I was sort of commissioned to write this piece back in 2004, but the book in which it was to appear fell on hard times and was not published. I later had a contract with another publisher to have it released on its own, but it fell victim to cutbacks. Knowing that I do not have present resources to publish in paperback as I did with Feed My Lambs, I decided on my first ebook-only (PDF) release.

You can get more information and learn how to purchase by going to my Pactum Reformanda Publishing web site.

Now, of course, God does lay requirements upon man, and God does grant forgiveness of sins apart from works. But the Bible’s use of the terms “gospel” and “law,” particularly in Paul’s writings, where Protestant discussion on these subjects tends to centre around, is very different from these definitions.

Paul always uses nomos (“law”) to refer to Torah, whether in the sense of “the Mosaic covenant” (by far his most frequent usage) or in the more general sense of “the five books of Moses.” In the second sense, his focus is on Torah as Scripture, as e.g. the Genesis narratives concerning Abraham are referred to as nomos in Galatians 4.24 and, given the immediately following context, likely in Romans 3.31 as well.

Similarly – and not surprisingly, given the content of the books we call Gospels – the term “gospel” is a very concrete term with definite historical connections (after all, it means “good news“). While free forgiveness of sins has always been God’s way of dealing with sinners, the term “gospel” is tied to God’s concrete and dateable historical actions related to what some scholars call “the Christ event,” with Christ’s death and resurrection at the center (see e.g. 1 Cor 15.1-4).

I have become increasingly convinced of the importance of abandoning the abstract usage of these terms, not because the general theological point is wrong; it is not. God saved us, out of His own sovereign mercy, not because of works of righteousness which we have done (Titus 3.5). But the problem with using the specific terms law and gospel in the way that we do means that inevitably those “synthetic” meanings get read into all the biblical texts where the terms appear. And that is not a good thing.

What follows is a lightly modified version of a private post I made on this subject. I have tried to clean up the style slightly, as well as eliminate points that were really germane only to a narrower discussion. To aid clarity, I have also added a couple of brief statements that distill thoughts I had made in the more extended discussion.  I trust making this public will prove somewhat helpful in terms of clarifying the importance of the fight for biblical language.

Nobody in my sphere denies that one’s acceptance with God is not dependent upon anything they do, but rather God’s love in Christ. Not only do we not deny it, I doubt that anyone of us are the slightest bit unclear on it either.

That is not at all the point of my tirades regarding the terminology of law and gospel. My point is that by using the terms “law” and “gospel” to give this assurance (and ubiquitously, as people prone to use the terms generally do), the possibility of reading the texts correctly is effectively destroyed. And that does far more harm than anyone can imagine.

Now, taking Galatians as a sort of example. If we go to what Paul is actually talking about, where will we derive application? Is it really such a big deal that we skip the circumcision issue and jump right to “the heart of the matter”?

It’s all well and good to say that we don’t face the circumcision issue in our churches. But just because we need to make an extra step in application doesn’t mean that understanding the text properly to begin with is unimportant. To the contrary, the applications that would be much closer to the heart of the issue are completely lost because certain preachers think that all those Pauline texts are harangues about law and gospel, defined in their traditional Protestant terms.

There are all sorts of issues much closer to the surface application than dealing with some supposed merit theology that dwells in every man’s Pelagian heart. Frankly, paedocommunion and “close communion” are a lot more relevant to Galatians than is merit theology. Does paedocommunion have to do with assurance? Absolutely, but it’s a lot more practical and on the ground than the gospel-law treatment ever makes possible.

The whole matter of Jew and Gentile, which Paul broadens out explicitly into barbarian, Scythian etc – these are the immediate implications of the gospel, and if the churches had been preaching what Paul actually says rather than hammering on a pet doctrine, racism could never have taken hold anywhere.

Then too the use of “gospel” and “law” with a different, extrabiblical meaning and then reading that meaning into Scripture not only buries the native and should-be obvious applications. People express concern about the fine distinctions which systematic theology makes. Some of those distinctions are valid. Fine. But I worry about the distinctions that Scripture itself makes, distinctions which become not merely unaccented but unallowable because systematic theology’s forcible takeover of the key terms cannot allow the texts like James to say what they actually do say. They do not allow the texts like Galatians 5.4 to say what they actually do say. They do not allow the texts like Galatians 6.7-9 to say what they actually do say. Ad infinitum.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are all sorts of implications that hardly anyone has even begun to think about. How does it affect the church that while the NT is all about Israel, it wouldn’t make a difference to most preaching if Jesus were born in Quebec?

I preach free grace clearly and quite consistently as well. I have no problem with that. But I will not bow to this confusion that has been wrought by distorting the biblical terminology. It has done more damage than we can possibly know.

Frankly, I increasingly think the ubiquitous law-gospel thing is a crutch. I wonder if where it’s preached most strongly is in fact where it least needs to be preached – where folks are much more prone to feel secure when they ought not, because they believe “the right thing” about justification.

In his new book Deep Exegesis, Peter Leithart warns about treating the actual words of Scripture as “husk” which we can safely discard as long as we have what’s really important, the “meaning.” (And all too often, “meaning” is boiled down even further, so that it is not even merely a summary of the text, but a systematic statement of the supposed “doctrine” we are to take from the text.)

If we actually understand the text, we can revisit in every generation and every situation and come back with a fitting application. But if we boil all the meat off and say it’s all about free grace in the abstract, we will lose any particular witness (or at least, the most biblically-relevant) on the ground to what the gospel is about.

The battles in the early church over the law were not about theological theorems. Every last one of them were battles over practical issues of
fellowship and exclusion, and if we learned those lessons, church life would be much different than it is in conservative Reformed-dom. The exclusivism of conservative Reformed and Lutheran churches bears eloquent witness to the fact that their law-gospel construct is a monumental hindrance to actually living by the letters that Paul really wrote.

The essay includes treatment of Paul’s comments about “days and months and seasons and years” in Gal 4.10, as well as discussion of “the Lord of the Sabbath” passage (Mk 2.23-28) and a variety of related material.

This has really been a paper that I probably should have worked on long ago, given how often the subject comes up and I get involved in protracted discussions, but anyway… judging from the sorts of issues that have come up in conversations/debates I’ve been involved in, I think I’ve covered the major bases necessary. See what you think….

Canon Press informed me today that they would like to publish my little book. The full title is These Are Two Covenants: Reconsidering Paul on the Mosaic Law. It was originally intended as a chapter (an admittedly long one) in an Athanasius Press book which ultimately did not get published. I prepared it in 2004, although I did some minor touchups last year when I decided I needed to release it as a standalone book. Thus most of the work done on this is a few years old, and it’s relatively short (probably somewhere around 100 pages), but those who helped me vet the manuscript seemed to indicate that they found it a very helpful treatment of Paul’s view of the law. So although some time in the far distant future, I’d like to do a more comprehensive treatment of the subject, I’m very much looking forward to seeing this essay finally come to print.

I recall that when I first started writing sermons, I was given to lengthiness. I suppose I saw those sermons as short – my Dad used to preach anywhere from an hour (on the very short end) to 3-4 hours (!).

When I was pastoring in Montana, I was in a local church context where the people really weren’t accustomed to long sermons, and I suppose I was kind of already going in the direction of shorter ones, anyway. I suspect my average sermon clocked in somewhere around 22-25 minutes by the time I left.

I find I’m going back up a bit. I hope that doesn’t mean that I’m just becoming more wordy and difficult; the truth is that while I still retain a very high view of preaching, I now recognize that it does not carry the full weight of the liturgy. God speaks to His people throughout the service, and not just in the sermon.

Anyway, I’ve just completed my sermon draft for tomorrow. It’s up in the 3300 word range; most of my Montana sermon drafts were around 2300-2600. But I don’t feel bad…. I guess I feel safe, since I think my sermons are usually shorter than my fellow preachers in the rotation. :p

But the real issue is doing justice to the text. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised by Galatians 3.6-9, since this is a chapter I’ve devoted extensive study to. I honestly didn’t really think it would be easy to come up with enough material for a sermon, but once again, I’ve not only come up with a rather long sermon, I haven’t managed to even go over every phrase directly.

So what’s so special about this passage?

At first, it looks fairly straightforward: Paul is telling the Galatians that justification is by faith; Abraham was justified by faith, as borne witness by Gen 15.6.

But a closer look uncovers rather a lot more. For starters, consider a couple of questions:

1. The immediate link in the text is between the Galatians’ experience of the Spirit and the counting of Abraham as righteous through faith. (This has led some people to pretty much equate the gift of the Spirit with justification.) What’s the nature of the link?

2. Genesis 15.6 occurs, not at the outset of Abraham’s walk with Yahweh, but several years in. But wait: Isn’t justification something that happens once, at the beginning?

It’s in answering these questions that a lot about Paul’s argument makes a lot more sense. In terms of how Gal 3.6-9 is often read, Paul could have cited anyone else from the list of “heroes of faith” in Heb 11; he just happened to settle on Abraham.

But the text itself leads us to think otherwise: the promise to Abraham was that all the nations (= Gentiles) would be blessed in him. The blessing envisioned therefore requires a relationship between Abraham and the Gentiles – a relationship involving not merely a pattern of example and imitation, but one of father and sons, of head and seed. (The faith articulated in Gen 15.6 is in response to God’s promise that He would make Abraham’s seed like the stars in number; the fact that God tells Abraham that nations will be blessed in him suggests that the multiplication of Israel does not exhaust this particular promise. The nations too must somehow become Abraham’s seed.)

Already in Gal 3.6-9, Paul is developing his argument regarding how Gentiles (who are not under Torah) have become sons of Abraham, and therefore are fulfilling the promises God made to him.

The Holy Spirit comes into play in this on at least a couple of levels. At the broadest level, the NT conceives of the Spirit as the sign of God’s acceptance, which is why e.g. Peter reasons from the outpouring of the Spirit upon the Gentiles that he is to baptize them.

But there is something more specific in the Galatians context. In 3.13-14, Paul ties “the blessing of Abraham” to the reception of “the promised Spirit,” coming as the fruit of the death of Christ – and specifically, that death as the bearing of the curse against apostasy from Torah. (This, I take it, is the point of 3.10: those under Torah were under – that is, subject to – a curse: they were bound by a curse-oath to uphold the law.)

Why does the curse against apostasy from Torah come into play in this context?

Remember that the promise was that Gentiles would be blessed in Abraham. Remember too that Israel was not simply a genetic or biological entity: those who were circumcised and took up Israel’s law thereby became Israelites – i.e. in reality they were no longer Gentiles at all. Which means that in order for the promise to be fulfilled, the Gentiles had to become incorporated into Abraham apart from circumcision and the law.

And that is the genius of Paul’s argument: in order to get the Gentiles into the seed as numerous as the stars (true to the intent of the original promise), he first “narrows” that seed, as it were, into Christ (3.16). What does this accomplish? Well, among other things, it means that the curse against apostasy, borne by Christ (3.13), has removed Abraham out from under Torah and thereby made it possible for Gentiles to be included in him without becoming circumcised and following Torah.

And that inclusion, of course, comes about in fact in 3.26-29, where those baptized into Christ (and remember, He is the promised Seed, the recipient of the promise, 3.16) thereby put Him on and become that One Man that He is (3.27-28). And since this is the case, they thereby become Abraham’s Seed and heirs according to the promise (3.29).

The other thing to observe is that the “problem” regarding the chronology of Genesis is one of our own making, imposed upon the text by a wrong assumption – namely, that justification (counting as righteous) is a one-time, punctiliar event. That assumption has led to all sorts of weird interpretations (e.g. that Gen 15.6 is a parenthetical remark, referring in fact to Abraham’s initial faith when first called) – but it is in truth by recognizing that the faith and the reckoning righteous in Gen 15.6 belong precisely in that context, that we also get the proper parallel to the Galatian situation.

Paul has just said that the Galatians began “in the Spirit,” but are now seeking to be completed in/by the flesh (3.3; cf 5.7, where he says that they were running well). He doesn’t need to hammer home that some one-time, initial justification was by faith; his problem is that they are falling back from the faith with which they began.

And that is precisely where Abraham comes in. Years after he was first called out of darkness and justified, Abraham was still believing God’s promises, and that faith was being reckoned to him as righteousness. That is the nature of pistis, and we can see how the same term can mean “faith” or “faithfulness” – not because faith and good works are somehow conflated, but because in the divine economy of things, faithfulness is simply persisting faith.

Genesis, of course, isn’t teaching progressive justification, as if one is 10% justified at the beginning, and then slowly works up to 100% justification. Nor is it teaching that Abraham was justified, lost that, and then needed to be justified again. Abraham was only called out of Ur once, and he became a friend of God – a just one, a covenant partner. But God continued to count him righteous by way of faith; that is the indisputable record of Gen 15.6.

And it is in view of that, that we can say that the notion that justifying faith is a nanosecond act once in the past, is utterly pernicious. It’s a notion that cuts the biblical fabric apart. Saving faith is persisting faith. And ironically, by transforming saving faith into a nanosecond act, we are encouraged to take our eyes from the Word of promise and put them on our action or experience in the past. And thus we end up with faith in faith, rather than faith in the faithful Word of the faithful God.

I’m working on finalizing tomorrow’s sermon on Gal 2.15-16. One of the things that I am arguing is that Paul is drawing upon an Isaianic context within which justification is seen as an eschatological event. This is based upon three Isaianic pillars: justification is in Yahweh (Is 45.25); the Servant will be justified (Is 50.8); and the Servant in turn will justify many (Is 53.11). Thus there is a justification that arises with the advent of the Servant.

Today, it occurs to me further that the biblical relationship between covenant and righteousness confirms this.

N. T. Wright has correctly identified Romans 4.11 as a gloss on Genesis 17.11. Whereas Genesis says that circumcision is a sign of the covenant, Paul says that God gave Abraham the sign of circumcision, epexegetically articulated as “a seal of the righteousness of the faith” Abraham had while still uncircumcised. Which all indicates that the justification-righteousness word complex – despite their disparity in English, these words are cognate in both Hebrew and Greek – is essentially covenantal in nature. (This, of course, is not to deny in any sense that justification is a forensic – legal, courtroom – term; it is only to clarify that the legal cast derives from the covenant. Hence the frequent observation by the commentators that the prophetic writings largely consist of “covenant lawsuits” by Yahweh over against His people, with the prophets acting in His stead somewhat along the lines of prosecuting attorneys.)

Now, the point with regard to the eschatological nature of justification is quite simple, and it assists us in seeing how it can be that there was both justification under the old covenant ; and yet, that the old covenant does not provide the justification which interests Paul. That Pauline justification draws upon the eschatology anticipated by the prophets, an eschatology which was inescapably concerned with the matter of justification.

On the one hand, the Servant in His individual manifestation (I qualify thus, because Isaiah shifts back and forth between individual and corporate senses) is only anticipated under the old covenant; thus the justification involving Him does not arrive until He arrives.

But then, also, the prophets identify the anticipated day as a new covenant (Jer 31.31-34). And if, as is suggested above, justification is covenantal, that would imply, quite by the nature of the case, that a new covenant would entail a new justification. (Indeed, Jer 31.34 itself speaks of a future forgiveness of sins in connection with the new covenant, even though there was clearly an individual forgiveness of sins already available at the time.)

When Paul says, therefore, that justification does not come through works of Torah (Gal 2.16), he is not merely saying that one cannot earn one’s own salvation by good works. That’s true enough; but it simply wasn’t an issue in context. Peter was neither thinking such nor implying such by his actions when he withdrew from table fellowship with the Gentiles, which is the issue in context (Gal 2.12).

Withdrawing from table fellowship is not a matter of merit legalism; it is a covenantal matter. Otherwise, Paul himself would be a merit legalist when he tells the Corinthians not to have table fellowship with those who are called brothers but are impenitent fornicators, covetous, idolaters, revilers, drunkards, or extortioners (1 Cor 5.11). The clear implication of that instruction is that those who practice such things are not covenantally faithful: they are unrighteous.

Thus, Peter’s fault is in no way oriented toward merit legalism; nor is it that he withdraws from table fellowship generally. Such withdrawal was mandated by Paul himself. The issue here is the covenantal basis of the withdrawal.

When Peter withdraws from table fellowship with believing Gentiles, he is identifying them as covenantally unrighteous. But of course, that judgment is not a valid judgment in terms of the new covenant, which has brought about a new justification apart from Torah; and in fact, Peter’s action places him – rather than the Gentiles whom he implicitly, even if unintentionally, judges – as condemned (Gal 2.11; the versions that render this “he was to be blamed” or “he was self-condemned” weaken the force of the original, which simply says that he was condemned). Christ has vindicated a community of Jew and Gentile, and by cutting himself off from that vindicated community, Peter was, in effect, cutting himself off from new covenant vindication itself. (My observation here is not intended to speak to Peter’s eternal standing – “If he died that day, he would have gone to hell!” I am simply pointing out the text’s own connections between condemnation in 2.12 and justification in 2.16, in terms of the argumentative context and biblical background.)

In sum, the expectation of what would happen to the Isaianic Servant (justification, which He in turn would share with others), as well as the expectation of a new covenant (and thus, a new justification), help us find our way in understanding the Pauline doctrine of justification. This doctrine does not countenance merit legalism, but neither is it raised within the context of that particular discussion. Rather, Paul is concerned to defend the definitive act which God has accomplished in vindicating His Servant, Jesus Christ, the Just One, and thus effecting an eschatological vindication for those in Him – a vindication of Jew and Gentile, and thus a vindication apart from Torah, which separated the two as a dividing wall.