How Jesus and Paul Loved the Law

What has been the effect of antinomian Christianity on spiritual formation?

Antinomian Christianity is Christianity which is lived “against the law.” In this view we are not only made right (justified) with God apart from the law, we are made right by avoiding disciplined action according to the law. “It amounts to rejecting [the law] entirely except in so far as it may be done to you by God, passively.”1

With such a relationship to the law, antinomian Christianity has a spiritual formation without any form. Such Christianity must rely on “grace as formless spurts of permissiveness that thrust the law aside.”2 Without the form of the law to guide and structure our spirituality, we are left with a grace that merely allows disobedience and empty living. The formation of our spirit is not based on the revelation of God’s guidance for all of life, but on emaciated superstitions that reduce life with God to mere service to humanity, a “get-out-of-hell-free” card, or a really good worship service show.

Why did Paul “love” the law? (Note Romans 7:22)

Paul loved the law because it made him “conscious of sin” (Ro. 3:22), his great enemy which sought to enslave him to “impurity and ever-increasing wickedness.” (6:19-20) He loved the law which was so “holy, righteous, and good” (7:12) that sin wanted to deceive him and make “the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually [bring] death.” (7:1-0-11) The law helped Paul to see and know sin as his great enemy bent on deceiving and killing him. The law also explained, taught, and illustrated a life of willing “slavery” to God in “true righteousness and holiness” (Ep. 2:24), the very essence of eternal living of a life like God’s. (Ro. 6:23)

Why is the law so important even today?

Sin is still our greatest enemy and we are in need of guidance and teaching more than ever. With the loss of the knowledge of morality in favor of a vague sympathy for morality, we find ourselves cut adrift, “infants [in knowledge], tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.” (Ep. 4:14) We are more afraid of law than of sin, more afraid of guilt than of wrongdoing. So, we find ourselves unable to grow in grace and have called such stagnancy the inevitable cost of being fallen human beings. Our world and our lives look quite pagan, without hope and without God (Ep.2:12). The law supports us and can bring hope and God’s presence through a grace that actually brings knowledge and overcomes sin.

How do law and grace go together?

The law is direction and guidance, which is a grace in itself, but it is not complete. The law points to the fullness of grace found only in Jesus. As Dallas Willard said, “The law is the course of rightness, not the source of rightness.” When law is taken as ultimate in our life with God (“The Bible says it, so I will do it!”), we find our willpower is insufficient to keep the law, so “what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Ro. 7:15) This is because our will is no match for sin coming at us in obsessive desires. (vv. 18-20) When the law is not ultimate, but subordinate to the grace through Jesus in his abiding Spirit, it becomes a powerful ally, able to not only identify sin, but able to bring new desires that overcome sin from a new nature operating in and around us.

Why is the law so important to the soul and its restoration?

More and more we are finding that recovery of physical function after injury must include the right kind of activity and effort of the affected areas. Apathy makes injuries much harder to heal or even permanent. Similarly, our souls cannot heal without the right kind of effort in their injured and fragmented areas. “The law was given as an essential meeting place between God and human beings in covenant relationship with him, where the sincere heart would be received, instructed, and enabled by God to walk in his ways.”3 This “meeting place” is one where delighting in the law will bring integration and healing to the soul by God’s grace supplied by Jesus, our Teacher. The efforts to delight in the law may seem small and indirect, but will help the soul as nothing else can. Where there is healing and help for the soul, God’s kind of life flows through our life and our being making what is impossible for any person possible with God.

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1Willard, Dallas. Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (p. 213). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

2Ibid, 215.

3Ibid, 212.

What is the Kingdom of God?

First of all, we must shed the idea of kingdom as a realm or a people when trying to understand the kingdom of God.  It is first and foremost God's rule and action as George Eldon Ladd, a professor of New Testament Exegesis writes:

We must ask the most fundamental question: What is the meaning of " kingdom"? The modern answer to this question loses the key of meaning to this ancient Biblical truth. In our western idiom, a kingdom is primarily a realm over which a king exercises his authority. Not many kingdoms remain in our modern world with its democratic interests; but we think of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as the original group of countries which recognize the Queen as their sovereign. The dictionary follows this line of thought by giving as its first modern definition, "A state or monarchy the head of which is a king; dominion; realm."

The second meaning of a kingdom is the people belonging to a given realm. The Kingdom of Great Britain may be thought of as the citizens over whom the Queen exercises her rule, the subjects of her kingdom.

The exclusive application of either of these two ideas to the Biblical teaching of the Kingdom leads us astray from a correct understanding of the Biblical truth. The English dictionary itself makes this mistake when it gives as the theological definition of the kingdom, "The spiritual realm having God as its head." This definition cannot do justice to the verses which speak of the coming of the Kingdom in outward glory and power when Christ returns. On the other hand, those who begin with the idea of a future realm inaugurated by the return of Christ cannot do justice to the sayings about the Kingdom as a present spiritual reality.

Furthermore, those who begin with the idea of the Kingdom as a people base their definition upon the identity of the Kingdom with the Church, and for this there is very little scriptural warrant.

We must set aside our modern idiom if we are to understand Biblical terminology. At this point Webster's dictionary provides us with a clue when it gives as its first definition: "The rank, quality, state, or attributes of a king; royal authority; dominion; monarchy; kingship. Archaic." From the viewpoint of modern linguistic usage, this definition may be archaic; but it is precisely this archaism which is necessary to understand the ancient Biblical teaching. The primary meaning of both the Hebrew word malkuth in the Old Testament and of the Greek word basileia in the New Testament is the rank, authority and sovereignty exercised by a king. A basileia may indeed be a realm over which a sovereign exercises his authority; and it may be the people who belong to that realm and over whom authority is exercised; but these are secondary and derived meanings. First of all, a kingdom is the authority to rule, the sovereignty of the king. (The Gospel of the Kingdom. George Eldon Ladd. Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. Grand Rapids, MI. 1959. Pages 13-23.

Second, we find that the words associated with God's kingdom are not ones of building, bringing, or making it happen, but receiving, seeing, and entering it.  Again, Ladd speaks to this:

The supernatural character of the present Kingdom is confirmed by the words found in association with it. A number of verbs are used with the Kingdom itself as the subject.

The Kingdom can draw near to men (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15; etc.); it can come (Matt. 6:10; Luke 17:20; etc.), arrive (Matt. 12:28), appear (Luke 19:11), be active (Matt. 11:12). God can give the Kingdom to men (Matt. 21:43; Luke 12:32), but men do not give the Kingdom to one another. Further, God can take the Kingdom away from men (Matt. 21:43), but men do not take it away from one another, although they can prevent others from entering it. Men can enter the Kingdom (Matt. 5:20; 7:21; Mark 9:47; 10:23; etc.), but they are never said to erect it or to build it. Men can receive the Kingdom (Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17), inherit it (Matt. 25:34), and possess it (Matt. 5:4), but they are never said to establish it. Men can reject the Kingdom, i.e., refuse to receive it (Luke 10:11) or enter it (Matt. 23:13), but they cannot destroy it. They can look for it (Luke 23:51), pray for its coming (Matt. 6:10), and seek it (Matt. 6:33; Luke 12:31), but they cannot bring it. Men may be in the Kingdom (Matt. 5:19; 8:11; Luke 13:29; etc.), but we are not told that the Kingdom grows. Men can do things for the sake of the Kingdom (Matt. 19:12; Luke 18:29) but they are not said to act upon the Kingdom itself. Men can preach the Kingdom (Matt. 10:7; Luke 10:9), but only God can give it to men (Luke 12:32)  (The Presence of the Future. George Eldon Ladd. Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. Grand Rapids, MI. Page 193.) (Italics mine.)

Dallas Willard has a good way of putting it:

The Kingdom of God is God reigning. It is present wherever what God wants done is done. It is the range of God’s effective will. God’s reign is all around you and is from “everlasting to everlasting” — it is the natural home of the soul. Matthew uses the term the Kingdom of the Heavens to emphasize that the Kingdom of God is not far off and way later but is immediately and directly accessible to us through Jesus Christ.

And so we find that Jesus's message of "Repent and believe the good news, the kingdom of heaven is at hand" is not about the kingdom that is about to happen or come, but one that is accessible now.  The good news is about how we can join Jesus in the kingdom through trusting him in our daily lives.

The Gospel of the Kingdom

Dallas Willard interview with Keith Giles in 2005

Keith Giles- “Dallas, can you explain the difference between the Gospel of the Kingdom and the more popular, Gospel of the Atonement for us?”

Dallas Willard – “The Gospel of the Kingdom is that you can now live in the Kingdom of God and the Gospel of the Atonement is that your sins can be forgiven. Those are the, respective, ‘Good Newses’, I suppose.”

KG- “So, are you saying there are two Gospels? Are my sins not forgiven if I live in the Kingdom? Or am I not in the Kingdom of God if I accept the Gospel of the Atonement?”

DW- “The way it practically works out is this, if you have the Gospel of the Atonement, and that’s all you’ve heard, the rest of your life you will run on your own and you may or may not think of being a disciple of Jesus or of obeying him or of devoting your life to the Kingdom of God. You can still do that, but those things are all optional for you. That is where we really stand in our Christian culture today. Anything more than forgiveness of sins, and by that I mean ‘Heaven when you die’, is optional and most of our professed believers now do not know that they can live in the Kingdom of God now.

“By contrast, anyone who is alive in the Kingdom of God now knows that their sins are forgiven because they have the life of Heaven in them now. So Heaven and forgiveness are natural parts of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God whereas discipleship and holiness and power and other scriptural evidences are not a natural part of the Gospel of the Atonement. I want to emphasize that sense of being a natural part.

“Here’s one of the ways I try to help ministers understand this difference. I ask them, ‘Does the Gospel you preach truly lead to discipleship to Jesus?’ and the Gospel of the Kingdom has that natural connection. It’s not trusting the Kingdom, it’s about trusting Jesus and living in the Kingdom with Him. So then, for example, the New Birth is the birth from above and as Jesus was telling Nicodemus, “You must be born again..”, now that’s about new life that isn’t just Atonement. One of the strange things that has happened is that verses like John 3:16 is treated as if it were a forgiveness verse whereas it is really a new life verse. The whole context is about having the life of The Kingdom. Nicodemus came saying he could see it and Jesus said, ‘No, you can’t see it’, and helped him to understand why he couldn’t.

“So, it’s the idea of a natural part of The Kingdom containing forgiveness, and if you’re trusting Jesus, and not just his death on the cross alone, but the person of Jesus, then life in the Kingdom comes with that and, as a natural part, also comes discipleship, forgiveness, all of the things that any good theology would cover.”

(Full Article by Dallas Willard here)

For Dallas

His last words were “Thank you.”

Let these also be my parting words to you.

Thank you for opening my eyes to God’s great kingdom,

    the pearl of great price,

    the seed that grows all of itself.

Thank you for sharing your vision of Dr. Jesus,

                      Master of all reality,

        Teacher of all time.

Thank you for showing that eternal, abundant life begins now,

       being poured out as a gift of God

       as a blessing on other’s lives.

Thank you for the hymns you sang in the hallways,

           the scriptures you quoted without thinking,

           the kindness you showed in your silence.

Thank you, God, for the gift of this life,

        quiet laughter, intense thought,

        stinging wit, gentle hands,

        unhurried feet, eyes wide open,

        devoted heart, deep soul.

Thank you.

Small Steps in Discipleship to Jesus: A Vision

For God so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.  (John 3:16)

This popular verse encompasses the vision of what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus.  The substance of that vision is God's love for each person as an individual.  The expression of that love is in God's gift of Jesus Christ.  The response to that love is belief, seeing and trusting in this loving God.  The outcome is eternal life, a blessed and wonderful existence with God starting now and stretching into eternity.

According to Dallas Willard, who uses vision in his V-I-M model for personal transformation (Living a Transformed Life Adequate to Our Calling), vision is what motivates each person in growth.  The stronger the vision, the stronger the desire for growth and change.  I am not surprised that God spends so much time teaching me about and encouraging me with his love.  I remember one man writing that 90% of the time God speaks to him, he tells him how much he loves him.  God understands that without this vision of his love firmly set in the heart, the intention the change and the means of enabling such change will not be effective.

The substance of God's love must go beyond a general good feeling or force.  God does not love humanity; God loves each person.  In The Shack, I found it touching to hear God the Father say, "Tell your friend that I am especially fond of him."  He is able to spend time with each of us as individuals and not be less present  to any one person just because there are so many people.  He is infinite in his ability to give attention.  Jesus puts it this way: "Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered."  God does not love or treat us as masses or generalities; God loves each person dearly as an individual.

The expression of God's love is seen most clearly in Christ.  He is the Word through which everything that has been made was made.  He is Jesus, the incarnation of invisible God.  The Spirit of Jesus continues to indwell and act within this world and in his disciples.  One way I have discovered in understanding Jesus is to see that he comes as my Savior, Lord, Teacher, and Friend.  I can see the substance of God's love in a relationship with his Son, who brings God's love to me in ways I can understand and appreciate.  These four relationships express the deepest needs of my heart.  I need to be saved and restored.  I need to embrace my life as a created being who serves my God.  I need to be shown how to live.  I need to be befriended and walked with, even when I am not such a good friend myself.

The response to God's love is trusting him.  The relationships that God establishes in Christ require a response on my part in order for me to be a part of him.  I am always responding and never initiating in these relationships.  I respond to Jesus as my Savior by accepting my need my need to be saved, my hopelessness without his action on my part.  I respond to Jesus as my Lord by obedience to his commands, seeking to conform to his desires, and worshiping him and through him.  I respond to Jesus as my Teacher by learning from him about how to live my life as he would live my life, being his apprentice, his disciple.  I respond to Jesus as my Friend by going to him in all times, good or bad, and confiding in him about all things.  I see Jesus in these ways and trust that they are true about him.

The outcome of God's love is eternal life.  Jesus defines eternal life as knowing God and himself.  This is not merely something that happens after a person dies.  The reality and experience of eternal life can begin in this age and in my present existence.  The vision of eternal life is one of abundance, blessedness, love, joy and peace.  Although Jesus says that I will have trouble in this life, he says that he has overcome all trouble.  That is one of the meanings of the cross.  No one stands outside of the blessedness of such abundant life, no matter what their status, circumstances, or sufferings.  In the light of this life, even when we face trouble and suffering, Jesus says, "Rejoice and be glad!"  (Matthew 5:12)

Such a vision of God's love is what under-girds discipleship to Christ.  Where the vision falters or fades, my desire fades as well.  Without the light of that vision, my intentions become confused and my practices meaningless.  As the vision of God's love which gave me Jesus as my Savior, Lord, Teacher, and Friend who accepts my neediness, my service, my questions, and my company and which brings a new life of blessedness and abundance fills my vision, my sight, and my life, I will find that my decision to follow him and serve him and love him becomes clear and the practices necessary to enter that life become fruitful and life-giving.  I believe that most of my effort and attention need to go into this vision so clearly stated in John 3:16.

If you were to pick one aspect of this vision that gives you the most trouble, which would it be?  Do you find it hard to see God loving you in particular?  Do you find it hard to see Jesus as being enough to fill your needs and desires?  Do you find it hard to accept a relationship with Jesus?  Do you find it hard to see your life as blessed and abundant?

Doubt as Disbelief

The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:6-8)

Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23)

FAITH here is understood, not as a profession of something you do not believe, but as belief, trust, reliance upon something. You believe in A, or that P, if and to the degree that you are ready to act with reliance upon A or as if P were the case. We always "live up to" (or "down to": really, right at) our beliefs. (The Faith of Unbelief, Dallas Willard)

When I do things while doubting them, I think I sin. I am thinking of doubt not as mere uncertainty, but mixed with skepticism. To doubt something is not merely to say, "I don't know," but to say, "I suspect it's not so." I must work to relieve my doubts before I go about my practice, otherwise I find my efforts to be hindered and biased. Doubt indicates some level of distrust. It indicates that my will is not settled, but divided.

James pictures doubt like a wave in a storm. It is blown here and there. There is a lack of control. The person in doubt “wavers.” Living in doubt is like living on a boat with no sails or oars. It is a life not only without direction, but without the means of steering.

Another picture is that of a person with two minds. He (they?) possesses two sets of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs and goes back and forth between them. The stumbling between the two minds makes him unstable, staggering and unable to be steady in anything in his life. A poignant picture of this is split personalities and neuroses.

Paul indicates that a person who doubts proceeds with something other than faith, trust, and confidence. We must live by trust if we are to live at all. The consequence is of not living by this trust is to steer completely out of God’s desire for us and away from God himself. I cannot walk with God and distrust him as well.

So doubt is characterized with wavering, instability, and missing out on God. Trusting God (not just trusting something about him) brings certainty, stability, and relationship with him. When my relationship with God is well, doubt does not remain in my mind.

Using Dallas Willard’s description of faith, I find that doubt is not being ready to act with reliance on or trust in someone or something. Doubt is hesitation that comes from divided loyalty. “No one can serve two masters,” Jesus says (Matthew 6:24). Trying to do so brings doubt.

Like anger, doubt is part of the human condition. Nothing is wrong with either in themselves. But when a person harbors anger, it becomes rage or contempt and becomes sin. Similarly, when I hold on to doubts without addressing them, they bring the life that James writes about, one that is wavering and unstable and unable to receive anything from God.

God does not intend for me to live in doubt; he wants me to live in trust and confidence. It is not that God doesn’t want me to ask questions. I am told to ask. In doubt, however, the questions become accusations and God becomes silent for the most part. It is not so much that he won’t answer, but that I can’t hear him.

As my trust and confidence in God grows, I encounter doubts. They come as assumptions that have to be torn down and thoughts and feelings that have to be replaced (2 Corinthians 10:3-6). I find they cannot be safely ignored, but some battles go on for quite a while.

Lord, I see how doubt can identify areas of distrust in my life. I do not want to let them remain, poisoning my life in you and with you. Conquer these places that stand against you. You are my help and shield. Amen.