The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesiological Theology

August 18, 2011 by Matthew Mason

Keeping the law to please God

A friend sent me this quotation and asked my opinion:

[In contrast to religious and irreligious unbelievers alike]: A Christian comes to say: “though I have often failed to obey the law, the deeper problem is why I was ever trying to obey it! Even my effort to obey it is just a way of seeking to be my own savior. In that mindset, even if I obey or ask for forgiveness, I am really resisting the gospel and setting myself up as Savior.”

It’s possible that the author means nothing more than that a Christian, looking back on his/her moralistic pre-Christian life recognises that his/her attempts at obedience then were sinfully motivated. This seems to me entirely uncontroversial; in fact, the paper from which this comes has very helpful analyses of the dynamics at work in unbelievers’ attitude to God’s standards. As a good Anglican, I can point to the 39 Articles for Reformational support for this position:

Works done before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of His Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ, neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School authors say) deserve grace of congruity: yea, rather for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin. (Article 13)

However, I don’t think this is the most likely interpretation of the author’s words. Later in the paragraph he claims that, in contrast to irreligious people who don’t repent and religious people who repent only for their sins, Christians “also repent of their righteousness.” This – coupled with the argument of the paper as a whole, that the gospel is the beginning and end of the Christian life, that all our problems come from a lack of orientation to the gospel – suggests that he means that Christians should speak like this of our present attempts to obey God.

This view of the gospel, the law and the Christian life seems to be growing in popularity in certain parts of the evangelical world. Sadly, though, it’s a Procrustean bed. It chops up the Bible to fit a hermeneutical bed that is small and exegetically deforming. It also stretches and misshapes believers to fit a pastoral bed that weakens our hands, legs, and feet, making it harder for us to walk in the ways of righteousness.

Hermeneutically (to take just a couple of examples), where in the NT are believers called upon to repent of their righteousness? Certainly, we continue to be sinners, and must repent of our sins (e.g., 1 Tim 1:15; 1 Jn. 1:8ff).  But when Luke describes Zechariah and Elizabeth as “righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord” (Lk. 1:6), he is commending them, not highlighting their need for repentance.  When Paul calls others to imitate him (e.g., Phil 3:17), or when he offers Timothy and Epaphroditus as models of Christ-like behaviour (Phil. 2:19-30; cf. 2:5-11), although it’s not a claim to perfection (cf. Phil 3:14!), nor to justification by works (cf. 3:9-11!),  surely it’s not limited to imitating his repentance. It can’t be: he wants us to follow him as he follows Christ (1 Cor 1:11), who never had to repent of his righteousness.  Paul commends his, and others’, Spirit-wrought righteousness as a model for us to follow.

Pastorally and theologically, at root, this kind of preaching appears to lack even the most rudimentary distinction between Christians and non-Christians. To return again to the Articles, as a representative Reformed statement on these matters: in the language of Article 13, works done before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of His Spirit, are not pleasant to God…’ But, by implication, works done following justification, and in the power of the indwelling Spirit, are pleasing to God. Indeed, that’s the point of the preceding Article:

Albeit that good works, which are the fruits of faith and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins and endure the severity of God’s judgement, yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit. (Article 12, emphasis mine)[1]

In other words, for the Christian, our attempts at obedience are not a problem. They’re certainly not a way of resisting the gospel, nor of seeking to be our own savior. We’re not like non-Christians! We have died and been made alive together with Christ (Rom 6:1-11); the Spirit of Christ dwells in us, ripening his fruit in our lives, writing the law on our hearts, motivating and enabling us to keep its righteous requirements (Gal 5:16-26; Jer. 31:33; Rom 8:4) ; we have the mind of Christ (2 Cor 2:16; cf. Phil. 2:5). So we must not speak, think, or act as if a Christian’s desire to keep the law has the same motivation as that of a non-Christian. To be sure, our motives are inconsistent and imperfect – wise pastors will remember that. To be sure, the gospel does motivate sanctification in all kinds of ways – good pastors will try to speak in the rich and variegated ways of the Bible on this issue. But God has also given us the Spirit, that, like Zechariah and Elizabeth, we may obey God’s commandments and statutes, not to save ourselves, but to walk blamelessly before our loving heavenly Father, who is well pleased with us.

Categories: General | Matthew Mason | sanctification