By request, here’s the complete paper from July 2010 from which the Completed by the Spirit blog series was adapted. You’re welcome to download it and distribute it freely as long as you do not modify it:
Completed by the Spirit: New Covenant Sanctification in Paul (PDF, 240 kb)
This is the 18th 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.
If sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, why do believers — who have received the Spirit — still need instruction and exhortation?
First, it is important to remember that believers are still imperfect this side of glory. As we have seen, the incarnate Christ as God-Man was the prototype of the believer given the Holy Spirit.
But unlike us, the incarnate Jesus’ communication with the Holy Spirit was perfect.
In Christ, the Spirit’s communication was complete. Continue Reading…
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…
This is the fifth 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 our previous post in this series, we showed that Paul does not call us to use the law to measure or promote our sanctification, though there are many who assert that he does.
But there also those in the “reformed camp” who would even counter Paul’s repeated entreaties to rely on the Spirit. Willem VanGemeren denies Paul’s assertion that the Spirit replaces the law in the New Covenant:
The law is not replaced by the Spirit in the eschatological age. The Spirit opens people up to the law and transforms them to live by a higher ethics [sic]. We may even speak of eschatological ethics as an application of the moral law, by which believers live in the present age with their eyes focused on the coming of the kingdom. While all people belong to the present age and are made responsible for keeping its mores, Christians live by the higher ethics of the kingdom. Paul speaks of this tension in his ministry: “To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law [ennomos Christou]), so as to win those not having the law” (1 Cor. 9:21). The law is God’s instrument in transforming the Christian into a servant of the kingdom of God. …[1]
