Grace and the Mosaic covenant

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me...

Many people point to the preface to the Ten Commandments to demonstrate that obedience to the Ten Commandments was (solely) a response to a salvation already received.

I have two problems with this (other than the Pauline letters!):

1. Israel were not yet in the Promised Land. God may have unconditionally promised to bring the nation into Canaan, but he did not promise to bring every individual. A whole generation would perish in the wilderness because of their disobedience. Gordon Wenham himself comments "Israel is posed to take possession of the rest of their inheritance, but this depends on total obedience to the law and its demands".
2. Israel were tenants who could be dispossessed if they disobeyed. This is particularly clear in Deuteronomy, but even in the command to honour your parents there is an implicit warning that disobedience will lead to ejection from the land.

Transcending these problems is the absence of holiness in the people. Kiuchi comments "though it seems the Decalogue was given within a context of 'grace', would not the difficulty of observing it in addition to the severe punishments associated with such violations... mitigate against such a conclusion...the Israelites standing befoer hte Lord in Exod. 19 are as yet unredeemed (unsaved) from their sinfulness... the spiritual reality of the people showed that they were far from being saved from their own sinfulness" (pp.27-28, Leviticus (AOTC))

"the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (John 1:17)

Paul Miller on one use of 'the law'

We don't know how bad we are until we try to be good.

(p.31, Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life)

Paul Miller talks about this in relation to prayer. Mark Galli talks about it in his excellent article "Giving Up Self-Discipline for Lent". Its one of the uses of 'the law' at the end of the day, in whatever form 'the law' comes to us.

Circumcision

Circumcision was a sign of the promise, and that promise was made to Abraham and his Seed. More than that it was promise about the Seed that was to come.

Therefore it makes sense to have such a weird sign. Not to be too crass, but the seed would come through reproduction of Abraham and his descendants.

Therefore, the offence to God in continuing to be circumcised after Jesus had come (and faith in him, Gal 3:25) is in denying that Jesus was the promised Seed. It says you are still waiting for the promise to be fulfilled and looking for another descendant of Abraham.

An old myth: the Pharisees' problem was they were law-keepers

I'm a bit fed up of writing on the Lutheran doctrine of 'the law' at the moment, because you're not supposed to end with the law, only start there. It's getting me down, because the end of the law is Christ, not reflection on the law. I think this may be the last for a while.

Years ago I was struck by someone saying that Jesus never criticised the Pharisees for keeping the law, but actually he often criticised them for failing to keep it. To self-righteous people who thought they were good he held up the mirror of the law and showed them their true selves, in the hope they would give up trying to impress people and God with their obedience, and instead trust in him for forgiveness.

For example:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!...Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." (Matthew 23:23-28)

"And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." (Mark 10:17-22)

"Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honour your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” he need not honour his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God." (Matthew 15:2-6; cf. Matthew 12:2-6)

However, the far greater criticism he has for the Pharisees, and which purveys all the NT Gospels is that they reject him. He is the Mosaic law personified. He is good and lovely, but with a burning intensity that outshines even the law written by the hand of God. As such, people either tried to kill him or ran to him attracted by his goodness and hungry for mercy.

To those already broken by their sin and helplessness who flocked to him in droves, he showed that other aspect of the Mosaic law - mercy and exodus from slavery - when he took upon his shoulders the curse of death we deserve for not living the life he lived.

He fulfilled the law in two senses: he embodied it in his life, and he ended it in his death.

The relevance of Jewish law to Gentiles

Martin Downes insightfully comments that:

If you deny that law has any reference to Gentiles, are you not forced to conclude that Jesus neither kept it for their sake, nor is his obedience imputed to them for their justification?

I've been aware on in my recent posts on the law that while (I feel) I haven't neglected eschatology, I have neglected the fact that it was given to the nation of Israel. Not unconnected to that, I've focused on the Ten Commandments. But I still think what I have said holds because the relevance of the law is more fundamentally a question of the age, or creation, we live in than whether we are Jew or Gentile.

I would argue that as Adam represented humanity in the Garden, so Israel represented the nations in the land. They were priests to the world showcasing what life in close relationship to God looked like.

Israel were to keep the OT law on behalf of the world, and if they kept it then through them the world could be blessed. However, if they broke God's law then they would be judged first, and then the rest of the world through them.

The line of the seed is the line of representatives of the old humanity:

• Adam
• Noah
• Abraham
• Isaac
• Jacob/Israel
• David
• Jesus Christ

The specific commands (as part of their covenants) to each were slightly different, each building on the one before. However, they all were representing the world before God.

The line of the seed is also a line of shadow-representatives of the new humanity, each with their own promises which were slightly different building on the one before. The Seed who is representative of the true new humanity where all the promises are 'yes' is singular and not a family tree because one king will rule on that throne forever:

• Jesus Christ

Perhaps that needs some fine-tuning, but that would be the outline of where I'd go.

PS In case you're wondering why I'm obsessing about the 10 commandments at the moment it is because our pastor is doing a series on them entitled "10 ways to love", I'm reading Ed Clowney's book alongside that, and lots of conversations are happening with church members. However, what I should be obsessing about is property and criminal law because I have exams in a week, so don't expect to hear from me too much for a while.

Jesus and the 10 commandments

• Jesus reveals their intensity - e.g. not just condemning destroying marriage (adultery) but weakening marriage (lusting), and implying the positive command to strengthen marriage
• Jesus transforms them (making them 'Christian' by giving the fullest content to the name 'God' and the fullest example to imitate):
• he is our God, who created and saved us from a bondage greater than Egypt
• he is the image we worship of the invisible God, excluding any other representation of who God is
• he is the name of God which we are given to bear as Christians in a way which gives him the honour he is due,
• he is the Lord of the Sabbath who commands us to enter his rest,
• he is our brother who obeyed his father perfectly and by whom we are adopted into a new family to love and given a new Father to honour
• he is the life-giver who not only gave life to humanity, but bought it back by identifying himself with humans, so how can we kill those made in his image and redeemed by his blood?
• he is the husband of the ugliest and most adulterous woman, who shows that to love our wife is to lay down our life for her, and that wives should submit to their husband as the church does to Christ - recognising that even more important than our earthly marriage is our marriage to him
• he is the owner of all the cattle on the hills and every star in the sky, but he gave all that he had to those who had already stole from him,
• he is the perfect witness to (and embodiment of) the truth about God and about our sin even though it cost him his life
• he is the lover of neighbour who didn't begrudge all that we have, but loved us so much he wanted to give us more
• Jesus obeyed them fully even though he was the one to whom obedience was due
• Jesus was condemned by them as a sinner because he identified with us

Therefore

• the law ends (terminates) with the death of the people to whom it was given in the cross (Rom 7:4)

but then

• the law reaches its end (telos/purpose/fulfilment) in the resurrection new lives of the saints against which there is no law but which flawlessly reflect the same God who gave the law (Rom 10:4, 13:10; Gal 5:14)

For us the cross and resurrection are not just past events, but part of our lives now, and only fully realised in our lives when Christ returns. So for us the law is "becoming obsolete and growing old [and] ready to vanish away" (Heb 8:13), but not yet fully gone.

Are the 10 commandments for Christians today?

I think the answer is: "Yes", so far as we live in the present evil age, but "no" so far as we live in the age to come.

Jesus says that the law will persist "until heaven and earth pass away" (Matt 5:18). If we are not Christians then we are still living in the "present evil age" (Gal 1:14) and so Paul can say in 1 Tim 1:9 that "the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners" because they are still living in that age.

However, Christians are caught between the ages. Our old self which belongs to the present age is in its death throws, but our new self which belongs to the future is growing in its resurrection life of the age to come. In that age to come there will be no law, because against such a life in the Spirit "there is no law" (Gal 5:23).

For us to believe that the new self needs the law to give it life is to "turn back again" (Gal 4:9) to the old age. The law brings death and promises life from another source, but has no power to bring life itself. Death with hope is what our old self needs, so it still has a role to play so long as our old self lives, but the law cannot bring life and so it should not be applied to our new self.

The law is God's radiotherapy. It kills but it offers hope of a future life free of cancer. We fire it at the cancerous cells that riddle our body, but we don't start eating it. Once the cancer of sin has gone, we will stop the treatment.

Because of God's amazing love for us incurably sick people, the full power of that radiotherapy was applied to Jesus even though he didn't have one cancerous cell in his body. But his life was so indestructible he rose again to new life (Heb 7:16).

He gives himself to us as food by his Spirit, and in that way he gives us the same eternal life he enjoys (John 6) so that even when the radiotherapy finishes us off we will rise again into the new age with him.

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Note 1: It is subtle but I have not restricted the term "law" to the sense of command or accusation, as is often the case in Lutheranism. Instead, I've tried to be more biblical and make the term wider so that includes both command and promise, but with the emphasis remaining on the former.

The Mosaic law contained both command and promise, but the promise was not the same type of promise that we find in the New Covenant. The promise of the Mosaic law is that something will be done whereas the promise of the New Covenant is that it has been done. Even the promise that looks forward will pass away to leave us only with love built on the promise of what has been done (1 Cor 13).

Note 2: Many people say that Paul doesn't teach the 10 commandments to Christians. But he quotes them directly in Romans 13:9 and Ephesians 6:2, and alludes to them often. He also often sums them up in the (Mosaic) command "love your neighbour as yourself". So Paul saw the law as continuing in some sense for the Christian (I would argue only their "old self" though). However, it is striking that even in these instances he only quotes the second table of the law, not the first (see here and here for thoughts on that).

Note 3: Come back welcome. I know this is controversial, and I'm just thinking aloud. Also I'm sorry that I go on and on about "the law" on this blog sometimes. It really isn't my heartbeat...honest. It is just that it is on "the law" that I'm often challenged to think most precisely and needing to think precisely forces me to write... which leads me to blog.

Your law is my delight

(HT Tim)

"I long for your salvation, O Lord,
and your law is my delight.
Let my soul live and praise you,
and let your rules help me.
I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant,
for I do not forget your commandments."

(Psalm 119:174-176)

"I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

(Romans 7:22-25)

Both passages include:

• delight in the law; and
• a realisation of our failure to keep it.

After this common starting point:

• The OT passage includes a prayer to be delivered.
• The NT passage includes thanks that we have been delivered.

Mounts of curse and blessing

'That day Moses charged the people, saying, "When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali."' (Deuteronomy 27:11-13)

Do you think it is a coincidence that:

• Those particular tribes were told to stand on those particular hills? I think it is probably because Mount Gerizim was the Southern mountain and those were the 'Southern' tribes, and vice versa for Mount Ebal. But nevertheless the mountain of blessing included the most blessed tribes as well.
• In the previous few verses we are told that the plastered stones with all the words of the law on them should be placed on Mount Ebal from which the curses were announced (vv.1-8)?
• Paul would also talk about two mountains, one that is free and the other that is of slavery to the law (Galatians 4:24-25)?
• Moses only bothers to describe the responsive curses to be declared at this event (27:14-26)?
• In Chapter 28 which seems to be summing up the blessings and curses again, the blessings get 14 verses and the curses 68?

The greatest deception ever

This is not really anything. It is not an interpretation of all of Romans but is an attempt to pick up some of the themes that Romans deals with, with 7:11 as the pole around which everything else revolved. Although that is not to say that it is an exposition of that verse.

It is the result of some reflection on truth and lies in Romans. I posted a word search on truth, lies and deceit here, but should have searched for 'knowledge'/'knowing'/'knew'/'know' and more would have been clearer sooner. But as 7:11 connects deceit with the law, it is also my attempt to understand how these themes fit with the law.

This is also not my promised post on knowledge of God through creation, but will hopefully feed into it... so with that out of the way....

God in creation made himself known by revealing the truth about his power and nature (1:18). However all humanity rejected this truth preferring instead to believe a lie (singular, 1:25). What was this lie? If we read Genesis 3 the lie that the serpent deceived Eve with was the lie that God would not follow through on his threat of death. In short he persuaded Eve that 'the wrath of God is [not] against all ungodliness and unrighteousness' (1:18). That wrath has been revealed so we should now know it to be true, and yet humanity still believes the same lie.

God provided Israel with the law which was the 'embodiment of knowledge and truth' (2:19-21). This law meant Israel knew 'that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice' sin (2:2). However, Israel while believing this truth in relation to others did not believe it applied to them, and so they did not 'obey the truth' (2:8). Instead of letting the law judge them they relied on it and boasted that they knew God's will (2:17-18). They taught others but not themselves.

The people of Israel were believing the serpent's old lie that judgment would not really fall on them. So if God entered into judgment with Israel, like God did with David (in Ps 51 quoted in Rom 3:4), God would be justified in punishing Israel - proving the lie to be a lie. Israel should listen to their own law which, as Paul shows in the quotations of Romans 3, declares them to be under sin and under the curse. Instead they were using their tongues to deceive themselves and others about their true situation which was that they were under the curse of creation and of the law.

But what of the covenants and the promises of God to Israel? Can God really be faithful to these promises and also be justified in his judgment against sin? Or from the other direction, how can God pass over former sins and yet stay the righteous judge who does not let the wicked go unpunished?

Paul explains that God has fulfilled both the law and the promise that appeared 430 years earlier. He did this by putting forward Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins. He took the curse of the law (showing God to be righteous) but he also fulfilled the promise of the covenant with Abraham that God would be faithful to his promise even at the cost of his own life.

But does this only affect the Jews, of is it for the Gentiles also? After all the promise was to Abraham and his offspring, and the law was only for the Jews as well. Aren't the Gentiles just spectators to this drama of the Jewish people. No, because God is the God of all of creation. The law was just the embodiment of what was already in creation (chap 1). The promise to Abraham was that 'all the nations be blessed' (Gal 3:8). The Jews were priests to the world, and represented the world to God. God was never just interested in them.

But all this assumes that the promise cannot come through obeying the law. Isn't that what the bible teaches? Wasn't Abraham declared righteousness because he obeyed the law, and receive the promise because of his obedience? No! Abraham was declared righteous because he believed in 'him who justifies the ungodly' (4:5). He then received the promise, not because of what he did but as a gift.

So why then the law? What did the law achieve?

• It brought knowledge of sin (3:20)
• It brought transgression (4:15)
• It counted sin (5:13)
• It increased the trespass/sin (5:20)
• It held us captive (7:6) Imprisoning us under sin (Gal 3:22)
• It showed sin to be sin (7:13)
• It made sin sinful beyond measure (7:13)

These can be brought under two headings:

1. It described what sin looked like and told us that it would lead to God's wrath
2. It actually increased the sin

We can understand how the law did 1. while remaining good, but how did it do 2. while still being a good thing?

Well it did it because it was not the law itself but Sin using the law to its own advantage. It used the law to bring the deception it had been perpetuating since Eve, to its climax. It used the law to perform the deception of history, which showed more than had ever been shown before how sinful humanity was.

By the commandment the Devil deceived humanity into believing not merely that God's judgment wasn't as strong as they thought (as he did with Eve), but instead he deceived humanity into using God's judgment against God himself. Israel did this whenever they boasted about the law. They did it every time that thought that doing a good work earned them a wage. But they did it supremely in the greatest sin of history, the crucifixion of God's own Son.

This was legalism brought to its climax. They rejected the cornerstone and it became a stumbling block (9:33; 1 Peter 2:7-8). They had a zeal for God, a zeal for keeping the law, but this was not according to knowledge of the truth and so they did not submit to God's righteousness in the person of Christ but instead they killed him (10:1-3)! They condemned the perfect obedient son using the very law that should have led them to accept him. They were deceived like Eve was into thinking that they could take the place of judge over God, instead of letting God judge them. But they increased the trespass because where as Eve had just rejected God's law and asserted her authority, the Jewish leaders had used God's law itself to assert theirs.

However that judgment was shown to be a lie by God's raising of Christ from the dead for his justification (1 Timothy 3:16). He 'was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead' (Romans 1:3). But that justification of Jesus was also our justification if we see ourselves judged in his death by being baptised into it (4:5). We too can share in his declaration to be a child of God. We too can share in his new resurrection life.

• Further thoughts on reading Romans: Reading Romans backwards

What do you think? Does that make sense of the text? My particular concern might be that it reads the truth/lie as belief/rejection of the judgment of God against sin, when the connected promise should also be in there as well. Some of the passages seem to fit the latter better than the former.

The law came in to increase the trespass

The law is not a remedy for sin. It does not cure sin but rather makes it worse. St. Paul says it was given to make sin apparent, indeed, even to increase it. It doesn't do that necessarily by increasing immortality, although that can happen when rebellion or the power of suggestion leads us to do just what the law is against. But what the theologian of the cross sees clearly from the start,is that, more perversely, the law multiplies sin precisely through our morality, our misuse of the law and our success at it. It becomes a defence against the gift.

(italics original (bold by me), p.27, Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518)

So the law does not increase sin by making us more like younger brothers, but like older brothers which is worse.

I can't believe that this thought is new to me. It is one of those occasions where I wonder whether after all my reading I'm still yet to really get Luther's main points.

But does it make sense of Romans 7 to see sin increased by:

(a) increasing immortality; or

(b) through our morality as a defence against the gift?

I'm not sure. But I think the fact that it is the sin's deceit that Paul draws attention to (v.7) may support Luther and Forde.

Three meanings of the word 'law'

I think there would be more light and less heat if in discussions on the law people defined their terms. I think there are three main meanings of 'the law'. The trouble is people import concepts from one to another. Here are my three:

1. The Torah

2. Commands

3. God's word working death

The law [1] contains, but is not exclusively, law [2] which usually functions as law [3] to cause us to run to the Gospel.

The Torah is the Mosaic Covenant which contained both commands and promises. And the promises are not all conditional!

Commands are found not just in the Mosaic Covenant but throughout the bible; even Galatians. They can condemn us because they reveal our sin (2nd use of the law), but inherently they are good and so can help reveal how we should live once we have been saved (3rd use of the law).

God's word working death can come through commands (using the 2nd use of the law) but not exclusively (it can also come through phrases like 'Christ died for my sins' - see here) God's word working death is opposed to his word working life. But everlasting life can only be found by going through death. This is the meaning of 'law' in the phrase 'law and gospel' if that phrase is used in its true sense.

The three uses of the law

1. 'The first is the pedagogical or civil use, for God wills that all men be compelled by the discipline of the Law, even the unregenerate, not to commit outward sins'.
2. 'it is a second and very important use of the law of God to show our sin and to accuse, to terrify, and to condemn all men in this misuse of human nature. For the law of God which has been revealed to men is a perpetual judgment which condemns sin in the entire human race'
3. 'The third use of the Law pertains to the regenerate. Insofar as the regenerate have been justified by faith they are free from the Law... that is, from the curse and condemnation and the wrath of God which is set forth in the Law ...[Yet] the law must be preached to the regenerate to teach them certain works in which God wills that we practice obedience. For God does not will that we by our own wisdom set up works or worship'.

All quotes from Philipp Melanchthon's Loci Communes (1543) translated by JAO Preus, pp. 72-74.

See also

Trusting God by stopping

Rest is something I keep on thinking about these days. Some people may say I think about it too much. Anyway one thing I keep coming back to is what I read many years ago by Scott Hafemann:

The Sabbath signifies something fundamental about God's relationship to his people: it is a weekly bulletin that God, as Creator of the world, not only can but also will meet Israel's needs, because she is his chosen people. God called Israel to keep the Sabbath because, of all the peoples of the world, God created Israel to be his people. The Sabbath thus stood firm as a divinely established memorial to the covenant commitment God had made to his people. For her part, Israel was to "rest on the Sabbath" as a reminder of what she should do every day in relationship to the Creator who is committed to be her Provider: "call upon him" to meet her needs. God "keeps the Sabbath" by working for his people; his people "keep the Sabbath" by trusting him to do so.

(p. 49, The God of Promise and the Life of Faith)

Have you ever thought that all your service may actually be an expression of unbelief? Mine often is. Sadly often my rest is just laziness though. Can't get away from sin!

The world judged by the Mosaic law

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. (Romans 3:19)

There are two possible interpretations of how Paul comes to that verse as far as I can see (this may again be due to my lack of research).

1. Having established that Gentiles are condemned by natural law (as is clear by the blatant sinning of Gentiles displayed Romans 1) Paul then had to show that the religious Jews are also sinners. This he does in Romans 2-3:18. Therefore having dealt with both he can conclude that the whole world is sinful because everyone is either Gentile or Jew.
2. The law condemns Israel. Israel represents the world as a priestly and kingly nation. Therefore the rest of the world is condemned 'in Israel'.

I think 2. is the right interpretation. Therefore the whole world is judged by the same law but in an order - the Jew first, and then the Greek.

This post parallels my last in being a reflection of my continuing feeble attempts to understand Romans. I would love to hear criticism. I should also do more reading, but I am so constrained by time. Out of ignorance I make wild stabs hoping over time and continual reading something sticks.

The church is not a theocracy

Have you ever heard the following reason for why we don't have to follow the Mosaic Law:

The Mosaic Law was provided for a theocratic nation, and the church is not a theocratic nation.

Did the NT authors ever use that argument? Not that I can think of.

The second use of the law at the cross

Sin [...] is not measured by a law, or a nation, or a society of any kind, but by a Person. The righteousness of God was not in a requirement, system, book, or Church, but in a Person, and sin is defined by relation to Him. He came to reveal not only God but sin. The essence of sin is exposed by the touchstone of His presence, by our attitude to Him. He makes explicit what the sinfulness of sin is; He even aggravates it. He rouses the worst as well as the best of human nature. There is nothing that human nature hates like holy God. All the world's sin receives its sharpest expression when in contact with Christ; when, in face of His moral beauty, goodness, power, and claim, He is first ignored, then discarded, denounced, called the agent of Beelzebub, and hustled out of the world in the name of God.

(pp. 56-57, PT Forsyth, Missions in State and Church: Sermons and Addresses, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908, HT Per Crucem ad Lucem)

This is a similar thing to what Marcus Honeysett is saying in the clip Dave Bish links to. The Law is not just explicit commandments.

Contemporary society under the law

Is there any use in attempting to understand our society as under the law, when most of us no longer accept the existence of a law-giver?

Oswald Bayer thinks that we can...

Precisely the individualistic antinomianism of modernity and postmodernity ends up being legalistic. Individuals want to think of themselves as different, but they act in masses.They want to follow the ideals of freedom and diversity of options, but the anticipation of new experiences, the anxiety of missing something and the imperative of incessantly having to choose and decide drives them afresh to competition and to being overburdened

[...]

The fulfillment of the law is [...] presupposed to have occurred already in principle: the human being is free, good and spontaneous. In this sense, modernity and postmodernity are antinomian.

The new human beings of modernity and postmodernity, however, always must yet become, under the compulsion of realizing it by themselves, what they already are. The generally asserted gospel of freedom places human beings simultaneously under the compulsion of realizing themselves and fulfilling their potential, since from birth itself it is theirs already. If, however, freedom is not announced and communicated from without, but rather belongs to me from the very start, then I as both an individual and collective subjectivity am burdened with the fulfillment of the promise given to me by myself—not liberated for freedom, but "damned to be free" (Sartre); I am not allowed to be free, I rather must free myself.

[...]

Even if this human being—precisely according to modern and postmodern transformations—no longer directly recognizes the one who speaks in the law, perhaps, indeed, does not even hear a voice, he or she nevertheless experiences more or less anonymously the inescapable demand: "Here you and no other are addressed. Here you are responsible. If you evade it, you are guilty." The human being is ultimately responsible: that is the element of truth of Kantian anthropology and ethics, in which it—against postmodern diffusion and covering of tracks—is the ally of theology.

(pp.7-9, "With Luther in the Present", Lutheran Quarterly, Spring 2007 Volume XXI, Number 1)

The Distinctive Mosaic Law

Elizabeth Anscombe has an admirable summary of the distinctiveness of the Mosaic Law:

For example, it greatly heightens his own notion of the paramountcy of God,; it absolutely forbids superstition, 'seeking truth from the dead', concern with omens, soothsaying; if we suppose him [a 'seeker after God'] acquainted with, say, Arabian tribes of the fiercer sort, we can also suppose that he is struck by the prescriptions tending to check the licence and bloody revenge natural among such people; the arrangements tending to make impossible the casual jetttisoning of wives and the killing of those who have suddenly or accidentally killed your relations. for while revenge was forbidden as a matter of personal ethic, it is also made difficult as a matter of public law by the establishment of the cities of refuge. He notes the prohibition on punishing any but the offender - remember that even Roman law, as codified by a Christian Emperor, permitted the destruction of the family and close associates of a man found guilty of treason against the state; but the Mosaic law forbade it. He notes the restriction on stripes as a punishment to forty 'lest thy brother become vile in they sight' - equally astonishing when you think of Roman floggings, or floggings in the British navy up to quite recent times. There is no torture in the Mosaic law: remember again that the Code of Justinian retained the requirement to torture slaves as witnesses. He notes the fact that if you so much as knocked out the tooth of a slave, he was to go free; the asylum to runaway slaves from the nations round about, the prohibition on man-stealing; the provision whereby you could not send a slave or bondman away if he had married in your house and chose to remain; the provisions forbidding persecution of poor debtors. He sees the contrast between the estimation of offences against property [...] and offences against the person and sexual offences.

(italics original, p. 35, 'Prophecy and Miracles' in Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics)

The essay itself is very good, and I think I will read it again and maybe even post a summary.

Leithart and I on Law and Gospel

To quote Leithart in full:

A strict distinction between law and gospel is offered as a prophylactic against works-righteousness. If it is admitted that law is gospel in any sense, all is lost.

But this view assumes the very same view of law that it contests. A proponent of works righteousness sees the law as demands that need to be kept, and the end of the law is simply its keeping. The proponent of law/gospel segregation has the same view of law.

Both detach law from its purpose, which, as Knight argues, is eschatological. Law exists to correct, instruct, lead to maturity. And to that extent, law is always intended as, and in practice often is, good news.

However is this to misunderstand what is properly meant by Law/Gospel. Charles Arand and Robert Kolb in their conversations on the Book of Concord note that even "Christ died for your sins" can be "Law" rather than Gospel if you hear it as condemning you for the magnitude of your sins rather than lifting you from despair (they said it in a really menacing and accusative way to emphasise the point).

Kolb and Arand don't make the connection but I wonder if the same cannot be true for commandments. Commandments can be good news if they bring life rather than condemnation. I think of the beatitudes which Matthew characterises as Gospel (Matt 4:23) although most people teach them as commandments - do this and you will receive this (be merciful and you will receive mercy etc). However, if read in context they seem to be saying: “rejoice because you who are X are going to be saved”. It does not say be X, but assumes that they already are. Equally though it could be preached as an impossible standard we cannot reach in seeking justification by our works.

So the same words can have the different meanings for different people. God knew this so the Law of Moses was intended to be both life and death to people, just as the Gospel is (2 Corinthians 2:16). This may make interpretation of the different statements in the bible a whole lot easier (although it may be cheating).