The Problem with Sermon-Centric Worship

 

What is sermon-centric worship?

 

Think of a church where every week the minister decides he wants to preach on topic X on the following Sunday, then picks Scripture readings for that day based on his topic and instructs the organist or choir director or praise and worship leader or whoever happens to be in charge of music to pick music that corresponds with the theme of his sermon.     Everything else in the service is subordinate to the sermon.   People who go to this church go there, first and foremost, to hear the sermon.

 

This is sermon-centric worship.   For many conservative Protestants, especially Calvinists and fundamentalists, this is the only way of ordering a worship service, deviation from which raises the suspicion of a weakening of standards of doctrine and practice.   This raises the question of what is being contrasted to the sermon-centric order of service.   If the sermon is deemphasized for something novel and contemporary, some gimmick chosen in order to appear more relevant and up-to-date and user-friendly and seeker-sensitive and whatever other such gibberish is currently in vogue, then our Calvinist and fundamentalist friends have a point.   When this sort of thing is done it is often, perhaps usually, a good indication that orthodoxy and orthopraxis have dropped a few places in the hierarchy of priorities of a parish and its leadership.

 

 

Suppose, however, that the alternative to sermon-centric worship were not anything novel, contemporary, or gimmicky.   Think of a church where the Scripture lessons are not chosen to support the topic of the sermons but where the preacher is expected to give a sermon explaining the Scripture lessons assigned to that Sunday in a lectionary designed to take the church through the written Word of God within a set period.   Think of a church where Holy Communion is treated not as something to be tacked on at the end of a sermon-centric service once a month or less but as something that should be done as often as possible, preferably whenever the church meets, and ideally every day, and of at least equal importance to the sermon and probably greater because it is the ministry of the Word as a whole, in which the sermon takes a subordinate position to the Scripture lessons, with which the Sacrament is on par.

 

The preceding description is what was generally the case with all churches in the first millennium of Christian history, remained true of the ancient churches other than the Roman after the first millennium, and from which the Roman church deviated not by adopting sermon-centric worship but rather by twisting Communion-centric worship into a caricature that provoked a response in the Protestant Reformation that gave birth to sermon-centric worship.

 

Calvinists are unlikely to be deterred from thinking their sermon-centric model of worship to be the only valid one by this fact.   Although the need for a greater stress on preaching – and for higher quality preaching than what had been the norm – was a common theme of all branches of the Magisterial Reformation, it was the Reformed far more than the Anglicans and Lutherans who developed the sermon-centric model, and the separatist sects, even those who would be appalled to consider themselves “Calvinist” in theology, usually took their cues on matters such as these from the Reformed.   Today, conservative Reformed theologians more than any other conservative Protestants point to what they call the return to the primacy of preaching, in explaining what was good and necessary and right about the Reformation.

 

Now in the late Medieval period, in the centuries immediately prior to the sixteenth which saw the Protestant Reformation, bad doctrine and bad practice concerning both preaching and the Sacrament became prevalent in the Roman church.   This is why the Calvinist position cannot just be dismissed wholesale.   Calvinism, however, has a tendency to lump doctrines and practices common to all the ancient churches, not just the Roman but those whose communion with Rome was broken in the first millennium, in with the errors particular to the late Medieval papacy.   The Protestant Reformation was a needed response to the errors of the late Medieval papacy, but Calvinism went too far in rejecting what was common to all the ancient churches.   Typically, when Calvinism rejected something common to Rome, the Eastern Orthodox, and the ancient near Eastern churches, it was not because it could demonstrate that the Scriptures opposed it, but because it could not be shown that the Scriptures required it.   This is a very bad way of approaching traditional doctrine and practice.   Doctrines, such as the truths confessed in the Nicene Creed, and practices, such as an annual celebration of Christ’s birth and Resurrection, common to all the ancient churches, should be regarded as good and sound and worthy of being retained and perpetuated unless it can be shown that the Scriptures are explicitly against them.   The rejection as “popish” of doctrines, practices, and traditions common to all the ancient churches rather than distinctive of Rome in the late Middle Ages is hyper-Protestantism, and is typical of both Calvinism and fundamentalism, the most sermon-centric movements within Protestantism.

 

Let us consider the difference between Protestantism and hyper-Protestantism as it pertains to that which was ubiquitously the focal point of church services prior to the Reformation – the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  What the Protestant Reformers objected to in Roman practice going into the sixteenth century was that while the Mass (the liturgy of the Eucharist) was said daily, the laity seldom took Holy Communion.  They were obliged to attend Mass regularly, but the only obligation with regards to taking Communion wat that they had do it once a year.   When they received Communion it was in one kind – the cup was withheld from them.   Their part in the Sacrament was, apart from the once a year obligation to receive it in this mutilated form, was to gaze on it and adore it.   All of this was particular to the Roman church and a fairly late development.   The practice of withholding the cup from the laity, for example, was no older than the eleventh century and the official banning of the laity from receiving the cup came barely a century prior to the Reformation.    Obviously, the reform called for here was to insist that both bread and wine be offered to the laity and to encourage the laity to receive Communion regularly rather than just adore the Sacrament.   De-emphasizing the Sacrament, however, so that it is no longer the focal point of the service, goes against the practice of all the ancient churches, not just against the errors of Rome.   A similar observation can be made with regards to the doctrine of the Sacrament.   The Protestant Reformers objected to the Roman doctrine of Transubstantiation – that during the Eucharist the bread and wine are transformed into the actual Body and Blood of Jesus Christ with only the appearance of what they were before remaining.   What all Protestants agree is objectionable in the doctrine of Transubstantiation is the idea that after the consecration the bread and wine are no longer bread and wine – the Real Absence of the bread and wine, if you will.   There are many different Protestant views as to what actually does happen which I will not be listing here as it is largely beside the point.  Suffice it to say that hyper-Protestants are usually drawn to Zwingle’s view of Communion as a mere symbol remembrance of the death of Christ, a view Calvin rejected although it is hard to discern a real difference between his view and Zwingle’s, which interpretation rejects not merely Transubstantiation and the aforementioned Real Absence of the bread and wine after consecration, but also the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the elements of the Sacrament, which all the Church Fathers taught and which all the ancient churches hold to, with all but Rome generally regarding it as a mystery that does not require an explanation of the sort Transubstantiation was thought up to provide and for which such an explanation would be an impiety.

 

It should be clear from what we have just seen that the move to de-emphasize Communion to the point that it becomes something infrequently tacked on to a sermon-centric service arises out of the hyper-Protestant rejection of the doctrine and practice common to all the ancient churches – that which is truly Catholic – rather than mere Protestant opposition to the late errors distinctive to Rome.

 

Now with regards to sermons themselves, the Reformers taught that the clergy must not neglect the duty of giving sermons, that the clergy needed to be better educated so that they could better explain the Scriptures, that the sermons needed to be delivered in the vernacular, and should faithfully preach Jesus Christ and not merely serve some political agenda of the papacy.  There were all valid points and that they were all made indicates that the quality of preaching had declined significantly although the picture that is often painted of preaching in Western Europe on the eve of the Reformation is probably exaggerated.   It is doubtful, for example, that outside of university pulpits sermons were given in Latin to congregations that could not understand it, rather than being preached in the vernacular to congregations but when published put in Latin for a literate readership.   Certainly, the Reformers’ emphasis on the need for an educated clergy bore good fruit in the academic institutions established at this time for the purpose of educating clergy in the Scriptural languages and the art of interpreting them.

 

The hyper-Protestants, however, again took things too far.   In their doctrine of the primacy of preaching they elevated the sermon above the very Scriptures the sermon is supposed to interpret and explain.   Consider the difference between the two models outlined earlier in this essay with regards to the relationship between the Scripture lessons and the sermon.   In the sermon-centric model, the lessons are chosen to support the preacher’s topic.   In the traditional model, the preacher composes his sermon to explain the given Scripture lessons.   The traditional model has the sermon subordinate to the Scripture lessons, the sermon-centric model suggests that the Scripture lessons are subordinate to the sermon.   In some forms of Puritan theology this was spelled out explicitly.   The Puritans were the original English hyper-Protestants.  In The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, his response to Puritanism, Richard Hooker addressed at length arguments from a leading Puritan of his day to the effect that the mere reading of Scripture in the lessons is insufficient to quicken the spirits of men, that the Scripture had to be preached, i.e., in a sermon to be effective.  As crass and blasphemous as this notion is – it translates into the idea that the very words of God are ineffective but human interpretation of those words is effective – it is frequently encountered among the sermon-centric.

 

As with all such errors the idea that the Word of God is ineffective unless preached in a sermon has its “proof texts”.   These are Romans 10:14-15 and 1 Corinthians 1:21.   The first of these is where St. Paul asks how they shall call on the Lord if they have not believed, then how they shall believe if they have not heard, how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach except they be sent, with the point of course to each of these questions being that they will not, that it is necessary to believe to call on the Lord, it is necessary to hear to believe, and to hear one needs a preacher who has been sent.   The second proof text is the verse where St. Paul says that “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe”.   What can be said about the Puritan, hyper-Protestant, abuse of these texts is that it illustrates the Reformers’ argument about the need for a better educated clergy. 

 

The word “preach” in these verses does not mean “give a sermon”.   It is a word that at its most literal means to do the work of a herald, to proclaim.   In these verses it basically means to tell other people about Jesus.  It is hardly confined to the concept of giving a formal address to a congregation.   Indeed, the implications that are often read into 1 Cor. 1:21 are hilariously comical when the verse is read in its context.   The sermon-centric read it as if the unbelieving world regarded preaching in the sense of the act of delivering a sermon as “foolishness” but God has shown them up by using what they consider foolish to accomplish His saving ends.     This is nonsense of course.   The ancient world did not regard preaching qua preaching, i.e., delivering an address to an audience as foolishness.   On the contrary, they held it in the highest regard.   If you don’t believe me, read up on Demosthenes, Cicero, and the role of the art of rhetoric in ancient education, including the schools of Plato and Aristotle.    The only difference between a sermon and any other sort of public oration is the subject matter.   For a Scriptural example, think of St. Paul before the philosophers at Mars Hill in Acts 17.    Those who ridiculed him did so because of what he preached to them, i.e., the Resurrection, not because of the form or manner in which he presented the Resurrection to them.   In 1 Corinthians 1 it is just as clear I the context  that it is the content of what St. Paul preached that the unbelieving world regarded as foolish, and not the mere act of preaching.   Note earlier in the passage, the Apostle, who is rebuking the factionalism that had emerged in the Corinthian church, says that Christ did not send him to baptize but to preach the Gospel, adding that he preached the Gospel “not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect”.   In other words, the power to save in his preaching came from the cross of Christ, and not from his oratorical ability.   The verse immediately after that spells it out – it is the preaching of the cross that is foolishness to them that perish, but to the saved it is the power of God.  

 

Again, when the New Testament speaks of “preaching” as God’s instrument in bringing people to faith and salvation to people, “preaching” merely means telling people about Jesus.   It could take the form of what we more commonly call preaching today, that is, giving a speech in which an entire crowd is told about Jesus at once, like when St. Peter addressed the multitude on Pentecost or what Billy Graham became famous for doing in our own time.   It could also just be you having an informal discussing with your neighbor and telling him about Who Jesus is and what He has done.  

 

The disingenuity of those who conscript these texts about God using the preaching of the Gospel to bring salvation into the service of their case for sermon-centric worship is further evinced in that the examples from the book of Acts of preaching that is used by God in this manner are all of sermons that are addressed outward to audiences other than the church.   St. Peter’s Pentecost sermon illustrates the point well.   The entire church at the time was already assembled with St. Peter in the upper room.   After the Holy Spirit descended upon the church, however, the sermon St. Peter gave which yielded the fruit of about three thousand converts baptized and added to the church, was not addressed to those with him in the upper room, but to the multitude gathered outside.   Later in the chapter, when it says that those who believed “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” this is where we get our earliest glimpse of what the first church did when she gathered together to worship.   Their continuing “in the apostles’ doctrine” means that when they gathered they were instructed in the faith by the Apostles.   This is the beginning of what we think of as the sermon in the regular church service today.   Addressed to those within the community of faith that is the church, rather than outward, its purpose is didactic rather than evangelistic.   Together with fellowship, the Sacrament of the Eucharist (“breaking of bread”), and prayer, we have here the basic elements of the traditional order of service.

 

A frequent accusation which hyper-Protestants level against traditional liturgical, Sacramental, worship is that it is a show put on by priests acting out a prescribed role in which the laity are observers rather than participants.   This adds a level of deep irony to their advocacy of sermon-centric worship.   The word “liturgy” which we use for the order-of-service of traditional, priest-led, Sacramental services comes from combining the Greek words for “people” and “work” and involves far more participation on the part of the laity than a non-liturgical service.   Throughout the liturgical service, the clergy and laity interact with versicles and responses, mostly consisting of the words of Scripture, which introduce or close or both, Scripture lessons, collects, and other prayers.   For example even the Anaphora – the Eucharistic Prayer in which the elements of the Sacrament are consecrated – opens with a preface that begins with the priest and laity interacting in the Sursum Corda (“The Lord be with you” “and with thy spirit” “lift up your hearts” “we lift them up unto the Lord”,  “Let us give thanks unto our Lord God” “It is meet and right so to do”) and ends, the preface that is, with the Sanctus hymn sung or said by choir and/or congregation.   The single largest element in the liturgical service in which the laity plays a merely passive role is the sermon.   In a sermon-centric service, this part is extended and emphasized, and the interactive, participatory, liturgy is minimized or eliminated, so that such a service is far more limited in terms of lay participation than a traditional liturgical service.   A similar irony, directly related to this one, is that hyper-Protestants regard the priest-lay distinction as being an offence against the unity of the church that divides Christians into two classes with one being unjustly subject to other in violation of the “universal priesthood of believers”.   Apart from being unscriptural – the establishment of the Apostles as governing order of the church and their establishing two other Holy Orders under them is clearly recorded in the New Testament – and illogical – the nation of Israel was described as a nation of priests in Deuteronomy and this did not preclude the Levitical priesthood, therefore the universal priesthood of Christian believers cannot preclude the special priesthood of the Apostolic orders of ministry – and contrary to the universal practice of every ancient church for the first fifteen centuries of Christian history, this Christian era version of the sin of Korah resembles the Communism that is its secular counterpart by producing, whenever it is acted upon, a far greater gap between minister and congregant, than exists in the ancient, traditional, order against which it rails in the name of “equality”.

 

Finally, one telling indicator that the sermon-centric model of worship is deeply and dangerously flawed, is the language that one often hears when such preaching is discussed.   It is not infrequent to hear the sermon described in such a way as would suggest that the sermon itself is the Word of God.  Let us be clear.   The Scriptures are the Word of God.   The sermon is someone’s interpretation and explanation of the Word of God.   When the Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel lessons are read out, this is more properly called “preaching the Word”, than when the homilist gives his talk on what these lessons mean, no matter how sound his hermeneutics may be.    The two must never be confused.  

The Cross is Where Law and Gospel Meet

 

The cross is universally recognized as the main symbol of Christianity.    This seems strange to some since the cross was the instrument by which Jesus Christ was put to death.   The New Testament itself makes it a symbol of the Christian religion however.  St. Paul writing to the Galatians said “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal 6:14).   Indeed, the association was made by Jesus Christ Himself.  When He asked His closest disciples first, Who men said that He was, then second, Who they, that is His disciples themselves said He was, He received St. Peter's confession "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God" (Matt. 16:16)  Praising this response as having been revealed by the Father, He then began to explain to His disciples that His being the Christ meant that He would go to Jerusalem, be put to death on the Cross - a particularly cruel form of execution ordinarily reserved for the worst of criminals - and would rise again from the dead on the third day.  (Matt. 16:21)   He then told them that if they wanted to be His disciples they must deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him.  (Matt. 16:24)    Taking up the cross was not a reference to wearing a cross as a piece of jewelry.   It was a reference to the condemned criminal being forced to carry the crossbeam to the execution site, as He Himself was forced to do (with Simon of Cyrene being forced to help Him).  (1)

 

 

In a book that was quite popular when I began my theological education, John F. MacArthur Jr. used Jesus' call to take up the cross to hopelessly confuse Law and Gospel.    The book received the endorsements of all sorts of evangelical celebrities and even contained an introduction by an orthodox Anglican priest, the late J. I. Packer, who definitely ought to have known better.  (2)   While I am more reluctant to speak negatively about MacArthur after his behaviour of the last two years – the Solzhenitsyns and Niemollers and Wurmbrands who stood up admirably against the Satanic public health totalitarianism usually came from among the heretics and schismatics whereas the leadership, even that which is ostensibly orthodox, of Apostolic Churches behaved abominably - the confusion of Law and Gospel is deadly error, which is particularly obnoxious when it is tied in to a theology of the cross.   It is in the Cross of Jesus Christ, which bears the shape of the meeting of two paths, that Law and Gospel meet, and it is because of the Cross that they must never be confused.

 

 

Law and Gospel, when juxtaposed and contrasted, refer to the two Covenants, the Old Covenant God established with Israel through Moses at Mt. Sinai and the New Covenant He established with believers in Jesus Christ - both individually and collectively as the Church - through Christ's Death on the Cross and Resurrection.   The Law Covenant takes its name from the Books of Moses in which the terms of the Covenant are set out.   The Gospel Covenant takes its name from the Christian kerygma - the message of Good News that we proclaim to the world about how God has sent the Promised Redeemer, His Son Jesus Christ, how He has accomplished the salvation of the world through His Death on the Cross, and how He rose again victorious over death.     The emphasis in the contrast is on the opposite principles by which the two Covenants operate.   The principle upon which the Law operates is exactly what its name would indicate.   God commands and requires obedience, men obey and are rewarded and they disobey and are punished.   It is summed up in the words "do and live" (Rom. 10:5, Gal. 3:12).   The principle upon which the Gospel operates is that of grace - God's favour, freely given in Christ.   The Gospel tells us that God’s grace has been given to us in Christ, we receive it by faith, by believing the Gospel.  It is summed up in the last thing Jesus Christ said on the Cross before committing His Spirit to the Father – “It is finished” (Jn. 19:30).

 

 

St. Paul explains the contrast between the two principles this way:

 

 

For what saith the scripture?  Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.  Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.   But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.  (Rom. 4:3-5)

 

 

Later in the same epistle he declares the mutual exclusivity of the two principles.   In talking about the “remnant according to the election of grace”, i.e., ethnic Israelites who believe in Jesus he says:

 

 

And if by grace, then it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.  But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work. (Rom. 11:6)

 

 

St. John expresses the contrast at the beginning of his Gospel:

 

 

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.  (Jn. 1:17)

 

 

The mutual exclusivity of the principles of Law and Gospel does not mean that there was no grace in the Old Covenant or that there is no law in the New.   The Tabernacle/Temple, with its daily sacrifices, and especially the Day of Atonement was all about the forgiveness of sins and reconciling the offender to God which is only accomplished through grace.   These did not accomplish the removal of sin, but they pointed forward as St. Paul explains in his epistle to the Hebrews, to the One Sacrifice of Christ at the heart of the Gospel which did.   Jesus, after the Last Supper in which He instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist declaring the Cup to be the “New testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Lk. 22:20), gave to His disciples a New Commandment “That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (Jn. 13:34), a Commandment both similar and different to the Two Greatest Commandments in which He declared the whole of the Law to be summed up.   What the mutual exclusivity does mean is that the Law and the Gospel have their own ends to accomplish, that neither can accomplish the ends of the other, and that it is disastrous to try and accomplish the end of the Gospel by means of the Law.   When the Law is used for its own end rather than that of the Gospel the two complement each other.

 

While the Law forbids sin and requires righteousness it is incapable of producing the righteousness it requires (Rom. 7).    This is not the end for which the Law was given.   In contrasting the glory of the Law with the greater glory of the Gospel St. Paul described it as the “ministration of death, written and engraven in stones” and the “ministration of condemnation” (II Cor. 3:7, 9).   This is the end for which the Law was given.   It was given to condemn.   As a Covenant, the Law was made with a specific people for a specific time.   Its message, however, is for all people in all times, and that message is to the effect of “this is the righteousness God requires, you do not measure up, you are a sinner, you are condemned”.   The condemnation in the Law’s message for us is not a maybe condemnation – “you might be condemned if you don’t shape up”.   It is a certain condemnation, a judgement that is already past, a sentence hanging over all of our heads.

 

 

The Gospel tells us that God, out of His Own love and mercy, has done everything that needs to be done to rescue us from this condemnation.   He has given us His Only-Begotten Son as the Saviour He promised back when our first parents fell into sin (Gen. 3:15)   That Saviour, Who was without sin (Heb. 4:15, I Pet. 2:22) took our sins upon Himself when He was nailed to the Cross (I Pet. 2:24) and by His Suffering and Death, a work of perfect redemption (Rom 3:24, I Pet. 1:18-19) and propitiation, i.e., turning away of wrath (Rom. 3:25, I Jn. 2:2) He obtained for us the righteousness of God (II Cor. 5:21, Rom. 3:21-22, 26).   That the work of salvation is complete and nothing more needs to be added to it was proclaimed by Christ as He died (3) and by His Resurrection (4).   This is God’s free gift to us (Rom 3:24, 6:23, Eph. 2:8) proclaimed in the Gospel to all who believe.    Believing is not something we do to add to or complete what Jesus has done.   Faith merely receives what is brought to us through the proclamation of the Gospel.   (5)   The salvation proclaimed in the Gospel is as certain as the condemnation proclaimed in the Law.

 

 

When Law and Gospel are used for their own distinct purposes these messages complement each other.   God, through the message of certain condemnation contained in the Law, works repentance – brokenness, humility and contrition – in our hearts, preparing them for the message of certain salvation proclaimed in the Gospel by removing the impediment to faith that is our own self-righteous delusion that we can earn God’s favour.   Through the Gospel, when it is received in faith, God works love in the hearts of believers (1 Jn. 5:19), which love is the source of the only human works that are in any way acceptable to God.

 

 

When Law and Gospel are mixed the certainty of both messages is compromised.   The Law, adulterated in this way, ceases to be the message of certain condemnation to the sinner.   The Gospel, similarly adulterated, ceases to be the message of certain salvation to the believer.   Both become the same message in which both condemnation and salvation are uncertain.  

 

 

It was by going to the Cross that Jesus fulfilled all the demands of the Law.   It was by fulfilling the demands of the Law at the Cross that Jesus gave us the Gospel.    It is in the Cross that Law and Gospel meet each other and we should not try to force them to meet anywhere else.   The call to discipleship illustrates the point very well.

 

 

Contrary to the way it is explained in the typical sermon, i.e., your “cross” being some non-specific burden that is particular to yourself, Jesus’ original hearers would have understood the call to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him quite literally as a call to follow Him to their deaths.   Since it was made in the context of predicting His Own Death and Resurrection an obvious opportunity to do just this was provided along with the call.

 

 

At the Last Supper Jesus told His Apostles that they would be scattered like sheep and that St. Peter in particular would deny Him three times.   St. Peter vehemently vowed that though he were to die with Jesus, he would never deny Him.   All the others joined in and said the same thing.   Of course, things turned out exactly as Jesus predicted.   The Apostles scattered after the arrest at Gethsemane, St. Peter followed Him to Caiaphas’ palace, where he denied knowing Jesus three times before the cock crow signaled the dawn.   None of the disciples were crucified with Him that day.  

 

That is not where the story ends, however.    Jesus went to the Cross Himself.   He completed the work of salvation for the Apostles and for the rest of the world.   He died – and then He rose again.   The Cross led to the Empty Tomb.   The Empty Tomb led to the Ascension from the Mount of Olives.   The Ascension led to the sending of the Holy Spirit on Whitsunday.   At Whitsunday St. Peter proclaimed Christ to the multitude and three thousand were converted.   Later, after healing the man lame from birth, he proclaimed Christ to the crowd at Solomon’s Porch in the Temple.   He and St. John were arrested and brought before the priests and the Sanhedrin who ordered them not to speak or teach in Jesus’ name and they answered that they “cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts. 4:20).   Arrested again and miraculously delivered from prison, the Apostles were brought again before the Sanhedrin where St. Peter with the others declared “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).   Much later, St. Peter was indeed crucified as a martyr for Christ, as Jesus Himself predicted when after His Resurrection He forgave and restored him (Jn. 21:18-19).  

 

 

It was the Cross that made the difference.   Up to that point, the call to discipleship operated on the principle of Law which cannot produce that which it demands.   Then Jesus fulfilled the Law at the Cross and ushered in the Gospel.   Under the Gospel, discipleship operated on an entirely different basis, the basis of grace and liberty and the power of the Holy Spirit, and what was demanded under Law was produced under the Gospel.

 

 

Had a certain evangelical celebrity from Sun Valley, California understood this he would have written a very different book indeed.

 

The Law and the Gospel meet in the Cross.   Don't try to bring them together anywhere else.

 

 

 

 

(1)       The multiple references to the carrying of the transom, both in Jesus' call to discipleship and in the Gospel accounts of His and Simon's being made to do so, demonstrates that the  familiar T/t - shaped complex cross was the Cross of the Crucifixion and not the crux simplex or "torture stake".   All the earliest writers who make any allusion to the kind of cross used indicate that it was the T-shape.  Claims to the contrary arise from the delusions of hyper-Protestants like the nineteenth century Rev. Alexander Hislop who start from the premise that the Catholic - not just papal, but actually Catholic, held by all Churches everywhere since the most ancient times - understanding of everything is wrong.  In Hislop's case he thought that everything Catholic was not just wrong but a fraud designed to pass off Babylonian paganism as Christianity.  He saw the T in the familiar cross shape as a reference to Tammuz, the Sumerian/Babylonian deity with some similarities to the Adonis of Greco-Roman mythology after whom the Babylonians named a summer month which name was borrowed by the Jews for their tenth civil month/fourth religious month in the Babylonian Captivity and remains the name of that month in the Jewish calendar to his day.   Hislop, on the basis of no evidence other than his own conjecture and imagination, identified the mythological Tammuz with the son and supposed reincarnation of the Nimrod mentioned in Genesis as an early king of what became Babylon.   All of this deserves to be mocked as the risible nonsense that it is.

(2)       The same year (1989) that this book, The Gospel According to Jesus, was published, MacArthur was defending his "Incarnational Sonship" doctrine before the Independent Fundamental Churches of America.   Incarnational Sonship is a gross heresy.   By denying the Eternal Sonship affirmed in the Nicene Creed and deriving Christ's Sonship from the Incarnation it implicitly teaches Sabellianism by confusing the Persons of the Father and Holy Spirit, the Latter being the Agent in the Incarnation.   MacArthur has since recanted this view.

(3)       “It is finished” also has the sense of “paid in full”.

(4)       “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).   The parallel structure of the verse indicates the second “for” has the same sense as the first.

(5)       Proclaiming the Gospel is something done both by individual believers and by the Church collectively.   With regards to the Church it is a more formal Ministry than it is with the individual believer.   Proclaiming the Gospel is part of the Ministry of the Word which includes preaching in the sense of giving a sermon, teaching if that is distinguished from preaching, and even just the reading of the Scriptures.   The Ministry of Sacrament is another form of proclaiming the Gospel.    Unlike the Ministry of the Word, which involves Law as well and is the Ministry where the danger of confusing or mixing the two must especially be guarded against, the Ministry of Sacrament is pure Gospel.   In Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the physical elements of water, bread, and wine become vessels through which the Word of the Gospel is conveyed tangibly.   The Absolution is another form of proclaiming the Gospel although it is a bit of a stretch to maintain that it is also another Sacrament as our Lutheran friends do seeing as there is not really a physical element comparable to water, bread, or wine.   It is part of the Ministry of the Keys, the Gospel Key that is the counterpart to the Discipline/Excommunication which is the Law Key, and as such belongs to the Apostolic Government of the Church.   Those who have inherited the errors of the Puritans, and specifically the Puritan error of associating the priestly office with the Law and the prophetic office with the Gospel - it is obviously the other way around, the prophetic office being all about rebuking people for sin, the priestly office being all about provision for forgiveness of sin – would regard the sacerdotal assertions in this footnote as legalistic.   Ironically, these also generally follow the Puritans in advising people to look to their own works for evidence of their election, which is another way of telling people to put their faith in their own works.   With regards to individual believers, proclaiming the Gospel is less of a formal Ministry and consists of verbal communication – although the quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi (amusingly fact checkers assert he didn’t say it even though what they really mean is that no evidence exists from his own time that he said it which hardly constitutes proof of the negative assertion – they would be on firmer ground if they could find an alternative attribution) “Preach the Gospel at all times.  If necessary, use words” bears keeping in mind.   So does the similarly themed poem that includes the lines “The Gospel is written a chapter a day/In the deeds that you do and the words that you say/Men read what you write whether faithless or true/Say what is the Gospel according to you?”

 

The Left Abandons Liberalism

A criticism that I have frequently made of mainstream conservatives is that they no longer stand for anything with which Modern liberals would not wholeheartedly agree and which in many if not most cases was originally a liberal idea.   I most recently made this criticism in my annual essay for New Year’s Day explaining my own views, which I prefer to call Tory, because they stress affirmation of institutions such as royal monarchy and the Church as well as beliefs such as the orthodox Christianity of the Apostles’ Creed and ideas which go back to ancient times and predate Modern liberalism.   I have never meant by this criticism that the things for which conservatives still stand are bad in themselves, merely that there are other, older things, which are more important and ought to be recognized as such by those who wish to distinguish themselves from liberals.     This distinction is a very important one because without it, criticism of contemporary conservatism for making its focus primarily or entirely the defence of ideas that have their origins in liberalism could be construed as suggesting that every idea that liberals have ever had is wrong or bad.   Liberalism, I would say, has been wrong a lot more often than it has been willing to admit, has been very wrong in generally regarding itself as immune to the sort of analytic criticism it levels against its rivals, and most wrong in its assumption that there was little to no worth in anything that was around prior to itself.   To say that it was always wrong about everything, however, is to commit the equal and opposite error to that greatest of liberalism’s errors, and the events that have unfolded south of the border since Epiphany illustrate just how erroneous it is.   That which is called “the Left” sprang historically from the same sources as liberalism – the Puritan revolt against the orthodox Church of England and the Stuart monarchy, Modern philosophical rationalism, Kantianism, to name but three – and through much of their history the Left and liberalism have walked similar paths, so much so that in many periods, including that of my youth, their names have been used interchangeably as if they were completely identical.   Last week, however, the Left revealed just how much it has parted ways from historical liberalism.   It would appear that there is now not the slightest vestige of liberalism lingering within it, merely the totalitarianism that had previously reared its head in the Cromwellian Protectorate, the French Reign of Terror, and in every state unfortunate enough to be taken over by the Bolsheviks.   Utterly illiberal, it tolerates no divergence from its thought and mercilessly persecutes all who dissent.

 

The word liberal is derived from the Latin adjective liberalis.   My pocket Collins  Latin Dictionary defines this word as meaning “of freedom, of free citizens, gentlemanly, honourable, generous, liberal; handsome”.   Turning to Charlton Lewis and Charles Short for a more extensive definition I find that they begin by relating the word to the shorter root adjective liber (long i, with a short i it becomes the noun meaning book) and thus gives as its first meaning “of or belonging to freedom, relating to the freeborn condition of a man”.  The second definition is “befitting a freeman, gentlemanly, noble, noble-minded, honourable, ingenuous, gracious, kind.”   I will not cite all the sub definitions given for the second, just B. 1., which is “Bountiful, generous, munificent, liberal”.

 

The short version of all of that is that for the ancient Romans, the adjective liberalis first designated the condition of being free rather than a slave, and in its secondary connotations denoted the kind of character and behaviour that the Romans saw as being appropriate to someone with free status, e.g., graciousness, kindness and generosity.   Before it came to be used as a political label the English word liberal was pretty much an approximation of its Latin ancestor.   This gives us something of an idea of what those who originally applied this term to themselves as a political designation must have thought of themselves.    Frankly, I am of the opinion that they thought far too highly of themselves and this term is singularly inappropriate for the heirs of the religious fanatics who murdered King Charles I, outlawed Christmas, stripped the Churches of artwork and music, shut down the theatres, and imposed Sabbatarian restrictions so severe that they would have made the Pharisees of old blush and of the Manchester plutocrats who enclosed the commons, legalized usury, and drove the peasants from the countryside into the cities to subsist on servile labour in ugly, smelly, factories.   To be fair, a similar analysis of the Latin root of conservative would suggest that in its political usage it refers to everything those so designated have failed to accomplish.

 

That having been said, there is much to appreciate in the ideas put forward in the book which more-or-less defined liberalism when it was at its best in the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.   No, I am not referring to John Locke’s Two Treatises, which in its response to Sir Robert Filmer provides us with what is perhaps the earliest example of mere contradiction being taken for refutation or debunking, the phenomenon that has become the working principle of news and social media “fact checkers”.   Locke’s book contains only one worthy idea and no, it is not his bastardization of Thomas Hobbes’ concepts of the “state of nature” and “social contract” but his idea of the basic rights of life, liberty, and property.  This, however, as Sir William Blackstone later demonstrated, was present in Common Law long before Locke.   The book that I am talking about is John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859).   It is an argument for the need for restrictions and limitations on government to protect the freedom of the governed.   While it contains much historical nonsense and Mill makes the repugnant false ethic of utilitarianism the entire foundation of his argument, a great deal of what he says about freedom and limited government has merit.   Freedom of thought or opinion, Mill argued, was the most fundamental freedom of all, and attempts to suppress opinions, even ones that are entirely false, by limiting freedom of speech, are always bad.

 

Clearly, the present day Left is light years removed from Mill on this matter.

 

That this is the case has been evident for quite some time.   For decades the Left has favoured legislation prohibiting what it calls “hate speech”.   “Hate speech”, as the Left uses it, has never meant speech that actually expresses hatred, such as, most obviously, “I hate you”.   Indeed, there has never been a “hate speech” law passed to the best of my knowledge under which someone could be charged for saying “I hate you”.   What the Left means by “hate speech” is speech that they consider to be “racist” or “anti-Semitic” or “anti-immigrant” or “xenophobic” or “sexist” or “homophobic” or “transphobic” or characterized by any other such weaponized word that they have coined to refer to ideas and opinions with which they disagree.   The Left considers “hate speech” to be a form of violence and supports this contention by comparing it to incitement.   There is no substance to this argument, however, because “hate speech” laws do not merely commit the redundancy of prohibiting people from explicitly suggesting, encouraging, or calling for violent action towards the groups they wish to protect which sort of thing was already covered by existing incitement laws that were are far superior to “hate speech” laws because they protect everybody and not just select groups.   Rather, they prohibit the communication of information and opinions, whether true or false, that reflect negatively on protected groups in a way that might, possibly, inspire someone to commit a criminal act against them.   For all their denials – “hate speech is not free speech” – their support for this kind of legislation is clearly a rejection of Mill’s case against the suppression of thought and opinion and an embrace of a form of thought control, one which has only gotten more totalitarianism since the Left first proposed it.

 

Although this is directly related to another way in which the Left has left liberalism behind, that is, in its abandonment of the arguments against racism, especially of the de jure discrimination type, which became prevalent about sixty years ago and which were grounded in liberalism in favour of an aggressive “anti-racism” that is actually itself racism against white people, I wish to devote an entire essay to this point and shall defer further discussion of it until that time.  What I would like to point out now is how the Left has expanded the flawed reasoning by which it equates speech it considers to be “racist”, “sexist”, etc. with violence into all-purpose argument for suppressing any information and opinions which contradict its own narratives.

 

In the aftermath of what transpired in Washington DC on Epiphany, the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives in the United States has for a second time voted for Articles of Impeachment against the current president of the American republic, a man whom the Left hates like it has hated no other political leader before him.    Last time, they accused him of colluding with the Russians to steal the 2016 election.   This time, they are accusing him of inciting an insurrection by claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from him.    Tempting as it is to focus on the glaring hypocrisy, especially since insurrection more accurately describes the BLM riots that the Democrats and the Left in general have turned a blind eye to or endorsed out of their refusal to accept Trump’s election of four years prior, the point is to be found in the fact that in nothing Donald the Orange said, either on social media or in the address he gave to the throngs who showed up to the massive rally before the Washington Monument to show their support, was there anything that could legitimately be considered incitement.   Not when incitement is understood, as it traditionally has been, to take the form of “I want you to do X” with X being some form of violent or criminal behaviour.   The Left here is applying the same kind of bad reasoning that underlies its support for prohibiting “hate speech” – “saying Y about Z could make someone angry against Z and if someone is angry against Z he might turn violent against Z, therefore saying Y about Z should be considered the equivalent of indictment and banned” to justify suppression of a completely different kind of opinion.  

 

The Big Tech companies that control the largest social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, marching in step with the Democrats – or rather it was more like the other way around – threw the President of the United States of America off their platforms, using the same faulty justification, and then proceeded to purge their platforms of thousands of his supporters as well.   Then, having basically told thousands of people “if you don’t like our rules, go to our competitors”, they immediately proceeded to attempt to drive those competitors, such as Twitter competitor Parler, out of business.  When the internet first went online, many had seen it as a way of escaping the near monopoly on the sharing of information that the Left, which already dominated the major news and entertainment media corporations, possessed.   Now, however, with Big Tech controlling most of the platforms that people have come to regard as a kind of public forum, aligning itself with the Left, purging its platforms of those who dissent from the Left and ruthlessly eliminating competitors that allow for more freedom of thought, the Left is seeking to make its control on the sharing of information and opinion absolute and total.

 

Clearly, the Left has completely abandoned the liberalism of men like J. S. Mill in substance and spirit, and if it continues to maintain any sort of outward pretense of liberalism, it will be out of either sheer hypocrisy or an utter lack of self-awareness.

 

As many problems as there are with a conservatism that offers nothing but (classical) liberalism, it is to be preferred a billion times over a Left in which nothing of liberalism, neither its freedom nor the generosity and munificence to which it seems to have aspired in naming itself liberal, remains.

Which Came First the Gospel or the Law?

The knee-jerk response of many to the question posed in the title of this essay will be to say that the Law came first. It, after all, is the “Old” Covenant whereas the Gospel is the “New” Covenant. The proof-texting types will then back up this answer with John 1:17 “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

Since the Exodus took place approximately half-way through the second millennium BC this might seem conclusive. Back up, however, sixteen verses to the words with which the Gospel of John opens: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The beginning alluded to is the same beginning references in the first verse of Genesis which precedes Exodus. The Word, as the fourteenth verse clearly states, is Jesus Christ.

Now let us jump ahead seven chapters to where this same Jesus, Who brought the grace and truth of the Gospel, tells the Pharisees “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.” Abraham was the first of the Hebrew Patriarchs, the grandfather of Jacob in whose days the Israelites went down to Egypt, from bondage in which God delivered them in the days of Moses, four centuries later. When Jesus was then asked “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” He responded with “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.”

While Moses lived a millennium and a half prior to the Incarnation, the verses that I have been pointing you to, which testify to the deity of Jesus Christ demonstrate that He, Who in Himself IS the Gospel, is prior to Moses. Elsewhere, St. John testifies to seeing an angel flying in the midst of heaven “having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth” (Rev. 14:6). The word translated “everlasting” here is αἰώνιος. It is the Greek word for “eternal” which means having neither beginning nor end.

Lest it be thought that I am finding clever arguments for a moot point turn to the third chapter of epistle to the Galatians and note how St. Paul hangs his entire argument that grace finishes what grace begins upon the priority of the Gospel over the Law. In the eighth verse he writes “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.” Later in the seventeenth verse he writes “And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.” The Gospel, the Covenant of grace and promise, St. Paul is clearly arguing, is older than the Law, which he proceeds to argue was temporarily added, “because of transgressions” (v. 19) as a “schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ” (v. 24).

This third chapter of Galatians demonstrates several doctrines that are popular in various circles within contemporary Christianity to be utterly in error. Let us look at two of these.

The first is the “Church Age as parenthesis” doctrine that has been taught by many dispensationalists in support of their eschatology. This doctrine teaches that we are living in an Age that began with Pentecost and which will conclude with the Rapture and which, having been completely unknown to the prophets of the Old Testament, is a parenthesis – a gap – in the timeline of Old Testament prophecy and in God’s dealings with national Israel under the Mosaic Covenant (the Law). John F. Walvoord, who was president of Dallas Theological Seminary, the flagship school of dispensationalism, from the 1950s to the 1980s, articulated and defended this doctrine in both The Rapture Question (1979) and The Millennial Kingdom (1983). Earlier, Harry A. Ironside, popular Bible teacher and pastor of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago had written an entire book entitled The Great Parenthesis: The Mystery in Daniel’s Prophecy (1943). Both men derived this doctrine from the earlier teachings of men like John N. Darby and C. I. Scofield. Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, in his Major Bible Themes (1926), which was later revised and expanded by Walvoord (1974), took the parenthesis theory to its logical conclusion, given the premises of dispensationalist eschatology, and argued that in the Great Tribulation after the Rapture, the Age of Law would resume. Of the Age or Dispensation of Law Chafer wrote “Its course was interrupted by the death of Christ and the thrusting in of the hitherto unannounced age of the church. Thus the church age, while complete in itself, is parenthetical within the age of the law.” That this is the exact opposite of what St. Paul taught in Galatians ought to be obvious to anyone who reads that epistle. It is the Law, not the Gospel, that is the parenthesis.

The second doctrine is found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was drawn up in 1646 by the Puritans, those seditious, regicidal, maniacs, who murdered and martyred King Charles I, the legitimate king who was the true defender of his people’s liberty and freedom against those who wished to use Parliament as a means to subjecting the kingdom to their own arbitrary rule, because he stood in the way of their plans to abolish all that is ancient and aesthetically pleasing in the Church, to impose such a rigid, legalistic Sabbath keeping upon everyone that had the Pharisees of old survived to see it they would have cried “whoa, chill out, man”, to accuse everybody they didn’t like of “popish” leanings or witchcraft, to persecute those so accused, and to require that everyone subscribe to the darkest, gloomiest, version of the dark and gloomy doctrine known as Calvinism. The Puritans were the first liberals and leftists – their party within Parliament developed into the Whigs who later became the Liberals, their rebellion again the King and Church of England became the model for the Jacobin and Bolshevik Revolutions in France and Russia, and their Cromwellian Protectorate was the template for all subsequent totalitarian terror states from the French Reign of Terror to the Soviet Union to the Third Reich. Here is what their Confession has to say about man’s original condition:

The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience. (Westminster Confession of Faith, VII, ii)

The verses the Westminster divines pointed to in support of this idea of a “covenant of works” are verses which speak of the principle of the Law, including, ironically, a verse from Galatians 3. Ironies abound with regards to this teaching of the Westminster Confession. By making the original condition of man in the Garden a “covenant of works” that is the equivalent of the Law, they have fallen into the same mistake usually found in Gospel tracts written by Arminian – or outright Pelagian – evangelicals of saying that God’s original plan was messed up by man so He had to fall back on Plan B which was the Cross. St. John speaks of Christ as the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) in language that echoes that used by St. Peter in the eighteenth to twentieth verses of the first chapter of his first Catholic Epistle. Note St. Peter’s use of the word “foreordained” in verse twenty. The Cross was never “Plan B”, and one would think that people who emphasized the doctrines of election, foreordination, and predestination to the extent that the Puritans, who took these doctrines to such an extreme that they turned them into a gross, impious, and blasphemous heresy that denies the universal love of God and the universal offer of salvation in the Gospel, ought to know that better than anyone else. (1)

Man in the Garden of Eden was not under the Law. The Scriptures are very clear about this. Here again are the words of St. Paul from the first part of the nineteenth verse of the third chapter of Galatians: “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions.” The Fall of Man was the first such transgression. Consider also the following which St. Paul wrote to Timothy:

But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine; According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. (I Timothy 1:8-11)

If the Law was added because of transgressions, of which the Fall, which resulted in the expulsion from Eden was the first, and the law was not made for a righteous man, which Adam was prior to his transgression, but for the lawless and disobedient, i.e., men after the Fall, then man’s condition prior to the Fall in the Garden was not the “covenant of works” of the Westminster Confession.

Indeed, it is quite evident from the Genesis account alone that man’s original state was one of grace. It is an impoverished understanding of grace that thinks of it exclusively or even primarily as a merciful response to man’s sin. Grace, which we get from the Latin word gratia, the equivalent of the Greek Χάρις. These words had a similar range of meanings, from being the proper name of a class of pagan goddesses, usually three in number, to being the standard word used in giving thanks, which is why we speak of a prayer of thanksgiving prior to a meal as “saying grace.” All of its meanings, however, point back to its primary meaning of “favour”. When used of outward beauty, as we still use it when we speak of someone speaking or moving “gracefully” this had connotations both of beauty as a gift bestowed by divine favour, and that which is pleasing to the eye and so wins the favour of the beholder. The Graces were so-called because they were the goddesses of beauty and other related concepts. Thanksgiving, of course, is the proper and polite response to favour bestowed. When the Bible speaks of the grace of God it speaks of God’s favour, freely bestowed upon mankind, and it is a comprehensive term covering everything from the divine benevolence which motivates the bestowal of favour, the act of freely bestowing it, the favour itself, and everything which is freely given to show that favour, including both the Saviour of mankind, all that He did to accomplish our salvation, that salvation itself and the Holy Spirit Who was sent to indwell His Church and to perform the work of sanctification. Grace did not begin with man’s Fall. Man’s entire original state was one of grace. God poured His grace upon man by creating Him in the first place, for God did not owe us existence, by blessing him upon Creation and giving him dominion over the rest of creation (Gen. 1:28), and preparing the Garden of Eden for him and placing him in it (Gen. 2:8-15).

Note that the Genesis account mentions the Tree of Life as having been placed in the Garden of Eden before it mentions the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (Gen. 2:9). No conditions are placed on eating of the Tree of Life, which man is only barred from – and only temporarily at that (Rev. 22:1-2) – after his fall into sin (Gen. 3:22-24). A single commandment is given – the prohibition from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen. 2:17) Commandments are not contrary to grace. Jesus, on the eve of His Crucifixion and the dawn of the New Covenant, in conversation at the same Passover seder in which He instituted the New Covenant Sacrament of the Eucharist, left His disciples a “new commandment.” The new commandment was similar to the two commandments that He had said summarized the Law, but with a difference. The new commandment was “That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” “As I have loved you” has a double meaning. It means both “in the same manner as”, i.e., self-sacrificially, and “because.” Christ’s self-sacrificial love for us is both the example we are to follow and the motivation given for following it. Under the Gospel of grace, our motivation for obeying God is not that of the Law – do this and live (Gal. 3:12) – but gratitude (a word derived from grace). Being under grace rather than Law does not mean being under no authority and having no obligation to obey God. It means that our being in God’s favour is in no way dependent upon our performance of these obligations but that that favour is freely bestowed. (2) Which is exactly the condition of man in the Garden prior to the Fall. Nowhere in Genesis 1-3 is life “promised to Adam…upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.” On the contrary, life was freely given to Adam, as was access to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. The prohibition on the other Tree came with a warning of death, but there is a huge difference between saying “you have A on condition that you do B” and “don’t do X or you will get Y.” The Puritans never understood this difference. This is why they preached the regulative rather than the normative principle of worship, i.e., that it should include only what is specifically commanded in Scripture rather than that it can include all that it is not specifically prohibited in Scripture. This is why they rebelled against their legitimate king in the name of “liberty” and proceeded to establish the grandparent of all totalitarian despotisms. This is why they saw Law rather than grace in the Garden of Eden and included this, ironically Pelagian, heresy in their famous Confession of Faith.

Should someone want to quibble that the Gospel properly refers to the Good News about divine favour restored by He who redeemed us from sin rather than the grace enjoyed by man in his innocence, look to Genesis 3:15. The promise of the Redeemer was given in the midst of the curse, even before the expulsion from Eden, long before God saw fit to hand down the Law to Moses at Mt. Sinai.

(1) The dispensationalists also ought to have known better. In many other respects they have the strongest grasp of the distinction between Law and Gospel/Grace of any group in Christendom except the Lutherans. Whatever else can be said, for or against, the teachings of C. I. Scofield, the distinctions in his “Law and Grace”, originally the sixth chapter of his booklet Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, (1896) later modified and included by R. A. Torrey and A. C. Dixon in The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, (1910-1915) are superbly worded. “Law shuts every mouth before God; grace opens every mouth to praise Him… Law never had a missionary; grace is to be preached to every creature. Law utterly condemns the best man; grace freely justifies the worst.”

(2) It also means that the commandments are light rather than burdensome. In the Garden of Eden there was only one commandment – it prohibited eating of one tree, all other trees in the Garden were allowed. While the Law, containing over 600 commandments, could be essentially reduced to the famous Ten, and these summed up in two, the commandment of the Gospel is, like that in the Garden of Eden, single. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30)