant law (the commandments of the Old Testament, especially those given by Moses)? Every covenant established by God-even the Abrahamic (Gen. 17:1)-not only declares His gracious work on behalf of His people, but lays down stipulations which they are to observe as a sign of fidelity and love to Him. For instance, the giving of the law at Sinai (Ex. 20-23) was preceded by God's gracious deliverance of Israel from bondage (cf. Ex. 19:4; 20:2). God identified Himself as Lord of the covenant and rehearsed his gracious dealings with His people (Deut. 1-4), and then with that foundation and background He delivered His law (Deut. 5ff.). The failure of the Mosaic generation can be called a failure in obedience (Heb. 6:4), but this was identical with a failure of faith (Heb. 3:9). The righteousness of the Mosaic law was always to be sought byfaith, not works (Rom. 9:31-32).

The Mosaic Covenant, a Gracious Covenant

Read Psalm 19

The law which we read in the Old Testament is a provision of God's grace to us. Every covenant carries stipulations which are to be kept, as we have seen. But prior to that we saw that all of the covenants of God are unified into one overall Covenant of Grace, fully realized with the coming of Christ in the New Covenant. So if there is one covenant enjoyed by the people of God throughout the ages, then there is one moral code or set of stipulations which govern those who would be covenant-keepers. Therefore, New Testament believers are bound to the Old Testament law of God. His standards, just like His covenant, are unchanging.

The Newness of God's Covenant

Read Psalm 89:34; Jeremiah 31:33-34; Hebrews 8:8-12

When we inquire as to what is new about the New Covenant under which Christians now live, we must allow the Lord to define the proper answer. We cannot read into the idea of a "new Covenant" just anything we wish or can imagine. The revealed terms of the New Covenant are given to us in both Jeremiah 31:33-34 and Hebrews 8:8-12, and when we look at them we find that the New Covenant is far from suppressing or changing the law or moral standard by which God's people are to live! Just the opposite is true. Contrary to those who think that the Mosaic law is not applicable to the New Testament believer, Scripture teaches us: "This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds and I will write them upon their hearts" (Heb. 8:10).

The establishment of the New Covenant does not imply the abrogation of the Mosaic law or its depreciation in any sense! The idea of a new law is ruled out altogether, for it is the well known law of God which He says He will write upon the hearts of New Covenant believers. Unlike the Old Covenant where God found fault with the people for breaking His commandments (Heb. 8:8-9), the New Covenant will give internal strength for keeping those very commandments. It will write the law on believers' hearts, for out of the heart are the issues of life (Prov. 4:23). The Holy Spirit of God will indwell the heart of believers, writing God's law therein, with the result that they will live according to the commandments. "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances" (Ezk. 36:27). As Paul writes in Romans 8:4, those who now walk according to the Spirit have the requirement of the law fulfilled within them. America's twentieth-century orthodox Protestant leader J. Gresham Machen said, "The gospel does not abrogate God's law, but it makes men love it with all their hearts."!

God's covenant law is one unchanging moral code through Old and New Testaments. Once God has spoken His law and expressed His righteous standards He does not alter it. Indeed He pronounces a warning and curse upon anyone who would dare tamper with his stipulations in the slightest. Times may change, human laws may be altered, but God's law is an eternally just and valid standard of right and wrong.

Conclusion: God Hates Double-Standard.

Read Deut. 25:13-16; Lev. 19:35-37

One of the requirements of his law, which reflects His holy character, is the prohibition of using a double-standard. It is ungodly to use one measure or yardstick with some people, and then use an altered measure with others. "Divers weights and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the Lord" (Prov. 20:10). Accordingly God requires that we have but one standard or moral judgment, whether it be for the stranger or the native (Lev. 24:22; Deut. 1:16-17; cf. Num. 15:16). He abhors a double-standard of right and wrong, and we can be sure that He does not judge in such a fashion. Something that was sinful in the Old Testament is likewise sinful for us in the New Testament, for God's standards are not subject to fluctuation from age to age. He has one uniform standard of right and wrong.

Source: Bahnsen, G. L. (1985). By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics. 

The Scope of True Obedience

"Obedience is from the heart, but not restricted to the heart, and it even goes beyond personal conduct." 

Chapter 4 of "By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today" is all about the scope of true obedience. In it, Dr. Greg Bahnsen identified the two common ethical mistakes, explained the meaning of "obedience from the heart" and "obedience not restricted to the heart," and elevated the understanding of obedience beyond personal conduct.

Two Common Ethical Mistakes

A number of common moral mistakes are made by believers, even after they come to the realization that God holds them accountable to His revealed commandments. Among those mistakes two can be focused upon here as the root of many other misconceptions. On the one hand, people often fail to see that God's law requires obedience from the heart. On the other hand, people make the mistake of thinking that it is sufficient if their obedience is restricted to matters of the heart. Both of these errors - opposite in character but equal in destructive force - are addressed by God's word, showing us the full dimensions of true obedience to the Lord.

Meaning of Obedience from the Heart

Read Matthew 5:20; 15:7-9; 23:23-24; Galatians 5:22-23; Proverbs 6:16-18,25; Matthew 5: 21-30

In Matthew 5:20 Jesus taught something which must have been shocking to His hearers. He said, "Except your righteousness shall exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven." The shocking thing about this was that the scribes and Pharisees had a reputation, one which they themselves were anxious to promote, for a deep commitment to obeying even the minor details of the law. But the fact of the matter was that the Pharisees were far from living up to the true demands of God's commandments. They had distorted the law's requirements, reading them in a perverse, self-justifying, and externalistic fashion.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus exposed the shallow obedience of the Pharisees for what it was, pointing out that God is not satisfied with anything short of full, heart-felt obedience to His law as comprehensively interpreted. By contrast, the Pharisees had appealed to the law in a way calculated to escape God's true and original demands, placing a hypocritical veneer of "piety" upon all of their actions.

The Pharisees made a religious show of adhering to the law, but Christ saw that it was a mere facade. He said to them, "You hypocrites, Isaiah was right when he prophesied of you, saying 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men' "(Matt. 15:7-9). The Pharisees actually overlooked the weightier matters of the law, such as justice, mercy, and faith (Matt. 23:23-24). They were blind guides who trimmed down the requirements of God's law so that it could be made to appear conformable to their cultural traditions. "And He answered and said unto them, 'Why do you also transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said.... But you say.... So you have made void the word of God for the sake of your tradition'" (Matt. 15:3-6, 14).

So it is quite possible to take an avid interest in the commandments of God and still have a heart that is far from the Lord - still have a lifestyle which is anything but pleasing to God since our attitudes and motives are out of line with the moral guidance of Scripture. We can take a concern for the fine details of the law, and we should, but not in such a way that we miss the main point in it all: namely, the display of such godly attitudes as are mentioned listed in "the fruit of the Spirit" -love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control, against which there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23).

Back in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:20ff.), after Christ declared that only a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees would gain entrance into the kingdom of heaven, He went on to deliver a series of illustrations of how the scribes and Pharisees held to a diminished understanding of God's requirements. He set their approach to various commandments over against His own interpretation of God's demands, thereby restoring the full measure of God's purpose and requirements to the Old Testament law. His illustrations began with words like these: "You have heard it said by those of old ... , but I say unto you." In such sayings Jesus was not personally dissenting from the law of God but from the Pharisaical understanding and undervaluating of the law of God.

After all, if the Pharisees really were living up to the law, and Jesus added to the law's demand, then His ex post facto condemnation of the Pharisees for not living up to His additions would be quite unfair! Rather, Jesus indicted the Pharisees for not living up to what God originally required. "You have heard it said by those of old" refers to the rabbinic interpretations of the law passed down from one generation to another; the scribes commonly appealed to the traditional interpretations of the ancient rabbis as a way of teaching the law. The amazing thing to the crowds who heard Jesus, though, was that he taught as one having authority in Himself, and not as one of the scribes, always appealing to others (Matt. 7:28-29).

The problem with the scribal or Pharisaical understanding of the Old Testament law was that it was trite and externalistic. Jesus had to point out, in accord with Old Testament teaching (for example, Prov. 6:16-18, 25), that hatred and lust were the root sins of murder and adultery (Matt. 5:21-30). When God commanded that His people not kill and not commit adultery, He did not merely require abstaining from the outward acts of assault and fornication; His requirement went to the heart, requiring that our thoughts, plans, and attitudes be free from violence and unchastity as well.

True obedience to the law, then, stems from a heart that is right with God, a heart that seeks to please the Lord - not simply by outward conformity but by pure attitudes as well. We see, then, why the "obedience" of the Pharisees was not acceptable in God's eyes. They were not truly obeying the law in its comprehensive demand, inward as well as outward. Any obedience which we are to render to God's law today which is going to be pleasing to God, therefore, must be better than externalistic, hypocritical, self-righteous Pharisaism. It must be obedience from the heart.

Meaning of Obedience not Restricted to the Heart

Read Romans 8:5-10; Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:26-27; Matthew 23:23

A man who refrains from physical adultery while cherishing lustful thoughts is self-deceived if he thinks that he has obeyed the Lord's commandment. On the other hand, a man who thinks that he has a pure attitude and motive, even though he engages outwardly in an act which transgresses God's law, is just as self-deceived. God's law does not place a premium upon inwardness and attitudes of the heart at the expense of overt obedience to His requirements! When it comes to obeying the Lord, it is not simply "the thought that counts."

Situational ethicists, who say a man can act out of love to God and love to his neighbor when he commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, still stand condemned by God and His word on the final day. This should be obvious to most born-again Christians. They know that "walking by the Spirit" means that, unlike those in "the flesh" (in the sinful nature), they can keep the law ofGod (Rom. 8:5-10); it is "the ordinance of the law" which is "fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit" (v. 4).

Those who have hearts made right with God, those who have been given a new heart by God, those who wish from the heart to please God, will seek to walk according to God's commandments (Jer. 31:33; Ezek. 11:19-20; 36:26-27). A proper heart attitude should lead to proper outward conduct as well. Obedience cannot be restricted to the heart. Jesus not only wanted the Pharisees to realize the inward values of mercy and faith; He did not want them to leave undone the minor outward matters of tithing garden vegetables (Matt. 23:23).

Obedience Beyond Personal Conduct 

Obedience goes beyond personal conduct to personal responsibility to exhort, to teach, and to promote obedience to the law of God on the part of others. 

Read Psalm 51:13; 119:53; Matthew 5:14-15; 28:18-20; Romans 15:14; Ephesians 5:11

Just as obedience cannot be restricted to the heart in the sense of forgetting the need for outward conformity to God's stipulations, it can likewise be said that obedience - if it is genuine Biblical obedience - cannot be restricted to a concern for our own personal conduct. Full obedience embraces an interest in the obedience of those around me to the laws of God. The Christian must assume the responsibility to exhort those in his home, church, society, etc. to keep the commandments of the Lord. David wrote, "restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free Spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners will be converted unto thee" (Ps. 51:13). The Great Commission laid upon the church by Christ calls for us to teach the nations whatsoever Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:18-20). Anything less than this concern for the obedience of those around us is disloyalty to the Lord and fails to qualify as true obedience to his law. John Murray wrote:

"The least of God's commandments, if they bind us, bind others. We must resist the virulent poison of individualism which tolerates in others the indifference and disobedience which we cannot justify in ourselves. . . . The moment we become complacent to the sins of others then we have begun to relax our own grip on the sanctity of the commandments of God, and we are on the way to condoning the same sin in ourselves."

Heart-felt obedience to God's law will lead us to promote obedience to that same law on the part of others.

True saints have indignation for those who break God's law (Ps. 119:53), and they are not ashamed to promote that law publicly (v. 13). If they would keep silent in the face of disobedience, then they would become culpable for the sins they witness. As Psalm 50:18 says, "When you saw a thief, then you consented with him" by keeping your peace. Ephesians 5:11 exhorts the believer to reprove the unfruitful works of darkness. Scripture, then, is quite clear in teaching that the requirement of full obedience to God's commands extends to the active promoting of obedience to those commands in others.

The Scripture-guided believer is in a position to offer genuine counsel and help to others and to his society; he knows the purity of God's law. He is "able to admonish" (Rom. 15:14), and so to be quiet in the face of transgressions would be a guilty silence. Christ directed His followers that they were to be "the light of the world" -which is impossible if our light is placed under a basket (Matt. 5:14-15). Consequently, true Christian obedience to the law of God will take us beyond a concern for ourselves to a concern for the obedience of those around us. Churches which preach (either intentionally or by default) "moral individualism" are failing to proclaim the whole counsel of God. The sins of our society cannot be ignored or swept under the church carpet.

Conclusion

This article does not by any means touch upon every facet of obedience to God's commandments, but it does point out two very important aspects of genuine obedience. We see how far-reaching God's demands are when we keep in mind that obedience must be from the heart, and yet that obedience must not be restricted to the heart.

Source: Bahnsen, G. L. (1985). By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics.