Tag Archive - holiness

Completed by the Spirit Part 21: Do Not Submit Again to a Yoke of Slavery

August 23, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the 21st part of a series of posts adapted from a paper I pre­sented at a New Covenant The­ol­ogy think tank in upstate New York in July 2010.

Given all that we’ve stud­ied in this series, how do we apply what is shown to us about sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion in Scripture?

How do we grow in holi­ness or coun­sel those who are com­bat­ing sin by rely­ing on the Holy Spirit and fol­low­ing imper­a­tives grounded in the indica­tive of the gospel and the gift of the Spirit of Christ to dwell in us?

Our study has pro­vided us two answers: one pos­i­tive and one negative.

We do focus on the gospel.

We do not focus on the law.

When we set our eyes on Christ and look at His per­son and work, we behold more and more what it is that our union with Him has granted to us. Con­tinue Reading…

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Completed by the Spirit Part 16: Exhorted in our Union With Christ

August 3, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the 16th part of a series of posts adapted from a paper I pre­sented at a New Covenant The­ol­ogy think tank in upstate New York in July 2010.

Abraham Kuyper

Abra­ham Kuyper

The Holy Spirit is “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” Paul wrote in Colos­sians 1:27. It is, accord­ing to Abra­ham Kuyper, a “mys­ti­cal union with Immanuel.”[1]

Our sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is achieved by God through our union with Christ. “He who calls you is faith­ful; he will surely do it” (1 Thess 5:23–24).

The great existence-altering event that hap­pens in our sal­va­tion is our union with Christ through His Spirit.

Paul writes in Gala­tians 2:20: “I have been cru­ci­fied with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave him­self for me.”

To the Romans, he writes:

[3] Do you not know that all of us who have been bap­tized into Christ Jesus were bap­tized into his death? [4] We were buried there­fore with him by bap­tism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in new­ness of life. [5] For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall cer­tainly be united with him in a res­ur­rec­tion like his (Rom 6:3–5).

Con­tinue Reading…

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The Enfleshment of the Law in the Word Made Flesh

July 31, 2011 in Law, New Covenant Theology, Posts from other blogs, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

Chad Richard Bresson

Pas­tor Chad Richard Bres­son at the 2011 Bun­yan Conference

At last week’s Earth Stove Soci­ety think tank, Chad Richard Bres­son pre­sented a paper enti­tled, “The Incar­na­tion of the Abstract: New Covenant The­ol­ogy and the Enflesh­ment of the Law.”

Chad asks the ques­tion, “What does the Pri­or­ity of Jesus have to do with New Covenant ethics?” He lists five implications:

1.      That the Law is a Per­son means the Law of the New Covenant is not encoded in exter­nal imper­a­tives or principles.

2.      The Law Incar­nate has placed a Per­son, the Holy Spirit, within the believer as the law writ­ten on the heart. That’s the upshot of 2 Corinthi­ans 3’s under­stand­ing of Jere­miah 31. The law writ­ten on the heart should not be iden­ti­fied in its typ­i­cal form, but its Anti­typ­i­cal… a Per­son, liv­ing and breath­ing life into and through the New Covenant mem­ber. The entire law “cat­e­gory”, as it moves from Old Tes­ta­ment to New, lands on a per­son. The tra­jec­tory of the ful­fill­ment of the law does not land on a new set of rules or prin­ci­ples, or even a sum­ma­rized list of the law of Christ. The Law as a type has its end in Christ. The law as a type fades away into obliv­ion because all types do… it has become a person

3.      Abrogation of the law and a denial of third use is a given. The law, like any other type of the Old Tes­ta­ment, has ful­filled its prophetic and rev­e­la­tory role and is gone and done now that the Anti­Type has filled up its intended mean­ing to the fullest.

4.      Imperatives have a role to play in the New Covenant, but they can­not eclipse the Indica­tive, a Per­son, from whence they come. It’s not a mat­ter of bal­ance, as some have sug­gested. The New Tes­ta­ment doesn’t not speak of, explic­itly or implic­itly, a so-called bal­ance between the Indica­tive and imper­a­tive. In fact, see­ing the New Tes­ta­ment as hav­ing a heavy empha­sis on the imper­a­tives says more about the pre­sup­po­si­tions of the inter­preter than it does about proper hermeneutics.

5.      An Incar­nate Law does not mean that com­mands in the New Covenant are not impor­tant. It does not mean that obe­di­ence is not impor­tant. It sim­ply means the grounds for the dis­cus­sion have changed. Obe­di­ence to com­mands is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the inward obedience-causing law writ­ten on the heart.

Chad has more at his blog, The Vossed World, includ­ing a link to his paper on Scribd.

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Completed by the Spirit Part 13: Love Poured Into Us

July 12, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification with 0 Comments

This is the 13th part of a series of posts adapted from a paper I pre­sented at a New Covenant The­ol­ogy think tank in upstate New York in July 2010.

Water pouring from pitcher into a glassLove is a repeated theme for Paul.

While we have seen pre­vi­ously in this series that love ful­fills the law and that God’s love is poured into us by the Holy Spirit, let’s look at how Paul describes that love. In 1 Corinthi­ans 13, Paul writes:

[1] If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clang­ing cym­bal. [2] And if I have prophetic pow­ers, and under­stand all mys­ter­ies and all knowl­edge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove moun­tains, but have not love, I am noth­ing. [3] If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

First, let’s note that in accor­dance with love being some­thing poured into us by the Holy Spirit, that love is not some­thing that would be described by Paul as “prac­ti­cal benev­o­lence. In fact, he cau­tions, “If I give away all I have … but have not love, I gain noth­ing.” Love is not the result of our actions; rather it is a God-given, Spirit-provided qual­ity that impels actions in the believer.

It is that same Spirit-provided love that forms the out­work­ing of the New Covenant ethic.

Con­tinue Reading…

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Completed by the Spirit Part 11: Not of the Letter, But of the Spirit

July 5, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification with 0 Comments

This is the 11th part of a series of posts adapted from a paper I pre­sented at a New Covenant The­ol­ogy think tank in upstate New York in July 2010.

T. J. Deidun: New Covenant Morality in Paul

T. J. Dei­dun: New Covenant Moral­ity in Paul

There is one more pas­sage in which Paul speaks against the law for sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, and that is 2 Corinthi­ans 3. It is per­haps the most spe­cific com­par­i­son between a law of let­ters and of the Spirit – the γράμμα/πνε̣̣ῦμα antithesis.

[1] Are we begin­ning to com­mend our­selves again? Or do we need, as some do, let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion to you, or from you? [2] You your­selves are our let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion, writ­ten on our hearts, to be known and read by all. [3] And you show that you are a let­ter from Christ deliv­ered by us, writ­ten not with ink but with the Spirit of the liv­ing God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

[4] Such is the con­fi­dence that we have through Christ toward God. [5] Not that we are suf­fi­cient in our­selves to claim any­thing as com­ing from us, but our suf­fi­ciency is from God, [6] who has made us com­pe­tent to be min­is­ters of a new covenant, not of the let­ter but of the Spirit. For the let­ter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Cor 3:1–6)

Con­tinue Reading…

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Completed by the Spirit Part 8: Paul, Redeemed but Struggling

June 23, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the eighth part of a series of posts adapted from a paper I pre­sented at a New Covenant The­ol­ogy think tank in upstate New York in July 2010.

As we vis­ited in our pre­vi­ous two installments, Douglas Moo describes three dif­fer­ent ways in which the man Paul describes in Romans 7 can be identified:

1. Paul describes his expe­ri­ence as an uncon­verted Jew under the law, a view we saw explained in the pre­vi­ous installment.

2. Paul describes his expe­ri­ence, per­haps shortly after his con­ver­sion, as he sought sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion through the law.

3. Paul describes his expe­ri­ence as a mature Chris­t­ian.[1]

Sin­clair Fer­gu­son advo­cates for the third view, a post-regenerate Paul (or generic regen­er­ate man) in Romans 7, and sees the apos­tle as using this peri­cope to join chap­ter 6 with chap­ter 8 and to describe the strug­gle that the believer has between his remain­ing cor­rupt flesh and his new nature: Con­tinue Reading…

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Sanctification, Gospel and Effort

June 14, 2011 in Law, Posts from other blogs, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

Tug of war in 1920'sJustin Tay­lor brings our atten­tion to an online dia­logue between Kevin DeY­oung and Tul­lian Tchivid­jian on the effort we’re called to make in our sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. Since that ties in with our cur­rent series, Com­pleted by the Spirit, I thought it would be good to visit the dis­cus­sion as it stands so far:

The two pas­tors agree that the indica­tive of the gospel and our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in Christ must be the basis of our sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. But I think the dif­fer­ence can be boiled down to the dif­fer­ence between action and ontol­ogy. At the risk of over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, Kevin’s call is for us to “do” those things that are given to us as imper­a­tives, while Tullian’s call is for us to “rest in” the indica­tives so that the imper­a­tives flow from them.

Our view — and the one that will be explained in fur­ther posts in the Com­pleted by the Spirit series — is that Paul’s imper­a­tives are calls for us to “be who we already are.” We can do things that look like sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion but if those actions are done in the flesh, they are sim­ply behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion. It’s a change in the heart that is desired, not sim­ply an out­ward change in actions.

To grow in Christ’s image, we must engage in “the hard work of going back to the cer­tainty of our already secured par­don in Christ and hit­ting the refresh but­ton over and over,” as Tul­lian explains. It’s know­ing who we now are in Christ that gives us the free­dom to be that new creature.

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Completed by the Spirit Part 7: Paul, the Unconverted Jew

June 13, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the sev­enth part of a series of posts adapted from a paper I pre­sented at a New Covenant The­ol­ogy think tank in upstate New York in July 2010.

In the pre­vi­ous install­ment in this series, we saw that the­olo­gian Dou­glas Moo describes three dif­fer­ent ways in which the man Paul describes in Romans 7 can be identified:

1. Paul describes his expe­ri­ence as an uncon­verted Jew under the law.

2. Paul describes his expe­ri­ence, per­haps shortly after his con­ver­sion, as he sought sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion through the law.

3. Paul describes his expe­ri­ence as a mature Chris­t­ian.[1]

Moo advo­cates for the first posi­tion: Con­tinue Reading…

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Completed by the Spirit Part 6: Who Is The Man of Romans 7?

June 9, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the sixth part of a series of posts adapted from a paper I pre­sented at a New Covenant The­ol­ogy think tank in upstate New York in July 2010.

As we noted in the pre­vi­ous install­ment of this series, Paul draws no dis­tinc­tion in sep­a­rat­ing a New Covenant life in the Spirit from an Old Covenant life of the let­ter or writ­ten code (Romans 7:6).

But Paul does more than tell those who would look to the law that they are wrong; he calls them adul­ter­esses. In his anal­ogy, he says that a woman who lives with another man while he is alive com­mits adul­tery. We have died to the law; to live as under the law is to com­mit adul­tery against Christ, to whom the church is betrothed, and to whom He gave His Spirit as a guar­an­tee until the mar­riage sup­per of the Lamb (Rev­e­la­tion 19:9).

Paul con­tin­ues in chap­ter 7 in a peri­cope of which the sub­ject is widely debated:

[7] What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” [8] But sin, seiz­ing an oppor­tu­nity through the com­mand­ment, pro­duced in me all kinds of cov­etous­ness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. [9] I was once alive apart from the law, but when the com­mand­ment came, sin came alive and I died. [10] The very com­mand­ment that promised life proved to be death to me. [11] For sin, seiz­ing an oppor­tu­nity through the com­mand­ment, deceived me and through it killed me. [12] So the law is holy, and the com­mand­ment is holy and right­eous and good.

Con­tinue Reading…

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Completed by the Spirit: Excursus — Bunyan’s ‘Of the Law and a Christian’

June 8, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

John Bunyan

John Bun­yan

Lest any­one think we’retreading on new ground in the blog series “Com­pleted by the Spirit” that we are anthol­o­giz­ing here, let’s take a moment and visit John Bunyan’s “Of the Law and a Chris­t­ian.” (This arti­cle is avail­able as part of John Bunyan’s Mis­cel­la­neous Pieces as a free down­load from Project Guten­berg or from Ama­zon in hard­cover, paper­back or Kin­dle formats.)

Unlike those who would say, “Moses will drive you to Christ to be jus­ti­fied and Christ will send you back to Moses to be sanc­ti­fied,“[1] it is the office of God the Holy Spirit and not the pur­pose of the writ­ten code to sanc­tify us. (The law-for-sanctification view is dis­cussed fur­ther in Part 4 of this series.)

In the late 1600’s, Bun­yan made the rela­tion­ship of the Chris­t­ian to the law as clear and plain as prob­a­bly any­one ever has in “OF THE LAW AND A CHRISTIAN” (empha­sis in bold­face mine):

Con­tinue Reading…

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