by Daniel Botkin Daniel has a bimonthly publication, Gates of Eden. For a sample issue, send $3 to PO Box 2257, East Peoria IL 61611-0257 |
If
a person has a fair amount of exposure to Mainstream Christianity, and a familiarity
with the Bible, he may notice that Mainstream Christianity often de-emphasizes
the Old Testament and puts a disproportionate amount of emphasis on Paul’s epistles.
I would hesitate to say that any part of the Scriptures can be over-emphasized.
However, if we give uncalled-for weight and emphasis to certain parts of the
Bible, and neglect what the rest of the Scriptures teaches about an issue, we
will probably develop and imbalanced view of that particular issue.
By
volume, Paul’s epistles make up approximately 5% of the Bible. Paul’s writings
are holy Scripture, but neither Paul nor the Holy Spirit expected us to give
more weight and authority to these epistles than we do to the Old Testament or
to the rest of the New Testament.
By
putting a disproportionate amount of emphasis on these letters that Paul sent
to various churches, we fail to follow the example of Paul, who told the Ephesians,
“I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of
God” (Acts
20:27). By neglecting certain parts of the Bible, we ignore Paul’s
declaration that “all Scripture is inspired and is useful” (2
Tim. 3:16).
Christianity’s
strong emphasis on Paul’s writings, and lack of emphasis on so much of the rest
of the Bible, is puzzling. It is especially puzzling when we consider Peter’s
warning about Paul’s writings:
“His
letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable
people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2
Pet. 3:16).
If it was easy for Paul’s contemporaries
to misunderstand his epistles, we can be sure that it will be even easier for
us to do so, with our limited knowledge of the situations and problems Paul was
addressing when he wrote to these various churches. Yet some Christians,
perhaps unknowingly, are more intent on following the easy-to-misunderstand
teachings contained in Paul’s letters than they are on following the plain teachings
of the Messiah Jesus contained in the Gospels.
How
did this shift of focus come about? What caused the Church to begin paying so
much attention to Paul and so little attention to the Law and the Prophets and
other parts of the Bible? To discover the answer to this question, we must go
all the way back to the Second Century. After all the original Apostles had
died, other people took on the responsibility of continuing the Church’s work.
The original Apostles were all Jews, who had been exposed to the teachings of
the Law and the Prophets since their childhood. The leaders who replaced them
were mostly Gentiles from pagan backgrounds, who had comparatively little
understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures. We can read about these people
in various documents from the Second Century. One Church historian has this to
say about these documents:
“Many
stories come in versions so distorted that it is hard to decide whether the
principal characters were worthy successors to the apostles, or the devil’s own
agents. Perhaps their contemporaries were as uncertain as we are.”[1]
There is one character, however, which
was undoubtedly one of the devil’s own agents: the heretic Marcion, who lived
in the second half of the Second Century. Marcion taught that the entire Old
Testament should be rejected because it belonged to an evil, inferior God, and
not to the God revealed by Jesus of Nazareth.
Marcion
was very anti-Jewish; therefore he also rejected any New Testament writings
which appeared to speak favorably of “Jewish practices” (i.e., keeping the laws
and commandments of the Old Testament). As one writer notes:
“Marcion
started the trend which has had many followers right up to the present — if it
doesn’t suit the theory, excise it as spurious or an interpolation.”[2]
By the time Marcion finished editing
the Scriptures, his “Bible” consisted of nothing more than Luke’s Gospel (minus
the “Jewish” elements) and ten of Paul’s epistles. Paul, Marcion taught, was
the only apostle who could be trusted.
Marcion’s
anti-Jewish, pro-Paul churches spread throughout the Roman Empire and soon
became a major threat to the Messianic faith. According to historians,
Marcion’s heresy continued to spread until it finally died out sometime around
the Fifth Century.
We
who claim to believe the Bible must ask ourselves an important question: Did
Marcion’s anti-Jewish, anti-Old Testament, pro-Paul heresy really die out? Or
did the Church simply succumb to it and accommodate it and incorporate it, in a
subdued form, into Mainstream Christianity?
Of
course our Bible, unlike Marcion’s, includes the Law and the Prophets, but how
much do we heed their instruction? When we examine the average Christian’s
attitude to the Law and the Prophets, it is obvious that the ghost of
Marcion is very much alive in the church today.
Although
the Church pays lip service to the inspiration and authority of all the
Scriptures, its de-emphasis of the Law, the Prophets, and anything “Jewish,”
and its heavy emphasis on Paul, reveals that the Church today is basically
Marcionite in practice. For those who doubt this assertion, let us examine some
things that Marcion taught, and we will see that the spirit of Marcion still
has a very strong influence on the Church today.
Marcion’s
most influential writing was a work entitled Antithesis,
described as “a highly competent work” which consisted of “contrasted
statements arranged to prove the incompatibility of the law and the gospel.”[3]
Unfortunately
(or perhaps fortunately), there are no known copies of Antithesis in
existence. What we know about Marcion’s teachings comes mainly from the
writings of those who opposed his heresy.
The
one to write the most about Marcion was Tertullian, a church leader who wrote a
lengthy work called Against
Marcion. Tertullian describes Antithesis as:
“a
work strained into making such a division between the Law and the Gospel as
thereby to make two separate gods, opposite to each other, one belonging to one
instrument (or, as it is more usual to say, testament), one to the other, and
thus lend its patronage to faith in another gospel, that according to Antithesis.”[4]
No real Christian today would admit to
believing in two gods, of course. Yet many believers make such a division
between Old Testament Law and New Testament grace, that they view the Law as
something opposed to grace. The Law is seen as something obsolete and of little
use to a Christian. Such a warped view of God’s Law will carry over into our
view of God Himself. If God’s Old Testament Law is opposed to God’s New
Testament grace, we end up with either a schizophrenic God, or Marcion’s two
gods.
“Marcion
sets up unequal gods,” Tertullian writes, “the one a judge, fierce and warlike,
the other mild and peaceable, solely kind and supremely good.”[5]
Is
this not exactly what many Christians do? They shun the “Old Testament God” because
He is too stern and fierce. They focus instead upon the “New Testament God,”
who, in their minds, does not expect obedience to His laws. Listen to
Tertullian’s description of Marcion’s God, and see if it is not a description
of the god presented by the Church today:
Marcion’s
god “displays neither hostility nor wrath.” He “neither condemns nor disdains”
and “does not punish.” “A better god has been discovered,” Tertullian
sarcastically writes, “one who is neither offended nor angry nor inflicts
punishment. . . he is merely kind. Of course he forbids you to sin — but only
in writing. It lies with you whether you consent to accord him obedience.”[6]
“To
what purpose does he lay down commands?” Tertullian asks. “This god is exceptionally
dull-witted if he is not offended by the doing of that which he dislikes to see
being done.”[7]
We
might ask ourselves the same question about the God we worship: To what purpose
does He lay down commands? We are certainly not justified by
keeping the Law. We are justified by faith. But after we are justified, what
are we to do with God’s commandments? Are we to put them into practice, or are
we to disobey them?
One
thing that has helped the ghost of Marcion to thrive so well in the Twentieth
Century Church is the popularity of the Scofield Reference Bible. Even Christians
who have never seen a Scofield Bible have probably been affected by it
indirectly, through preachers and teachers who have been influenced by it.
The
Scofield Bible contains many excellent study notes and aids to understanding
the Scriptures. Several of Scofield’s notes, however, strongly suggest a
Marcionite view of Law and Grace. A reader of Scofield’s notes is left with the
impression that Law and Grace are mutually exclusive.
Scofield’s
anti-law bias has fed and nurtured and sustained the tares of nomophobia (fear
of the Law) that Marcion sowed in the Church nineteen centuries ago. As the end
of the age approaches, God is sending forth His messengers to uproot these
tares, so His wheat can mature and bring forth the fruit of obedience to God’s
laws.
A
spirit of lawlessness has been hanging over the Church for most of its history.
Some Christians have been influenced by it more than others, of course. Paul
saw it beginning in his lifetime. Second Thessalonians speaks about “the secret
power of lawlessness” which was “already at work” when Paul wrote to the Thessalonians.
Paul
told the Thessalonians that before the Messiah returned, there would be a
“falling away” (apostasy, “departure from truth”). This
departure from the truth would then open the door for something called “the man
of lawlessness” to come forth. This “coming of the lawless one” would be
accompanied by “all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonder” which
would “deceive those who are perishing.”
“They
perish because they refused to love the truth and be saved,” Paul writes. “For
this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the
lie.” In preparation for the Return of the Messiah, God is also sending
powerful revelation to graciously expose the ancient lie, so that those who
love the truth can depart from error and be freed from the bewitching influence
of the spirit of lawlessness.
In
1989, Ted Turner of CNN declared the Ten Commandments obsolete, and offered his
own “Ten Voluntary Initiatives” as an alternative to God’s outdated laws. No
one should take Turner seriously, of course, but he did make one comment that
deserves our attention. “Nobody around likes to be commanded,” he said.
“Commandments are out.”[8]
Christians
may scoff at Turner’s idea of replacing God’s laws with human ideas, yet is
this not the very thing the Church has done with some of God’s commandments? We
have replaced the 24-hour, seventh-day Sabbath with an hour or two of Sunday
morning worship; we have replaced the Biblical holy days with holidays of pagan
origin; we have replaced God’s dietary guidelines with our own ideas about what
we should eat.
After
a person has been forgiven and justified by faith, where should he look for
moral instruction? Should he look to God’s commandments to tell him how to live
the Christian life, or should he ignore God’s commandments and live according
to man’s suggestions? Even Scofield, in spite of all his anti-law bias and nomophobia,
concedes that the Old Testament commandments “are used in the distinctively
Christian Scriptures as an instruction in righteousness.”[9]
In Against Marcion, Tertullian accuses
Marcion and his followers of “forbidding what [God] commands and commanding
what he forbids.”[10] The ghost of Marcion continues to do
this in the Church today. Mainstream Christianity has criticized believers for
keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, for celebrating the Biblical holy days, for
practicing the dietary law, and for refusing to shave their beards — things
that God has commanded. And, like Marcion, Mainstream Christianity often commands
what God forbids: “Forget the Sabbath. Ignore the holy days and dietary laws.
And shave that beard, so you’ll look like a Christian!” (Many Bible colleges
and seminaries command their students to shave their beard, in spite of God’s
command in Lev. 19:27.)
Marcion,
like many church leaders today, misused the words of Jesus and the words of
Paul to support this nomophobic, anti-Jewish, pro-Paul gospel. Tertullian
rightly points out that Jesus’ verbal attacks on the teachers of the Law were
not aimed at the Law itself, but at man’s perversion and misuse of God’s Law.
“He is not criticizing the burdens of the law,” Tertullian writes. The burdens
Jesus criticized were, according to Tertullian, “those which they piled on of
their own, teaching for precepts the doctrines of men.”[11]
Tertullian
shows the importance Jesus attached to keeping the commandments when he writes
about the rich young ruler who approached Jesus:
“So
when he is asked by that certain man, ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to obtain
possession of eternal life?’, he inquired whether he knew — which means, was
keeping — the Creator’s commandments. . . Come now, Marcion, and all you companions
in the misery and sharers in the offensiveness of that heretic, what will you
be bold enough to say? Did Christ here rescind those former commands. . . ?”[12]
Tertullian opposes Marcion’s misuse of
Paul’s writings by pointing out the “Jewishness” of Paul’s faith, and then
asking, “What had [Paul] still to do with Jewish custom, if he was the
destroyer of Judaism?”[13] He also refers to Romans
7:7 to combat Marcion’s hatred of the Law:
“‘What
shall we say then? That the law is sin? God forbid.’ Shame on you, Marcion. God
forbid: the apostle expresses abhorrence of complaint against the law. . . Yet
he adds even more: ‘The law is holy, and its commandment is just, and good.'”[14]
As Tertullian points out later: “you cannot make a promoter of the law into an opponent of
it.”[15]
Unfortunately,
the Church ignored Paul’s positive statements about the Law and Jesus’ warning
about the necessity of continuing to practice and teach the Old Testament commandments.
(See Matt. 5:17-19.)
The
Epistle of Barnabas, an
influential letter written in the Second Century, indicates the general
direction the Church was heading in its attitude to the Old Testament. “The
main theme of Barnabas,” writes one church historian, “is a spiritualization of
the Mosaic law. The writer holds that the Jews were wrong to take the Old
Testament literally.”[16]
Everything
in the Old Testament was allegorized to give it a Christian meaning. Even the commandments
were taken figuratively, because, according to Barnabas, “the law of Moses had
never been meant to be taken literally.”[17] Even the dietary restrictions were
said to represent not actual food, but various kinds of sinful habits.
Justin
Martyr’s Dialogue
With Trypho also shows early Christianity’s negative
attitude toward the Law. Trypho the Jew expresses bewilderment when he tells
Justin:
“[You
Christians] spurn the commands. . . and then try to convince us
[Torah-observant Jews] that you know God, when you fail to do those things that
every God-fearing person would do. If, therefore, you can give a satisfactory
reply to these charges and can show us on what you place your hopes, even
though you refuse to obey the Law, we will listen to you most willingly, and
then we can go on and examine in the same manner our other differences.”[18]
Justin replies by saying that the Law
is “obsolete,” “abrogated,” “voided,” and tells Trypho, “You understand all in
a carnal way.”[19]
Not
all followers of the Messiah were influenced by the nomophobic, anti-Old
Testament, pro-Paul gospel of Marcion. There is historical evidence of several
groups of believers who practiced the Law as an expression of their faith in
Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah.
After
Trypho asks Justin about the possibility of believing in Yeshua as the Messiah
and continuing to observe the commandments, Justin writes his reply:
Yes,
Trypho, I conceded, ‘there are some Christians who. . . desire to observe as
many of the Mosaic precepts as possible — precepts which we think were
instituted because of your hardness of heart — while at the same time they
place their hope in Christ. . . [20]
Justin obviously disagreed with these
Law-keeping Messianic believers, but he does acknowledge their existence.
The
best-known of these groups who believed in Yeshua and practiced the Torah were
the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. There were other groups, more obscure and far
less orthodox, such as the Elchasaites and the Pseudoclementines.[21]
Some
doctrinal errors in some of these predominately Jewish groups probably
contributed to the decision of the Mainstream, Gentile Church to adopt
Marcion’s anti-law, anti-Jewish attitude. One writer notes that “Jewish Christianity
in various forms continued as a disturbing factor until almost the Fifth
Century.”[22]
It
is interesting that this is the same time that Marcion’s heresy supposedly
“died out.” Once Marcion’s error (in a modified, subdued form) had been fully
assimilated into the Mainstream Church, “Jewish Christianity” was no longer a
“disturbing factor” because the Law-keeping Christians were greatly outnumbered
by those who had adopted Marcion’s attitude toward the Law. The number of those
who upheld both the Torah and the Messiah (see Rev.
12:17 & 14:12)
was so insignificant by the Fifth Century that the Mainstream Church no longer
considered them a threat. They could now be written off as a fringe group, and
conveniently ignored. Though they were few in number compared to the now-Marcionized
Mainstream Church, these groups who upheld both the Torah and the Messiah continued
to exist until at least as late as the Tenth Century.[23]
While
Mainstream Christianity, influenced by Marcion, de-emphasized the law and
over-emphasized Paul, groups such as the Ebionites totally rejected Paul,
viewing him as an apostate and enemy of the Law. Both of these extremes are
distortions of true, Biblical faith in the Messiah.
The
solution is not to reject either Paul or the Law; the solution is to view
Paul’s writings in a way that will allow them to harmonize with what the rest
of the Bible says about the Law.
How
should a disciple of Yeshua/Jesus view Paul’s epistles? For those who desire to
be faithful and to live “by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,”
seven guidelines are listed below. The Bible student should keep these
guidelines in mind when reading Paul’s writings.
Paul’s epistles, like any other part
of Scripture, must be viewed in the light of the entire Bible. This means that
when we are dealing with the Law, we must not focus in on a few statements Paul
made, and ignore everything else the bible says about God’s Law. As pointed our
earlier, Paul’s writings make up approximately 5% of the Bible. Paul’s writings
must be understood in a way that will make them compatible with what the other
95% of the Bible says. In other words, let the other 95% of the Bible interpret
the 5% that Paul wrote.
It
is important to remember that for many years, the Old Testament was the only
Bible the Early Church had. The New Testament writings were gradually accepted into
the canon of the Scriptures. It was not until about the middle of the Second
Century that the term “the Scriptures” referred to the New Testament as well as
the Old Testament.[24] Therefore, when New Testament writers
mention “the scriptures” or “the commandments,” they are referring to the Old
Testament.
The
New Jerusalem Bible, in its “Introduction to Paul,” makes this statement:
“It
is important to remember that Paul’s letters were not meant as theological treatises:
most of them represent his response to a particular situation in a particular
church. . . . Paul’s letters do not give any systematic and exhaustive
exposition of his teachings; they presuppose the oral teaching which preceded
them, and enlarge and comment only upon certain points of that.”[25]
Because Paul often wrote to correct
particular problems in particular churches, we must have some knowledge of the
situation Paul was addressing if we are to understand his writings. Sometimes
the problem can be inferred from Paul’s remarks, but often we are left with
little or no knowledge of the situations Paul was dealing with.
Theologians
often try to reconstruct the historical backgrounds of the epistles, and make
educated guesses about the problems Paul was addressing. This can be a noble effort,
if it is done in a sincere attempt to come to a clearer understanding of what
Paul taught. Unfortunately, many people come to an understanding of Paul that
contradicts what the rest of the Bible teaches, either by incorrectly reconstructing
the historical background, or by ignoring it altogether.
It is important to bear in mind
Peter’s warning that Paul’s letters are not easy to understand:
“His
letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable
people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. Therefore,
dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not
be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your
secure position ” (2 Pet. 3:16f).
Those with little or no knowledge of
the Old Testament Scriptures are especially apt to misinterpret Paul’s writings
to their own ruin. Notice, it is not the Law-keeping disciples of Yeshua who
distort Paul’s epistles — it is “lawless men” that Peter warns us about.
Early
in His ministry, the Messiah spoke this warning to His followers:
“Do
not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come
to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and
earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will
by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone
who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the
same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and
teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt.
5:17-19).
Our Master’s warning seems plain and
simple enough to understand, yet many Christians mistakenly believe that by
fulfilling the Law, He thereby abolished it. This is exactly what He is warning
us not to think! “I have come to fulfill the Law,” He says,
“but do not even think that by fulfilling it, I am thereby abolishing it.”
Sometimes
it is easier for people outside Mainstream Christianity to see the blindness of
Christians in this area. The Jewish Encyclopedia quotes Jesus’ warning of Matt.5:17,
and then makes this bold statement: “The rejection of the Law by Christianity,
therefore, was a departure from its Christ.”[26]
In
an article with the catchy title, “Jesus Was Not a Christian,” the writer
points out that “Jesus certainly wouldn’t have been recognized as a Christian
throughout his entire life.” He “scrupulously adhered to the law of Moses” and
“enjoined his disciples to keep every detail of the Torah.”[27]
A
story in the New York Yiddish Forward tells tells
of a reporter’s encounter with an old Hasidic Jew in Paris years ago. This Jew
had a fervent faith in Jesus as the Messiah. When the reporter asked him about
the compatibility of Orthodox Judaism and belief in Jesus, the old man replied,
“Who then should believe in him — the gentiles?” The reporter describes the old
man’s remarks this way:
“He
said that only Jews can truly accept belief in Jesus as the Messiah and regard
him as the last prophet, for gentiles can never accept such a lofty faith. It
is next to impossible for them to walk in his ways, for first of all, Yeshua,
as he called him, commanded to observe all the Jewish laws, the entire Torah,
and gentiles do not even know this.”[28]
Of course it is not impossible for
Gentiles to accept and practice such a lofty faith. The question is, will they
do it? Or will they continue to cling to the lies of Marcion?
Many
Christians overlook or choose to ignore the positive things Paul said about the
Law. He writes, for example, “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy,
righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12). Paul's says, “For in my inner being
I delight in God’s law” and “I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law” (Rom. 7:22,25).
He
tells Timothy, “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly” (1 Tim.
1:8). To the Corinthians he writes, “Keeping God’s commandments is
what counts” (1 Cor. 7:19). Even when explaining the righteousness
that comes by faith, Paul is careful to make sure his readers know that their
faith does not give them an excuse to ignore God’s Law: “Do we, then, nullify
the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law” (Rom. 3:31).
Paul,
in his negative statements about the Law, was not criticizing the Law itself,
but man’s misuse of the Law. The Law was meant to be a moral guide for a people
already justified by faith, but some people in Paul’s day were depending on
their Law-keeping as the means of their justification before God. What Paul
criticized was not Law-keeping itself, but making Law-keeping the basis of
one’s justification before God.
Between
the Babylonian Captivity and the time of the Messiah, Israel developed an erroneous
understanding of the Law’s purpose. The Jews who first returned from Babylon
knew that their exile had been the result of the breaking of God’s laws;
therefore, they put a heavy emphasis on the Law when they returned to their
homeland. Unfortunately, this new emphasis eventually developed a theology that
caused some people to erroneously view Law-keeping, rather than faith, as the
key to their justification. Paul’s negative statements about the Law were
simply his attempts to correct this erroneous use of the Law. One writer puts
it this way:
“Paul,
in his epistles, affirms the law, yet condemns the wrong emphasis men place
upon it. In this sense he is turning believers back to the original intent of
the law, it being a rule for godly living for those who are already redeemed.
He rejects the later shift towards making it a means of salvation.”[29]
Another says basically the same thing
when he writes, “Paul rejects the law as a method of salvation but
upholds it as a standard for Christian conduct.”[30] If we ignore this fact, we will twist the
writings of Paul to our own loss, as Marcion and other lawless men have done
throughout the centuries.
Actions
speak louder than words, the well-known proverb says. If we truly want to understand
Paul’s attitude towards keeping or not keeping the Law, we must look at his actions
as well as his words.
Even
in Paul’s own lifetime, false rumors were circulating that Paul taught people
“to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk
according to the customs” (Acts 21:21). To dispel these false accusations,
the elders of Jerusalem had Paul go with four men who had taken a vow (probably
a Nazirite vow), telling Paul that in this way “all will know that there
is nothing to the things which they have been
told about you, but that you yourself also work orderly, keeping
the Law” (Acts 28:17).
To
his Jewish accusers from Jerusalem, Paul said, “I have committed no
offense either against the Law of the Jews or
against the temple” (Acts 25:8). To the Jews in Rome, he repeated the
same testimony: “Brethren, though I had done nothing against
our people, or the customs of our fathers,
yet I was delivered prisoner into the hands of the Romans” (Acts
28:17).
It
is very clear that Paul continued to keep the Law after he met the Messiah. The
only thing that changed was Paul’s reason for keeping the Law. Before, he had
kept it in an effort to be justified before God. After meeting the Messiah, he
found the justification he had sought through his Law-keeping. Paul was justified
through faith, and the Law was internalized, “written upon the heart,” as
Jeremiah prophesied it would be (31:31-34). Now he desired to obey God’s commandments
because of the inward impulse of his new nature. His obedience was no longer
the result of an external compulsion to justify himself before God by
Law-keeping. Thus, he was free to obey “in the way of the Spirit, and not in
the old way of the written code” (Rom. 7:6).
By
keeping the Law, in the right way and for the right reasons, Paul left an
example for all disciples to follow, whether Jew or non-Jew. Some people seem
to think that only Jewish believers were expected to continue practicing Torah.
The so-called “Great Commission” rules out this possibility. When Jesus
instructed His Jewish disciples to go to “all nations [Gentiles],” He told them
to teach the Gentile nations “to obey everything I
have commanded you [My Jewish disciples]" (Matt.
28:18ff). He commanded His Jewish disciples to obey the Torah (Matt.
5:17-19 & 23:1-2),
and they were to teach the Gentiles to do it.
The
key to godly living is not to ignore the Law and elevate Paul, as Marcion did.
Nor is the solution to overemphasize the Law and reject Paul, as the Ebionites
and others did. The solution is to do what Paul said to do: “Follow my example,
as I follow the example of the Messiah” (1
Cor. 11:1). If we truly follow Paul’s example, as he followed the
example of Messiah, we will begin to practice Old Testament commands that the
Church has ignored or changed.
A.
W. Tozer wrote, “Probably no other portion of the Scriptures can compare with
the Pauline epistles when it comes to making artificial saints.”[31] Let us avoid artificial sainthood by
keeping in mind the above-mentioned seven guidelines for understanding Paul’s
epistles:
1.
Over-all Biblical context
2. Historical context
3. Peter’s warning
4. Jesus' warning
5. Paul’s positive statements about the Law
6. Paul’s
negative statements about the Law
7. Paul’s example
As we let the naked truth of Holy
Scripture renew our minds and change our thinking, the sunlight of God’s Word
will dispel the mist of the ghost of Marcion. We will find ourselves
transformed as the fog lifts, and as we see the Law as God always meant it to
be seen: as something positive, holy, and good, “if one uses it properly” (1 Tim.
1:8).
Let
those who wish to whole-heartedly follow the Messiah begin to learn the commandments,
practice them, and teach them to others, for “whoever practices and teaches
these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt.
5:19). As we banish the ghost of Marcion, the “spirit of
lawlessness,” from our theology, we will see the commandments not as a yoke of
bondage, but as a moral guide by which we can joyfully live a life that is
pleasing to the Heavenly Father. Then we will be able to rejoice in God’s
commandments as the psalmist did:
“I
will praise You with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws... I
rejoice in following Your statutes as one rejoices in great riches... I have
chosen the way of truth; I have set my heart on Your laws. I hold fast to Your
statutes, O Lord; do not let me be put to shame. I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free... I will always obey Your law,
forever and ever. I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out Your
precepts... Great peace have they who love Your law, and nothing can make them
stumble” (Ps. 119: 7,14,30-32,44f,165).
[1] Smith, M. A. From
Christ to Constantine (London: Intervarsity Press, 1971), p.
14.
[2] Ibid., p.53.
[3] Tertullian, Against
Marcion, trans. and ed. Ernest Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1972), p.xv.
[4] Tertullian, IV.1.
[5] Ibid.,I.6.
[6] Ibid., I.26f.
[7] Ibid.
[8] “Turner’s Commandments,” Peoria
Journal Star, 27 Oct., 1989, section D, p.22.
[9] The Scofield Reference Bible,
ed. C. I. Scofield (New York: Oxford University Press, 1917), p.1245.
[10] Tertullian, IV.1.
[11] Ibid., IV.27.
[12] Ibid., IV.36.
[13] Ibid., V.5.
[14] Ibid., V.14.
[15] Ibid., V.17.
[16] Smith, p.39.
[17] Eerdman’s Handbook to the History of
Christianity, ed. Tim Dowley (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1977),
p.102.
[18] Justin Martyr, Dialogue
With Trypho, ch.10.
[19] Ibid., ch.11, 14.
[20] Ibid., ch.47.
[21] Austin, Bill R. Austin’s
Topical History of Christianity (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House,
1983), p.72f.
[22] Ibid., p.73.
[23] Flusser, David Jewish
Sources in Early Christianity (New York: Adama Books, 1987),
p.88.
[24] Smith, p.63.
[25] The New Jerusalem Bible,
ed. Henry Wansbrough (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1985), p.1852f.
[26] The Jewish Encyclopedia,
ed. Isidore Singer New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls, 1903), Vol.V., p.52.
[27] John Murray Smoot, Jesus Was Not a
Christian,” A Way in the Wilderness, ed. M.G. Einspruch
(Baltimore: The Lederer Foundation, 1981), p.28.
[28] J. Feldman, “Yozel’s Hasid,” The
Ox, the Ass, the Oyster, ed. Henry and Marie Einspruch (Baltimore:
The Lederer Foundation, 1975), p.74.
[29] Michael Schiffman, “A Pauline
Understanding of the Place of the Law for New Covenant Believers,” The
Messianic Outreach, 7:3, Spring 1988, p.9.
[30] Bacchiocchi, Samuele The
Sabbath in the New Testament (Berrien Springs, MI: University
Printers, 1985), p.101.
[31] Gems From Tozer (England:
Send the Light Trust, 1969), p.18.