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Completed by the Spirit, Part 1: Five Propositions

May 23, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 1 Comment

This is the first 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.

For the apos­tle Paul, the Mosaic law – or any exter­nal com­mands not grounded in the indica­tive of the Spirit of God given to dwell in the believer – is anti­thet­i­cal to our growth in holi­ness; rather it is the Holy Spirit who is trans­form­ing the believer from “one degree of glory to another,” (2 Corinthi­ans 3:18). Paul’s teach­ing on the inabil­ity of the law to effec­tively com­bat sin in the life of the Chris­t­ian has been dis­torted by many, result­ing in an improper focus on law that con­tin­ues to enslave believ­ers in sin.[1] Per­haps Paul’s exas­per­ated excla­ma­tion and rhetor­i­cal ques­tions to the “fool­ish” Gala­tians is sum­mary enough of Paul’s view of the law:

[2] Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hear­ing with faith? [3] Are you so fool­ish? Hav­ing begun by the Spirit, are you now being per­fected by the flesh? [4] Did you suf­fer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? [5] Does he who sup­plies the Spirit to you and works mir­a­cles among you do so by works of the law, or by hear­ing with faith— [6] just as Abra­ham “believed God, and it was counted to him as right­eous­ness”? (Gala­tians 3:2–6)

Rembrandt's painting of the Apostle Paul, c. 1635

Rembrandt’s paint­ing of the Apos­tle Paul, c. 1635

“Hav­ing begun by the Spirit, are you now being per­fected by the flesh?” That antithe­sis – the Spirit and the flesh – draws the bat­tle lines for Paul between those who would have believ­ers con­tin­u­ing as slaves to sin instead of liv­ing as slaves to Christ and reap­ing the fruit of the Spirit. It is, as Paul tells the Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans, the will of God that they – that we – be sanc­ti­fied, “because God chose you as the first­fruits to be saved, through sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (2 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 2:13). God did not choose believ­ers to be sanc­ti­fied by the law; God did not choose believ­ers to be sanc­ti­fied by their own actions, behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion or self-help tech­niques; God chose believ­ers to be sanc­ti­fied by the Spirit of Christ via the gospel of Christ.

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Completed by the Spirit, Part 2: A Resurrection Like His

May 25, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Life, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the sec­ond 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.

Empty tombIn the first arti­cle in this series, we looked at five propo­si­tions that Paul intro­duces in his epis­tles about our rela­tion­ship to the law and its rela­tion­ship to our sanctification:

First, law can­not cope with sin.

Sec­ond, it’s the love brought to the saint through the indwelling Holy Spirit that is ful­fills the law.

Third, it is the Spirit that pro­duces fruit in the believer, while the law in our remain­ing sin­ful flesh can only pro­duce sin.

Fourth, sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion – a growth in holi­ness — results from our union with Christ and Scripture’s exhor­ta­tions about what it means to be Christ-like.

Fifth, that the imper­a­tives Paul gives to us are not them­selves laws and are not given as laws or in the cat­e­gory of law, because they flow from the indica­tive of our reliance upon Christ and our posi­tion in Christ.

Before we address those five propo­si­tions indi­vid­u­ally in future arti­cles, we need to con­sider the escha­tol­ogy of our sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. We will indeed be glo­ri­fied, Paul promises (Romans 8:30). What is impor­tant now about that final and com­plete sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is what that state reveals about us – what that “not yet” tells us about our “already.”

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Completed by the Spirit Part 3: The Law Cannot Cope With Sin

June 2, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the third 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.

The first of the five propo­si­tions we intro­duced in Part 1 of this series is that the law can­not cope with sin.

The law can­not pre­vent sin; the law can’t curb sin; the law is pow­er­less against sin.

In fact, Paul tells us, the law pro­vokes sin.

Moses smashing the tablets of the lawAlthough what the law com­mands is holy, it was given to stiff-necked Israel to increase trans­gres­sions until the Mes­siah, the sin­gle seed of Abra­ham, was to come:

[19] Why then the law? It was added because of trans­gres­sions, until the off­spring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an inter­me­di­ary. [20] Now an inter­me­di­ary implies more than one, but God is one.

[21] Is the law then con­trary to the promises of God? Cer­tainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then right­eous­ness would indeed be by the law. [22] But the Scrip­ture impris­oned every­thing under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

[23] Now before faith came, we were held cap­tive under the law, impris­oned until the com­ing faith would be revealed. [24] So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be jus­ti­fied by faith. (Gala­tians 3:19–27)[1]

In his analy­sis of this pas­sage, Jason C. Meyer ref­er­ences Thomas Schreiner’s argu­ment that, “although the phrase ‘because of trans­gres­sions’ could refer to defin­ing or increas­ing trans­gres­sion, the lat­ter option is prefer­able.”[2] Schreiner gives three rea­sons for that inter­pre­ta­tion: first, that the con­text of the pas­sage is that sal­va­tion can­not be attained by the law; sec­ond, that the rela­tion­ship of “under law and under sin” reveals the law’s role in arous­ing sin; and third, that there is a par­al­lel with Romans 5:20: “Now the law came in to increase the tres­pass. …”[3]

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Completed by the Spirit Part 4: The ‘Poverty of our Sanctification?’

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

This is the fourth 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.

Measuring tapeDespite Paul’s warn­ings that the law arouses sin, many will point to the law as a prime mover in sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, essen­tial to con­vict­ing us about our remain­ing sin and mea­sur­ing our growth in holi­ness. In doing so, they will attempt to draw a dis­tinc­tion between being “under the law” and fol­low­ing the law. For example:

This con­vict­ing use of the law is also crit­i­cal for the believer’s sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, for it serves to pre­vent the res­ur­rec­tion of self-righteousness — that ungodly self-righteousness which is always prone to reassert itself even in the holi­est of saints. The believer con­tin­ues to live under the law as a life­long penitent.

This chas­ten­ing work of the law does not imply that the believer’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is ever dimin­ished or annulled. From the moment of regen­er­a­tion, his state before God is fixed and irrev­o­ca­ble. He is a new cre­ation in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:17). He can never revert to a state of con­dem­na­tion nor lose his son­ship. Nev­er­the­less, the law exposes the ongo­ing poverty of his sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion on a daily basis. He learns that there is a law in his mem­bers such that when he would do good, evil is present with him (Rom. 7:21). He must repeat­edly con­demn him­self, deplore his wretched­ness, and cry daily for fresh appli­ca­tions of the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all sin (Rom. 7:24; 1 John 1:7, 9).[1]

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Completed by the Spirit Part 5: We Serve In The Spirit

June 6, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

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]

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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):

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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.

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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 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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Completed by the Spirit Part 9: ‘It Cannot Justify, It Cannot Sanctify’

June 26, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the ninth 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.

Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Dr. D. Mar­tyn Lloyd-Jones

As we saw in our pre­vi­ous three installments, there are three ways the man of Romans 7 may 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.

But as we closed part 8, we asked, “Does it mat­ter to us as an appli­ca­tion of Romans 7 which of the three men Paul is describing?”

Whichever of the three views one might hold, two of the same con­clu­sions can be drawn from Romans 7.

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