THE TIME OF REFORMATION
In a wonderful treatise contained in three chapters of Hebrews (8, 9, 10), the writer summarizes what he had previously written about the superiority of the new covenant over the old. He begins the section with the words, "Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum" (KJV). Twice in this limited framework he refers to the promise of God through Jeremiah, that He intended to make "a new covenant" (8:8-12; 10:15-17). Of special significance is the catalog of observances and ordinances under the "old covenant," which were "imposed on them until the time of reformation" (9:10).
The next four words are, "But Christ being come." The covenant of law was temporary and transitory. It was to exist only until the time for the great change had come. It was a time of reformation, which was to be ushered in by the coming of Christ. He was to be "the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises" (8:6). It is this "better covenant" which creates and cements our relationship to God, and we should turn our attention to God's revelation concerning it with a great deal of eagerness.
The advent of Jesus to the earth constituted the watershed of human history. Jesus is the "Great Divide." He is the "new covenant," the Word of God, which became flesh and "dwelt among us, . . . full of grace and truth." All who receive Him receive of the fullness that is in Him. They become partakers of grace and truth. "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17; KJV).
The casual reader may overlook the profound significance of this statement. The law was given by Moses. The medium was not the message. Moses was not the law. The law was external to Moses. It was even written by another and handed to him. The law outlived Moses. It survived his death. But grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. They were not given by Him as the law was given by Moses. He was full of grace and truth. When Jesus came, grace and truth came. These constituted His "fullness," His nature, His essence.
Law is always external. It is always imposed from outside. It can never make man good. It can only make him wish he had been good. The coming of Jesus brought an end to law as a basis of anyone's relationship to God. Law, as a written code, was suspended and superseded by grace and truth. We are no longer governed by a written code. We are not under law, but under grace.
Jesus did not simply eliminate the law of Moses as a futile manner of attempting to secure righteousness. He did away with the "law principle." He did not substitute one written code for another. Instead of giving us a law, He gave himself. It is not by trust in deeds of law, but by faith in Him as a person that we secure and sustain a right relationship with the Father. Law has gone and faith has come. Moses stands in history as the giver of law. Jesus stands in history as the giver of life!
Law confines, restricts, and inhibits. It is a police power that keeps man down by keeping him under. It is a prison compound in which man is shut up. It is a custodian charged with guarding him and delivering him safely to his destination. No man is free under law. Law and liberty are antithetical to one another. The role of law is described in poignant terms in Galatians 3:23-26. Obviously, Paul is here speaking of the law given by Moses, the law that was announced 430 years after the covenant made with Abraham (3:17). But what he has to say will apply to any written code, as we shall see.
Paul uses the expressions "before faith came" (v. 23) and "after that faith is come" (v. 25). The period "before faith came" is identified as the time when men were kept under the law. The word "kept" means guarded, or under surveillance, as by keepers of a prison. Certainly there were men of faith under the law but there is a difference between men coming to faith, and faith coming to men. The first is a personal trust in God. The last is a principle of justification in Christ, which came as a historical event. That faith had not come while man was under a written code. He was "shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed" (v. 23).
If the law was helpless to justify, or make men righteous, what was its function? The answer is simple. "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith" (v. 24). Unfortunately, this rendering in the King James Version can be misleading because of the meaning we attach to "schoolmaster." We think of such a person as a teacher in school, but that is not the meaning of the original at all.
The word paidagogos was applied to a trusted slave who was made the guardian of a boy and charged with his upbringing. When a lad in a Roman or Greek household reached a certain age he was consigned to the keeping of such a slave. That slave was expected to control and direct the boy's life, regulate his conduct, and supervise his behavior until he reached the age of puberty. The word literally means a "child-conductor." Our best English equivalent is "custodian."
The law was like a custodian, to guard and guide God's people until they were safely delivered to Jesus, so they could be justified by faith in Him. After faith came we "are no longer under a custodian." If we are under another written code, we are under a custodian. If we make the New Covenant Scriptures a code of laws we constitute them a custodian. It is one of those very Scriptures which here declares that we are no longer under a custodian. We are not in custody, we are in Christ. The custodian is dead.
If our covenantal relationship with God is not established on the basis of a legal code, what is its nature? Fortunately we are not left in ignorance on this important matter. In 2 Corinthians 3, the apostle Paul describes the two covenants and graphically portrays the difference between them. Every person who is interested in establishing a right relationship with God should pay special attention to what is here revealed. That this is a contrast between the two covenants is evident. In the sixth verse Paul speaks of "the new testament." In the fourteenth verse he speaks of "the old testament."
The chapter begins with two questions. These were probably provoked by false apostles at Corinth who resented Paul and questioned the validity of his apostleship. "Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?" At the time when the apostle asked this question, letters of introduction, recommendation, and approval were common. Travel was wide-spread, and those who went from place to place carried documents that were signed by well-known political and business figures. These documents served to make the traveler's way easier when going into other countries.
There is every reason to believe that the primitive saints adopted the practice, writing letters of commendation which made it possible for the bearer to be received without question. Such a letter was sent by the congregation at Jerusalem regarding Judas and Silas (Acts 15:22-31). When Apollos prepared to go from Ephesus to Greece, "the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him" (Acts 18:27). The letter to Philemon was such a letter.
There was nothing wrong with letters of commendation, but the apostle did not need such a letter to Corinth from other congregations, nor did he require a letter from them to others. The saints at Corinth constituted his endorsement. They were his credentials. "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men" (2 Corinthians 3:2; KJV). The Corinthian saints were an epistle of Christ and the only letter of commendation required by Paul. "Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds" (12:12). What was engraved upon their hearts by his apostolic labor could be read by all men who would certainly know that an apostle of Christ had planted the congregation.
"Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (3:3; KJV). Here we have the contrast between the "old covenant" and the "new." The saints are the living letters of the living God. They are the epistles of Christ. Jesus is the author, the apostles His transcribers. They ministered the epistle because God had made them "able ministers of the new testament" (v. 6).
The new covenant was not written with ink. It is not a written code. It does not consist of the Gospels, the book of Acts, the epistles, and Revelation. Every one of these books was written with ink. John's epistles were written with paper and ink (2 John 12) and with pen and ink (3 John 13). These were written to a covenant people, but they are not part of the covenant. That covenant was engraved by the Spirit of God, "not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart."
This is exactly what God promised through Jeremiah. "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people" (Hebrews 8:10; KJV). The new covenant is not an external code. It cannot be read on tablets of stone or in a book written with pen and ink. In spite of the plain statements of God's Word that we are not under law, and that the new covenant was not written with ink, it is difficult for many persons to see how God's laws can be put into the mind or written in the heart, if we are not under law.
The answer lies in the fact that the word "law" has a wide range of meanings. When we read that we are not under law, the apostle is not telling us that we are no longer under the sovereignty of God, but that we are no longer under a written code or legalistic system. We can no longer strive for justification, or seek to arrive at guiltlessness, by observance of such a code laid down or imposed from without. Law, in its primal meaning, is a principle of action. It is the basis, or foundation, the motivating dynamic that governs our whole course of conduct.
God does not write numbered statutes and commandments upon our hearts as the Romans engraved laws upon the twelve bronze tablets in the Forum, or as His finger carved the Ten Commandments upon two tablets of stone at Sinai. Instead, He infuses our hearts with a divine principle of action, and this spontaneously and automatically responds in harmony with His will. Incorporated within that principle, which involves the divine nature or essence, is the fulfillment of all the commands of God, not as a way of life, but as "the life of the Way."
It is for this reason Paul writes, in contrasting the old covenant with the new, that God made the apostles the qualified ambassadors or administrative agents of the "new testament" or covenant. That covenant was not based upon a written code, but upon the Spirit, because a written code can only terminate in death. Instead, the Spirit gives life. Law says, "Do these things and you shall live." The Spirit says, "You live, so do these things." The law starts with man as he is, inducing him to seek to achieve life by his effort. "For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them" (Romans 10:5; KJV).
In plain language this means that under a regime of law, life is dependent upon human performance. Law must be kept meticulously or it is not kept at all. The slightest infraction results in death. The "fly in the ointment" is the fact that man in the flesh cannot keep law perfectly. It is an impossibility, not because of the weakness of the law, but because of the weakness of the flesh. A system based upon law-keeping can never produce righteousness or justification. "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20). No flesh! Law can make men aware of their weakness and sin. It can produce a sense of failure and guilt upon the part of those who seek to submit to it. Never can it produce guiltlessness in any person who is in the flesh!
Life is not a product of law. No written code, regardless of its origin, can ever produce life. If life could result from law-keeping, it was a heinous act for God to send Christ to die for our sins. He should have sent the law, or given the written code that could produce life. Paul writes, "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law" (Galatians 3:21). He also writes, "If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (2:21).
The Spirit does not start with man as he is, but when that man trusts in the righteousness of God, which is through faith in Christ Jesus, the Spirit makes of him a new creation. He is dead, and his life is "hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3; KJV). Christ becomes his life, for he has no life of his own. His life is not dependent upon obedience to laws, but because he has been transformed he keeps the commands of Christ who is his life. His service is not an attempt to keep the law, but to conform to the Spirit. He is not in the flesh but in the Spirit, because the Spirit of Christ abides in him.
Those who are in Christ are dead to the principles of legalistic righteousness. The custodian who held them is dead. His nerveless grasp has been broken from their necks. Now they are delivered and freed from a written code. That basis of justification is deceased, declared invalid by God's marvelous grace. The purpose is that all of us should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of a written code. This, I think, is what Paul is saying in Romans 7:6: "Now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter" (KJV). There is no intimation that service to God is relaxed because the principle of legalistic rectitude is dead. We serve, but it is in newness of spirit. Just because we have matured and the custodian is dead, these facts do not lessen our responsibility. Our very maturity increases that responsibility.
At this point we must inquire as to the principle that is put in our mind and written in our heart, which constitutes the new covenant rule of action. Paul's letters to the Romans and the Galatians are two great dissertations on the difference between law and faith as grounds of justification. It is in these letters the apostle plainly enunciates the one great quality that embraces and fulfills all law.
First let us look at the Roman letter. In it we are told, "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law" (Romans 13:8-10; KJV).
Obviously, the whole purpose of any law given by God is to establish a right relationship with himself and with men. But law cannot accomplish this because law can only make one conscious of failure and guilt. It cannot make him guiltless. Law is external. Love is internal. When one is justified by faith, which is the only way he can be justified, he attains peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Through Jesus he gains access to grace, in which state he can rejoice in hope of the glory of God. This hope never disappoints the one who is at one with God, "because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us" (Romans 5:5).
The first covenant was one of law, the second is one of love. The only debt I can owe another, which it is impossible to settle in full, is that of love. I must never borrow from another what I cannot repay. I do not love God's children because I am in debt to them, but because I am in debt to Him. "Let us love one another: for love is of God" (1 John 4:7); "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another" (v. 11). One should emphasize the word "so" in this statement.
Love fulfills the law. The apostle specifically mentions five Commandments, forbidding adultery, murder, stealing, false testimony, and covetousness. We generally think of these as moral regulations, but lest the legalistic mind try to find an exception, he writes, "And if there be any other commandment." No law can be given to cover every facet of human behavior or every contingency. Faith in Jesus lifts us out of the area of written codes and shows us "the more excellent way."
Love fulfills the law because it works no ill to another. The love that is here contemplated is the unceasing, undying, uninhibited concern for another's good, manifesting itself in positive action to promote that good. That active and beneficent good will stops at nothing to achieve the good of the beloved object. It is the application of the new God-nature to all human circumstances, problems of association and relationship. Such a broad scope as this can never be captured or confined by a written code, any more than such a code can contain the very essence of God.
For fifteen hundred years God sought to hold His people together by law, until faith could come. Law is a police force, drawing a circle and building a fence beyond which the inmates must not go, under penalty of death or banishment. When Jesus came, law was abandoned as basis of unity, and love was installed in its place. Love is a magnetic force, holding men together by drawing them to a common center. That center is the person of Jesus, who announced, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."
Jesus did not confine us with another law. He did not build another fence. He did not provide another yoke of bondage. Instead, He set us free, He freed us, not only from the law given by Moses, but the law principle that is helpless because of the flesh. We are told, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5:1; KJV). Any man who postulates his hope of glory upon conformity to a written code is signing his own death warrant. He is building his own scaffold and knotting his own hangman's noose. It makes no difference whether he conceives of the written code as originating with God or man.
"For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (5:13, 14; KJV). Here the apostle says the same thing to the emotional Gauls that he wrote to the Romans. In doing so, he defines the true use of liberty. Those who are freed from definitive written codes full of "thou shalt nots" are sometimes inclined to take advantage of their liberty. Because there is no wall to debar their progress, they may strain and break the cord of love that holds them to the center--the cross.
We have been called to liberty, but it is not our achievement. We did not escape from prison, we were liberated. We did not disentangle ourselves from the yoke; it was lifted from us. We have been called, so we have a vocation of liberty. We dare not use our God-given liberty to serve the flesh. The custodian died only after delivering us to Jesus. We are not free to do as we please; we are now free to do what will please Him. Liberty and service occur in the same context. "Ye have been called unto liberty . . . by love serve one another" (v. 13).
The new covenant has been inscribed on the walls of the heart. It has not been written with ink but with the Spirit. It does not consist of a compilation of legal propositions, but of one word: love! Correctly understood, that word involves all that law was intended to accomplish but could not. It lifts man out of the very domain of law. It places him in a realm where he can bear the fruits of the Spirit. "Against such there is no law" (v. 23). No law!
Love fulfills the law because it removes stumbling blocks. Love takes away every occasion for stumbling; that is, it creates no hazard, obstacle, or obstruction to cause anyone to trip or fall. Love is light, hatred is darkness. "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him" (1 John 2:10).
Love fulfills the law because it gives assurance of life. Love assures us that we have crossed the frontier separating death from life. No written code could ever do this. Under a written code one can never be sure he has gone far enough or done enough to be counted worthy of life. He can never be certain there is not something he should have known and did not know, or something he should have done and did not do. Under the law of love, "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren" (1 John 3:14). Love for the brethren is not the ferry that transports us from death to life. That ferry is faith. But the ability to "love the brethren" is on the opposite side of the border from death. When we have achieved that goal we know we are across the line, because love is the proof of the indwelling Spirit. "And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him" (v. 19).
Love is the fulfilling of the law because God dwells within us. "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us" (4:12; KJV). When God gave the old covenant it was deposited in a sacred ark. It was kept in an earthly sanctuary constructed by the hands of men. Today we are the only sanctuary God has on earth. The covenant cannot be borne upon the shoulders of a special caste. It is enshrined in the hearts of believers. We are the temple of God. Our bodies are His tabernacle. We cannot carry the covenant in our hands. It is not a book we can lay on the library table or place on the shelf. The new covenant is a pact of love. It exhibits itself in love for one another. It is the love of God perfected, fulfilled, and matured.
Under the new covenant God dwells in us and we dwell in Him, because He has given us His Spirit (v. 13). The Spirit is life-giving because He is love-giving. We live because we love, and we love because we live. There is no life apart from love. God is love, and His love is manifested toward us because He "sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him" (v. 9). As John adds, "Herein is love," so we may add, "Herein is life."
The first covenant was announced at a physical mount; the new covenant at a spiritual peak in man's history. When the first was announced, those who heard it were cautioned not to draw near or to cross a boundary. When the second was given, they were invited to "Draw near with a true heart in full assurance" (Hebrews 10:22). The first was engraved upon stone, and was as inflexible as the material upon which it was carved. The second was written upon the hearts of believers, and was as warm as the faith that led them to receive Jesus. The first bound the recipients to God upon the threat that the iniquities of the fathers would be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations. The second drew the respondents by the promise that their sins would be remembered no more forever. Truly it is a "better covenant, based upon better promises"!