Paul's Passing Thoughts

“The fact that Christians buy into ‘the imperative command is [always] grounded in the indicative event,’ is just plain embarrassing.”

I guess the belief sweeping through Christendom  that saints are unable to participate in the sanctification process is just fine with everybody. Also, we know that Christ died for our sins, but did he also live on earth for our works in sanctification? Was one of the primary purposes of His first appearing to fulfill the Law for us, and thereby nullifying a necessity to uphold  the Law in the sanctification process by us?  That seems like a major doctrinal angle to me with serious consequences regarding life application. But hey, I guess that’s just me. This neo-Reformed  doctrine can be seen clearly in a recent post by Justin Taylor entitled “Imperatives – Indicatives = Impossibilities” on his “Between Two Worlds” blog. The title of his blog is a reference to the Biblical Theology of Geerhardus Vos. “Biblical Theology” is an interpretive process initiated by an eighteenth century liberal named Johann Philipp Gabler, who emphasized interpretation based on Historicism as opposed to dogma (ideas drawn from the text using literal interpretation). Vos supposedly took Gabler’s concept in a more conservative direction. Supposedly.

Obviously, all of the grammatical commands in the Bible with the saints being the object of the action (God commanding) is a serious problem for those who propagate this neo-Reformed doctrine, sometimes referred to as Gospel Sanctification. Hence, the post by Taylor (http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/05/03/imperatives-indicatives-impossibilities/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+between2worlds+%28Between+Two+Worlds%29&utm_content=Netvibes ), that states that all commands in the Bible are preceded by a historical account of God performing the foundation of the command beforehand. In other words, we are not really obeying, we are merely displaying the obedience of Christ, who obeys for us. The only problem is the following: to suggest that this is a consistent  grammatical pattern throughout the New Testament is an insult to any intelligence one might possess. Throughout the NT, God also makes His actions contingent on our obedience. The fact that Christians buy into “the imperative command is [always] grounded in the indicative event,” is just plain embarrassing. I address this in one of the chapters of my book:

Click to access essay%2011.PDF

The link is the specific excerpt, and catalogs many examples.

In this particular post, Taylor also displays the attitude among GS advocates that they are on the cutting edge of a new reformation, and invariably on a mission from God to save the church from orthodox evangelicalism:

“The problem with the typical evangelical motivation toward radical or sacrificial living is that ‘imperatives divorced from indicatives become impossibilities’ (to quote Tullian Tchividjian). Or another way that Tullian puts it: ‘gospel obligations must be based on gospel declarations.’

This ‘become what you are’ way of speaking is strange for many us. It seems precisely backward. But we must adjust our mental compass in order to walk this biblical path and recalibrate in order to speak this biblical language.”

In addition, the post is very insightful because several GS cronies comment in unguarded fashion. How this theology fleshes itself out in real life can be ascertained by the many comments (which had to be closed due to the number of Kool-Aid drinkers rushing the alter to drink from the vat).

“Alex” said: “I hear Tim Keller doing this a lot in his preaching. He will often organize his message around, “Here’s what you need to do, but you’re not doing it and in fact you can’t do it. You will never be able to do this until you see what Christ has done/who Christ has made you”.

“Mike” said: “….And all along they’ve been doing it in their own strength, because no one tells them they can rest in the finished work of Christ: both His passive obedience on the Cross and, as Chad mentioned, His active obedience throughout the 33 years before the Cross.”

Is that true?  In the sanctification process, are we to “rest”? And are we to totally rest in what Christ has already done in our place? Remember, Alex also said that it is not us doing it [the obedience], and we couldn’t, even if we wanted to. To exert effort  is to do it in our “own strength” (Mike).

Chad Bresson, another advocate of GS and a Christian mystic / blogger, further propagates the whole “Jesus obeys for us” idea in his comment on the same post:

“I usually take it a half-step back further in the indicative, including Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. The indicative isn’t simply our position in Christ, but is (more importantly) Christ for us. IOW, not only should we be encouraging our people to become who they already are in Christ Jesus, we must be reminding them of what He has already been and done for them. We *do* the imperatives, not simply because of who we are in our union with Him, but because Christ has already done the imperatives on our behalf because we couldn’t. When I can’t do any given imperative perfectly (failing miserably), I rest in the One who has. Christ’s imputed active obedience is never far from the indicative-imperative rhythm of the Pauline ethic.”

Bresson’s comment concerning Christ’s “imputed active obedience “ should need no explanation in regard to what he is saying.

Other disturbing elements of GS can be seen in a comment by “Bruce” who reiterates the GS belief that there is no difference between justification and sanctification, and that we are “justified” every time Christ does not obey for us- via our confession:

“It’s not that complicated: the ground of all Christian obedience is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Justification occurs EACH time a believer confesses and receives forgiveness for his sins. The pattern of justification is illustrated by Paul in Romans 4. Abraham believes in the God who justifies the ungodly (in this case gentile Abraham), David is forgiven for his adultery and murder. God’s condemnation for sin has reached into history at the cross, glorification has reached into history at conversion where believers experience a foretaste of glory. Neither Old or New Covenant obedience require moral perfection, they both require obedience of faith….so, having been justified from faithfulness we have peace with God!”

However, in all of  the comments that were made, there was one voice of sanity that arose. Though I doubt the individual realizes the gravity of this false, antinomian doctrine; what he said, he said well, and I will use it for my conclusion. “Andrew” said the following:

“To be honest, at least in Reformed circles, I find that there is an equally large problem of total fear of ever trying to live in a godly way. No one would express it like this, of course, but the “I don’t want to work my way to righteousness” attitude means that almost any time a pastor doesn’t mention the gospel before he mentions godly living, the Reformed community jumps on him for it.

And of course there is something very right about this. But if I’m pasturing a church where I have been faithful to proclaim our total dependence on Christ’s righteousness in the gospel and I’m preaching through James, can’t I pound on the need to live a godly life? And here is exactly the problem: there are real parts of Scripture that simply don’t expound the indicative first.

For that matter, imagine that James was a Reformed blogger and wrote his letter as a blog entry first. Can you imagine the fury of the rest of the Reformed bloggers? “There is not nearly enough gospel in here, James! How can you expect us to live godly lives when you’ve given us no gospel?!?! Justification by works? Are you mad?!?!”

Now I don’t think that James and Paul are contradictory. But I do think that this statement: “This is not how Paul and the other New Testament writers motivated the church in light of the resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit. They did give imperatives (=what you should do), but they do so only based on indicatives (=what God has done).” is mostly true, but overstated.”
(Andrew Faris blog:  http://www.christiansincontext.org/ )

P.S. to Andrew,

Andrew,

They believe that synergistic sanctification is a false gospel.

paul