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Completed by the Spirit Part 17: The Gospel Brings About All Aspects of Our Salvation

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

This is the 17th 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.

Discipline of Grace cover

The Dis­ci­pline of Grace by Jerry Bridges

Paul’s repeated expla­na­tions of the gospel and his dox­olo­gies to Christ are not given because the peo­ple to whom he writes do not have Christ — or don’t know Him — but because they do know him. Paul writes to the Romans words that echo those we saw last time from 1 Thess 4:9:

[14] I myself am sat­is­fied about you, my broth­ers, that you your­selves are full of good­ness, filled with all knowl­edge and able to instruct one another. [15] But on some points I have writ­ten to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God [16] to be a min­is­ter of Christ Jesus to the Gen­tiles in the priestly ser­vice of the gospel of God, so that the offer­ing of the Gen­tiles may be accept­able, sanc­ti­fied by the Holy Spirit. (Rom 15:14–16)

Paul is bring­ing the words and truth of Christ to remem­brance, because it is the gospel of Christ that brings about all aspects of sal­va­tion: jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion and glorification.

But that’s not new infor­ma­tion to these saints. 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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Completed by the Spirit Part 15: Producing Fruit, Not Inspecting Fruit

August 1, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the 15th 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.

While we have seen that the law is inef­fec­tual against sin, and (as Paul argues) that the law pro­motes sin in sin­ful flesh, and while we have just seen that it is love that ful­fills the two tables of the law, we then must ask, “What, accord­ing to Paul, pro­duces growth in holi­ness?” And that brings us to the great antithe­sis between the Spirit and the flesh that Paul expounds in Gala­tians 5. Let’s empha­size once again that Paul is writ­ing to the church. He is not writ­ing a trea­tise solely on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith. He reminds the Gala­tians, as we noted above, “You were run­ning well!” These are believ­ers that Paul is cau­tion­ing against turn­ing from the Spirit.

[16] But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not grat­ify the desires of the flesh. [17] For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Gal 5:16–17)

While the strug­gling man of Romans 7 may or may not be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the unre­gen­er­ate man fac­ing despair in try­ing to obey the law, the man addressed by Paul is one who fights the Chris­t­ian fight, the war between the flesh and the Spirit.  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 14: The Very Stuff of New Covenant Ethics

July 28, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the 14th 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 last install­ment in this series, we noted that love is a God-given, Spirit-provided qual­ity that impels actions in the believer and that it is that same Spirit-provided love that forms the out­work­ing of the New Covenant ethic.

Love In Hard Places by D. A. Carson

Love In Hard Places by D. A. Carson

We’ll con­tinue and wrap up our look at love with a rather long quo­ta­tion from D. A. Car­son, in which he sum­ma­rizes Paul’s view on love as it relates to those two loves – God and neigh­bor – which have their expo­si­tion in the two tables of the Old Covenant:

Sim­i­larly, Paul insists that what is ful­filled in one word, viz. Leviti­cus 19:18, the com­mand to love one’s neigh­bor as one­self, is the entire sec­ond table of the Deca­logue: love is the ful­fill­ment of the law (Rom. 13:8– 10). Despite argu­ments to the con­trary, the dou­ble com­mand to love is not some sort of deep prin­ci­ple from which all the other com­mand­ments of Scrip­ture can be deduced; nor is it a hermeneu­ti­cal grid to weed out the laws of the old covenant that no longer have to be obeyed while bless­ing those that are still oper­a­tive; nor is it offered as a kind of reduc­tion­is­tic sub­sti­tute for all the Old Tes­ta­ment laws. In some ways, the twin laws of love, love for God and love for neigh­bor, inte­grate all the other laws. They estab­lish the proper motives for all the other imper­a­tives, viz. lov­ing God and lov­ing one’s neighbor.

But the “ful­fill­ment” lan­guage sug­gests some­thing more. All the laws of the old rev­e­la­tion, indeed all the old covenant Scrip­tures, con­spire to antic­i­pate some­thing more, to point to some­thing beyond them­selves. They point to the com­ing of the king­dom, the gospel of the king­dom; they point to a time when life prop­erly lived in God’s uni­verse can be summed up by obe­di­ence to the com­mand­ment to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength and by the com­mand­ment to love your neigh­bor as your­self.[1]

Con­tinue Reading…

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Completed by the Spirit Part 12: Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

July 7, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the 12th 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.

Love graffiti on red garage doorIf an exter­nal code is the antithe­sis of a life in the Spirit (as we noted in our last install­ment), what is the expres­sion of a life in the Spirit? Love. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

That love, that love from God via the Holy Spirit given to dwell in us is, as Paul tells us, the ful­fill­ing of the law:

[8] Owe no one any­thing, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has ful­filled the law. [9] For the com­mand­ments, “You shall not com­mit adul­tery, You shall not mur­der, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other com­mand­ment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.” [10] Love does no wrong to a neigh­bor; there­fore love is the ful­fill­ing of the law. (Romans 13:8–10)

Con­tinue Reading…

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Josh Harris: ‘Try hard’ is not good news

July 3, 2011 in Law, Posts from other blogs, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

There seems to be a grow­ing intra­mural dis­cus­sion on the inter­net among those who say we must “try harder” to attain growth in holi­ness and those who say our growth in holi­ness comes from con­stantly return­ing to the Gospel — under­stand­ing that in Christ, it is fin­ished. I’m with the lat­ter camp; our stand­ing is not based on our per­for­mance and our growth is based in His com­pleted work.

Growth in holi­ness — pro­gres­sive sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion — is not a bat­tle to be fought in the flesh but in the strength of the Holy Spirit (Gala­tians 3:3) in light of the Cross.

Check out this clip from Josh Har­ris as he makes the case:

HT: Tim Bris­ter

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Virgo: ‘The law always kills in the end’

July 2, 2011 in Law, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hear­ing with faith? Are you so fool­ish? Hav­ing begun by the Spirit, are you now being per­fected by the flesh? (Gala­tians 3:2–3)

The Spirit-Filled Church by Terry Virgo

The Spirit-Filled Church: Find­ing Your Place in God’s Purpose

We recently noted an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion about the effort we’re called to make in our sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. I believe Scrip­ture tells us that although we can do things that look like sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, 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.

I’m cur­rently read­ing The Spirit-Filled Church: Find­ing Your Place in God’s Pur­pose, by Terry Virgo. Virgo takes this argu­ment one step fur­ther, show­ing us that using the law for sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion gives Satan the oppor­tu­nity to heap con­dem­na­tion on us. “The law always kills in the end,” Virgo notes.

This por­tion of The Spirit-Filled Church (avail­able for pre-order at Ama­zon and via Ama­zon in the U.K. here or world­wide from the U.K here) out­lines Virgo’s case. It’s in agree­ment with what we’re advo­cat­ing in our cur­rent Com­pleted by the Spirit series:

It is essen­tial for us con­stantly to rec­og­nize our death to law. It is no longer the basis for our rela­tion­ship with God and never will be. We are mar­ried to Christ and our ful­fil­ment as Chris­tians is bound up in our love rela­tion­ship with him.

Con­tinue Reading…

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Completed by the Spirit Part 10: The Law of the Spirit of Life Has Set You Free

June 28, 2011 in Completed by the Spirit, Law, New Covenant Theology, Papers, Sanctification, Theology with 0 Comments

This is the 10th 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.

Bent over runner, out of breath

You were run­ning well. Who hin­dered you from obey­ing the truth?

In Romans 8, Paul pro­vides the solu­tion to the wretched state of the chap­ter 7 man, as he joy­fully pro­claims, “[1] There is there­fore now no con­dem­na­tion for those who are in Christ Jesus. [2] For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” (Rom 8:1–2). But that does not mean that the law is now harm­less to the regen­er­ate man who nev­er­the­less still has remain­ing sin – and as we noted above – will con­tinue to have remain­ing sin in his flesh until glory. Paul issues this stern warning:

[5] For those who live accord­ing to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live accord­ing to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. [6] For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. [7] For the mind that is set on the flesh is hos­tile to God, for it does not sub­mit to God’s law; indeed, it can­not. [8] Those who are in the flesh can­not please God. (Romans 8:5–8)

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.

Con­tinue Reading…

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