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Before we begin today's episode of Renewing youg Mind, we invite you to stay with us through the end of the program to hear how you can request today's featured teaching series from Ligonier Ministries.
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We're not just talking about pure lawlessness here. Again, there are many people who believe that the New Testament has its set of commandments, and that obviously as Christians we are obligated to obey the rule of Jesus Christ and the law that he gives to his people. But again, the question is, what about the Old Testament law?
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Hello and welcome to the Friday edition of Renewing youg Mind. Today we continue our study of the significance of the Old Testament law in the life of a Christian. Some Christians think that because we're under the New Covenant now that the law isn't relevant. But as we'll see today, the Law of God is indispensable. Let's join Dr. R.C. sproul
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recently I had the opportunity to teach a course to men who were studying for their Doctor of Ministry degree in the seminary, and in the opening day of that course, I sprang a pop quiz on them, which of course is the bane of every student and every classroom. I asked them the opening moments of the class to take out a piece of paper, a number from 1 to 10, and then I proceeded to give them one question. I said, please write down on this paper the Ten Commandments in order, and after sufficient time had elapsed, we had them check their papers. Mercifully, I didn't collect them and asked them simply to grade themselves and discovered that 20% of these pastors who were working on their doctor's degree in ministry were able to get all of the 10 Commandments in order. 80% were not able to do it, and about 50% of them were able to name all 10. But we're not able to do it in order. Now, you may want to take that same test right now, unless you're driving down the thruway somewhere, at least in your own mind. See if you can think through the Ten Commandments and give them in order, or at least be able to name them all. I've done this frequently at conferences with large groups and found out that less than 10% of the people that I've ask this too. In large groups, we're able to name all 10, not to mention in order, but just to name all 10 of the 10 commandments. That means that in my little universe, 90% of the people I've asked this question are not able to give the Ten Commandments in their entirety And I found that somewhat striking, indeed astonishing. And I've asked this question, what does that signify? Some may say, well, it just simply means that we're not very good at memorizing or that we've moved away from learning by way of rote memory, and we have a basic idea of what the law commands. But just because we can't name all 10 of them should be no major concern to us. But when we understand the central significance of the Ten Commandments to the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments to the New Testament Christian life, it is an amazing thing that even leaders within the Christian world cannot name these basic, foundational, elementary commandments of God. And I think that what it reflects, partly at least, is something of the climate in which the Church is functioning at the end of the 20th century. Historians and analysts have suggested that we are living in perhaps the most anti gnomian era in the history of the Church. Now, that's a fancy word, antinomian. I think we all know what anti means against Anomian comes from the Greek word nomos, which means law. And so antinomianism is that theory within theology that the law of God, at least the Old Testament law, is in no way binding or relevant to the Christian life. We read frequently in the New Testament passages such as the Apostle Paul writes that we are no longer under law, but we are under grace. And that is routinely taken to mean that we are no longer responsible in any way to conform to the law of the Old Testament, because the Old Testament law was only relevant to people in Israel in the theocratic system of that day. And all of that was done away with with the entrance of Christ and the beginning of the New Covenant and the establishment of the Christian church. John tells us that the law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And in that contrast, we see that we are no longer under the law, meaning the law has no binding significance or influence upon us. I was engaged in some theological debate with one branch of Christendom, and I mentioned that this particular school of thought was characteristically antinomian in its theology. And one of the leading scholars from that branch wrote me a lengthy letter in which he protested my charge of antinomianism against his group. And he said to me, we are not antinomian. We are because we believe that every Christian is responsible to obey the commandments of Christ that are found in the New Testament. We simply believe that the Old Testament law has no bearing or relevance to the New Testament Christian. And I responded to him by saying Historically, the term antinomian, as it has been used throughout church history, refers precisely to the statement that he has just made and that he just gave the classic definition of antinomianism by saying that the Old Testament law has no relevance to the New Testament Christian. So we're not just talking about pure lawlessness here. Again, there are many people who believe that the New Testament has its set of commandments and that obviously, as Christians, we are obligated to obey the rule of Jesus Christ and the law that he gives to his people. But again, the question is, what about the Old Testament law? Now, this is no easy problem to deal with for several reasons, the first of which is that we see in the Scripture itself that certain elements of the Old Testament law have clearly been abrogated in a sense. For example, the ceremonial law of the Old Testament. The ceremonial law refers to the rites and rituals that were performed in the worship experience of Israel. For example, the offering of sacrifices. The offering of sacrifices was not just simply a suggestion that God gave to Israel. It was by his command that they had to celebrate the Day of Atonement, and they had to make their burnt offerings and so on. And all of those ceremonies, the New Testament tells us, were shadows or types of the final sacrifice that was to be offered once for all in the death of Jesus. And in fact, we see the New Testament struggle with that group who were trying to influence the New Testament Church to continue with these ceremonies. And that group was called the Judaizers, who insisted that the Old Testament rituals be continued in perpetuity in the New Testament Church. And of course, that view was hotly contested and fiercely resisted by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians, as well as by the author of Hebrews. And the thinking was this, that after Christ has offered the perfect sacrifice once and for all, if we reverted back to the types and the shadows, we would in effect be denying the fullness of light that has come and the total fulfillment of all of this ceremony in the perfect sacrifice of Christ that is made once for all. And so, historically, the Christian church, in terms of her orthodoxy, has made it clear that we are not to continue these cultic ceremonial practices of rite and ritual from the Old Testament. Also, we find a segment of the law in the Old Testament called the dietary laws, which we remember God gave to Israel, and he prescribed what foods they were allowed to eat and what foods were considered unclean they were not allowed to eat. Pork, for example. And we know that in the New Testament, when the New Testament church expanded to include Gentiles who followed a different rule of diet. The question became a hot issue in Jerusalem. And the first ecumenical council of the Church was the Council of Jerusalem. That's recorded in Acts 15, where this question of diet was brought up. And Peter had had the vision whereby Christ had told him not to declare unclean things that he has now made clean. And the list of prohibited foods was greatly reduced by the Council of Jerusalem. We're not allowed to eat blood, and so on. But for the most part, the restrictions of diet that were established in the Old Testament were now lifted in the economy of the New Testament situation. So we see two ways in which it seems to be plain that the laws of the Old Testament are seen as no longer absolutely binding upon the lives of Christians. Now, again, historically, the Church made a distinction among these different types of law, the dietary laws, the ceremonial laws, and then looked at the third group, which was called the moral law of the Old Testament. Now, before we go any further with this, let me give a little caveat. Keep in mind that as helpful as this distinction may be, where you say there's the moral law and then there's the dietary, the ceremonial law, or the civil law of Israel, which is another question altogether. But we look at these distinctions. Keep in mind that for the Jew in the Old Testament period, these distinctions would have been basically meaningless because all of the law was moral to the Old Testament Jew. That is, it was a moral issue to Daniel, to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, whether or not they obeyed the dietary laws of God while they were in exile. It was a moral issue for Israel whether the people of Israel obeyed the ceremonial law. They saw these as moral mandates, of course, so that's a given. But we still understand why this distinction has been made. That the idea is that still there is a substantive stratum of law in the Old Testament that seems to continue into the life of the New Testament church. Now, one of the important texts that we find in the New Testament is found in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus makes this observation. Think not he said that I came to loose or to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. Now, in the same regard, the Apostle Paul, when he speaks in glorious terms of how we have been redeemed from the curse of the law and that we are no longer under the law, he's careful to warn us against jumping to the very conclusion that antinomians do, namely that we have disestablished the law and completely removed the law from any consideration to the life of The Christian, he says that the law is not a bad thing, that the law is holy and that the law is to be established. And the whole tenor of the apostolic writing of the New Testament. In James, for example, when he talks about the royal law of obedience in the teachings of Jesus himself, where many of the Old Testament laws are reiterated for the benefit of the Christian church, we see that the substantive content of the moral law of the Old Testament still has a vitally important place in the New Testament community. But again, the question is, what is that place? Now, this was a question during the Reformation period. And one of the most significant and important contributions to the Reformation that was made by John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion was his exposition of what he called the threefold use of the law. The threefold use of the law, in other words, what Calvin was saying is that there are three distinct ways in which the Old Testament law is. Is very useful to the New Testament Christian. Three distinct ways. And he differed at some fine points from Luther on this. But Luther also believed that the law had a significant role in the life of the Christian. And so what I want to do with the rest of the time I have today is give an exposition of these three uses of the law. Now, first, what I'll do is simply state them and then expand upon them individually. The three uses of the law that Calvin outlined were, first of all, the law's use or function as a mirror. The second is the law's function as restraint. And the third use, which is called simply in theology, the Tertius uses, that's the Latin for third use, the Tertius uses of the law, which Calvin saw as the most important, was what we regard as the revelatory use or function of the law. The revelatory function of the law. Well, let's look at them now in order, beginning with the first use of the law as a mirror. Well, what Calvin had in mind here was this, that we have to understand that the law of God is not something that exists abstractly, hanging suspended somewhere in the distant universe, east of the sun and west of the moon. It's not that God had to go to a heavenly mountain and climb the mountain and receive from some greater God tablets of stone by which God himself was called to be obedient, but rather the source for the Old Testament moral law is found in God himself. Now, that raises a question, that was a fierce question in the Middle Ages, and that is the question, is God himself outside of the law, or is God himself bound by some greater law? And that Controversy was called the ex lex controversy. I said ex lex, not ex lax. Ex lex means outside of or apart from law. Lex lex means law. And the idea was, is there some law above God to which God owes obedience and allegiance? That is, does God function sub lego. Is God under law himself? Well, the theologians of the Middle Ages said a thousand times, no, we have to scratch out sublego because if we said that God was under some law that was outside of himself, there would be something higher than God and that something higher than God would have to be God and God would no longer be God. So that there's no law outside of God that imposes obligation upon him. Well, if that's the case, wouldn't it follow then that God is lawless? He can do whatever he wants. If he is not sub lego, then he must be ex lex. He must be outside of all law and can act in an arbitrary, capricious or whimsical manner without any sense of order. Well, what the Middle Ages theologians did was said, we'll X that out too and say a pox on both of your houses. And that God is neither under law nor apart from law. But there is a third alternative, namely that God is a law unto himself. Now how does that differ from being excellent? What that means simply is that the behavior of God is never lawless. The actions of God are always in conformity to the law of God's own nature, his own character, which is inherently righteous, which is eternally holy. All of his actions come forth according to who he is. As we look at this question of law, it's important for us to remember that the fundamental problem in all of creation is the problem of evil. The fundamental problem in our lives is the problem of sin. And sin and evil, both are defined in light of of law. The fall of Adam and Eve was a transgression against the law of God. Absolute wickedness in the Scriptures is associated with lawlessness. The supreme manifestation of evil incarnate is the man of lawlessness. So when we deal with this question of law, particularly with respect to the law of God, we are not dealing with a peripheral matter, a tangential question, but something that comes to the core of our lives. As human beings, we're supposed to to live before the face of God. Coram Deo.
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That was R.C. sproul from his series God's Law and the Christian. And this is renewing your mind. Thank you for being with us. Today is the final opportunity for you to request Dr. Sproul's 15 part series. When you give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org, we'll be glad to send it your way. Your donation gives you lifetime digital access to all of the messages as well as the study guide in the free Ligonier app. Simply download the app and log in. So donate before midnight tonight@renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast Show Notes. And let me thank you for your generous donation. Well, you heard Dr. Sproul mention Coram Deo. That may be a new phrase to you. Here he is now to explain what it means.
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Literally, what it means is before the face of God. And what Luther was saying simply was this, that the Christian life means to live all of your life in the presence of God. You know, sometimes we behave and perform with our lives not for God, but for an audience that's here. And that our behavior when we're in secret may be different from how we behave when we're in the presence of people whose judgment or approval we seek. We think, for example, of the prodigal son when he pled with his father to receive his inheritance early, how he squandered that money. But before he squandered that inheritance, what did he do? He went away into a far country where he was anonymous, where no one knew him, where he didn't feel like he had to live under the scrutiny of somebody who might possibly disapprove of what he was doing. Now, Luther says we should live our whole lives not as people seeking the COVID of darkness, where we have a secret life, a private life that is hidden from the gaze of our friends or of authorities, but that our lives should be lived openly in the presence of God, before the face of God, practicing a kind of consciousness of God from moment to moment. Now we add to that a couple of other ideas. The big idea of Christianity is to live coram Deo, to live all of one's life in the presence of God under the authority of God and to the honor and to the glory of God.
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Amen. Well, on Monday we will be joined by Ligonier Teaching fellow Reverend Joel Kim to discuss Paul's letter to the Colossians. We hope you'll join us beginning Monday here on Renewing youg Mind.
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Sam.