Thomas Ice and H. Wayne House (just two among many) maintain false divisions regarding the law. They want to make a radical distinction between the “law of God” and the “law of Christ” as if two law systems are operating in the Bible.
Currently, God has made a new covenant with his people—the church—and we live under the “law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).[1]
Indeed, there is a “new covenant” with significant changes, and Jesus is the focus of those changes. The book of Hebrews spells them out in systematic detail. But it’s another thing to claim that “the law of Christ” has reference to a new moral code designed to replace God’s moral law that is found in what we described as the Old Testament.
House Divided: The Break Up of Dispensational Theology
Bahnsen takes on the law sections, while Gentry handles the eschatology. Dispensationalism teaches that God has two distinct plans: one for Israel and one for the Church. Bahnsen and Gentry show clearly that God never intended or taught about separate plans. Quite the opposite, God's plan for Israel was but the first phase of His plan for the world. Jesus was both God's plan and His solution before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:17-21).
Buy NowPitting the “law of God” over against the “law of Christ” is an old liberal ploy. This is not to say that anyone who substitutes the “law of Christ” with the “law of God” is a theological liberal. Liberalism (modernism) taught that the God of the Old Testament was a God of wrath and law, while the God of the New Testament (Jesus) is the God of love and grace. This heresy predates nineteenth-century modernism. It finds its best (worst?) expression in the writings of the medieval millenarian, the Abbot Joachim of Flora.
In contrast with the two-period old/new dichotomy, Joachim envisaged a threefold division of history, based on the Persons of the Trinity. The Old Testament era was the Age of the Father, an age of Law; the New Testament period was the Age of the Son, based on the Gospel. The Third Age would be the Age of the Holy Spirit, based on a new covenant and a spiritual, or eternal, Gospel. The Old Testament was the age of civil rule, the New Testament that of the church and hierarchy; the Third Age would be an age of spiritual government, of a monastic church.[2]
Joachim’s writings expressed a decided dissatisfaction with the existing church and its leadership. He was not concerned about the reformation of the church but only its denial. His threefold periodization rendered reformation impossible. The inevitability of history forced him to reject the present age for the next age. Joachim saw the Age of the Spirit, the third and final age, coming in his lifetime, A.D. 1260 to be exact. But as Robert Nisbet observes, “Joachim’s ‘Age of Spirit,’ demanded a heavy price: a period of time in which anarchy would prevail, in which torments would multiply, in which strife of every kind would become dominant. And the millennium, when it did finally come, would come suddenly, precipitately, blindingly.”[3]
Joachim’s “three ages” view is like modern premillennialism’s “dispensations.” In addition, Joachim’s apocalypticism is nearly identical with the views espoused by modern-day prophetic speculators. “Joachim succeeded in directing the attention of a large segment of Christendom away from the present to the future, from the contemporary church and its claims to a realistic eschatology and the expectation that the Last Days were imminent. His ideas were soon declared heretical and passed from the religious scene, but his periodization of history into three ages continues to fascinate and influence many.”[4]
No Other Standard: Theonomy and Its Critics
No Other Standard is Dr. Bahnsen’s response to various books, articles, and other critiques that have circulated over the years. Bahnsen skillfully takes his critics’ arguments apart, showing that they have either misrepresented his position or misrepresented the Bible. Line by line, point by point, he shows that they have not understood his arguments and have also not understood the vulnerability of their own logical and theological positions. Joe Louis once said of an ill-fated scheduled opponent in the ring, “He can run, but he can’t hide.” Likewise, Bahnsen’s critics. No Other Standard corners them all, and one by one, floors them.
Buy NowDo we worship three gods with three different laws and agendas? The law of God is one because God is one (John 10:30). Do different words and phrases always mean different things? For example, how many gospels are there? The Bible tells us there is the “gospel of Christ” (Gal. 1:7), the “gospel of God” (Rom. 1:1; 15:16), the “gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:15), and Paul mentions a gospel that he describes as “my gospel” (Rom. 16:25). Are there four different gospels?
There are several law synonyms in Scripture: “The law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2); “the law of faith” (Rom. 3:27); “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ” (Rom. 8:2); “the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:20), “the law of liberty” (James 1:25), etc. As these few examples show, law does not always mean legal code.
It is important to note that the term “law” (nomos) possesses a range of meanings in Paul’s writings. It can refer to the Ten Commandments (“if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet,’” Rom. 7:7), to the Pentateuch (“the law and the prophets,” rom. 3:210, or even to the whole Old Testament (note 1 Cor. 14:21, where “in the law it is written” is followed by a quotation from Isa. 28:11-12; see also Rom. 3:19 with the quotations that precede it). The term can refer to a principle (“I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand,” Rom. 7:21) and perhaps to Roman civil law (Rom. 7:1-3), and can serve as a synonym for “works of the law” (cf. Gal. 3:10 and 11), which refers to the keeping of the law in order to gain or retain one’s salvation. That the term law has a broad semantic range in Paul should not surprise us and should keep us from trying to assign a single meaning to the term wherever it appears in his writings.[5]
What, then, does the New Testament mean by the “law of Christ”? Since the New Testament gives no direct definition of the law of Christ, we must look for one based on what we know about the work of Christ. There seems to be a special relationship between the two.
- In one place, we’re told that Jesus came to give us a “new commandment”: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34). The command to love one another certainly was not a new commandment. Jesus quoted Leviticus 19:18 and Deuteronomy 6:5 in answer to the question of “which is the great commandment in the Law” (Matt. 23:35). Loving God and loving one’s neighbor were not new commands (Lev. 19:17-18; 1 John 2:9, 11; 3:15; Matt. 18:15; Luke 17:3; Matt. 19:19; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Rom. 13:9). In fact, these two laws are the focal point of the entire Old Testament, and they are just as applicable in the New Testament. Jesus went on to say that “on these two commandments depend the whole Law and Prophets” (Matt. 23:40). But following Jesus as an example of self-sacrificing love was a new commandment. As the good shepherd, Jesus would “lay down His life for the sheep” (John 10:11). He would “lay down His life for His friends” (John 15:13). He would “die for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6). Fulfilling “the law of Christ,” at least in this context, is a manifestation of a self-sacrificing act.
- “Bear one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). This choice of words by Paul is reminiscent of Jesus taking the burden of sin from us. While we cannot remove the burden of sin, we can help to lighten the load that sin brings for those who are beset by iniquity and its consequences. “‘The law of Christ’ seems here plainly to be the law of mutual love, so often and so explicitly enjoined, and so powerfully and affectionately enforced,—John xiii. 34, 35; xv. 12…. When Christians bear one another’s burdens, they obey the law of Christ; and when they do not, they violate that law.”[6] Jesus is our example.
The ‘law of Christ’ is to love one another as He loves us; that was the new commandment which He gave (Jn. 13:34; 15:12). So, as Paul has already stated in Galatians 5:14, to ‘love our neighbour’, ‘bear one another’s burdens’ and ‘fulfil the law’ are three equivalent expressions. It shows that to love one another as Christ loved us may lead us not to some heroic, spectacular deed of self-sacrifice, but to the much more mundane and unspectacular ministry of burden-bearing.[7]
- By using the phrase “the law of Christ,” Paul is emphasizing the New Testament fulfillment of certain Old Testament types that are realized in the New Testament antitype, Jesus Christ. In this sense, the Christian is under both the law of God (moral requirements) and the law of Christ (redemption accomplished). By using the law of Christ, Christians are reminded that Jesus was the once-for-all fulfillment of everything the Old Testament prophesied. All the laws that were designed to point sinners to Christ were fulfilled in and by Christ. There is nothing in Galatians 6:2 that should lead us to the conclusion that “in such a statement Christ is being set up over against Moses as a new lawgiver.”[8]
- The “law of Christ” is also mentioned in 1 Corinthians 9:21. Is Paul making a distinction between the law of Christ and the law of Moses in this passage? In context, the “law of Christ” can be explained in several ways. First, Paul described himself as free from the penalty of the law through the redemption Jesus secured by His death. Second, he is free from ritual law because Jesus fulfilled it, and it is kept in principle in Christ (Lev. 17:11; Heb. 9:22). There is no warrant, however, for making the law of Christ a contrasting ethical system over against the law of God or the law of Moses.[9]
In this instance the Christian ethical imperative is characterized as being “under Christ’s law.” Paul uses the word “law,” of course, because of the wordplay involving “law” compounds. This does not mean that in Christ a new set of laws has taken the place of the old, although in terms of specifics it would certainly refer to those kinds of ethical demands given, for example, in Rom. 12 and Gal. 5-6, so many of which do reflect the teaching of Jesus. Given the frequency of “lawlessness” among the Corinthians who opposed him, it is not difficult to understand the reason for this significant qualification![10]
The “law of God,” the “commands of God” (1 Cor. 7:19), the “law of Christ,” and the “law of Moses” are virtually synonymous.
By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today
Addressing the authority of God's Word, the words of Christ and the New Testament apostles and overall ethic standards, Bahnsen defines in common language the application of God's law in everyday life. By paying attention to the question of God's law in Christian ethics, we are simply being consistent with the conviction that our Christian beliefs should be guided only by Scripture and by all of Scripture!
Buy Now- In 1 Corinthians 9:21, Paul says that “to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ.” What does Paul mean when he says that he is not “without the law of God”? In this same chapter, Paul turns to the “Law of Moses” (v. 9), by way of analogy (Deut. 25:4), to support his contention that those who labor in the spiritual things of the Lord should expect to reap “material things” in the form of monetary payment (1 Cor. 9:11). The moral requirements remain in force.
Gordon Fee nicely summarizes the meaning of Paul’s polemic in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:
His concern was to “win the Jews,” as well as all others; thus “to the Jews I became like a Jew.” This opening item serves as the clue for understanding the others. How can a Jew determine to “become like a Jew”? The obvious answer is, In matters that have to do with Jewish religious peculiarities that Paul as a Christian had long ago given up as essential to a right relationship with God. These would include circumcision (7:19; Gal. 6:15), food laws (8:8; Gal. 2:10-13; Rom. 14:17; Col. 2:16), and special observances (Col. 2:16). On these questions not only was Paul himself free; he also took a thoroughly polemical stance toward any who would impose such requirements on Gentile converts.[11]
Paul did not have a problem referring to laws from the Mosaic era. He was applying wisdom. God revealed wisdom in the laws He gave. We would be foolish to ignore them. Paul didn’t ignore them. Jesus condemned the Pharisees and Scribes for neglecting them. Their neglect led them to create their own law tradition that Jesus said nullified God’s law.
Old Testament laws repeated in the New Testament include commandments such as not to murder (Rom. 13:9; 1 Peter 4:15), not to commit adultery (1 Cor. 6:9–10), not to steal (Eph. 4:28), not to give false testimony (Rev. 21:8), and not to covet (Col. 3:5). The command to honor one’s father and mother is also explicitly repeated in Ephesians 6:1-2. Additionally, Jesus reaffirmed several of the Ten Commandments when speaking to the young ruler in Mark 10:17-19.
Victim's Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice
Modern Christians have neglected or rejected the case laws of Exodus. They are now in judicial bondage to humanists who see criminals as the victims and the law-abiding public as the aggressor. This is the philosophy of environmental determinism. Result: injustice on a wide scale. What about specific penalties for specific crimes against specific victims? What about a system of restitution that helps both victim and criminal to recover? Silence. Why? Because such specifics point too clearly to the idea of God's final judgment and covenant-breaking man's desperate need for someone to make adequate restitution. Victim's Rights shows what judicial changes this would require and how such a system could work today.
Buy NowIn Dallas Theological Seminary’s scholarly journal, Bibliotheca Sacra, S. Lewis Johnson, a former professor at the seminary, argued that the Ten Commandments should not be a part of the Christian’s ethical life. He wrote the following: “Donald Grey Barnhouse, a giant of a man in free grace, wrote: ‘It was a tragic hour when the Reformation churches wrote the Ten Commandments into their creeds and catechisms and sought to bring Gentile believers into bondage to Jewish law, which was never intended either for the Gentile nations or for the church.’ He was right, too.”[12] Not according to what we find in the New Testament except maybe Sabbath legislation.
Paul applies a law about the mistreatment of animals (Deut. 25:4) to “the laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim. 5:18). See an expanded application in 1 Corinthians 9:7-10 where Paul references what is written in “the law of Moses” (v. 9) and broadens its application by stating that it was written “for our sake” (v. 10).
He makes a similar application from the OT about different animals being yoked together for work (Deut. 22:10) with believers and unbelievers being bound together, that is, being “unequally yoked” (ἑτεροζυγέω=hetero [differently] + zugeó [yoked]) (2 Cor. 6:14).
The Old Testament is filled with such applicational laws that did not pass away with the coming of the New Covenant. That’s why Paul could write the following: “All Scripture is God breathed [θεόπνευστος] and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Reproof, correction, and training in righteousness are moral categories. Paul commended Timothy because “from childhood” he had “known the sacred writings” (v. 15). Paul is referring to all the Old Covenant by using the terms “sacred writings” (ἱερὰ γράμματα/hiera grammata) and “scripture” (γραφὴ/graphē). They were and still are applicable. Let’s not forget 1 Corinthians 5:1, where Paul applies legislation from the law given to Moses to a sexual situation in the church at Corinth (Lev. 18:8; Deut. 22:30; 27:20).
[1] H. Wayne House and Thomas Ice, Dominion Theology: Blessing or Curse?: An Analysis of Christian Reconstructionism (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1988), 262.
[2] Harold O. J. Brown, Heresies: The Image of Christ in the Mirror of Heresy and Orthodoxy from the Apostles to the Present (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 266. See Rousas J. Rushdoony’s similar comments in God’s Plan for Victory: The Meaning of Postmillennialism (Tyler, TX: Thoburn Press, 1977), 5-6.
[3] Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 130.
[4] Brown, Heresies, 267.
[5] Robert H. Stein, Difficult Passages in the Epistles (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 104-105.
[6] John Brown, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians (Marshallton, DE: Sovereign Grace Publishers, reprinted 1970), 325.
[7] John R. W. Stott, Only One Way: The Message of Galatians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968), 158.
[8] Herman N. Ridderbos, The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1953), 213.
[9] It’s surprising that so many people would make “Mosaic Law” into a separate category as if Moses was its author. Keep in mind that God revealed the law to Moses. The Ten Commandments were written by God’s own hand.
[10] Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 430.
[11] Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 427-28.
[12] “The Paralysis of Legalism,” Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 120 (April/June 1963), 109.