I’m currently reading Greg Bahsen’s Theonomy in Christian Ethics, an extensive study about God’s law (theos-nomos) as it applies to ethics, the study of the principles of right and wrong conduct. We Evangelicals tend to have a love/hate relationship to God’s law. On the one hand it’s God’s, so we know it is a reflection of his character and our obedience is required. On the other, it condemns us because keeping it to the degree we must is impossible for sinful human beings. When Jesus says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), I reply, good luck! Calvin calls this use of the law a mirror because when we look into it, it’s not pretty. It condemns us specifically so we can realize our helplessness before our Holy Creator God, and be driven to Christ and his shed blood for us, he who fulfilled the law in our place.
Unfortunately, for most Christians because of the history of revivalistic fundamentalist Christianity, this is about as far as it goes. Our tendency is to be antinomian, against law, because we are saved by grace and not by works of the law, as Paul says for example in Galatians 2:16. We see God’s law as primarily if not solely a hostile force. If we’re honest, though, we’re not quite sure what to think about God’s law, thus the ambivalence. Bahnsen shows this isn’t just lay people who think God’s law isn’t relevant to Christian ethics. He quotes numerous scholars from various Christian traditions, including his and my Reformed tradition, who all discount God’s law to one degree or another.
My first encounter to the relevance of God’s law to the Christian life came after I’d been a Christian for over five years. It came in the form of my introduction to Reformed theology and the soteriology of John Calvin. I learned to see the purpose of God’s law as relevant to the Christian life, not as something only to drive me to the cross. I’m sure I studied it in seminary and developed some convictions at the time, but that was a long time ago and the study of God’s law never became a priority after that. Then in August 2022 when I embraced postmillennial eschatology, I found people in that camp have no ambivalence toward God’s law whatsoever. I wrote about theonomy and God’s law in my latest book, but I’m really just beginning this journey of developing my own convictions, specifically how God’s law relates to my sanctification and applies to the governing of nations.
The Fulfillment of the Law
Unfortunately, as Bahnsen points out, Christians have effectively become secularists when it comes to law in society. The ethics of Christianity, of what is right and wrong, is only applied to individual Christians, and even there, God’s law is not embraced as relevant to the Christian’s sanctification. Christians have no problem citing the Sermon on the Mount as foundational to Christian ethics, but when it comes to the L word we get cold feet. For some reason we ignore or explain away this passage about Jesus not abolishing the Law right in the middle of that sermon:
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
I’m not sure how you get from this to God’s law being only a mirror for the Christian to drive him to Christ, but that’s been the dominant view in Evangelicalism since the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century.
First let’s ask what it means when Jesus says he’s come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Bahnsen goes into great detail, quoting numerous scholars and perspectives. Giving away his own, he titles this chapter, “The Abiding Validity of the Law in Exhaustive Detail.” No ambivalence there! After an extensive survey of various scholars and lexical analysis of the text, he comes to this conclusion:
It is hard to imagine how Jesus could have more intensely affirmed that every bit of the law remains binding in the gospel age.
He also quotes Charles Spurgeon commenting on v. 17 which for most Christians lends significant credibility:
The law of God he established and confirmed. . . . our king has not come to abrogate the law but to confirm and reassert it.
What Jesus is saying about abolish and fulfill is related directly to something the Pharisees, the most respected Jewish religious professionals of the day, did to in some way abolish or abrogate it, to somehow make it null and void. We know from a later rebuke of Jesus that they “strain out a gnat and swallow a camel” (Matt. 23:24). The Greek word refers to straining water through a cloth or sieve to remove impurities, which relates back to an obscure part of the law they interpreted as meaning they should purify their water. They were so focused on the details of the law, the smallest minutia that in fact they went beyond the words and intent of the law, and at the same time ignored immense sins (swallowing camels) like pride, greed, and arrogance.
There is a lot of debate, and always will be, as to what exactly all this means. We know from the Apostle Paul that righteousness cannot be obtained by obedience to the law. We also know as Protestant Evangelical Christians, if that is what we are, that Christ lived the perfect obedience to the law that is required by God’s holiness, and his righteousness has been legally granted to us in him, it is forensic. The law could never do this, thus it condemns us, but the law itself is still valid for us, as Jesus says, not one jot or one tittle (KJV v. 18) shall pass away until everything is accomplished or fulfilled. Most agree this means at the end of the age, the consummation of all things in the second coming of Christ. It is necessary then to conclude what Bhansen does, though many won’t, that the law has an abiding validity in exhaustive detail. Of course we all know, pun intended, the devil is in the details.
Misunderstanding God’s Law as Totalitarian
What is it about God’s law that creates such ambivalence in modern Christians, both as relates to us personally as Christians, and its application in society? I recently realized the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of law itself. We tend to think of law as totalitarian, but experience law as liberty. The two concepts, totalitarianism and liberty, are diametrically opposed to one another. The former seeks to control everything, all thought and behavior, while the latter gives wide latitude for people to determine their own thoughts and behavior.
I use the contrast of the French and American Revolutions here frequently to explain the only two choices of existence in a fallen world, totalitarianism and liberty, the former inspired by an anti-Christian secularism, and the latter by a widely accepted Protestant Christianity. Robespierre and his buddies on the left introduced what came to be called the Reign of Terror. Anyone not thinking and acting a certain way was condemned to death by the infamous Madam de Guillotine. In American, by contrast, the people were free to think and act within the confines of the law with a limited government, and we call that liberty.
The modern world has given us numerous revolutions inspired by the French, each one bloodier than the next. We learn from the 20th century varieties the true nature of totalitarianism which by contrast enables us to better understand liberty and its relation to law. A simple definition of totalitarianism is total and comprehensive control of all aspects of life, including all thought and action of the people. This is of course impossible, which is why totalitarian regimes never last. In addition to raw history, there are numerous fictional accounts that give us a window into the totalitarian mind, the presumption that total control is possible. One is the classic novel by George Orwell, 1984. The protagonist, Winston Smith, resists the ubiquitous thought control throughout the story, lying when it is required to escape punishment, but it doesn’t work. The state in the form of Big Brother demands total, sincere fealty, and in the end brain washing accomplishes this in Winston when he genuinely falls in love with Big Brother. He now believes two and two equals five. The total in totalitarianism is complete. The other is much less well known, a 1983 movie called The Lives of Others about life in Soviet East Berlin and their secret police, the Stasi. This is an excellent depiction of the inevitable failure of trying total control human beings, who because they are made in God’s image cannot be totally controlled.
It is important to explore the failed attempts at implementing totalitarianism in various countries to contrast it with liberty, but more importantly, to show us what law is not, and specifically God’s law. I am convinced that the ambivalence or hostility to God’s law is in the misunderstanding of it as fundamentally totalitarian, as if the purpose of the law is to control every aspect of people’s lives. In fact, just the opposite is true. James in chapter 1 of his epistle is imploring Christians to be not just hearers but doers of the word, and then he says this:
25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
The word freedom can be translated as liberty, and means freedom from slavery. James uses the same phrase in chapter 2, “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty,” the context being the Ten Commandments. We see this as well in the Old Testament in Isaiah 61:1, something Jesus proclaims as he announces his ministry in his hometown of Nazareth (Luke 4)
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
This liberty can be found only within the confines of obedience to God’s law, which can only truly be had by those freed from their bondage to sin by the gospel. God’s law is not a fence to keep us in, but a guardrail to keep us safe so we don’t careen down the cliff and crash into a ball of flames on the rocks of life.
The Law’s Abiding Validity for the Christian and Societal Life
First and briefly, it seems the law’s validity for our Christian lives and sanctification should be obvious. I will quote Paul from 2 Tim. 3 to make the point:
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The Scripture Paul refers to is the Old Testament, the only Bible they had. All includes God’s law, every jot and tittle, lived as best we can in love, which as Jesus told is the fulfillment of the law. Read Psalm 119 if you need a reminder of the importance of God’s law for God’s people.
The abiding validity of God’s law for society is more complicated. There is a reason God starts the revelation of his law with the Ten Commandments. Those are the broad principles under which people should live to have true liberty and human flourishing, both individually and in community (i.e., nations). God didn’t start with details, with the minutia. Those developed over time because of the messiness of life lived in a fallen world among fallen people in fallen bodies. Take the ninth commandment to not lie or bear false witness against your neighbor. The command to not lie is not absolute. Rahab the prostitute lied to protect the Hebrew spies in Jericho, and not only was this prostitute and her family spared from the city’s destruction, but she is in the hall of fame of faith in Hebrews 11. Leave it to God to put a prostitute in the hall of fame of faith! Or take Corrie Ten Boom during WWII in the Netherlands when the Nazis took over. She was part of a group hiding Jews from the Nazis, and when they were asked if they were hiding Jews, of course they said no, they lied, and saved lives.
Over time people being the sinners they are, brought specific issues before Moses so he could judge conflicts and dispense justice. It soon became too much for him. When his father-in-law Jethro saw this, he told Moses to appoint judges among the people so he wouldn’t have to do it all himself. Out of this arose something we call case law which are laws based on precedents from previous cases because of the many varieties, for example, of bearing false witness. In the Christian West Alfred the Great in the 9th century in what is now England established his law based on the Ten Commandments, out of which eventually flowed the liberty developed in England and fulfilled in America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The primary principle is one of government of limited means, and laws with broad boundaries in which people can live freely without any coercion of the government.
How we decide what the validity of the law is in exhaustive detail, in Bahnsen’s words, is the challenge. The important thing to remember is that exhaustive detail is not totalitarian. If we do not break the law we are free to do whatever we want within the confines of the law. And the fewer the laws the healthier a society. A representative republic like America should not need a plethora of laws to cover a self-governing people. America as currently constituted is not a healthy society as indicated by its multitudinous laws.
Also, thinking there are simplistic answers like there is a one-to-one correlation between Israel’s laws and America, for instance, is a category error. America isn’t Israel, and every nation is unique in how it is arranged. Finally, we must remember there is no neutrality, thus the issue isn’t theocracy or theonomy; every nation is ruled by a god or a worldview and set of ultimate values. The question is which God. The question in the West is will it be the god of secularism and tyranny, or the God of the Bible and liberty. As Paul says in Romans 13 discussing the Ten Commandments, “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” The goal of a biblically based theocracy isn’t control, but loving our neighbors so our society can truly flourish. Only God’s law can do that.
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