The Thrust of the Law

Genesis 1 is a record of God’s establishing Order – distinction, distinctness, definition, form, law, boundaries, limits, hierarchies, authority. Genesis 2 is a microcosm of Genesis 1. And then the rest of Gen is a record of how that Order falls apart. It’s a story of the world unraveling. Genesis starts at the high point of Order, Godliness, and Communion with God, and then descends into Chaos, Ungodliness, and Separation from God. Israel finally finds itself down in Egypt, the geographical Pit of Death.

Death is the ultimate loss of definition, form, boundaries, etc. In Death, what God joined (body and soul) are separated: the soul returning to God, the body disintegrating back into the earth. The borders of the body are violated, and it ceases to be. The borders God made are transgressed. Transgression is Chaos; Transgression is Death. The Israelites in Egypt are in danger of completely dissolving into the Egyptians. God calls them out of their Idolatry, Transgression, and Death in Exodus. Exodus, then, is an Ascent back up to the Mountain of God, back to definition, law, form – Order. The Israelite body politic is saved from Death. It is reconstituted from the dust of the earth, brought up out of the waters just like Creation, especially the Land, in Gen 1 and 2. It receives a Law.

The building blocks of that Law go right back to, you guessed it: Genesis 1 and 2. At the end of Exodus, the people have been raised up from Egyptian Death to Jehovah’s Life and Order. And that leads to the Priestly book of Leviticus. The book of Leviticus is the book on how to maintain the Life and Order of God. Actually, the Torah as a whole is that. Leviticus stands at the heart of this maintenance of Order. Genesis and Exodus both anticipate Leviticus, and Numbers and Deuteronomy both recapitulate it. They are all working together to teach the Israelites – and us – how to maintain the Order of the World.

This is perhaps why these books, especially Leviticus, appear so strange to us. We don’t ordinarily feel the need of maintaining the great Order of the World. We’re shielded from this necessity by our technologically advanced society and the immense power of the modern State. Our technologies allow us to treat Time and Distance as if they are non-existent, or at least trivial obstacles. Other givens of nature, like basic facts of biology, are likewise negated. Cf. The Pill or sex reassignment surgery. Technology allows us to brute force our will on Nature. The State is able to impose an Order without respect to our will, approval, or action. It can minutely control territories, markets, and institutions. Which is to say life in a technologically advanced State is not “natural.” It is only possible because of a huge power at work.

The State is simply human power, but it feels like it’s the natural order, “the Way Things Are.” That’s not the case. And the Israelites knew that. The Israelites had neither the technology nor the modern State. They understood how easy it would be to slip back into Chaos. The Torah was how God taught them to maintain His Order. The laws God gave to the newly revived Israel were for keeping things in their places, according to their kinds, definite, ordered, distinct, rightly divided according to the Word. The hierarchies and grants of authority are not given arbitrarily, but rather insofar as they preserve the World-Order. This is why obedience to the Law would yield Blessing and Life, but disobedience Curse and Death. Curse and Death just are the wages of tearing down the hierarchies, overturning the authorities, and transgressing the limits and boundaries set by God. You can’t pull down hierarchies without descending into Death.

There is, therefore, an abiding importance for understanding Leviticus, indeed the whole Torah, and for keeping the substance of the Law. The remainder of the Old Testament writings is a record of this Order either being Glorified, as in aspects of David and Solomon’s reigns, or being allowed to devolve back to Chaos, as in the Exile. The Scriptures reach a fullness in Christ, who is this Law made Flesh. While He frees his people from the multiplicity of ceremonial and symbolic forms and rites the Law required, He does not remove our obligation to obey its substance. We are called now to preserve the Order of the World in Christ, not to send the world spiraling back into Chaos. Our Christ is a God of Order, not confusion. It’s in the light of the Torah, especially Leviticus, that we are to read our New Testament rites and laws. Obedience, Authority, Baptism, Eucharist, Submission, Patience, Forgiveness, Faith, Repentance – Love. These and more are instruments for maintaining God’s Presence with us, and hence the Order of our World, Life, and Glory.

Repent and be…

One of the major stumbling blocks for advocates of credobaptism, that baptism may only follow an individual’s credible profession of faith, is the formula and pattern found in Acts 2:38: “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” In the baptistic view, Peter commands first repentance, then baptism, and so that is the essential chronological order of the actions. The rest of the baptisms in the book of Acts are read in those terms. There’s no reason to read Peter’s instruction as saying some singular act of repentance must precede baptism, however. In fact, to take it that way is to misunderstand the nature of repentance and baptism both.

On the baptistic view, repentance in this context is taken to be a singular point of decision, almost a crisis moment. You repent, and then you move on to other things. I won’t deny there’s sense in which repentance can be like that, but it’s not the typical biblical idea of repentance. And it’s not how our theologians have explained repentance. For example, John the Baptizer says, “Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” To him, repentance is more like the fruiting of a vine or fig tree: it’s a long, slow work in the same direction. It takes time. It’s a way of life. It’s not a one-and-done deal. The Heidelberg Catechism explains repentance on Lord’s Day 33:

88. In how many things does true repentance or conversion consist? 
In two things: the dying of the old man, and the quickening of the new.

89. What is the dying of the old man? 
Heartfelt sorrow for sin; causing us to hate and turn from it always more and more.

90. What is the quickening of the new man? 
Heartfelt joy in God; causing us to take delight in living according to the will of God in all good works.

91. But what are good works? 
Those only which are done from true faith, according to the Law of God, for His glory; and not such as rest on our own opinion, or the commandments of men.

So true repentance is two-parted: there’s a dying and a coming to life. The dying of the old man is hating and turning from sin. The coming to life of the new man is delighting in and living according to God’s law, that is, doing good works in faith for God’s glory. Note the dying is always and more and more. It’s not a one-off event. It’s something we do as habit, just as we live. Living is something done over time. You don’t live for just a moment!

Even though we don’t strictly equate true repentance with doing good works, we can see here that the man who truly repents is the man who does good works, and the man who does good works is the man who truly repents. A call to doing good is a call to repentance, and vice versa. “Turn from your wickedness!” implies “Be righteous!” “Be fruitful! implies “Cast out the evil thing from among you!” The positive and negative aspects are never separated, even if only one of them is explicitly named in a text. (This is called “synecdoche.”) This biblical understanding of repentance opens up our understanding of baptism and it’s historical predecessors.

Take, in the first place, Noah. Peter says that Noah’s salvation through the Flood with his household is a type of baptism. We should expect, then, that all the major aspects of Christian baptism are addressed in the narrative of the Flood. Repentance no less than water or salvation or the recipients. If you take the baptistic understanding of repentance, do you find that in the Flood story? I don’t really think you do. But if you take it in the Reformed sense, you certainly do. Consider first our introduction to Noah: “Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” This is a penitent man. In keeping with what we’ve said, to walk with God is to leave the paths of the wicked. Noah lives his life dying to the old man, and so God blesses him and his whole household with the baptism of the Ark. They are brought safely through the waters of cleansing and judgment. On the other side, God further establishes his covenant with Noah and his children by repeating the blessing of Adam: “Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee…and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.” Again, this is the positive side of saying “go forth and repent!” Fruitfulness is the mark of repentance. The fruitful man is the penitent man, and vice versa. This is why, again, John the Baptizer says, “therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” Bearing fruit, and thus repentance, is a condition of Noah’s covenant no less than any other.

Those “baptized” with Noah all had a duty to repent, just as he repented. But we know that Ham was unrepentant and chose to die to the new life promised by God. He returned to the old way of living, the wicked paths which led to the judgment in the first place. Yet, God still baptized him and told Noah to include him in the blessings and duties given to Noah’s family. Here was a baptism both preceded and followed by a call to repentance, and baptism given to a whole household where not all the children have necessarily repented individually.

Take another example, our father Abraham. God says to him at the outset, “Get thee out of thy country…” We know from the book of Joshua that his country, even his father’s house, was a place of idolatry. So telling him to leave it is a command to repent, to leave behind the old man, and to walk with God in newness of life. His very literal, geographical “turning away” corresponded to a spiritual turn and new orientation. An even more interesting part of his story, and one more relevant to the topic of baptism, is at the institution of the circumcision rite. We can make some real hay here. God begins his address with “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.” We have a tie back to Noah; God is going to fulfill the command to multiply in Abraham’s family. He also calls Abraham quite clearly to repentance: “walk before Me (like Noah!) and be thou perfect” As we’ve established already, this is the positive aspect of true repentance, the coming alive of the new man, the loving and joyful keeping of God’s law. It is the same as what Peter lays on his audience on the day of Pentecost.

The sign of this covenantal obligation in Abraham’s day, however, was to be circumcision. After calling Abraham to repent and walk with Him, God gives him the sacrament of circumcision as God’s mark of ownership on his body – and the bodies of all in his house. Thus, God effectively preaches, “Repent, and be circumcised in the name of Jehovah, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” (See Gal. 3:14 for why we should see a reference to the Holy Ghost here.) How similar that sounds to Peter’s cry at Pentecost! And yet, Abraham is to give the sacrament to his infant sons in their generations. We can’t, therefore, take the formula, “repent and be…” as a chronological order. Rather, it’s instruction as to the duties laid upon us whom bear the mark of God’s covenant in our flesh. The sacrament calls us to believe, and to repent, and to obey. It’s not much different than preaching or reading the Word in this respect. It’s different mainly in that it is a physical, tangible Word.

The baptists are wrong to think the sacrament of baptism requires conscious repentance before receiving it. The same command is given to our father Abraham, and his household were all circumcised, infants included. The sacrament does call us to live repentant lives, however. By the Spirit of Christ it is even a mystical help to that end. It is a witness, as the old heaps of stones were witnesses, to our obligations in the great Covenant. Let us keep our obligations. Let us remember our baptisms, and repent…

A Farmer’s Sword

Lately, I’ve had reason to think of these lines from the Georgics as I’ve cleared thorns and thistles from my land where I hope to establish a farm:

“Nor must we pass untold what Arms they wield,
Who labour Tillage and the furrow’d Field”

I come to a piece of land overgrown with blackberry, briars, thistles, sweet gums, wild muscadines, small pine trees, wild cherry trees, dog fennel – all kinds of low brush and trees. It is wild and untamed. Vines snake through trees; briars spread between trunks. A lot of it I can’t force my way through. It’s lush and vibrant, a mass of vegetation – obviously full of potential and fertility. But it’s fertility unguided, undirected, ungoverned, and so it chokes out productive life which might yield fruit good for eating.

I obviously want the land to be productive for me and my household, so I have to bring some order to this unruly mess. I have to establish order – to judge, name, separate, divide, and gather.

Judging, naming = seeing what’s here and determining what needs to be cleared away. The wild cherry and dog fennel has to go, for sure. It’s a danger to my goats. So it is out. The sweet gums and pines, too. Sweet gums are too big and take over too quickly, and pines make the soil too acidic. Not good for farming. There are several pretty dogwoods I plan to keep. The blackberries and muscadines, though, pose a question. Perhaps some of them can be trained? Not sure yet. We’ll see. Making these judgments requires knowing the land well, knowing both what my vision for its future is, and what it can handle.

Separating, dividing, gathering = executing the judgment. This is where I wage war against the thorn and the thistles. If you’ve ever tried to cut down a briar thicket, you know it’s the work of war. The briars snare you, cut you, try to drag you in. You have to be on guard! I’m doing most of the work with goats and hand tools. My best weapon is a bush axe. (You need one!) I can cut down trees and briars and beat down thickets easily with it. I have to do this part carefully, though, because I don’t want to uncover too much of the land. Land needs to be covered to preserve (and increase) the fertility of the soil. If I uncover too much too quickly, the soil will erode and wash down the hill. It will become hard, compacted, beggarly – inhospitable to life. Again, I have to watch the land closely, stay present, listen to it. Perhaps change a previous judgment.

It’s probably easiest to associate swords and Law. Yet, here, I am the Law, working to establish a realm fit for the glory and communion of a Garden. My bush axe is an instrument of the Law, Law-made-tool. Just as a warrior’s sword is Law-made-tool. He judges friend from enemy, separates body from soul. A minister is the same. His voice is his sword, his preaching is Law-made-tool. That preaching separates good from evil, holy from profane, saint from sinner. It judges the thoughts and intents of the heart, divides soul and spirit.

Our women are Gardens personified. Our souls are Gardens. Our households are Gardens.

This shows the mutual need of Man and Woman. What is a Gardener without a Garden? What is a Garden without a Gardener? The Gardener has to have a vision of the End and know how to make order. The Garden has to receive the order of the Gardener and give fruit and life in accordance with the order, else it’s just a tangled mess where no one can live.

I think of Paul’s command for younger women to get married, have children, and run their households. He knows the feminine tendency will be towards disorder. He knows that without a Gardener, they will be unguided, undirected, ungoverned, and so will choke out productive life, not yielding good fruit. They need a Gardener! They need Law. And so a husband must be a good Gardener. He has to know his Land. He has to be close to it. He has to have an end envisioned. He must know what his Land can handle. He has to be proficient with the tools of his trade: the Word which is the Farmer’s Sword.

Men, Word(s), Law, and Swords II

The Book of Genesis is the book of beginnings. It is foundational for Christians – it’s the place to start to understand the world God has made. Part of its genius is that it doesn’t just tell us about our origins. It tells us about our end, too. The creation account begins in darkness, moves through six days of labor wherein God forms and fills the world with ever greater glory, and ends with the glorious, Light-filled, Sabbath-rest of God on the seventh and last day. This is the first of the “last days” Holy Writ talks about, and they all are like this first one.

They all follow a period of history. The first Last Day follows the history of the First Week – six days of labor crowned by a seventh of rest. The Final Day of the Lord follows the history of all Creation – millennia crowned by the Eternal Day. Time and history are important elements of Creation. God has pleased to make Man a time-dwelling being. We begin life small, helpless, and immature. Through time, we grow into greater size, strength, and maturity. We don’t obtain these things in a moment, but after day upon day, week upon week, year upon year. What’s true of a man is true of Mankind, as well. The race as a whole “grows up.” It gets larger, stronger, and more mature. Language becomes more specific. Our power to change things in the world increases. The Church, which is the True Mankind – redeemed and restored to the image of God in Christ – follows this same pattern of maturation. Indeed, the Apostle makes just this argument in Galatians and Hebrews.

This historical character pervades all things human. Our law, philosophy, theology, culture, and so on develop through time as an acorn develops into an oak tree. They change, but remain the same. The order in and by which we live flowers into greater glory with time. Our liberties grow as societies mature and “grow into” them. Just like a son who matures from infancy to adulthood.

History and biography have a particular arc. They begin with an end envisioned. The beginning tells us what we are, and what we are meant to do – children in the House of God, meant to serve in the House. The end is rule with God in His Council. It is judging angels and sitting at the right hand of the High King Jesus. History, and our singular lives, is preparation for this calling. It is where we learn to wield words well – and all the other things like them: swords, axes, plows, to name a few.

Men, Word(s), Law, and Swords I

Order is foundational for Liberty. Without a Just Order, Liberty is impossible. Vice and license – lawlessness in the biblical sense – undermine and destroy Order, so they cannot be a part of true Liberty. Rather, true Liberty is freedom to do virtuous things. Order and then Liberty require, then, a law. Law constitutes the Order, which then makes a theater in which Liberty may be enjoyed. The rule of law must be established for Order’s sake, since true Law is stable, does not show partiality, does not shift and change of a sudden. It makes for a structured world, a solid ground on which to stand. The Law must stand over and above the desires of Men. The passions of Men must be ruled by the Law, not the Law ruled by the passions of Men. That said, the Law needs an executor, a living image in the created world, a person or persons to be its arms and legs.

Hence, God created Adam and his sons.

I aim to flesh out this idea: Men (i.e. the male sex) are living images of God as the Law-giver and Law-enforcer, images of Law itself. Men are Law-made-flesh. They divide, gather, form, and name – all ways of establishing boundaries, hierarchy, and structure, which is what Law does. I’ve written some about this before, mostly as a summary of Alastair Roberts. I’ll be using those thoughts as a starting point for the next post, so go check them out.

A Theology of Tongues

Men of all nations under heaven gathered in the City to keep the Feast. Streaming in from far-off lands where unknown languages were spoken, they came to the Temple to glorify God’s Name. But these were strange times, and many rumors and riddles were in the air and on the tongue. Strange signs had been seen in the land. The blind rulers of Jerusalem slept uneasily while the lowly whispered of the lately murdered god.

Then, in the morning hours of the Day, on Pentecost, a mighty Wind blew through those streets to a house where a company had gathered for pious purposes. Tongues of dividing fire burned over their heads, and their tongues were aflame with strange words. The pilgrims to the City heard these words and marveled, for they heard tales of dreadful deeds and might and power which God had done. Their minds were troubled, though, because they heard these things in a multitude of tongues, in their own languages. Men of Rome heard Latin cadences. Men from Babylon heard the Chaldean tongue. Egyptians heard the Coptic language of their homeland. Many wondered at the reports they heard, though some mocked.

Thus the Spirit came upon the disciples. Luke records this in the second chapter of Acts as the first great work of the ascended Christ. Peter notes that it is a fulfillment of prophecy. It is a significant event, worthy of much meditation, and though the full meaning of Pentecost won’t be understood until we all sit down to the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, we can reflect on various aspects of it. The aspect I want to take up here is the miracle of tongues. What does the sign of tongues mean? And in answering this question, we will cast light on another particularly pertinent question on the mind of many modern Christians: is the sign of tongues still operative today?

As with every other teaching of the New Testament, the sign of tongues has deep roots in the Old Covenant. To fill out our theology of tongues, we’ll need to tap into those roots or else we will completely misunderstand the sign. There are two New Testament passages in particular that call on Old Testament material on tongues. The first, Acts 2, does so implicitly; the second, 1 Corinthians 14, particularly verses 20-25, does so explicitly. We will begin with Acts, move to the Corinthian letter, then draw the two together, and finally consider how the teaching helps us today.

Pentecost and Ancient History

I’ve already summarized a portion of Acts 2 at the outset of this post, but consider it again. Men from every nation under heaven have come together in the city of Jerusalem for a festival. Oddly, Luke lists all the nations represented, and it’s a comprehensive list of the nations of the known world from the far west of the Roman Empire to the far eastern lands of Persia and Babylon. They hear a sound like a might rushing wind, which is the Spirit coming down on the disciples. The sound brings these men running to see what is. Gathered, they hear the disciples speaking the various tongues of the nations represented, and it confuses them. They are bewildered, confounded, to hear the mighty works of God told in their own tongues. Peter preaches to them about Christ, the Holy Spirit, repentance, and baptism, and ends with this: “the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” In tabular form:

1. Men from every nation gather in a city for religious purposes
2. A table (list) of nations represented
3. God descends to the city
4. The men of the nations are confused by a language miracle
5. A covenantal promise of blessing is made “for you and for your children and for all who are far off”

Where else have these pieces come together? On the plain of Shinar, in the East, at Babel.

“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated eastwards, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.”

Before examining this account from Genesis 11 like we did for Acts 2, we need to place it in its broader context. First, Babel is Babylon. It’s the same name, but for some reason I have yet to discern, modern translations insist on rendering it Babel. This is important to note in light of the history that Israel has with Babylon. Second, the story of the tower of Babylon follows on the heels of the Flood story. Noah’s household comes out of the Ark and cuts a covenant with God. The lines of Noah’s sons are listed in Genesis 10 in what is called “the Table of Nations.” This list is exhaustive of all the fathers and peoples of the known world. In all, seventy nations are named, representing the whole world. Third, the Babel story is followed immediately by the story of Abram’s call and covenanted dealings with God. Abram is called out of Chaldea, which is a land closely associated with the Babylonians, even synonymous with Babylonia.

With those things in mind, what were the men of Babylon trying to do, and why did God frustrate their attempt? Recall that Noah and his household were given a charge to multiply and cover the face of the earth. This was the same charge given to Adam, and in a way, Noah is a new Adam, an heir of Adam. In a similar way, Noah was an heir of Seth, in whose days men began calling on the Name of the Lord. So, Noah’s descendants have two missions, so to speak: to cover the face of the earth and to glorify God’s Name. This is not what they did, though. Rather, Nimrod the Hamite led yet another rebellion against the Lord’s decree. Instead of spreading over the face of the earth, mankind congregated in the land of Shinar and founded a city, Babylon. Instead of glorifying Jehovah’s Name, they glorified their own. Instead of waiting on the Lord to re-establish fellowship with them, they built a Tower to gain access to Heaven on their own terms, a Temple of Man. (The “tower” of Babel is a religious building. It is more properly a temple, a sacred place. The temples of the Babylonians, which you can see even now, were pyramid-shaped. The men of Babel were trying to “reach Heaven” by their own technologies.)

Gods response to this monument of Babylonian arrogance was to come down among them, confuse their language, and send them out from there to settle the earth. God recognized that mankind united was powerful and would soon descend back into the depths of evil they had achieved prior to the Flood. His curse of confusion at Babel was one way He made good on the promise shown to us in the rainbow. By removing their common tongue, God made it impossible for the people at Babel to work together. Where before they had a common purpose, now they had different, competing ones. Their only option was to leave off the building of the city and retreat to their own lands. They were hobbled, as it were. Unable to sin further in that direction.

Abram is called out from that environment to be God’s vehicle for blessing these same nations. God covenants with Abram to be God to him and his children and any foreigner who dwells in his household. These promises are very much outwardly focused. Abram will bring good to the darkened nations and families of the world. All that said, let’s list the elements we find here:

1. A table (list) of nations
2. Men from every nation (or who will become the nations) gather in a city for false religious purposes
3. God descends to the city
4. The men in the city are confused by a language miracle
5. God makes a promise of blessing that extends to him, his children, and the nations (Cf. Genesis 12:1-3; 15; 17:1-14)

These are strikingly parallel to what we see in Acts 2. Indeed, the Author of history and Sacred Scripture purposefully wrote them to be parallel. The Day of Pentecost is a kind of redemptive replay of the story of the founding of Babel. At Pentecost, in one light, what is wrong with the world is coming untrue. A true City and Temple of God is established in the Church of Christ. But it’s not only blessing that is being communicated. Remember that the confusion of language was a sign of a curse to the men of Babel. Not everyone in Jerusalem that day was a follower of Christ; most were not. Most were living to make their own name great. The confusion they felt at the sound of strange and foreign tongues would be a frightful thing to them. As we turn to our next text, we will strengthen this interpretation of the sign of tongues at Pentecost as a sign of divine judgment and curse.

(To be continued…)