V1. n.10. Gospel and Law

The impassioned writings of Paul show that he believed salvation to be a knife-edge operation. Jesus’ community of believers throughout the present age needed guidance in order to avoid the pitfalls of false teaching. Nothing stirred the heart of Paul more than the threat of a return to the Law of Moses as a basis for being right with God. Paul grapples with the deadly foe of legalism on a number of occasions.

For those of us who have seen that Jesus was a Jew and his Christian teaching (Christianity must be founded on the teaching of Christ!) proceeds from the very Jewish matrix from which Jesus’ theology was developed, there is a special danger. It is this: The fact that the Gospel of Jesus about the Kingdom is Jewish in its origin, being based on the Covenant made with Abraham (Gal. 3:8), does not mean that New Testament Christians were bound by the Laws of Moses. Paul makes a rigid distinction between Law and Gospel. Yes, Jesus was a Jew who come to confirm the promises made to the fathers (Rom. 15:8). Yes, Jesus was the Messiah destined to be the recipient of the land and prosperity promises made to Abraham. But no, the teaching of Jesus, particularly as it is developed through Paul, the servant of Jesus, does not require a Christian to adhere to the Law of Moses as means of salvation.

The choice is a clear-cut one: “Did you receive the spirit by hearing the Gospel Message [of the Kingdom and the name of Jesus, Acts 8:12] or by keeping the Law?” “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Messiah’s Message [Gospel of the Kingdom]” (Gal. 3:2; Rom 10:17). For Paul salvation begins and is sustained by faith: faith of the same quality as Abraham’s, faith in the promises made to Abraham and faith in the Christ as the promised seed. But we dare not mix faith with Law. It is an “either or” situation. Black and white. Faith in Jesus means faith in his Gospel preaching: “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3). Christians believe as Abraham did in the promises of God in Christ. Believing in Jesus means believing the words and promises of Jesus.

Paul’s caution is this: You cannot begin with faith and mix that faith with Law. This would mean beginning in the spirit and continuing in the flesh (Gal. 3:3). Paul then recalls the history of God’s dealings with Israel. The Law was introduced as a parenthesis in God’s arrangements with the chosen people. It was added to promises made to Abraham, but on a provisional basis and only until the seed (the Messiah) should appear. “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under the tutor” (Gal. 3:25).

Paul’s argument reaches a fever-pitch of intensity: “Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?” In other words, let me show you from the Old Testament that law as a means of pleasing God, and faith in the Gospel of Jesus as a means of being right with God, are two mutually exclusive things. They cannot be mixed. It is a matter of two incompatible covenants: The first covenant was given at Sinai and the products of that covenant of law are slaves (Gal. 4:24). The present Jerusalem shows what happens to the offspring of that now obsolete system. She and her children are in bondage. They have not received Jesus as rabbi and Lord. They are not pleasing to God, even though they are striving to measure up to the requirements given by God through Moses (the classic case of zeal without knowledge, Rom. 10:2). This is a hard pill for some to swallow. Paul is radical certainly, but then New Testament Christianity is not just a repeat of Judaism with Christ at its center.

“The Jerusalem above,” Paul goes on, “is our mother” (Gal. 4:26). The Jerusalem above, of course, has nothing to do with the popular notion of “heaven for disembodied souls at the moment of death.” In true rabbinical style Paul is thinking of the Jerusalem of the future now prepared in heaven, the Jerusalem in which the faithful will reside when the Messiah comes back. And what are the conditions for successful participation in that coming restored Jerusalem, the inheritance of the earth to be granted to the Christian meek (Matt. 5:5; Rev. 5:10)?

The word is: Stay away from legalism. Stay away from promoting the Law as your badge of righteousness. The Sinai Law includes the whole concept embraced by physical circumcision. It includes the observance of the Saturday Sabbath or Holy Days as a supposed Christian distinction. It is Sinai that comes under criticism here, not just a part of the Sinai contract, but the whole principle of Law as a means to righteousness. “I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be put right with God by Law; you have fallen from grace. For we through the spirit are waiting for the hope of righteousness” (Gal. 5:3-5) — the fulfillment of the hope of the inheritance of the Kingdom when Jesus returns.

Movements such as the Armstrong Worldwide Church of God fell headlong into the trap against which Paul warns with such fervor. The book of Galatians was and is the bane of all who think that special understandings of the Hebrew calendar, particular dates for the keeping of Pentecost or Passover, expert insights into the pronunciation of the divine name or the insistence on Hebrew names carry any weight with God.

The apostles wrote in Greek and translated Hebrew names into Greek with complete freedom. Some, however, have wanted to go beyond what is required and have stamped their followers with the strangeness of Hebrew terminology, feast-keeping as a matter of obligation, even tithing (first, second and third tithe) as an absolute rule. It is all too easy to be enticed into a “righteousness” which exceeds that of Jesus. (The condemnation of the use of alcohol even in strict moderation is another fine example of self-made standards which exceed Jesus’ and actually condemn him — “Look at that liberal Jesus turning all that water into wine!”)

The one new man formed of Jew and Gentile is certainly an ideal based on the hope of the covenant made with the father of the Jews. Jesus was and is the Messiah, a Jewish king. But he is a universal Jewish King, destined to embrace Jews and Gentiles with his saving Gospel of the Kingdom. Why then would Christians want to go back under the Law, when the warnings of Paul are so uncompromising? There is a perennial tendency in fallen human nature for special recognition with God, special marks of sanctity — but what model of the faith are we presenting when we insist that Saturday is the correct and only day to meet? It may be pleasing to perpetuate a long-standing tradition of adherence to special days or foods, and we may argue that we are not doing these things for salvation, but then, why are we benefited one wit by our “Jewish” observances? What example are we setting the unconverted world? It is striking that John refers to the Holy Days of Israel as the “Feasts of the Jews.” Odd use of language, if his object was to make sure we all understand that those feasts are really the Feasts of the Christian Church.

Perhaps the desperation of the original Worldwide Church and some of its present offspring will make the point we are urging: How did they deal with Paul’s warnings not to “come under the Law”? Faced with the impossible, adherents of the Christianity-by-keeping-Laws school did not hesitate to re-translate the text. What Paul said really, it was maintained, was this: You should not go back under the penalty of the Law.

Bible study is not that difficult! Paul meant what he actually said: Don’t go back under the Law. If you do you will be cut off from Christ, “severed from Christ” (Gal. 5:4). “If you are circumcised you will be obligated to keep the whole Law” (Gal. 5:3). The implication is that a Christian is not obliged to keep the Law. “Faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6) sums up the whole duty of those who have received with intelligence the seed/Gospel of the Kingdom (Mark 4:11-12; Luke 8:11-12; Matt. 13:19).

Are Christians, then, without law? Obviously not. There is a law for Christians, but it is not the legal system given to Israel by Moses. Jesus openly modified the law of divorce and remarriage, restricting the permission for the dissolution of marriage to one exception (porneia = marital unfaithfulness). Paul gave a straightforward description of Christian law: he knew himself to be “within the law of Christ” (I Cor 9:21) This law of Christ he contrasted with the Law of Moses. He was not under that Law, though on occasion he would concede to the weaknesses of those whom he hoped to win. (Timothy was circumcised as a concession to Jewish feeling.)

The Law which is no longer binding on Christians concerns those prescriptions which divided the Jew from the Gentile, forming a partition wall.

A distinguished Dutch theologian and life-long student of Paul wrote:

“The law no longer has an unrestricted and undifferentiated validity for the church of Christ. In a certain sense the church can be qualified as ‘without the law.’ The law of God is not thereby abrogated. This continuing significance of the law can be qualified as ‘being bound by the law of Christ.’

“That the law in its particularistic significance as making a division between Jews and Gentiles is no longer in force constitutes the foundation of Paul’s apostolate amongst the Gentiles. He speaks of it as ‘the law of commandments contained in ordinances’ and as ‘the middle wall of partition’…[This law] has been pulled down and rendered inoperative (Eph. 2:14ff; cp. Gal. 2:14; 4:10; 5:2ff; 6:12; Col. 2:16ff; 3:11. Also Rom. 2:26ff; 3:30; ch. 4; I Cor. 7:18, 19). This holds above all for circumcision, but in general for ‘living like a Jew’ (Gal. 2:14), as a description of those regulations which had the effect of maintaining the line of demarcation between Israel and the Gentiles in a ritual-cultic and social respect…In Colossians 2:16ff, with regard to the keeping of dietary regulations, feasts, new moons or sabbath days, we find the typical expression: ‘which are shadows of the things to come, but the body is Christ’s’…All these prescriptions are but provisional and unreal, as a shadow exhibits only the dim contours of the body itself. Herein is the important viewpoint that with Christ’s advent the law, also as far as its content is concerned, has been brought under a new norm of judgment and that failure to appreciate this new situation is a denial of Christ (Gal. 5:2).

“There can thus be no doubt whatever that the category of the law has not been abrogated with Christ’s advent, but rather has been maintained and interpreted in its radical sense (‘fulfilled’; Matt. 5:17); on the other hand, that the church no longer has to do with the law in any other way than in Christ and thus is ‘within the law of Christ’” (Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, pp. 284, 285).