Today on the podcast for Cultural Reformation, we'll continue our discussion on God's Law, talking about theonomy, history, and Messiah. Well, welcome back to the podcast for Cultural Reformation. I'm your host, Pastor Nate Wright, the Canadian Director of the Ezra Institute. And I am joined by my colleagues who are live on location filming. I will let Michael tell you all about that. But first of all, Joe, how are you adjusting to the time over here? Completely fine, thanks, Nate. Yeah, I'm very used to popping between over the pond these days back as a Ford. So I'm sleeping very well. Thank you. But it was good to be in Canada for a few days for our recent promotional and fundraising event in Inga Soul. And and then speaking at one of our partner churches on the Sunday morning with one of our most faithful and supportive pastors in Canada, Jacob Raune. So I'll leave Michael to tell you what we're up to now, but where we are down in in Tennessee in the womb out of the cold. You know what, actually, as soon as you left the weather turned and everything is beautiful and sunny outside. So I won't make any correlations to there, but anyway, Michael, you look like you're in a fancy location. How you doing, my friend, where are you? Well, as Joe mentioned, we're on location in Tennessee. We're just outside of Pigeon Forge and we're in a studio cabin and we're recording foundations to very, we're very excited about it. We're about to sit down and do the recording in the next two days. So for our listeners, if you haven't ordered and gone through foundations one in a small group, please go out and utilize that curriculum because we are preparing the next session that builds on it. So yeah, we're happy here, Nate. I noticed in your little segue there with Joe that you mentioned, it was sunny, but you said nothing about the temperature. So I assume that, you know, I assume that was a bit of a bait and switch there, my friend. Fair enough. Good catch there, Michael. You are absolutely correct. We are still wearing jackets outside. Go and I, we're in our short Chesterday sunbathing. Well, I will modify the envy that's swelling in my heart and get us back on track. So today we are talking about theonomy history and the Messiah. Now, I kind of want to start the conversation here. You know, we, we, last time we talked a little bit about natural law and it's inadequacies and, and so, you know, theonomy seems to be quite a buzzword and I would just say, you know, as the Ezra Institute has risen in popularity through the COVID era, theonomy became either a new word that people were exploring as they were being taught how to think Christianly about God's law and society. But it also kind of became a, you know, a four letter word to some people and became kind of the boogie man for a little while. So why don't we start with our esteemed president and, you know, do we embrace the term theonomy, Joe? And what does theonomy mean for our listeners? Well, we certainly need to embrace the law of God, I think. Any, I will believe in Christian would need to recognize as we read scripture that we need to obey God's commandments. Jesus himself said, if you love me, you will obey my commandments. And of course, our Lord famously goes up onto the mountain as the greater Moses will talk a bit about that a little later to expand the law of God. Paul the Apostle in 1 Timothy 1 tells us the law is good if it's used lawfully. So every Christian should be concerned with God's law. And one of the significant things actually about the law of God is that really we can't understand the decalogue, the basic moral commandments of scripture. We often talk about the 10 commandments as the moral law. And again, you know, what Christian would say, what faithful Christian would say, oh, no, I think we need to disobey the 10 commandments. Presumably, we all recognize, no, the 10 commandments written by the finger of God. In fact, the only part of scripture written directly by God's own hand is the law on the mountain as it republishes the creation law. And the moral law, let's take a commandment like you shall not murder is grounded in the legal norm. Right. We wouldn't understand the commandment you shall not murder as a moral requirement unless we knew juridically in terms of law, what murder is or how about you shall not steal. You shall not steal as a moral commandment. We would agree with that as Christians, presumably every Christian listening would agree, you shall not steal. Is something that we need to obey. Or you shall not commit adultery. But how do we know what theft actually is? What adultery actually is? Well, it's, I mean, it's grounded. The moral commandments, which are the love commandment essentially is grounded in the law. So that's why Jesus is able to summarize the law the way he does. You know, the law is summarized in this love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. So we can't drive wedge between I think what happens sometimes, Nate, when people, Christians hear about the law and we're asked this question about theonomy, which, by the way, maybe I should have started by saying theonomy just means he says, Theos nomos, it just means God's law. That's all theonomy means. Theonomy is a form of heteronomy. So heteronomy means that the law that governs us is something that's external to us, something that transcends us. And so Christians are heteronomists, that is to say we believe that there is a law that doesn't simply originate in our subjective consciousness. The law doesn't arrive from our relativistic preferences, but it is an external command. That's that's heteronomy. The particular form of heteronomy that the Christian embraces is theonomy, which simply means God's law. And the relationship between law and love is very, very important because, again, the initial thing I think that comes to people's minds when you asked a question like that, when you introduce a topic like that is say, well, how on a second, isn't the Christianity about love? Isn't the Bible about God's love and our love for people and God? You know, what's this law? Categories, isn't that legalism, et cetera? And this danger that we, if we don't recognize the relationship between law and love, or we try and break down the distinction and say, well, God doesn't care about law anymore. It's all love. We actually misunderstand the nature of love itself. Love is the Bible says in Romans 13, love is the fulfillment of the law because love does no wrong to its neighbor. So, and their Paul cites the decalogue as what it means to love God. So love to, God love to neighbor is obedience to God's law. And that's why we believe theonomy is important and should not be juxtaposed. Law should not be juxtaposed with love, but we should recognize their unity in Scripture. We can certainly say that love goes beyond law in the sense that my relationship, say, for example, to you and Michael, as my brothers, my friends, my colleagues, is not simply a lawful relationship. It's not just that I want to avoid breaking God's law with respect to you. We can say that there is an affection, a longing for one another's good and blessing and hopefully self-sacrifice and those kinds of things involved. So love goes beyond the simple requirement of law, but it is no less than obedience to God's law. And so, when in a pastoral situation a Christian maybe a member of Michael's church comes to him and says, I really love my wife, but there's this other woman at the gym that I've been sleeping with. Of course, you use my church as the example. Because it's more likely with that sort of activity, where I'm not in need. Surely. Well, if you go to Royal Spring Chapel, the president meant nothing by that. He was just using theoretical example that could have been at anybody's church. Go ahead, too. Well, we get the point. The point, the point being the pastoral response to a man like that in the church is to say, well, actually, you don't love your wife if you're behaving like that because love is the fulfillment of the law. So this is what we would call an anti-nomos perspective, an anti-law perspective, an anti-theanomic perspective would sort of throw law over in favor of an elastic principle of love. So theonomy just means God's law and it means that we recognize that there is a law external to us and that God requires us to obey His law and the private expression of that ethically is obedience to the moral requirements of God's law ethically to love our neighbor. Jesus deals with that and serving on the mount. The public, that's the private expression of it ethically to one another. The public expression of it is the juridical legal sphere of life where we recognize that God's law is good when used lawfully in the context of the civil order. So that's the basic, really, that's the essential meaning of theonomy. I think it's something that demands and requires the extent of every Christian, as he said, we get away from this boogie man idea that there's something new or novel here. This is simply recognition of the authority and power and relevance of God's law for our lives. Yeah. And what's sort of happening when people want to contrast love with law is that they're often looking at something that the Lord Jesus does in fact say, but they're pulling out all of its meaning and like a Trojan horse, they're filling up, you know, with a meaning that scripture doesn't give. So for example, Jesus does say that the most important law is love God and then love neighbor. But that's actually a summary of the law that if we were to ask the question, what does it look like to love God and then what does it look like to love neighbor, right? Love is not a nebulous concept. It's concrete. And so God shows us what does it look like to love him? He gives us the first table of the law and what does it look like to love neighbor and he gives us the second table of the law. And Michael, I want to bring you into this conversation because, you know, we live in a culture where we want this to be practical for people where we hear things like, you know, just follow your heart, right? I got to do what's best for me. And what that actually shows is what what Joe was describing there is is law is the moral commands of God that bind us. Is it external or is it internal? And so really what we're talking about here is that there's an inescapable concept at play. And that means that you are either, you know, beholden to God's law, theonomy or the alternative is autonomy, right? Self-law. Does it come out from inside of me? Is it have to do with my own subjective views of what love is? And then I can confuse, you know, you not using my proper pronouns as you not loving me. So talk a little bit about that inescapable concept. It's either theonomy or autonomy and how that plays out. Well, the phrase that, you know, as you mentioned, some of those buzz phrases that you think about, the phrase that comes to my mind is like believe in yourself, you know, you're, was just reading a post this morning about how Lewis and Tolkien were very skeptical of Disney's storytelling. It was very reduced. And you know, we know that out of modern media, that this is a message that we'll often get like believe in yourself, you know, listen to yourself. This slips into the category of counseling if we're thinking about this past story, just how often people are seeking counsel, which when we look scripturally, of course, is from outside of ourselves. It's God's wisdom. And they go to counselors and they find people just trying to dive into maybe all of their personal reasons for their behavior. And it ends up just being this rationalization of any type of behavior. So,onomy will always lead to the rationalization of behavior that we see this as a pastor. You take Joe's illustration of the man in his church who is sleeping around on his wife. And he's just rationalizing. And what ends up happening is when you rationalize from your own perspectives, you're no longer sitting under the authority of Scripture. So ironically, this big bad word, theonomy, I think most often, and I'd be happy for either of you guys to comment on this. What we really mean by it is it includes the whole council of God. You know, when Jesus comes and summarizes the law in the first and the greatest commandment, and the second one that is like it, he's summarizing all of Scripture. And so, when people are especially Christians are trying to deny the concept of theonomy because they're confused about it and they're interacting with Paul about justification, if you walk away and take an autonomous view of life and you do not submit in some way shape or form to theonomy, what you're actually doing is walking away from the whole council of God. And you're replacing your own opinion, man's word again, autonomy for almost every subject. That's for me, the pastoral danger in all of this, is that, you know, pastors get infighting about the buzzwords that they like. And I know that we're going to talk about history in the next segment. And, and part of the reason why the word theonomy is so loaded is because pastors, theologically, dump load and dump academic conversations and articles onto it. But the pastoral implication is just simply if people walk away from a basic perspective that God's law is informative for our life, they end up walking away from the entire council of the Lord. They walk away from all of Scripture because whether it's in the 10 commandments or it is in Christ or the New Testament applying the 10 commandments or the the word revelation of God in specific situations, Scripture is full of commands. And all of those commands do not come from an individual, they come from the Word. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's sort of a misunderstanding. I was just at our classical Christian school just teaching this in our Bible classes. We went through a unit on the law. You know, amazed how how few students kind of understand this, right? That, you know, the entire law is summarized, love God, love neighbor. And then it's fleshed out in the first and second tables of the law of the decalogue. And then you have the case studies, right? The application of the decalogue to every day life. And that's where you have, and the students were really amazed at how, you know, the 10 commandments seem simplistic. But if you dig into them, right? You recognize that when God says, on your father and mother, that's not a limited command to just honoring your biological mom and dad. But this is actually God embedding authority structures into the fabric of the world that he's created. And so that law is expanded then as the case law talks about honoring the civil magistrate and honoring church ecclesiastical authority and all these kinds of things. So there really is a lot more to it. So Joe, before we get to into the nitty gritty, and we will talk a little bit the next segment about, you know, some of the principles of the law that are sometimes confusing for people, let's start with that historical perspective. Because I think one of the objections to theonomy is that this isn't actually the historical position of the church. And so as you look through the Puritans and the Reformers, you know, is theonomy, though the word might be a little bit more new, is the concept that we're talking about here, the historical position of the church? Yeah, it's a good, it's a good question. And the, there's been a lot of debate back with some forwards about, as Michael said, terminology. But the, the view that the law of God is central to the Christian life is the historical position of the church. The notion that man could just rely on so-called natural law or his understanding of natural law was never the historical position of the, of the Christian church. If you go to, we already mentioned Paul in Romans 13, but Paul in First Timothy says this, we know that law is good, provided one uses it legitimately. We know that the law is not meant for a righteous person, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and irreverent, for those who kill their fathers and mothers for murderers, for the sexually immoral and homosexuals, for kidnappers, liars, purdurgers, and for whatever else's country, to the sound teaching based on the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was entrusted to me. And we deal, of course, I deal with this in think, Christianly, I know we're working through some of the key themes over these few weeks that come up in my new book, think, Christianly. And so people who want to delve deeper into this, they should, we can't cover all the historical material here. But yes, if you then look at early figures like Justin Marta, early Christian apologists, even though they were wrestling with the paganism that was around them. And this is one of the problems, Nate, is that as we've often discussed on our show, as Greeks and Romans will be coming Christians, especially the intellectuals, there was this temptation and tendency to try and synthesize the concepts of Greek philosophy with Christianity. So we don't see consistency in everything in the history of the church on this issue. But we do see a very, very clear and distinct direction. Justin Marta, for example, makes the distinction between moral, ceremonial, and judicial law without any negative remark on the judicial law of the older testament. And we see a similar pattern during the reformation era. What's particularly interesting, perhaps worth pointing out, is that during the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquatness, who is often held up as the as the Paragon of the representing the sort of magisterial position of the Western church, as the doctor of the Roman Catholic church, and the man who advanced natural law theory, a very interesting study was done by Professor Mark Klausen. And he argued from the source material, let me just quote Mark briefly to you, Klausen to you. He says about minus, Thomas Fox is the mosaic judicial laws closely, justifying various punishments without modification or criticism, including the comprehensive details, such as restitution varieties of theft, wrongful death, negligence regarding animals, man stealing adultery, even surprisingly, the death penalty for the rebellious son. We can come back to that later. In every case, he gives ample evidence that the judicial precepts are just as valid in his own day as they were for the Hebrew Commonwealth. That is not, this is not to say that a coin is sought to require the adoption of all the details of the Old Testament mosaic judicial laws. On the contrary, he sees them as valid in principle. In other words, he advocates a general equity theory of theonomy. Very, very interesting that Aquinas, who is often set up as some sort of paradigmatic opponent of the theonomic position, which is that we have to take the details of God's law seriously. We have to look at the principles of God's law. What is the equity, the general equity of the law of God and make valid applications for today? Then of course, it should need no justification going on from there to talk about men like Piaverette and Martin, Boosa and John Calvin and so forth. The reformation was a period as it sought to recover the hebraic roots of the faith. Took the law of God very seriously. John Calvin, for example, spent a good deal of time preaching through the law of God. His sermons on due to theonomy, for example, on the covenant law are absolutely vital reading for any Christian interested in the reformers view of the relevance of the law of God. Of course, the word theonomy can mean slightly different things to different people. It's like the word charismatic or even the word evangelical. It has to be qualified what we're talking about when we talk about theonomy and what we mean. But essentially what we're saying is if you break it down, God's law, the decalon and then the applications of the law in illustrative examples, minimal cases that are given are relevant for us today to mine wisdom of or of God and its validity for our current circumstances. So just before we move on to some of the particulars Michael, bring this home for us with a little bit of application. Why is this relevant? Why is this important for modern Christians to understand? I'm going to go back to something Joe said at the beginning of the podcast and that is how do we know conceptually what a sin is if we don't have this lawful reference point and just very simple application both for our own personal holiness and walking with the Lord and evangelism we return to the Apostle Paul in Romans 7 when he simply says what then shall we say that the law is sin by no means if it had not been for the law I would have not known sin if I would have not known sin for I would have not known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet and so very simply in our own lives and in our evangelism to people where we're trying to help them repent of sin the law defines sin for the believer. This episode of the podcast for cultural reformation is brought to you by the Ezra Foundations Curriculum. The Ezra Foundations Curriculum equips churches small groups and Christian educators with a clear biblical worldview for all of life rooted in scripture and aligned with the theology of the Ezra Institute. It's designed to help participants think Christianly about family, education, politics, culture and more. Each Curriculum kit includes full access to the Ezra Foundations video courses featuring Dr. Joe Boot, Pastor Nate Wright and Dr. Michael Tisen along with 10 printed participant guides and a comprehensive leaders guide for group facilitation. Learn more and get started today at EzraMedia.tv slash foundations. Now back to the show. So we've been talking a little bit about theonomy and what the word itself means, kind of defending that this is in fact the historical view of the church. It's interesting to think that the Puritans and the American colonists cite Deuteronomy far more than they slight cite any other political source in their formation of the legal system and the setting up of the nation. But I kind of want to get into some of the details of this. So we'll talk maybe in this segment about restitution and just retribution. Lex Tallyonis is the phrase and I would say a lot of modern Christians don't understand the idea of an I for an I principle of proportionality that it actually prevents both excess in severity and laxity when it comes to understanding how lawlessness ought to be punished civilly. So Joe, why don't you just start by taking that phrase Lex Tallyonis and sometimes we like to use phrases that confuse people. But what does that mean and how understanding it is sort of a bedrock for understanding the legal theonomy? Well, there's a couple of important things here. First of all, they're just the Latin phrase Lex Tallyonis means the law of retaliation or the law of retribution. So it is the the meaning kernel that would be a rather doyveridine expression. When you think about the juridical dimension of our lives, this area of law, the juridical aspect of life which plays a central role in all of our lives, what is the what is the central meaning of the juridical aspect? What is it that's irreducible about the juridical area of life? What makes law law? How would we find it? And actually the the the irreducible meaning of the juridical aspect of life is retribution. It is the the the law of tribution to to give somebody their due. That's what tribution means. So just as we have to give God his due. In fact, in a sense, we see that the foundation of the idea of law of justice in the being of God himself, because we're told in scripture that the sun gives due honor to the and then we see that the father honors the sun reciprocally in giving him exulting him, giving him a name that is above every name. Jesus says, I honor my father. And then of course the father honors the sun. So justice occurs in the Trinity. Now within the being of God, their justice is at work. That's where we find in a certain sense. The it's a concept transcending, of course, idea of justice when we're talking about the being of God. But we see it operative in the intrapersonal relationship within the Trinity. And temporarily in the in the creation audit, retribution is to give somebody their due. And so the the central meaning of the juridical of the idea of law is tribution or retribution. It's to give somebody their due. And so that's what the lex talionus is concerned with. The the eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth principle. Now some people tend to think, or you know, isn't this awfully barbaric. This this idea in the Bible of an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. How can how can you treat people in such a way that if somebody's eye is damaged, then you poke out the eye of the other person in terms of that that's not what the principal meets. And any brief attention to the meaning of this makes that clear. The the the the the law of retribution or tribution. The principle of the lex talionus is concerns proportionality. Nate, you mentioned it in your preamble proportionality within the law. There's a difference between law and advice. And we've talked about this before. Law involves both precept and penalty. I mean, if you're driving your car down the highway and you're doing 170 kilometers an hour in 110 limit on the on the 401 in Canada and the police pull you over, they're not just going to say, well, you know, the advice that the you know, the the government of Ontario gives for the 401 is, you know, about 110. No, they say, the law is this and here's the penalty. We're going to seize your vehicle because you are way over the limit. So law involves both precept and penalty. So at the heart of this juridical aspect of life is the the giving of somebody their due. And that means in the context of law, the juridical sphere of life, in this public arena, the law is concerned with making sure that the punishment fits the crime. That's another way of putting it that the punishment fits the crime that neither excessive inhumanity or laxity are present in dealing with the violation of the law. And we see both, of course, in the history of the Western world. We see periods of of inhumanity and excessive severity and actually to very recently, I mean, just think about into the 19th century, well into the 19th century, you could be executed for basically shooting gay wild game on, you know, the local Lord's property. There were severe penalties, excessive numbers of death penalties for all all sorts of instances of theft, for example, think about the United States, where cackel rustlers or horse thieves would often be executed. Those are examples of excessive forms of punishment at the Bible does not endorse, does not tolerate. But then fast forward into our own time, now just, 150 years or so later, and or let's do that, you know, 100 years later. And we have not only we allow murderers to get away without suffering the maximum penalty, which God's law requires, actually, the mandatory execution of the murderer, not only do we tolerate the murder, we promote murder in the form of abortion and euthanasia. We instead of addressing, for example, the heinous crime of rape with the death penalties that were valid in Canada for rape right through until 1950, you're pretty unlucky if you get prosecuted at all. And if you do, the penalties are not severe. So then to the period of white would call severe laxity in general in the west, when it comes to dealing with this issue of the lexatallionus of tribution. And perhaps in a minute, we can come on to why that is with the sort of humanitarian views of justice rather than God's view of justice, where justice is concerned with tribution, with giving somebody their due, not with being a crime as sort of illness or sickness in which the state is going to cure and rehabilitate you. Yeah, I think just on a very practical level, we can see what happens when, when civil governments get away from God's law, actually, they tend to move in a trajectory of being severe with minor infractions and lax with very major infractions. In Canada, there's all kinds of examples of rapists who are released just several months later. And yet if a farmer was caught selling raw milk, he could go to jail for five years. And I think intuitively we know that this is there's something wrong with that. And so I want to come back to that, Joe, but just before I do, I kind of want to anticipate maybe an objection or a question that a listener might have, because anybody who knows the sermon on the mount might say, well, didn't Jesus kind of abolish the lexthalionist? It doesn't kind of condemn the eye for eye and tooth for tooth when he says, you know, you've heard it said, but I say to you, don't repay an evil person. And so obviously, Jesus who understood sphere sovereignty even better than the Jesuer Institute was not making a case for abolishing God's law, but actually making a distinction between personal vengeance and civil retribution. So Mike, why don't you answer the question of somebody who might come and say, well, didn't Jesus just abolish all of this on the sermon on the mount? Yeah, if we go through the sermon on the mount, we see Jesus referring to a number of fair sayerkels, a fairs' equal interpretations of the law. And sometimes you can see that clearly in the text where he is quoting someone who is misquoting the Old Testament. And then sometimes he is just using the words that they're saying. So first of all, as pastors and as Christians, we have all experienced individuals using the literal words of the Bible. And sometimes very properly, like with a precision, but completely out of context. And you have to correct their proper pronunciation of scripture, but you are then dealing with their interpretation. So the thing that I want to acknowledge is here when you see Jesus in Matthew 538 talking about the law of retaliation or the law of retribution, which by the way, Joe, you, when you mentioned that, it's giving someone what's due, the repayment side of that is giving someone what's due when you've taken from them. So, tribution, if I give a tribute, I'm giving someone out of honor when I'm retributing, I'm giving someone something that I owe them because I need to pay them back. So it's a repayment. It just goes to all of the examples that Joe just mentioned about extreme vengeance or retaliating rather than injustice. So we have to acknowledge that we are committed when we come to this text that Jesus is the great law giver. And here when Jesus quotes Moses, he is quoting scripture as the Pharisees are quoting it. So we are committed when we interpret this passage to who Jesus was and what he was doing. But with that proper understanding, then you understand simply that Jesus is correcting their interpretation, that their interpretation, you know, someone is using that law to overreact to someone taking a tunic, you know, someone takes a, you're tunic, but I'm having your cloak as well. There is an element of personal grace that Jesus is exhorting here, obviously in the face of people who are being very technical and and and and over responding to slights and and wrongs, you know. Also, none of these within Roman, the Roman context, there's the whole mile where you were under Roman law, a soldier could make you walk a mile, but they couldn't make you walk too. So there's this is a conversation of justice and he is clearly not going away with the law, but he is clearly interpreting it properly that we don't take a law that's supposed to restrain us from an overreaction to actually overreact. Right. So I want to come back to something that you said, jokes, I think it's really important. There was a cultural shift that took place. I would say a sociological shift in viewing sin and viewing crime as as sociological as opposed to judicial. And so I want you to talk a little bit about how that shift took place and how how it affects our conversation. Yeah, very quickly, just circling the wagon on what Michael just said for for clarity, Jesus concerning the servant on the mount is with the ethical life of people's personal relationships with one another and how they react, as Michael said, not legalistically, but ethically, morally in their personal relationships in the public. So Jesus is not abolishing courts of law. I mean, and he's not abolishing the validity of the law in any way, shape or form, we'll see that in Mark and Matthew where Jesus cites the law and its juridical use. So you always have to interpret scripture with scripture. That's one of the things that sometimes Christians are not good at. As Michael said, they grab something out of context. They take out of context of the broader teaching of Jesus. They sell, well, Jesus said, you've heard a seven eye for an eye, but I say to you, what Jesus is dealing with there, if don't take personal vengeance on people, vengeance belongs to the Lord. Vengeance is mine says the Lord. How does God take vengeance according to scripture in human? These issues of human crime in society. He uses the proper authority that binds the civil authorities to exact tribution and retribution. With respect to the this humanitarian theory of justice, yeah, what actually see a sluice did an amazing essay on this, the way in which our society has moved away from this idea of retribution of the lex talionus to hear as though that it's unloving and to a so-called humanitarian view. By the way, the original meaning of humanitarian was somebody who denied the supernatural, especially the resurrection. That was the original meaning of the term humanitarian and it morphed into meaning somebody who loves humanity. Interesting that, isn't it? That its original meaning is a denial of the resurrection of Jesus and those are the people that really love humanity. And this humanitarian theory is that no crime is not rooted, as we've already said on the show, in sin, lawlessness, where a just retribution needs to be delivered because the concern of the law is justice. That's why when we talk about law and penalties, which is an important aspect of the Bible, the concern of the why we talked about law as precept and penalty, it's not simply advice, in order for it to be truly function as law. The penalty has to fit the crime, but if there's no penalty, we're no longer, we've no longer got a connection between the idea of law and justice. We're now thinking of in other categories like healing or cure. The deterrent, of course, is a, is this can be a side benefit of properly applying the penalties of the law, but the primary purpose of penalties within the law is not deterrent either. It's to make sure that law and justice remain connected and that law does not become simply a tool for some other manipulative purpose. And so, C.S. Lewis deals with this humanitarian theory that throws over restitution. It says, well, actually crime is a disease. Crime is an illness and the state needs to cure it. And actually, we can't have talk in these terms, you know, in popular culture, when the newsreels are telling us about some hideous crime that's in a complex, almost inevitably, they talk in the language of tragedy or the sick individual or this disturbed individual or they're looking into the state of mind of this individual. And everything, and you know, we've had some crimes recently in the United Kingdom, some really serious hideous crimes where the, actually, interestingly, I've been challenged in terms of the findings of the court that have sort of put these criminals into hospitals, mental institutions because they weren't in their right state of mind or they were off their meds or whatever as though the Bible has categories for people off their meds. There's though the goal of the justice system of the law really is not justice but is actually the curate, the rehabilitation of the criminal. And it's no longer about restitution. And I think it was Mike Lumenschen, that principal, and maybe it was unique, the principal of restitution is absolutely central for a Christian view of justice that we're restoring something that's been taken or been lost. And if you've taken somebody's life, then the restitution is the death penalty. If you've stolen, then restitution is the restoration of good. I mean, that's what goes on with even Zacchaeus when he finds salvation in the gospels, is he makes restitution for the thefts that he has done. That is the nature of justice. But we've turned it in humord and humanism away from the connection with justice because we no longer believe in sin. And we say that we've got to cure somebody so that they can, they can fit again in society. It's not, there's no crime is not to do with sin and justice. We did connect the meaning of law and justice. We say, well, law is instrumental towards making society a healthy place that most people can live together satisfactorily in. And so people who don't conform to the expected patterns, we need to cure them in a humanitarian way. And we need to rehabilitate them. Well, of course, if anything is proven to be a total failure, it's the humanitarian theory of justice. It's the idea that prisons and penitentiaries will make people penitent and rehabilitate them for society. Residivism rates, that is reoffense rates show that this does not work. And worse of all, it disconnects law and justice altogether. So punish the only thing that connects law and justice is punishment. If punishment's gone, then law and justice are no longer connected to one another. And that's what the Bible rejects. And that's what very interestingly, if people get a chance to read it, the humanitarian theory of punishment, the CS Lewis wrote about really good essay. Yeah, absolutely. And then there's plenty of reading that people can do to dig a little deeper into these concepts. But I kind of want to wrap up this part of the section and we want to land the plane on Christ as we've teased a few times. But Michael, I want to come to you just to wrap up this segment and ask the question, what happens when we abandon this view of retribution and justice and not giving somebody what they deserve? Yeah, I think Joe's already said it and I'll just repeat it here at the end. If we abandon and deserve what a person deserves, if we walk away from that idea, then we just give the state or the church or the parent or any other position of authority permission to treat us how they see fit in order to therapeutically heal us. So if you go to a counselor, you're giving the counselor that authority and you can just go into this ongoing, never-ending cycle of sickness where you stay in your sin, you don't repat- you don't repay the payment that you need to make in order to be reconciled to someone. Restitution. Yeah, you're never able to be restored to the other individual because they continue to be wronged by you. And so thinking, Christianly about law means that we are demanding that the punishment for the crime stays fitting. No more, no less. And this opens up the door through Christ and in the life of the church for real reconciliation, the ministry of reconciliation that we have. 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So this conversation that we've been having concerning theonomy and history and justice, we want to land the plane talking about how Christ and the Messiah coming into the world has affected this. I think that the wrong view obviously is that Christ comes into the world and his sacrifice eradicates all of this when we would say it actually fulfills all of this. So we want to end this conversation kind of talking a little bit about correcting the the anti-nomean error by looking at Christ's own relationship with the law. Now we've teased this out a little bit but Joe, you said something in the last segment that I want to give you an opportunity to kind of dig a little deeper into. You said that Jesus doesn't attacking the law. He's attacking the traditions that the Pharisees used to actually bypass the law. So why don't I turn it over to you to kind of tee up this conversation? Yes, one of the greatest errors I think of modern Christians is many modern Christians is to think that Jesus had come to abolish and overthrow the law and replace it with an elastic principle of love. And we don't pay sufficient attention to Jesus' relationship to the law as the living Torah. And I find increasingly that this is actually the best place to start with people is to help them understand the law of Jesus because if we're Christians with followers of Jesus and Jesus was the one who fulfilled the law perfectly. I mean, isn't that the meaning of the part of the meaning of redemption is that Christ fulfilled the law perfectly. He was sick because he was sinless. Sin is lawlessness the Bible says. Jesus is sinless. So he fulfills the law we're told perfectly so that he could be the sinbarra. And not only does that mean that as the Christ is a model, an example, if you're a follower of Christ, then you live like he lived. You tread the seed, we saw that he trod. We believe that what he taught. So that's what to be a Christian means. And Christ was the one who kept the law as God intended. And as Michael said in the last session, interpreted it properly as God intended it to be understood as the master and authoritative teacher of the law, as the one who gave the law in the first place, then he obeys it in its fullness completely. And Paul says it tells us that the Christian is being conformed to the image of his son. So we're not being conformed to the image as Christians of a lawbreaker, but conformed to the image of the one who fulfilled the law perfectly. It would be strange, indeed, wouldn't it, if what took Christ to the cross was our lawlessness so that only by coming to Christ and the cross, we could immerd as those who could live lawlessly. I mean, it would be an absolute absurdity. It would be an utter contradiction of the intention of the gospel. It's that it's Christ died so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, so that we would be justified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who kept the law so that then in the process of sanctification, we might be conformed to the image of his son and live a holy righteous life, a just life, which is one that it righteousness and justice are the same word in the New Attestiment. So you're just understanding the gospel actually helps us to understand the importance of the law, if we understand the gospel properly. And then I think as we encounter Jesus dealing with the Pharisees, as you said, again, people wrongly position this debate as though it's the Pharisees who love the law, who are wanting to uphold the law, and then Jesus coming along, wanting to break the law and therefore them getting an arguments about it, which is the absolute opposite of what the Bible teaches us. It teaches us a Pharisee. What was Jesus charged to the Pharisees? He says, you neither know the Scriptures nor the power of God. You do not know what you're talking about is what Jesus actually called the Pharisees about. The Pharisees created a fence for the law. They've created an oral tradition around the law so that they can actually find ways of justifying their disobedience to the law of God. And actually every challenge that the Pharisees make with a trap Jesus and show them to be a law breaker, Jesus turns tables and shows them that they are the lawbreakers and that he is keeping the law, whether he's talking about the Sabbath and he's on the Sabbath, whether he's talking about tithing. In every instance, Jesus shows that he is the one upholding God's righteous standards and they are violating the law by their traditions. Let me take you to one passage, Matthew 23 versus 23 to 24. Jesus says, woe to you. Scribes Pharisee hypocrites. You pay a tenth of mint, dill and cumin, yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy and faith. These things, that is the tithing, should have been done without neglecting the other. So these things, that is justice, mercy and faith, should have been done without neglecting the others like tithing. So, rind glides, he says, you strain at that, yet got down a camel. So you claim to be law keep, you have your pontillious fulfillment of the these little details that you can do in front of other people, the people can see, but true justice, true mercy, these waiting passes of the law, he says, you neglect, you should have done that whilst not gnawing the details of God's order. So that is the nature of debate, debate, wherever you confront it in whether it's in John's gospel, ideal with that in detail and think Christianly. Think about how Jesus at the very beginning of his ministry is confronted by Satan. And this should be an indicator for a straightaway. Satan in scripture is called the lawless one. Seeing his lawlessness, he's the lawless one. And the lawless one comes to Jesus and tempts him in the wilderness as he goes out like Israel into the wilderness to be tested. And how does Jesus deal with the temptation of Satan? And as Michael pointed out in the last segment, sometimes, you know, not only do people misquote the law, Satan himself knows how to quote the Bible and he quoted it to Jesus. But Jesus responds every time from uterolomy, from that period, actually, where Israel is being tested in the wilderness. And he quotes the law of God to defeat Satan. What should that tell the Christian immediately about the relevance of God's law? Jesus chose the instrument of the law to defeat the temptations of Satan. So I think that we set up our final segment here. Now, Jesus deals with the Pharisees, how he deals with Satan. And so we can talk a little bit to about Jesus on the mountain of God and what he says about the fulfillment of the law in his life and ministry. And there's one or two details I had to come to a bit later too. Yeah, I'll bring that back to you in just a minute, Joe. I want to once again kind of anticipate some of the responses that some of our listeners who might not agree with us. One of the things that we often get thrown at us is the phrase, but we're not under law, we're under grace. And I think that that comes to a fundamental misunderstanding that grace saves us from the penalty of the law so that we're actually empowered to live lives that keep the law. And so when Paul says that we're not under law, we're under grace. He's talking about having the judicial punishment of crime lifted from us because of what Christ did on the cross. But that doesn't at all alter what then God expects of us as Jesus comes along and says, if you love me, you'll obey my commands. And one of the things I often say because there are some, we don't have time to go into all of them, but there are some other, I would say theological positions, novel, I would say theological positions that would say that the standard of justice has changed, that the new covenant era comes in and actually changes what law we are required to uphold. And they would talk about, they would kind of contrast the law of God versus the law of Christ. And without, you know, having the time to go into all of that, one of the things that I often say to people is that we are saved by Christ's imputed righteousness. And as you said earlier, Joe, Christ was the one who fulfilled the law perfectly. And so if part of what saves us, you know, what justifies us before God is the imputed righteousness of Christ and his righteousness is perfectly adhering to the law of God. Then if the standard has changed, then it actually changes our standing before God, because his imputed righteousness is based, it's a righteousness that's born out of adherence to the law. And so if that law standard changes, then we need a different imputed righteousness in order to stand justified before God. And so the standard of justice cannot change coming into the new covenant era as evidenced by the fact that we are in fact saved by the imputed righteousness of Christ. Now, Joe, you talked a little bit about Satan attempting Christ and Christ defeating Satan in the wilderness by quoting the scriptures. And so Michael, let me ask you this question. If Jesus used the Torah to defeat Satan in the wilderness, why on earth would modern Christians think that it's useless for defeating the cultural evils that we want to see defeated around us now? Yeah, I knew you were going to ask this. I could see this one coming. And I think the simplest answer is more pastoral in nature, not academic. And that is it is a great inconsistency. Like I can think of some of the most wonderful godly saints in my life who would have the same view. And by the way, I'm so glad Joe just went to Matthew about the Pharisees, because it is one of the most ridiculous interpretations of the Pharisees is that they were actually trying to pursue God's law. We'll I'll go to one example of that. But I think it is just a great inconsistency. I think they've been, I think they've been taught poorly. And I think that they have been really bashed. You know, God's law bad, grace good, God's law bad, love, upigupi, undefined love, good. And yet if you take the average Christian and you ask them questions about the law of the Lord, those who are immersed in Scripture have a great affection for it. So I think that it's an inconsistency and they need to be given permission and and encourage and exhorted to be consistent to to quote Scripture day. One of the reasons why we don't quote Scripture is because we have an angle. And one of the you see this most clearly when I, you know, of course Jesus goes from his ministry in Galilee, he's into Jerusalem, the triumphal entry. And then now he has more of his confrontations with the official religious position. And it's there that the Pharisees always show their hand into their real motives. So even when he's challenged at the temple by the chief priests and and they ask by what authority are you doing these things? And Jesus goes back and he asks them the question, you know, I'll answer that. And and he says, but you answer this first, the you know, the baptism baptism of John, where did it come from? And you notice their answers. They discussed it among themselves saying, if we say from heaven, he will say to us then why did you not believe him? But if we say from man, we are, if sorry, if we are, if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd for they all told us that John was a prophet. And so they answered, we don't know. Here's the thing that that doesn't happen in that entire dialogue. The Pharisees don't legitimately answer the question. They don't even grapple with it. They don't want to deal with it. So I think that when people refuse to quote scripture, they're either being incredibly inconsistent or there is an ulterior motive that's going on here and they don't want to speak the truth or deal with the truth in a moment because either of people pleasing or losing position. So it's it's it's it's simple and it's complicated. There's a number of reasons why Christians just wouldn't use the authority of God's word as we should. So Joe, I want to come back to you and and you know, we've talked a lot about the Pharisees and I think getting a proper understanding of what exactly was going on in Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees I want to come back to a point that you wanted to make about Jesus fulfilling the law and what that what that actually needs because you know, he says very clearly in in Matthew 517 that his his purpose did was not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He says that very clearly. But two few Christians I think understand exactly what he's saying there. So when I come back to you to make some of the points that you alluded to earlier. Yeah, this is a this is a vital text actually in this whole discussion especially as it relates to your your questionate about why would that that Michael addressed why would people not want to use the law of God or to try and say well there's a difference between the law of God and the law of Christ, the law of Moses and the law of Christ and tried it almost develop new categories somehow for dividing God. Let's remember first that the when Jesus goes on to the mountain as the great Moses there in Matthew 5 to to interpret the law he does so as the author of the law. So it's interesting the number of times that in the scriptures that Jesus refers not to Moses. Sometimes he does refer to Moses but other other times he simply says God's law. So take for example Matthew 15 another one of these instances he answered the Matthew 15 336 and this is dealing with penal sanctions. Why do you break God's commandment because of your tradition? Because God sent only your other and your mother and the one who speaks evil of father and mother must be put to death but you say you ever tell father and mother whatever benefits you might have received from me is a gift committed to the temple. He does not have to honor his father. In this way you have revoked God's word because of your tradition. Now we haven't got time to exegy that significance of that and go back into the details of the the penal sanctions and everything else but what Jesus says here is it's God's commandment and you've revoked God's word. He doesn't say you've revoked man's word or interpretation or Moses interpretation. You've revoked God's word. Christ himself is the author of the law and he's therefore he's the ultimate interpreter of the law and in Matthew 5 he says I've not come to abolish the law. I've come to play route. I've come to fulfill. I've come to fill it up. That's what it means. I've come to bring it to its full measure. I've come to fill it's like a glass. It's like a mug like yes like Michael's holding right now. That is half wall and Christ has come to fill up to the brim so that the full measure of the law, the full meaning of God's law of God's righteousness, will be understood and critically Nate I think the whole discussion is settled completely in that passage when Jesus says not punctuation mark of the law is going to pass away till heaven and earth pass away right to till till till the new order until the era of temporal law is gone right until the restitution of all things nothing's going to pass away from my law and critically he says those teach the law and do you law those who are obedient to the law and teach the law will be called great where not in some past dispensation but great in the kingdom of heaven. That's the other expression Jesus uses for the kingdom of God those who who who who ignore God's law and who teach others to do the same he's referring to Christians now actually will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. He's actually not talking about unbelievers there. He's actually walking to profess believers who ignore God's law and teach others nor it. They will actually be least in the kingdom of heaven. To me that's pretty serious Jesus says I've come to fill up the law to full measure to give it its full meaning and impact to put it into what's fully and the great ones in the kingdom of God in the kingdom of heaven are those who teach it and obey it. The least are those who don't that is very very significant I think from the Christian standpoint what is the law of Christ? The law of Christ is clearly the law of God. The the decalogue the whole council of God as Michael referred to earlier in the show this is what is being referred to. The law comes in the back tick portions you know propositionally it comes to us again in the wisdom literature where you know the father is teaching his son the law it comes to us in the Psalms in the form of song and poetry. I mean the longest chapter in the Bible let's not forget that the the passage of scripture that is the longest in in our Bibles is in Psalm 119 is a celebration of the law of God in the form of poetry and song. It comes to us through the prophets in the form of calling people to return to the law of God and return to covenant obedience and then the living Torah the Lord Jesus Christ himself the truly obedient son comes and as the greater Moses goes there up onto the mountain it says I've not come to abolish this I've come to put it into force I've come to fill it up and I've come to pay the penalty of the law I've come to make restitution in the end this is the gospel for the God-wood relation that the penalty of law ultimately in the God-wood relation is eternal separation from God I've come to bear the penalty of the law so that we might be restored to God and to become a people of obedience and so really it's at the heart of the kingdom of God the meaning of the gospel and we have to grasp back we have to get that and so there's no question anywhere in the Bible in scripture of Jesus setting aside the righteousness and the justice of God and introducing some completely different standard the only new commandment you might say that Jesus brought was a new commandment I give to you love one other as I have loved you that couldn't be obeyed before Christ came look at the way I've loved look at my obedience look at my faithfulness now you go and do it that's the new commandment and and that is really wrapped up in in the performative model of what it looks like to live lawfully right that's so it's not necessarily new in other than it's now you have the model now you now we can imitate as you know Paul says imitate me as I imitate Christ the whole point there is we've seen what lawful living looks like we've seen what kingdom living looks like in the person of the living Torah of Christ himself and now we are free to actually follow the model that we saw live and breathe and interact with people and and we saw that actually on display and I want to just end this segment and there's many ways we could go with it but you know what unites us as Christians is we all understand that we are under the marching orders of Christ's great commission and and we don't want to strip that of its significance and so in all of this what we want to say is the great commission isn't merely the evangelistic nature of going and making disciples and baptizing them but then it goes on to say and teaching them all that I have commanded and so the great commission we are commanded to follow the Lord Jesus Christ we are commanded to model right being a disciple of Jesus means imitating his relationship to the law and we cannot call him Lord while holding his statutes in disdain and so part of the great commission means go and live like Christ did live lawfully and see the kingdom of heaven come to earth as we pray in the Lord's Prayer we want to wrap that conversation up there if you are a subscriber you can join us over on the post show but we want to remind you in closing that from him and through him and to him are all things to Christ be the glory forever on men