Do you Misrepresent the Pharisees? Well Then, You Just Might Be an Antinomian
I heard it again yesterday in a Sunday morning message: the Pharisees were really,really good at keeping the Law, but at the end of the day Jesus said that our righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees. Alas, proof that we can’t be justified by keeping the Law (which no one would argue with). The pastor, in this message that is one of many in his series on The Sermon on the Mount, even said something like this: “The Pharisees’ efforts at keeping the Law wasn’t the issue, they were good at keeping the Law.” But is that true? And by the way, considering who the audience was at that church (primarily saints gathered for worship and the hearing of the word), and the fact that his topic was the role of the Law in Christian living, why was he even discussing justification in that context? Based on his view of the Pharisees and their supposed efforts to be justified by keeping the Law, one of his statements to *us* was “you don’t keep the Law by trying to keep the Law.” Hmmm, really?
We certainly are not justified by “trying” to keep the Law, but should we try to keep the Law in order to please and obey our Lord? Yes, I think so. Now, I don’t know this pastor very well, but I know him well enough to know that he wouldn’t dream of synthesizing justification and sanctification, but due to the fact that our present church culture is awash in an antinomian doctrine that does just that, are pastors propagating such a synthesis unawares? Yes, I think so. In his sermon notes, the top of the page has statements like ”Things Jesus wants us (“us” would presumably be Christians) to know about the Law.” The top part of the notes are also replete with “we” in regard to the Law, but the bottom part has statements like: “We live in the Age of Grace; salvation is not of works,” but yet, the whole message clearly regards the role of the Law in the life of a Christian. Therefore, whether unawares or otherwise, he clearly extended the relationship of the Law in regard to Justification into the realm of sanctification.
Here is where we must call on our good friend Jeff Foxworthy who developed a program for helping people who may be rednecks but don’t know it. He presents several different questions from different angles of thought, and depending on the answers to the questions, “you just might be a redneck.” Likewise, if you misrepresent the Pharisees, you just might be an antinomian without knowing it.
First of all, we can see from the very same proof text used to demonstrate the idea above that the Pharisees were not guilty of attempting to keep the Law in order to be justified:
[19] “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. [20] For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19,20).
So, as the reasoning goes, verse 19 indicates that “we” should revere God’s Law, but since the Pharisees were really, really good at keeping the Law (an assumed interpretive criteria) we shouldn’t “try” to keep the Law because that’s what they tried to do, and our righteousness must surpass theirs because you can’t be saved by keeping the Law (and again, why are we discussing salvation in this context to begin with?). But we can see just from this text alone that this interpretation is not true. In every literal English translation that I could find, the coordinating conjunction “for” links verses 19 and 20. As we know, coordinating conjunctions join two complete ideas together and indicates the connection between the two. In all cases, the translators saw fit to translate the conjunction “for” from the Greek texts. If Jesus was contrasting the two ideas, a different conjunction would have been used like “but,” ie., the Pharisees do verse 19 really well, “but” not perfectly, therefore you need a righteousness that is perfect (this is true, but not what Christ is referring to here). No, the conjunction used is “for” which indicates “reason”(reason why): because the Pharisees were guilty of verse 19, they (the audience) were not going to enter the kingdom of heaven if they where like the Pharisees in regard to habitually breaking the Law of God and teaching others to do so. Also, I think the Lord’s reference to being the least or the greatest “in the kingdom” (verse 19) is in reference to degree and set against the example of the Pharisees who were guilty of doing (breaking the Law and teaching others to do so) habitually which was an indication that their souls were in peril. Therefore, even if the assumption regarding the Pharisees ability to obey the Law outwardly is true, it’s the wrong transition; a better transition would be “but” and would read something like this: “Christians should obey the Law ‘but’ even if you keep the law as good as the Pharisees do, it will not get you into the kingdom, so you need a righteousness that surpasses theirs.”
Granted, depending on how you diagram the sentence, you might be able to make a case either way, but is it true that the Pharisees were experts at keeping the Law outwardly? No. From other Scriptures we know that the Pharisees were guilty of verse nineteen; specifically, they replaced the Law with their own traditions. That’s why Jesus immediately launches into the whole “you have heard that it was said….but I tell you”starting in the following sentence (verse21). Not only that, Jesus says specifically in Matthew 15:1-9 that His contention with the Pharisees (and the teachers of the law as exactly referred to in verse 20) was the fact that they twisted the Scriptures according to their traditions:
[1] Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, [2]”Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”[3] Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? [4] For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ [5] But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ [6] he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. [7] You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: [8] ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. [9] They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'”
The Pharisees were not proficient at keeping God’s law outwardly. In fact, they didn’t do so at all, but rather propagated teachings that were “rules taught by men.” Therefore, the Pharisees were guilty of neglecting the true Law and teaching others to do so (Matthew 5:19). They were not the poster-children for some campaign to demonstrate the futility of Law-keeping, especially in regard to believers. In fact, Christ said their lax attitude toward the Law was indicative of those who will not enter the kingdom. For this reason the Pharisees were not the greatest in heaven as the masses supposed, but the least, if they were even in the kingdom at all. Therefore, when Christ told the crowd that their righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, He wasn’t talking about the imputed righteousness of Christ that the Pharisees were supposedly trying to obtain themselves for salvation (besides, they were not attempting to do that to begin with as I have demonstrated), but rather the true righteous behavior demanded of kingdom citizens. If Christ was talking about an imputed righteousness (for sanctification), why would He have not simply said so? For example: “Your righteousness must not only exceed that of the Pharisees (which wouldn’t have been hard to do anyway, and therefore by no means a profound statement by Christ), but ( a contrast conjunction) must be a righteousness that comes from God alone”…for sanctification.
If you misrepresent the Pharisees as the first century poster-children for “let go and let God theology” because they supposedly tried to keep the Law, you just might be an antinomian. But in part two, we discuss another question that may give credence to the possibility: Do you misrepresent obedience as outward alone? Well then, you just may be an antinomian.
paul
Jesus Obeys For Us? Is That What We Really Believe?
“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
With All Due Respect, Your Buddy “Joe” Piper Doesn’t Know Either
Here are three bits of information to start: I can’t say enough good things about Grace Community Church, and I can’t say enough negative things about Joel Olsteen; but with that said, I don’t like hypocrisy either. One of these days, I hope to make it to a Shepherds conference held annually at John MacArthurs church (Grace Community). Once again, my efforts fell short this year. One of the speakers at the 2009 conference was Pastor Steve Lawson of Mobile, Alabama. He brought the house down with a rendition of Joel Olsteen’s appearance on the Larry King show. Basically, Larry King asked Olsteen if non-Christian faiths were wrong about salvation because they didn’t believe in Christ. Olsteen said he didn’t know, which was bad enough, but Lawson was able to put a hilarious spin on the discourse because of the way Olsteen stuttered and stammered while answering. As I watched the video excerpt of Lawson‘s performance, I found myself somewhat offended. Why? Two reasons: I think everybody was having a little bit too much fun with it at the expense of one who is also created in God’s image. Secondly, they (Lawson, MacArthur, Mohler, et al.) seem to have a favorite buddy these days, John Piper. Lawson and MacArthur spoke with him at the Resolve conference this year. Like my grandmother use to say: “Birds of the feather flock together.” So, let me get this straight, Piper is less confused than Olsteen? Oh really? Consider the following outrageous statements he makes in his book, “Desiring God”:
“Unless a man be born again into a Christian Hedonist he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John Piper, Desiring God, page 55)
“The pursuit of joy in God is not optional. It is not an ‘extra’ that a person might grow into after he comes to faith. Until your heart has hit upon this pursuit, your ‘faith’ cannot please God. It is not saving faith.”
(John Piper, Desiring God, page 69)
“Not everybody is saved from God’s wrath just because Christ died for sinners. There is a condition we must meet in order to be saved. I want to try to show that the condition…is nothing less than the creation of a Christian Hedonist.” (John Piper, Desiring God, page 61)
“We are converted when Christ becomes for us a Treasure Chest of holy joy.” (John Piper, Desiring God, page 66)
“Something has happened in our hearts before the act of faith. It implies that beneath and behind the act of faith which pleases God, a new taste has been created. A taste for the glory of God and the beauty of Christ. Behold, a joy has been born!” (page 67)
“Before the decision comes delight. Before trust comes the discovery of treasure.” (page 68)
So what’s the big dif? That’s what Olsteen emphasizes, a hedonistic joy now; not only that, Olsteen is not the only one of the two that “doesn’t know.” Here is what Piper says on page 55 of the same book:
“Could it be that today the most straightforward biblical command for conversion is not, ‘Believe in the Lord,’ but, ‘Delight yourself in the Lord’?” (John Piper, Desiring God, page 55)
“Could it be!?” What does he mean, “could it be?” Doesn’t he know? He’s talking about the gospel! So, why is it ok for Piper not to know, but not Olsteen? Oh, that’s easy. Piper is “reformed” and Olsteen isn’t. If you carry the reformed label these days, you have the Joe Biden thing working for you. You know, “Ahhhh, that’s just Joe.” Yes, what an anomaly Joe Biden is; he can say anything he wants and “Ahhhh, that’s just Joe.” Truly, John Piper has to be the Joe Biden of modern evangelicalism.
Recently, I read an endorsement for a reformed book posted on Facebook. Later, my daughter informed me that the author was a Charismatic. In fact, many who hold to Charismatic doctrine are now widely accepted in reformed circles because they have the “gospel” right. Such is the environment we find ourselves in. If you are “reformed,” you can toy with God’s word anyway you see fit, even in regard to how we are sanctified. Just believe in monergistic justification, and you are now free to play with God’s word anyway you want to.
Let me finish by saying something good about Joel Olsteen. At least he doesn’t pretend to be orthodox. The guy has plainly said: “I’m not a theologian.” That’s called honesty. Something could be learned from him in regard to that.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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