“Another reason that godly, Bible-believing Christians can disagree over the five-points of Calvinism is a lack of clear thinking. Indeed, Blomberg will be furnishing some examples.”

Gotta love a flamethrower sometimes, don’tcha?

Very good insight here (with broad implications):

“We need to draw a firm distinction between what the Bible teaches and the impression that makes on some readers. Does the Bible teach a paradoxical relation between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility? Is the (alleged) paradoxicality of that relation part of the Biblical teaching itself? Does Scripture assert that this relationship is paradoxical? Or does it simply strike some readers as paradoxical? The fact that some readers can’t harmonize the two doesn’t mean that Scripture itself is affirming a paradox. This is not a Scriptural claim.”

The discussion with Blomberg in the combox was interesting as well…

Steve

However, if you consider that a Law’s purpose is not just an instruction to follow, but a cause of behavior, we get past many of the difficulties in understanding the indwelling person of Christ as our new law.

Do his words in the scriptures teach us about righteous behavior? Absolutely, but not only the NT words. The OT words teach us as much or more about right and wrong, especially when understood through the lens of the NT.

However, as the scripture tells us, letters don’t achieve righteousness in us. They don’t transform us. They don’t cause our righteous behavior. They can teach us about it and what it looks like in Him and in ourselves, but they don’t produce it in Him or in us.

So what then does produce it? (rather WHO)
In Christ?
In His saints?

Many speculate about the spirit writing the text of the law (etching the letters or impressing their meaning) on our hearts, but the text tells us it is the SPIRIT who is placed within us. It is the SPIRIT who is written.
As Letters, LAW fails to achieve the purpose.
As indwelling Spirit, Law succeeds abundantly. Christ IN us *causes* us by discipline and heart circumcision to behave righteously. It should be of no surprise that he does so consistently with everything the word teaches about righteousness – both NT and Old through the lens of the new.

As modern Christians we have lost site of the promise we were given. We rarely reflect on the reality that what God promised was our PERFECTION in Christ. We readily give lip service to the fact that we are counted righteous because of Him, but we overlook the fact that it says we will BECOME righteous by way of union with Him. He will cause us to become righteous with the exact same righteousness found in Christ. We will be transformed to be exactly like Him. Perfect as the Heavenly Father is PERFECT.
A Law of words (old or new) can never even begin to do that to us and anyone who thinks it can happen by following words is a liar or self-deceived.
Only the indwelling Christ can do this to us.

The other aspect of this is that the Spirit is called an ‘arrabo’ – a ‘down-payment’ or ‘partial payment’.
Unfortunately some translations use ‘pledge’ or ‘guarantee’ in Eph 1:14, 2 Cor 1:22 and 2Cor 5:5, but the meaning is ‘partial payment.’
This is different from signs or seals in the old covenants. Those were temporal symbols of a promise, but they were not a partial payment of it. The rainbow symbolized preservation of life, but it was not a portion of the kind of eternal life it represented. Neither was circumcision a portion of the actual of cutting out of stone hearts that it symbolized.
Those were pledges. Signs. Temporal tokens symbolizing a future reality. Somewhat like a Vegas chip that represents prize money, but itself is not even part of the money. It is to be exchanged for the real thing. It is a pledge or guarantee, but it can’t be enjoyed unless it is exchanged for real money.

The indwelling Holy Spirit, however, is not a symbolic token. He is no mere pledge to be exchanged. He is a partial payment of the full union with Christ to come. He is a down-payment that will not be exchanged for a better reality. He will preserve us, transform us, discipline us, and himself increase until the reality of oneness with Christ is fully consumated on that day – when we too are glorified, fully made perfect in oneness with Him. The Spirit written in us is a portion of the real prize much like a down-payment is a portion of what you pay for a car. It’s not payment in full, but it is the beginning of the real payment.

The Spirit of Christ indwelling us is a law that has begun achieving its purpose. A down-payment of consumate union. A down-payment of full oneness. A down-payment of full transformation. A down-payment of full heart replacement. A down-payment of our full perfection. “I will put MY SPIRIT within you and CAUSE you to obey my righteous principles.” eg. to be perfect as I am perfect.

He is a down-payment of the living law, the Christ, who causes righteousness to become reality IN us by union with us.

He is a Law that is not obeyed in order to become righteous; He is a Law who by making us actually righteous causes us to obey naturally.
That is the hope we so often fail to look forward to and hope in. To be made fully righteous by His indwelling us that we become perfect as he is perfect.

This is exactly what was promised in Ezek 36, and exactly what Paul refers to as “living by the Spirit rather than the Law of letters.”
We are transformed by him and righteousness is being animated in us by Him rather than by words, even as those words inform us about what’s happening, why, and what good comes of it.

Whereas the letter Torah merely proved to us that we needed transforming from outside of ourselves, the living Torah is transforming us by way of indwelling union – and he’s already started with a real living down-payment.

So, long post, but if you consider that Law is supposed to produce righteousness, you can see how it must become a living nature within us, not just a better set of commands. To make us righteous the Law must become one with us as Adam and his unrighteousness is already one with our flesh. Adam’s flesh in us produces our unrighteousness. We are one with him and share/possess his corruption as our own. Christ will produce total righteousness in us which we will share/possess fully at consummation.
In the mean time, we have a down-payment of Him which we call the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, who begins the transformation and remains consistent with the written word.

The Spirit of Christ has begun causing righteousness in us, but only fully consumated oneness will yield in us His perfect righteous nature. So while we wait, the imperatives train us how to run with patient endurance even through His discipline, and teach us what we are becoming.

They do not function as Law. They do not produce His righteousness in us.

Steve

John Piper hits on this in this quote from a 2008 sermon on 1 John 4:

But don’t miss the crucial place of the new birth in relation to the manifestation of God’s love as well as the nature of God’s love. When John says in verse 11, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” When John writes that, how are we to understand this word ought? If you forgot everything in the preceding five verses, you might be able to say: “Well, the point of the incarnation is imitation. God loved us. We look at how he did it and we do it too. We’re obliged to.”

But John has not forgotten what he wrote verse 7-8. “Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” So when he says, “We ought to love each other,” he means ought the way fish ought to swim in water and birds ought to fly in the air and living creatures ought to breathe and peaches ought to be sweet and lemons ought to be sour and hyenas ought to laugh. And born again people ought to love. It’s who we are. This is not mere imitation. For the children of God, imitation becomes realization. We are realizing who we are when we love. God’s seed is in us. God’s Spirit is in us. God’s nature is in us. God’s love is being perfected in us.

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/2008/2686_The_New_Birth_Produces_Love/

On question 1: The commands and exhortations of Christ are instruction in what who we are to be in Him, that is instruction in how that new birth manifests itself. They again are indeed imperatives, but not in themselves laws. (The only time ordinances, statutes, and laws are spoken of in the affirmative are in Luke speaking of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Paul is adamantly against laws of letters and instead exhorts in law of the Spirit.)

The written word of God is a means of grace in our sanctification and instruction in who we are in Him. There’s more to it than Christus exemplar. It’s not, “be like Him,” but “be who He has made you to be.”

On question 2: Christ as Law Giver fulfilled the Law (cf. Mt. 5:17). His spoken words and the epistles, particularly Pauline and Johannine, flesh out the imperatives. But the imperatives are mostly in the form of exhortation. When Christ sums up following the Law as loving God and loving neighbor, He moves the Law from being that of following statutes to one of being one who loves and thus fulfills the law. Similarly, the Beatitudes and the whole Sermon on the Mount are not merely an exposition on the Ten Words, but an indicative of who we are in Christ — the Greek is definitely indicative in the “Blessed are”.

So … you’ve quite rightly hit upon an area that needs further writing and which has much currently in progress.

So, I have two questions:

1.) Do you see any ways that this is significantly different from the Christus exemplar ethical model?

2.) Aren’t there some serious practical difficulties associated with the model presented? Such as, how do we discern appropriate marital principles if Christ, as Law Giver and Law, was never married? Don’t we have to rely to some extent on His spoken, imperative words as well?

Essentially, I’m asking what role has been left for biblical imperatives in the model presented on this collaborative blog?

This from Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Matthew 5:17-18 is a concise summary of that fourth stream:

“It is, in other words, that all the law and all the prophets point to Him and will be fulfilled in Him down to the smallest detail. Everything that is in the law and the prophets culminates in Christ, and He is the fulfillment of them. It is the most stupendous claim that He ever made.”

There is a group of us who have identified four NCT “streams” — the fourth of which is the one we advocate, which has the baggage of being redemptive-historical, Christ-centered and monotheistic, but with an emphasis on picture-fulfillment in a very BT sense. D. A. Carson has very much been an influence on that, eh?

That’s found at this new joint blog: http://christourcovenant.blogspot.com/

My presentation from a think tank last summer as well as other papers are there. Not to be missed is Chad Richard Bresson’s on Isaiah 42:6 and 49:8. (Please excuse the stock Blogger graphics; it’s a fairly new site.)

Mike Adams is from stream #2 of the four streams identified in the article on the various flavors: http://christourcovenant.blogspot.com/2009/02/all-proponents-of-nct-believe-christ.html

The emphasis in stream four is on the pictures and types of righteousness as expressed in the revelation of God through the unfolding covenants and how they are fulfilled in substance in Christ who is the New Covenant.

I’m reading between the lines here that he’s essentially saying that NCT is non-confessional. Or am I mis-reading between the lines?

Is NCT redemptive-historical, Christ-centered, monotheistic, etc.? If so, then it has certain theological baggage, even if it is the “right” theological baggage. Every hermeneutical system leads to doctrinal conclusions, which then inform and shape that hermeneutical system. It’s inescapable. I don’t think being “free from any-preconceived theological bias” is possible, we simply need to attempt to have our theological views constantly being shaped by the Scripture. And that includes our hermeneutical principles. As Don Carson might say it in latinized French Canadian: Semper Reformanda, eh?