According to a pastor from the Alberta Synod, "We do ourselves and the people of God an injustice if we try to separate what God has joined together. The Holy Scriptures are true as a whole and in all their parts. If we rend them apart and see in them great contradictions and opposing theologies, how can we rely on a sure word from God in the midst of life’s trials and temptations?"
Introduction
Today in our ELCIC there is some confusion about our how to understand and apply our Christian faith. Some methods of Biblical interpretation have spawned a distrust in the plain sense of Scripture and in the unity of Scripture - something Martin Luther and the reformers believed in, cherished, and entrusted to us.
The ability to study Scripture by the use of human reason is a God-given capacity. But it has parameters. We need to approach Scripture with humility, using sound hermeneutic principles and relying on God’s Holy Spirit to teach us, instead of allowing our human reason or the cultural trends of the day to dominate our understanding of God’s Word.
In this article my purpose is to give only a very cursory analysis of the topic. It is beyond the scope of this summary to include many Biblical references or do a detailed exegesis of specific passages. I am assuming the readers have a keen knowledge of Scripture that will bring some resonance to what I am trying to say.
Relationship
Relationship is at the heart of our Christian faith. Our faith centers on a relationship with God and with one another. Theology is man’s best attempt to understand and explain this relationship that was once perfect, but was ruined when sin ruptured our relationship with God, self, and others. The Biblical story of salvation is God acting in human history to restore the human race to fellowship with Himself and with one another. God’s action would culminate in the arrival of His Son, Jesus Christ, who by His life, death, and resurrection would remove the barrier of sin and bring forgiveness and reconciliation to the human race.
The Biblical Narrative: A Unified Message
The Old Testament
It requires some effort to properly understand the Biblical narrative, especially the Old Testament. The accounts are rich and complex. The characters are many. The history spans many centuries and is written by different authors. Still, it is all threads of a seamless garment woven by God as He gradually unfolded His plan of redemption. Understanding it is within reach of ordinary Christian people, not only learned scholars.
In God’s story we see the account of the creation and fall of humankind. It then moves to the flood, the covenant with Abraham, the lives of the patriarchs, the birth the nation Israel, and the sojourn in Egypt. It continues on to the Exodus, with the crossing of the Red Sea and the Passover as a pivotal point in God’s redemption history. We then see God’s people set apart to worship Him by means of the tabernacle and the sacrificial system that would atone for sin - a shadow and type of the perfect sacrifice that Jesus Christ would one day offer.
As the story continues with the wilderness wanderings we see the recurring pattern of sin, divine discipline, intercession, and forgiveness. The Mosaic Covenant is established to give Israel a conscience, a deterrent, a measuring stick, and a path by which to walk. It is not a means of salvation but an extension and outgrowth of God’s earlier covenant with Abraham, an expression of God’s will for humankind and a means by which people would be made conscious of their sin and aware of their need for forgiveness.
We continue to see the reign of God among His people as He enacts civil laws to preserve order and to enhance and protect life. Under the leadership of Joshua, God’s people enter the promised land. Over the next centuries the Israelites struggle for national identity. The pattern of sin and grace continues as they frequently turn away from God to false gods. God disciplines them by allowing foreign oppression, they cry out to God in their suffering, God rescues them through His chosen leaders, and they remain faithful to God for a time.
Then Israel, as a loosely knit confederacy, is united under the reign of Kings, with David being the King par excellence with whom God reaffirms His ancient covenant with Abraham, and from whose family line Jesus was descended.
The story continues with the exile of God’s people because of their persistent rebellion toward Him, the messages of the prophets sent by God to turn His people back to covenant relationship with Him, and the return to the promised land and the rebuilding of the temple for worship.
Clearly this is a telescoping of salvation history, but I am trying to show that the story is a not a patchwork of unrelated accounts or a mix of different theologies. Though it is at times complex, it is one story, authored by the Spirit of God as He worked through the human writers.
The New Testament
The story of God’s salvation is perfectly continuous from the Old Testament to the New Testament. The promises and prophecies of the Old Testament came to fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ (note all the OT quotations in the NT). The gospels are not biographies in the normal sense, but are rather, as somebody once said, “Passion and Easter narratives with long introductions.” They are witnesses of who Christ is and what He did, written to call forth faith in Him and in His saving work. And though the gospels differ somewhat in content, and are written to different audiences, they all contain the truth about Jesus, because the human authors were superintended by the Holy Spirit as they wrote their words.
Christ came to bring the kingdom reign of God into the hearts of all who trust in Him. His preaching, teaching, and miracles of healing, exorcism, and raising the dead all served as both proclamation and demonstration that God was in their midst; that He was about the same business He had been involved in beginning thousands of years earlier, namely, to restore fallen humankind back to an eternal relationship with Himself. And to accomplish this, Christ gave His life to set us free from Satan, sin, and death.
Jesus and the Law
Any notion that Jesus was a rebel who came to upset the status quo of His day, is a false portrayal of Him. He was not a lawbreaker (antinomian) in any sense. Rather, He came to fulfill the law, in that He gave it its full meaning and emphasized its deep, underlying principles and total commitment to it rather than mere external acknowledgment and obedience. With respect to keeping the law, His actions often did fly in the face of the many additions and amendments to God’s moral and ceremonial law that people added over time to enhance their feelings of personal piety. In doing these things He was not breaking God’s law, but exposing false and hypocritical distortions of it.
In any discussion about the law we need to be clear about what law(s) we are talking about. The civil law was given by God for only a time--when Israel was not subject to an earthly government but was governed directly by God through His anointed leaders (pure theocracy). The ceremonial law (and sacrificial system) was also given by God for a time, as the means by which there could be atonement for sin through animal sacrifice. The moral law (the decalogue, or ten commandments), is that which alone expresses God’s enduring will for humankind (love God, love neighbor). And this, Jesus fulfilled with perfection! He also fulfilled and brought to an end the need for the sacrificial system and the ceremonial laws that were only shadows and types of His perfect life and His sacrificial death for our sins.
Early Proclamation of Jesus’ Life, Death, and Resurrection
Luke continues his gospel narrative with the book of Acts. The early apostles who proclaimed the message personally knew the Jesus of the gospel writings. Anointed by God, sent forth by Him, and filled with His Spirit, they were not going to skew the message about what Jesus taught and what Jesus did. The Jesus they proclaimed was the very same Jesus we read of in the gospel accounts. Their ways of communicating who Jesus is and what He did may have been somewhat different from that of Jesus (for example, Jesus told a lot of parables), but their message was in perfect harmony with everything Jesus did and taught. They proclaimed truth, just like Jesus did. On this note we need to keep in mind that Jesus was proclaiming Himself as the truth; the early Church was proclaiming the truth about Him. This alone would involve some variance in the forms of communication and terminology that they (especially Paul) would later employ to articulate the gospel message.
Jesus and Paul
We don’t know for sure if Paul personally met Jesus during Jesus‘ earthly life, but Jesus certainly appeared to him in person on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). And after Paul’s conversion he became one of the most articulate spokesmen of the gospel message. In his letters he uses terms like salvation, atonement, redemption, reconciliation, justification, sanctification, mediator, and adoption to describe the fullest possible dimensions of who Christ is and what He has done for us. Paul didn’t make up his gospel. It was revealed to him by Jesus Christ (Acts 9, 22, 26; Gal 1:1, 15-16; Eph 3:2-3), so there was no discrepancy, no contradictions in his teaching from that which Jesus taught. Paul was guided by the Spirit of Jesus living in him. Consequently, he proclaimed “the truth that is in Jesus” (Eph 4:21). Like Jesus, he upheld God’s moral law as something good, and that which would continue to serve its purpose to reveal sin and to be a guide for living out our life in Christ (law/gospel, third use of the law). Like Jesus, he also taught that living the Christian life is only possible by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit who indwells the believer.
Paul’s gospel was a continuation of the unified message about the Person who was promised and typified in the Old Testament, incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, proclaimed by the early messengers of the gospel, and now proclaimed by us today.
Conclusion
We do ourselves and the people of God an injustice if we try to separate what God has joined together. The Holy Scriptures are true as a whole and in all their parts. If we rend them apart and see in them great contradictions and opposing theologies, how can we rely on a sure word from God in the midst of life’s trials and temptations? How can we proclaim to others, “This is the Word of the Lord?" How can we teach both law and gospel, both justification and sanctification?
May God give us the spirit of the Reformers, who were not captivated by the sophistry of their day but instead based all they believed and all they taught on the Holy Scriptures as God’s inerrant Word that has one unified message.
- Pastor Marv Krebs
- Interim Pastor, Synod of Alberta
