A significant debate is underway today about God’s law. Are we free from every aspect of biblical law because we are “under grace”? The New Testament doesn’t support this claim (e.g., Rom. 13:8-10; 1 Cor. 5:1-2). How do people know they are loving someone if not by some moral standard? Not stealing, murdering, and committing adultery are acts of love. What about the Mosaic legislation? Dispensationalists maintain that we are in a different dispensation where nothing in the Mosaic legislation applies. For many dispensationalists, law in the Old Testament is exclusively “Jewish law.”[1] Dispensationalists do believe that Mosaic legislation will be revived during the thousand years of Revelation 20, including circumcision and animal sacrifices.
In Dallas Theological Seminary’s scholarly journal, Bibliotheca Sacra, S. Lewis Johnson (1915-2004), a former seminary professor, argued that the Ten Commandments should not be part of a Christian’s ethical life. He quotes dispensationalist Donald Grey Barnhouse for support.
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.[2]
This sounds like what I’ve been hearing from Israel-Only advocates who believe the Bible was only meant for Jews and after AD 70 everything is up for grabs when it comes to ethics. But God’s revelation was not limited to Israel.
“See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the LORD my God commanded me, that you are to do these things in the land where you are entering to take possession of it. So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ What great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God, whom we call on? Or what great nation has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole Law I am setting before you today?” (Deut. 4:5-8).
The book of Hebrews never disavows the moral law of the Old Covenant, but it consistently shows that Jesus fulfilled the laws related to blood, the priesthood (7:12), the temple, and the altar (e.g., 7:27; 9:12; 10:10-14; 13:10). Paul often appeals to the moral law from the Old Testament, and why wouldn’t he? “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). “All Scripture” refers to what we call the Old Testament. Why discard what God has specifically revealed?
Charles Colson (1931-2012) criticized Christian Reconstruction in an interview with Bill Moyers on the “God and Politics” segment that first aired in December 1987. See Christian Reconstruction: What It Is? What It Isn’t? and The Debate Over Christian Reconstruction.
Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, What It Isn't
Christians have been told that there is nothing they can do to improve society. This idea is the devil’s own lie, one that gives him breathing room. They have been told that the world is lawfully governed by neutral principles of ethics, law, and science. Christians have believed this, but the results have been anything but neutral: secular humanism, New Age mysticism, and abortion on demand. Christian Reconstruction is a theological system, a movement of independent activists, and a cultural ideal. Its goal is nothing short of transformation of the world. “And they shall build the old wastes, and they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generation” (Isa. 61:4). Isaiah’s vision of cultural transformation was recapitulated by Christ, but applied to the whole world through God’s church, not just to the kingdom of ancient Israel: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). Will the church be successful in presenting God’s message? Yes!
Buy NowReconstructionists believe God’s moral law is applicable to all of life. Consider the following article by Colson, published in the 1988 book Transforming Our World, titled “The Kingdom of God and Human Kingdoms.”
Recently I addressed the Texas legislature…. I told them that the only answer to the crime problem is to take nonviolent criminals out of our prisons and make them pay back their victims with restitution. This is how we can solve the prison crowding problem.
The amazing thing was that afterwards they came up to me one after another and said things like, “That’s a tremendous idea. Why hasn’t anyone thought of that?” I had the privilege of saying to them, “Read Exodus 22. It is only what God said to Moses on Mount Sinai thousands of years ago.”[3]
Colson did not take the legislators to natural law or Adamic or Noahic law. Instead, he refers them to Mosaic legislation, a set of laws dispensationalists and Israel Onlyists say were unique to Israel. Scofield and his fellow dispensationalists say these laws were never meant for non-Jews. According to dispensationalists, they are Israel-specific case laws.[4] Consider the following from Ted Koppel, the host of “Nightline.”
What Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions. They are commandments. Are, not were. The sheer brilliance of the Ten Commandments is that they codify in a handful of words acceptable human behavior, not just for then or now, but for all time. Language evolves. Power shifts from one nation to another. Messages are transmitted with the speed of light. Man erases one frontier after another. And yet we and our behavior and the commandments governing that behavior remain the same.[5]
Colson believed that Exodus 22 is “the only answer to the crime problem.”
[T]he citizens of the kingdom of God living in the midst of the kingdoms of the world provide a respect for the Law that stands beyond human law. It means the presence of a community of people whose values are established by eternal truths. There is no other place that a culture can find those values.
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“How about the revealed propositional truth of Scripture, because that is the Law that is beyond law?” The Bible provides a basis for absolute truth, for true right and wrong. It is only the citizens of the kingdom in the midst of the kingdoms of man that make that discovery possible.[6]
Colson saw the whole Bible as the standard. “[W]e must apply God’s laws.”[7] Which laws ought to be applied? Can God’s law be applied to non-Christians? As we’ve already seen, Colson told a group of Texas legislators to dust off their Bibles and look at the Mosaic legislation regarding restitution found in Exodus 22.
In his book Kingdoms in Conflict, Colson decries a “utopianism” that he says, “is often articulated today in contemporary Christian circles.” He argues that “such preoccupation with the political diverts the church from its primary mission”: saving man’s soul. But another risk exists, particularly among “those on the political right where many want to impose Christian values on society by force of law.”[8] He wrote. “Some, such as those in the theonomist movement, even want to reinstate Old Testament civil codes, ignoring Christ’s teaching in the parable of the wheat and the tares in which He warns that we live with the good (the wheat) and evil (the tares), and cannot root out the tares. Only God is able to do that and He will—when the Kingdom comes in its final glory.”[9] This is typical. But how should we then live before the “final glory”?
God and Government
With a fresh new look, more images, an extensive subject and scripture index, and an updated bibliography, God and Government is ready to prepare a whole new generation to take on the political and religious battles confronting Christians today. May it be used in a new awakening of Christians in America—not just to inform minds, but to stimulate action and secure a better tomorrow for our posterity.
Buy NowColson would be hard-pressed to find a Reconstructionist who believes in utopia or that the Christian’s concern should be for the world rather than the salvation of souls. Can’t it be both, with the person’s salvation as a priority? The Bible says God “so loved the world,” and everything He made is good (1 Tim. 4:1-4). Reconstructionists want to know how the saved should act in the world post-salvation. This is the message Paul sends to the early churches. The Pauline letters were designed to show these new Christians how to live “in this present evil age” (Gal. 1:4).
One of Colson’s heroes is William Wilberforce, who cared about slaves as they lived in this world. How should Christians have responded? I’m not sure how an Israel Onlyist would respond, considering that after AD 70 everything is up for grabs.
Can you imagine what the world would be like today if the nations applied the following law to slavery? “Now one who kidnaps someone, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall certainly be put to death” (Ex. 21:16). According to the Bible, the State (civil government) has the power of the sword to enforce these values (Rom. 13:4). But Colson inconsistently objected to applying biblical values in this way. Which is it? In his article “The Kingdom of God and Human Kingdoms,” he says Exodus 22 is an excellent example for prison reform, and we should “apply God’s laws.” See Gary North’s Victim’s Rights and James Jordan’s The Law of the Covenant.
The Law of the Covenant
If we take a man-centered approach to these laws, we might say that the purpose of this legislation is only to ensure human prosperity. Such an approach to the law of God misses the most basic point. These laws show us God's own genuine personal care for His world, and as such these laws cannot be altered by human whim. To be sure, the Bible is man-oriented, and thus obedience to these laws will improve human life; but the laws are God's, and cannot be changed by man. Thus, as we examine the laws in Exodus 21-23, our first concern must be the glory of God, not whether these laws seem right to us sinful men. If we start with God, we will soon see how these laws also improve human life.
Buy NowApplying God’s law to society does not conflict with the theology of the parable of the wheat and the tares. The parable of the wheat and tares describes events leading up to the destruction of the temple in AD 70. Many of the Jews believed in Jesus, and many rejected Jesus. When the temple was destroyed, the distinction between believing and unbelieving Jews became apparent. In the lead-up to Rome’s wars with the Jews, the Romans could not distinguish between Christian Jews and non-Christian Jews.
During Paul’s trial in Corinth, when the Jews brought charges against Paul, Gallio refused to intervene in what he considered an internal intramural religious matter, stating, “If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you: But if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters” (Acts 18:14-15). He then drove the accusers from the judgment seat.
Rousas J. Rushdoony offers a helpful correction to those who claim that since Jesus’ death, Christians are not obligated to follow even the Ten Commandments, let alone other laws that have specific application to our lives.
The purpose of grace is not to set aside the law but to fulfil the law and to enable man to keep the law. If the law was so serious in the sight of God that it would require the death of Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, to make atonement for man’s sin, it seems strange for God then to proceed to abandon the law! The goal of the law is not lawlessness, nor the purpose of grace a lawless contempt of the giver of the law.[10]
[1] “To be sure, dispensational premillenarians insist that the Old Testament Law was given only to the Jews and not to Gentiles.” Norman L. Geisler, “A Premillennial View of Law and Government,” The Best in Theology, gen. ed. J. I. Packer (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today/Word, 1986), 1:259. See the multi-volume dispensational work, Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, 8 vols. (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 1947), 4:234-243.
[2] S. Lewis Johnson, “The Paralysis of Legalism,” Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 120 (April/June 1963), 109.
[3] Charles Colson, “The Kingdom of God and Human Kingdoms,” Transforming Our World: A Call to Action, ed. ed. James M. Boice (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1988), 154-155.
[4] House and Ice write: “The Christian is to love the law of God. Grace does not free the believer from obedience to the will of God. However, Christians are not under the expression of the law as it was given to Israel. Instead, we may use the Mosaic legislation as examples of how we may respond individually and corporately; we may gain wisdom from it [as suggestions for godly living?]. Christians are, however, to obey the will of God as it is expressed in the New Testament — the law of Christ — and the law revealed in the Adamic and Noahic covenants." House and Ice, Dominion Theology, 118-119.
[5] Ted Koppel, The Last Word, Commencement Address at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (May 10, 1987). Quoted in Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 164.
[6] Colson, “The Kingdom of God and Human Kingdoms,” 151.
[7] Colson, “The Kingdom of God and Human Kingdoms,” 154.
[8] Charles Colson, Kingdoms in Conflict (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987), 117.
[9] Colson, Kingdoms in Conflict, 117.
[10] The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: The Craig Press, 1973), 4.