Author: Tobie

The Heart of the Pharisee II

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2 The Pharisee and the Law of God

The Question of Motive

‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason’, wrote T.S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral. If I understand Eliot correctly, then the rightness of a deed is measured first and foremost not by the deed itself, nor by the consequences thereof, but by the motives behind it. In an age of excessive pragmatism not everyone might agree, but this does not change the factual value of the statement. In fact, Eliot is merely echoing a truism that has been recognised and taught through the centuries by sages and holy men alike.

Scripture, especially, is clear on this point: ‘The Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts’, David said to Solomon (1 Chron. 28:9), and in Proverbs we read: ‘All a man’s ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the Lord.’ (16:2). God, it seems, has a special interest in motives, and according to the apostle Paul even keeps a record of them for the day of judgment: ‘He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts.’ (1 Cor. 4:5).

It is my conviction, and the thesis of these articles, that the fundamental distinction between the Pharisee and the Christian is to be found in the area of motives, and that all other differences are merely symptomatic and secondary. More than a mere inference drawn from observing the Pharisee in history, this conviction is derived from the pages of Scripture itself, both Old and New Testament. The Pharisee, as the archetype of the religious person who rejects Christ, obtains his religious zeal from a source other than God. The ‘why’ of his passion differs from that of the Christian, and it is here that their paths diverge.

What is this ‘why’? What is the driving force behind Pharisaism? What is it that drives a person to embrace the law of God, yet reject the Lawgiver? These are the questions we are faced with in our search to understand the heart and mind of the Pharisee, and we shall now endeavor to answer them.

The Real Purpose of the Law

We shall take, as our point of departure, the law of God as observed by a Pharisee. We shall then proceed to look at the real purpose of the law, and how this insight is either ignored by the Pharisee so as not to threaten the fabric of his Pharisaism, or, on the other hand, understood by the Pharisee, causing him to convert from his Pharisaism to true, authentic Christianity.

To put this another way: There is something in the law of God that challenges the heart of Pharisaism, and, when noted, leads the observer away from the law as a means of salvation, and to Jesus Christ. The difference between the Pharisee and the Christian, therefore, lies in the way they view the law of God, and specifically how they define the ultimate function of the law. If we can isolate this difference, we have come to the heart of Pharisaism.

The Conversion of a Pharisee

In a sense, then, we are interested in the conversion of the Pharisee, and the process that underlies it. It should be noted that the Pharisee is not beyond redemption, nor that God has no desire to save him. Too often we read Christ’s classic discourse on Pharisaism in Matt. 23 with affirming nods of disgust, yet completely ignoring the heart wrenching conclusion of the chapter: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.’ (v. 37).

It is also noteworthy, and almost unbelievable, that God chose a Pharisee as the main author of the New Testament. It might be argued that God did so because of Saul’s learning, or perhaps because of his seemingly inborn commitment to orthodoxy and Pharisaical adherence to absolutes. He possessed tools and traits, in other words, that would later prove immensely valuable to Paul the Christian apologetic. Perhaps these factors do come into the equation, but I suspect that God chose the apostle Paul for a greater reason: In Paul we see an incarnation of the transition from law to grace. His testimony is not just one of personal salvation, but of universal salvation. As we see in the person of Christ the perfect union between God and man – one that we would not have been able to grasp without the reality of a man in whose life this truth incarnated itself – so we see in the person of Paul the death of the Old Covenant and the birth of the new. He is the two covenants incarnate. He represents to us both Adam and Christ. Adam, not vile and sinful, but Adam as righteous as any man can hope to be: Adam the religious man, Adam the Pharisee. Yet in spite of this, Adam the transgressor, sentenced to death. In Paul we see the sentence carried out. We see an execution, and we hear Saul the Pharisee, the circumcised Hebrew and Benjamite of Phil. 3, crying out ‘I no longer live’, recognising and admitting that even for the very religious man the wages of his sins are death, and that in Christ the judgment is carried out. Yet we also hear him say ‘Christ lives in me’, as he identifies with Christ in his resurrection, and becomes a new creation in Christ. From this new vantage point, he looks back to his life of Pharisaism, and in what can truly be described as one of the most shocking statements in the Bible, calls it ‘scubilon’; literally ‘excrement’.

In the light of the above, the obvious question that arises is this: ‘What happened between the sixth and seventh verses of Phil. 3? What happened to effect the conversion of such a great and committed Pharisee?’ The answer might seem obvious: ‘Acts 9, of course: The account of Paul’s conversion.’ Yet it is more than that. When we study the account of Paul’s life and conversion, then Acts 9 becomes merely one act of a much greater drama unfolding itself across the pages of the New Testament. To think that Paul was drawn to Christ by an overwhelming experience on the Damascus road is to underestimate the work of God in his life. Rather, we have reason to believe that the Acts 9 experience was a culmination of a long religious history that had prepared him for this event. He was a man ripened and mature, ready to be picked.

To discount his past would be no different to giving the credit for Augustine’s conversion to the voice of the child who cried ‘tolle, lege; tolle, lege’ in a garden in Milan on a summer’s day in 386. These famous words, known and quoted for centuries by Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants alike, would have meant nothing to the great church father were they not uttered against a backdrop of inner restlessness, spiritual hunger and religious disenchantment. Paul, like Augustine, had a long religious history that prepared him for that one fateful event that would become the turning point in his life.

To argue that the historical records provide us with precious little insight into the mind of the unconverted Paul (As opposed to Augustine, for instance), is also incorrect. We are given a striking glimpse of the apostle’s psyche, in his pre-conversion days, by none other than Paul himself, in what is perhaps the most misunderstood and misquoted chapter of the New Testament.

The Man in Romans 7

I am, of course, referring to Romans 7. Even as a young Christian I found it incredulous that seemingly well-meaning Christians glibly quoted Paul as though he had provided the church with the poem of great excuse.

For what I want to do I do not do,
but what I hate I do.
I have the desire to do what is good,
but I cannot carry it out.
For what I do is not the good I want to do;
no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.

If the defeated man who penned these words were sketching God’s best hope for the Christian, then perhaps we should seriously reconsider our use of the term ‘conversion’ as a description of what happens to the sinner who finds Christ. Moreover, we should put a question mark behind verses such as 1 John 3:9 and 5:18, where we read that the one born of God ‘does not continue to sin.’

This does not mean that we follow the 19th century holiness preacher in his quest for sinless perfection or entire sanctification. To draw such a caricature of the theologian who rejects the view that Romans 7 presents us with a picture of the normal Christian life is unfair, to say the least. No, we acknowledge that the believer shall never be completely free from sin in this life, and we have no desire to prove otherwise.

The question, however, is this: Is Paul using Romans 7 to prove this point? And if not, does that mean that the point remains unproven in Pauline theology? In other words, are we not allowed to be weak once we no longer have Romans 7 as an excuse for our weakness?

The answer to the second question is obvious, and not much need to be said in reply. The perfectionist thesis is not espoused by Paul or any of the New Testament authors, and certainly does not stand or fall by any interpretation of Romans 7. Barth’s accusation that those who disagree with him on Romans 7 do so because of the ‘spectacles of their own piety’ (1980:270) is therefore unfounded.

The answer to the first question is less obvious, and it is here that we find the much-discussed difference of opinion amongst theologians and scholars. It is certainly not my aim to try and settle a centuries old theological dispute in the spate of a few paragraphs, yet it should be pointed out that the scale seems to be turning more and more in favor of the view that Paul is not referring to the Christian’s remaining struggle against sin, but rather to the ‘impotence of the ego outside Christ and the power of his Spirit’ (Ridderbos 1975:126).

Law or Spirit?

The real question, of course, is not whether we are faced in Romans 7 with Paul before or after his conversion, but rather whether we are faced with Paul as a man under the law or as a man led by the Spirit. It is important to see the difference. To state that the legalistic person is of necessity a pre-Christian person is anachronistic, and this is nowhere better illustrated than in the letter to the Christians at Galatia. Theirs is the classical post-conversion return to the law, and Paul uses extremely strong language to try and bring them back to their senses, reminding us that Christianity and legalism are not mutually exclusive.

In other words, if Paul were speaking in Romans 7 as a man under the law, then he was indeed speaking about a potential Christian experience, but we need to understand that for the Christian such an experience is an illegitimate and undesirable one. ‘Christ is the end of the law’, Paul points out three chapters later, and so to put oneself back under the law is to go the path of Galatian bewitchment, which he calls ‘a different gospel’ in that epistle.

This means that the ego’s impotence, spoken of by Ridderbos, may indeed be experienced by Christians from time to time, but it is hardly the same as ‘struggling against sin’. The impotence of Romans 7 is then that of a person under the law, and it is portrayed in stark contrast against the life led under the guidance of the Spirit in Romans 8, albeit it an imperfect life. The contrast is especially accentuated by the dark décor of Romans 7. What we find here is not new life in Christ, but fatalism and despair. As Martyn Lloyd Jones points out in his commentary on this passage: ‘The regenerate man, when he falls into sin, has to say that he has done something which he does not believe in doing; he is aware that he is not already perfect; but he does not speak of himself as a man who lives a frustrated, defeated life of failure.’ (1973:199), and ‘He [Paul] is not talking about a tendency to sin, he is talking about a captivity to sin.’ (1973:220). He adds: ‘In the Christian sin is not a master and he its slave. Sin to the Christian is an annoyance, a nuisance; it is something that worries him, and sometimes trips him up; but it never drives him to despair.’ (1973:254).

If the issue is one of law versus Spirit, rather than one of ‘saved’ versus ‘unsaved’, it follows that the wretchedness and despair of Romans 7 belong not only to the legalistic person before his conversion, but to anyone who looks to the law as a means of salvation, and that includes the Christian. Even scholars who are uncomfortable with a simplistic ‘before and after conversion’ interpretation of Romans 7 and 8 tend to acknowledge this: ‘The law speaks not of privilege and achievement, but only of failure and guilt. For sensitive Christians, therefore, who know how God hates sin, to be diagnosed by the law is a miserable and depressing experience.’, writes J.I. Packer in Knowing God (1973:288). The point, of course, is that Christians are not to look at the law, but rather to the gospel, as Packer proceeds to point out.

With the above in mind it would appear that our question has answered itself: The experience of Romans 7 is not possible without the law of God, and the depressing effect of this experience is not to be understood as the normal and daily experience of the Christian who is led by the Spirit. Therefore we can safely assume that Paul is speaking as ‘a man under the law’ who has not yet tasted the liberty of the Spirit (or who, having tasted, has lost focus), and as such as a Pharisee, albeit a Pharisee with a difference, as we shall promptly see.

Do All Those Under The Law Share the Experience of Romans 7?

In stating the above, one problem still remains. The fact that Paul’s despair followed his exposure to the law does not necessarily mean that all people who are under the law reach a point of despair. To put it differently: You cannot have the despair without the law, but you can have the law without the despair. It is the exception, rather than the rule, for the legalist to cry out ‘Wretched man that I am!’, and this fact is well illustrated by the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18.

Two men, both aware of God’s holy standard as it is revealed in his law, pray in the temple. The one believes that he has lived up to the law, and he thanks God for this. The other knows that he has broken God’s law, beats on his chest, crying out: ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’, and in the process sounds remarkably like the man in Romans 7. The striking conclusion of the story is that it is this man, the tax collector, who is justified by God, and not the Pharisee.

What is the point of the parable? Surely not that God delights in those who break his law whilst despising those who don’t? No, the point is that the purpose of the law was met in the life of the tax collector and not in the life of the Pharisee. This purpose is clear to see in Rom. 3:20: ‘Therefore no-one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.’ What God looked for in the temple prayers was consciousness of sin, not observance of the law, and he found it in only one of them.

This is also the point of Romans 7. We would not be far from wrong if we were to say that the law, in its final analysis, was given to be broken rather than kept, for it is in breaking the law that we become conscious of our need of a savior. The force of Paul’s ‘Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord’ would simply not have been the same without his preceding ‘Wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from this body of death?’ As a matter of fact, without a knowledge of one’s own wretchedness there is no need of Christ and his Spirit at all, which provides us with the main reason why the tax collectors as a group entered the kingdom of God ahead of the Pharisees (Matt. 21:31).

The person under the law in Romans 7, therefore, does not represent every person under the law. This truth has oftentimes been missed by expositors who ignore the fact that the average law abiding Pharisee knows very little of the despair of Romans 7, and it has also caused many to outright reject the notion that the person in Romans 7 is unregenerate. To quote Martyn Lloyd Jones again: ‘The unregenerate never speaks in that way. Not only so, the unregenerate man never condemns sin in the way this man does who says, “What I do, I do not allow; I do not approve of it.” The unregenerate man never uses such language. Neither does he ever say that he hates sin.’ (1973:198). He is right, of course, and his argument also holds for the person under the law.

The question that remains is this: What kind of a person are we then seeing in Romans 7, if not every person under the law?, and the answer is to be found in the specific command that triggered the experience for Paul, and caused him to go from a self righteous Pharisee to a broken man in despair as a result of his inability to keep this command.

The Problem of Covetousness

In Romans 7 Paul mentions the command by name. As unbelievable as it may sound, many debates over this chapter never allude to the fact that there is only one Old Testament law under discussion here, namely the last of the Ten Commandments: You shall not covet. Note verses 7 and 8: ‘Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.’

The key to understanding Romans 7 lies in the uniqueness of this command. Paul was not condemned by the law as a murderer, blasphemer, adulterer, thieve, idolater, or because he broke any other of the first nine commandments. Neither did he struggle with any of these. On the contrary, in describing his legalistic righteousness as a Pharisee in Phil. 3 he calls himself ‘faultless’. No sincere Pharisee would have dared to do so had he struggled with the obvious requirements of the first nine commandments.

The problem arose with the final command. Defined as ‘eagerly desirous’, covetousness refers to inner compulsion, and the prohibition to covet addresses itself to the inner person, differing from the other commandments in this respect. Whereas the rest of the law prohibits actions, the tenth commandment prohibits an intention. We break it before we break any one of the other, as the doing of a sinful deed is preceded by the motive or desire to do so: ‘…after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin…’ James tells us in his epistle (1:15). The first sin, as an archetype of all sins to follow, also clearly reveals to us covetousness as a precedent of sin: ‘When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.’ (Gen. 3:6) The real origin of sin, in other words, can be traced back to the problem of covetousness. In fact, as Jesus pointed out in the Sermon on the Mount, where covetousness is present sin has already been committed (Matt. 5:27-28), and the carrying out of covetous intentions is mere coincidence and formality. In this sense we can say that the command not to covet is really a summary of the Ten Commandments, for where coveting is no longer present sin would no longer follow.

The problem of sin, therefore, is an inward one, and it is the purpose of the tenth commandment to illustrate this. To put it another way: The problem of sin is a spiritual problem, and this can only be pointed out by a spiritual commandment. When the tenth commandment confronted Paul, he acknowledged it as ‘spiritual’, but in failing to keep it he had to acknowledge himself as ‘unspiritual, a slave to sin’ (v. 14). While the first nine commandments revealed to Paul his ability to meet the external demands of the law, the tenth commandment revealed to him his inability to live up to the law’s spiritual requirements. In this sense sin was ‘recognised as sin’ in his life (v. 13).

Paul’s despair, culminating in his ‘wretched man that I am’, came about solely as a result of the one commandment that he found impossible to keep. It is this experience, more than anything else, that revealed to him his need of salvation, and that prepared him for the conviction that something needed to be done about his ‘un-spirituality’. It is also here that the distinction is to be found between the regular legalist and the man in Romans 7. The former is blind to the unique spiritual nature of the tenth command, and views it on the same par as the other nine commandments, namely as yet another external requirement to be kept in order to procure salvation. As such the legalist, and that would include the Pharisee, has no knowledge of his own depravity, experiences no despair, and sees no need to call on a savior.

The man in Romans 7, in other words, cannot merely be labeled as regenerate, unregenerate or legalistic. Rather, he is a person who experiences the holiness of God, and in the light thereof, sees the long shadow of his own wretchedness. Perhaps the clearest treatment of this aspect of Romans 7 is that of Martyn Lloyd Jones’ 257 page exposition of the passage, with his findings summarised as follows: ‘What sort of man is Paul describing therefore? He is describing a man who is experiencing an intense conviction of sin, a man who has been given to see, by the Spirit, the holiness of the Law; and he feels utterly condemned. He is aware of his weakness for the first time, and his complete failure. But he does not know any more. He is trying to keep the law in his own strength, and he finds that he cannot. He therefore feels condemned; he is under conviction…This is the experience of a large number of people, sometimes of people who have been reading a book on Revival, or the biography of some great saint. Suddenly they are brought under conviction by the Holy Spirit. They see that the whole of their past is wrong, that it is loss. They see the meaning of the law for the first time. They have lost their self-righteousness, they are “dead”, they are “killed” by the Law; and they then try to put themselves right, but they cannot do so. They may remain like that for days and for weeks, even for years. Then the truth about Christ and His full salvation is revealed to them, and they find peace and joy and happiness and power.’ (1973:255-256).

Lloyd Jones also emphasises the fact that the above experience is brought about not by the first nine commandments, but by the specific command not to covet, noting the following: ‘The Apostle is really saying…”I would not have known that lust was sin in and of itself if the law had not taught me so”. That was undoubtedly true of the Apostle before his conversion as it was true of all the Pharisees. They thought of sin only in terms of external actions [italics mine]. As long as a man did not perform an evil act, he was not guilty of sin.’ (1973:115).

The tenth commandment, then, is the bridge that leads a man from self-righteousness and Pharisaism (‘I thank you that I am not like all other men: I don’t rob or commit adultery…’) to conviction of sin (‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’), and on towards salvation (‘…this man…went home justified’). It is the classical transition from ‘what-I-do’ to ‘who-I-am’, from whitened sepulchre to dead men’s bones, from cleaning the outside of the cup and dish to being overwhelmed by the greed and self-indulgence on the inside.

It is here that the paths of the Pharisee and God’s saints diverge. ‘The ultimate proof of the sinner is that he does not know his own sin.’, Luther said, and the same can be said of the Pharisee. Strangely reminiscent of the attitude displayed by the first sinners in history, the Pharisee is the last to acknowledge the reality of his sin, or to take responsibility for it, and the first to see the sins of others. For the Pharisee ‘Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits’, as Mark Twain quipped. When asked ‘What’s wrong with the world?’, the Pharisee never responds with the words of G. K. Chesterton in his well known correspondence stopper to The Times: ‘I am.’ The famous and immortalised sentence from Walt Kelley’s comic strip Pogo, ‘We have met the enemy and he is us’, is a sentence never uttered over the lips of the Pharisee.

Jesus Christ and the Tenth Commandment

If the command not to covet serves as a bridge between the two covenants, between law and grace, and between the Pharisee and the Christian, then it should not come as any surprise that Jesus Christ employed it in exactly this way. In the first teaching of Christ recorded in the New Testament, he says: ‘Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfil them.’ (Matt. 5:17). Clarifying the statement, which must have sounded rather unorthodox to his audience, for it was not generally felt that the law needed ‘fulfillment’, he added: ‘Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.’ (v. 20). This statement, too, must have sounded strange, for the Pharisees were as righteous as was humanly possible. Christ’s message was clear: The law was not yet fulfilled, and the party who gained a reputation for keeping the law was not as righteous as they could be; in fact, not even righteous enough to enter heaven.

The riddle is solved in the next few verses, with Christ quoting from the law and the rabbis six times, each time emphasising the obvious external requirement of the law, and each time pointing to a much deeper spiritual principle behind the words. Especially the first two statements confirm the division between the first nine commandments and the tenth commandment: ‘You have heard that it was said…”Do not murder…” (sixth command). But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.’ Anger, of course, corresponds with covetousness, albeit a negative form thereof, and is well defined in the Oxford dictionary as ‘hot displeasure’ (1964:48). It is a desire for revenge, for payback, and as such the motive that precedes the sin of murder – the very motive forbidden by the tenth command. And then the second statement: ‘You have heard that it was said, “Do not commit adultery” (Seventh command), but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Tenth command).

This even corresponds with the way in which the tenth command presents itself in Exodus 20. Coveting your neighbour’s wife (Tenth command) clearly precedes committing adultery with her (Seventh command). Likewise, coveting your neighbour’s possessions (Tenth command) precedes the act of stealing from your neighbour (Eighth command). In fact, every time you break one of the first nine commandments, you end up breaking two commandments: The one in question, as well as the tenth!

It becomes clear then, that the righteousness of the Pharisees was one based on their observance of the first nine commandments, as well as all the other external requirements of the law, and not of the tenth commandment. As such the Pharisees were not righteous enough. Also, it explains what Christ meant when he spoke about fulfilling the law without abolishing it. By enabling people to adhere to the underlying spiritual requirements of the law, the law shall be fulfilled, and by doing so the external commandments shall never be broken, and so the law is not abolished. Of course the fulfillment of the law also refers to the accomplishments of Christ that are imputed to the Christian by faith, but that is not the focus of this study. Suffice it to say that the fulfillment of the law is both legal, in the sense of a ransom or penalty that has been paid on our behalf, and practical, in the sense of the offender being rehabilitated. Our focus here is on the latter, not the former.

The Rich Young Man

If any doubt remains about Christ’s treatment of the Ten Commandments, and whether it corresponds with Paul’s treatment thereof in Romans 7, then such doubt is removed in a story about yet another man who thought he had the ability to keep the law. It is found in Matt. 19, and so overfamiliar to us that we often miss its obvious message. A rich young man comes to Jesus, asking: ‘Teacher, what good thing must I do to inherit eternal life?’, and in the process reveals his inadequate understanding of morality and righteousness. Christ responds by pointing to the law, quoting five of the first nine commandments (he stops at number nine!), and adds the command to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ from the book of Leviticus. The man answers like a typical law abiding Pharisee would, by claiming that he has kept all these, and then asks if there is anything that he still lacks. Note Christ’s response: ‘This one thing you lack.’

The rest of Christ’s well known response has very little to do with a lesson in giving, and neither is it one reserved for rich, young men. Rather, it is the one reserved for all religious people who believe that they have the ability to keep the law: ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’ It was, of course, the tenth command drawn to its logical conclusion: You shall covet nothing on this earth, and so you shall be happy to give away even what you have. It was also, as always, the impossible command for the unregenerate legalist and Pharisee, and so the young man went away sad. The message was so clear that even the disciples, in astonishment, asked: ‘Who then can be saved?’ Christ’s answer reveals that his dialogue with the rich man was not an effort to negotiate salvation, but an illustration of the impossibility to find righteousness through the path of legalistic efforts and doing ‘good things’: ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’

According to Jesus, therefore, nothing less than perfection will get us to heaven. This is clear from both passages discussed above. The last of the six references to the law and its spiritual nature in Matt. 5 concludes with the words: ‘Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ (v. 48), and to the rich young man Jesus said: ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions…’ (Matt 19:21). Such perfection can only be attained by Christ himself, of course, and provides the basis for our salvation. But this perfection is more than a mere ‘positional’ reality in heavenly places. It is made manifest in the life of the individual who goes beyond the keeping of the first nine commandments to the tenth commandment. This is indeed impossible for the unregenerate, no matter how legalistic they may be.

Summary and Conclusion

By studying the conversion of the most famous Pharisee in history, we have seen that a certain understanding of the law of God played a vital role in the process. As someone who once believed himself to be ‘faultless’ in obeying the law, the apostle Paul was driven to despair by his inability to keep the tenth command, ultimately recognising himself as ‘unspiritual’, and crying out for a savior as a result of this insight. We saw how Jesus Christ used the law in the same way, proving that the ultimate purpose of the law was not to be obeyed externally, but to reveal a spiritual demand that could not be met by the carnal person, resulting in God himself having to effect such a great and impossible salvation. We also saw, in various passages, that the Pharisee is characterised by a conviction that he has the ability to keep the law and so procure salvation for himself, completely missing the real purpose of the law, namely to make people conscious of sin, especially the sin of covetousness.

With the above in the back of our minds, it would appear indeed that the main difference between the Pharisee and the true Christian is to be found in the realm of motives. The Pharisee does the ‘right deeds for the wrong reasons’, as the inborn covetousness of his heart has not been dealt with, whereas the Christian has been freed from covetousness, and so does right without any ulterior motives. The practical implications of this basic and fundamental distinction between the two are so vast that we shall set aside an entire chapter for the purposes of discussing them in greater detail.

The Heart of the Pharisee I

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Some years ago I used a research opportunity to do a study that now ranks as one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Since then I have taught on this subject in a variety of settings and to a strange mixture of people. I have done so in Baptist churches, independent fellowships, home churches and even to a group of inmates in a maximum security prison. I have always been amazed at the response, and, as a result, have had it in my heart for many years to publish these teachings. I have, however, never felt led to do so. Until now.

I ask readers to bear with the style of writing, as the original academic document is only slightly edited for the present purposes of blog publishing. The language is somewhat academic here and there, but not so highfalutin as to be unreadable. I shall publish it in six chapters over the course of the next few days, the first one to follow hereunder. Please feel free to comment.

The subject under scrutiny is close to my heart. I admit, unashamedly, that I was a modern day Pharisee for most of my life, and that I shall become so again, in the blink of an eye, were it not for the continuous grace of the almighty God who allowed himself to be crucified by traitors like me.

Chapter 1: Introduction

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote ‘The Pharisee is not an adventitious historical phenomenon of a particular time’ in Ethics (1955:12), he struck a chord that is not often heard in the annals of theological seminaries, and rarely sounded by higher academics. Scholars, it seems, prefer to study Pharisaism from the safe distance of two millennia, much in the same way Pasteur studied his bacteria – detached and clinically objective.

This became especially clear to me as I began my research for this work. The first pile of books that I brought home from the university library carried titles about rabbinic traditions, Jewish sects, Zealots and early Christianity. And, of course, they had nothing to say about the type of Pharisaism Bonhoeffer spoke about. When a second visit proved ineffective, I turned my attention to psychology, and in particular the psychology of religion. I found brief references to contemporary Pharisaism in works by Victor Frankl and M. Scott Peck, but little else that could serve as a basis for my study. Even the psychology of religion offered very little assistance.

The problem, it seems, is twofold. On the one hand, the term appears to be suffering from the all too common disease of overfamiliarity: Everyone thinks they know what is meant by it, until asked for a definition, and that is where the confusion begins. On the other hand: The academic world has always been hesitant to venture into the subjective realm of metaphors. To try and work out a definition of a word that brings with it very little data that can be analysed, verified and tested, and that might be defined in another way by the next person, is simply not worth the effort. Who knows what was going on in the minds of the Pharisees? Moreover, most scholars would agree that the present system of classification for psychiatric illness provides a sufficient paradigm to analyse and diagnose every conceivable type of neurosis and disorder, and that would include the particular ones that constitute the Pharisaic personality. To try and create yet another subcategory for no other reason than giving content to a metaphor derived from an ancient Jewish sect – a sect that happened to gain notoriety for little other reason than their coincidental presence on the platform from which Christ spoke to the world – indeed sounds like a silly and futile exercise.

Unless we, like Bonhoeffer, detect an ageless parable in the stories of Christ and the Pharisees. Under the flowing robes with their long, fringed tassels Bonhoeffer sees ‘the man of disunion’, the religious person ‘to whom only the knowledge of good and evil has come to be of importance in his entire life’ (1955:12). He sees a timeless phenomenon, a people who are, in spite of their orthodoxy and piety, spiritually diseased and deaf to the call of Christ. As such, he sees in the gospels not merely an historical account but a present danger, and one that threatens the fabric of our faith to the very degree that it did those of our forefathers.

If this is the case, which I am convinced it is, then we dare not ignore the Pharisee, and we dare not leave him for the sociologist or religious historian to study. The Pharisee demands theological scrutiny. At the heart of the Pharisee we see a complex belief system coupled with an admirable adherence to orthodoxy and a passionate zeal for the furtherance of God’s cause. But we also see a person who, in spite of this commitment, rejects this very God as he reveals himself in and through Jesus Christ. It is this strange paradox that forces us to pay attention to the Pharisee, for it proves that there is an attraction in religion that has nothing to do with God.

What is this attraction? What is behind the strange enchantment of religion that blinds its devotees to the point of opposing the very God they profess to serve? Furthermore, was this magic restricted to the sect of the Pharisees, or do we also find it in the religions of the world, including Christianity? Is it present in our churches, and are we perhaps so oblivious to its existence that we not only ignore it, but actually employ it to draw the crowds to our meetings?

If we are serious about our faith we dare not ignore these questions. They deal with the heart of Christianity. The Pharisee stands opposed to God, and his religion antithetical to the faith proclaimed by Christ and handed down by the apostles. A Christianity that accommodates the Pharisee has ceased to be a true Christianity.

It is for these reasons that I have been moved to attempt a study of a deadly spiritual disease that I have found precious little mention of in both theological and psychological literature. I call it a deadly spiritual disease, for I see it present in the greatest of Christ’s enemies, and in Christ himself I see greater intolerance for this disease than for any other. His compassion for adulterers and drunkards, for thieves and murderers, for any and all from every walk of life, was and is unparalleled. Yet, when we read of his encounters with the ancient Jewish sect of religious separatists called the Pharisees, we see a different side of Christ. We see Christ the Judge taking the place of Christ the Saviour.

The Pharisee: A Living, Breathing Metaphor

It should be mentioned that, in studying the phenomenon of modern day Pharisaism, the ‘subjective’ nature of metaphors need not be a problem: Can anyone deny that the adulterous woman of John 8, the cheating Zacchaeus of Luke 19 and the sentenced robber of Luke 23 have spoken for centuries to thousands of adulterous women, cheats and inmates on death row? In fact, all sinners can see themselves depicted in these and other stories in the gospels, and we are not doing any injustice to the facts of history by applying them as metaphors to our lives.

The same goes for the metaphor of the Pharisee, which happens to contain a sterner warning than the metaphors of the tax collector or adulterous woman. Resistance to the gospel message is greater in the former, and therefore it may be argued that the problem of the Pharisee demands greater reflection than the problem of the tax collectors and harlots. After all, it was the Pharisee who wanted to see Christ on the cross, and not for the purpose of obtaining redemption from sin.

Who is the Pharisee? From a purely historical perspective much can be said in reply, but then this is exactly what Bonhoeffer warns us against. The Pharisee is more than a religious order referred to by the gospel writers, and as such I have decided not to involve myself with the historical details of the ancient sect of the Pharisees – details that are irrelevant for the purposes of these articles. If the Pharisees present to us a metaphor, a timeless phenomenon, then they need to be assessed theologically, and only afterwards can the light of other disciplines, such as the psychology of religion, be shed on that which theology and the Bible have to offer.

With this conviction I went to the New Testament to see if I could find what neither church history nor psychology offered, and I found infinitely more than I could ever have anticipated or hoped for. In the gospels I found the Pharisee introduced as the religious person who loves the law, but hates the lawgiver. I found, in the apostle Paul, the psyche of the Pharisee revealed as no biography of Hillel, Pollion or Samaias could ever have done. I detected, in various discourses dealing with the conversion of the religious person, such as Matt. 5, Matt. 19, Rom. 7 and Phil. 3, clear teaching on both the origin and cure for Pharisaism. In short, I encountered the phenomenon of religious interest, even obsession, accompanied by little or no interest in the One who invented religion, and so a powerful metaphor for a problem that every minister and Christian worker has to face at some stage of his or her ministry.

With this in hand I returned to the psychology of religion, and this time around it did not take me long to find Pharisaism there, albeit under other names. I present my findings in these articles, and I wish to emphasise that this research represents a mere scratch on the surface of the subject in question. The aim of this work is no more than to present a mere introduction to a field that requires much further research.

Outline

My findings are presented in six chapters. Chapter one is the introductory section, while chapter two deals with the law of God, how it relates to our subject, and what we can learn from the conversion of Saul the Pharisee. Chapter three deals with the nature and roots of covetousness, its cure, and the implications thereof for the problem of Pharisaism. Chapter 4 focuses on the Pharisee’s interest in religion, touches on the psychology of Pharisaism, and also deals briefly with the place of the religious environment and the incentives it offers for the Pharisee. Chapter 5 is a study of the effects that an ‘Old Covenant paradigm’ has on Christianity, as the Pharisee rejects the terms and regulations of the New Covenant. Chapter 6 summarises and presents the conclusions drawn from the research.

May the Lord bless and guide you as you join me on this adventure!

How to Raise a Theologian

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Years ago a student who had attended one of my Bible courses on grace told me something that made me want to resign the ministry on the spot. “When my boyfriend and I have sex”, she said, “I can visualise the smiling face of Jesus lovingly looking down on us.” I gulped, and then enquired how she managed to do something like that. “You taught me this”, she responded. “You taught me to accept God’s grace and not be condemned by those things that I have not yet perfected as a Christian.”

I was horrified. Clearly I had created a monster. Or had I? Perhaps she would have done the same, albeit with another excuse, if someone else had preached a different message to her. I had some serious thinking to do.

Since that incident I have discovered that people who “pervert the grace of God” and use their “freedom to indulge the sinful nature” have been around as long as the gospel itself (See Jude 1:4 and Galatians 5:13). Even the apostle Paul has had to defend the accusation that he was teaching people to “go on sinning so that grace may increase.”

But I have also discovered something else: You cannot present grace to someone who is not looking for it. Put differently, only the person who has tried to live up to God’s standards but who has failed dismally can appreciate the grace of God. Presenting grace without first presenting God’s holy law leads to “cheap grace”, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously pointed out.

A Fine Balance

What this means is that the faithful presentation of the gospel is a delicate balancing act. There is a time for speaking about grace and a time for speaking about works. At times a preacher should sound like a liberal, and at times like a conservative. There is a time to say to an adulterous person “I do not condemn you” (John 8:11), and there is a time to take a whip and drive religious people out of their gathering place (John 2:15).

It is sometimes extremely difficult to discern which action is called for. And so we oftentimes get it upside-down, driving the adulterous woman out of the church in anger whilst saying to the religious hypocrites “I do not condemn you.” Even Paul struggled with this issue. To the divisive Corinthian church he wrote: “What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness? (1Corinthians 4:21)

There are ways and means to discern whether a situation calls for discipline or mercy. But that is not what I want to talk about. Rather, I want to approach the issue from the other side, that is, from the side of the person who is on the receiving end of the discipline or the mercy. I believe the question that we should ask is this: How can you train someone to detect grace when they need it and to recognise and submit to authority when they need to do so? A person who can do this will not experience rejection or hurt when corrected and neither will he/she abuse privileges when they are granted. Such people will take the burden of discernment off their mentor and decide for themselves when a situation calls for work and when it allows for rest. They will never turn grace into license or responsibility into legalism.

A Solid Foundation

As so many other things, the foundation for this type of discernment starts in the home. It is here where the child learns to respect authority as well as enjoy freedom. Children who grow up in healthy homes learn to respect their duties whilst knowing that they are loved. Discipline is not seen as rejection and allowances are not abused. Works and grace harmonise in their lives, and when they turn to Christ the harmony reaches its full maturity. The fact that God is both a sovereign King and a loving Father represents no contradiction to them. They understand that they are fully forgiven and fully responsible, and they see no tension between the two. In short: Their theology is balanced and well integrated.

A Simple Strategy

The term “a healthy home” is rather fuzzy, and so I want to propose a simple parenting strategy that I believe to be extremely helpful and practical in this regard.

A child is exposed to a parents love when his/her needs (not greeds) are met. When this happens the child feels cared for, secure and validated. Such needs originate in the child and are communicated by the child to the parent. The parent responds to the communication.

A child is exposed to a parent’s authority in the exact opposite manner, namely when the will of the parent is made known and enforced. This will originates in the parent and is communicated by the parent to the child. The child responds to the communication.

The principle is simple: When it comes to the child’s needs, especially the need for social interaction, amusement and fun, the child should be allowed to decide what he/she wants to do and the parent must play along. God has placed these needs in the child as an integral part of his/her unique identity and the parent should allow the child to make it known. These needs differ from children to children and should not be assumed by the parents. The parents may not impose their idea of fun or recreation (Johnny wants piano lessons but daddy wants him to play rugby). When children’s wishes are respected in this regard they feel accepted and normal, and they see their parents as part of their world. Dad may find himself rolling in the mud with Junior, but he can console himself that it is a small price to pay for a big reward.

When it comes to the parent’s authority, the same rule applies. The parent has the say and the child must yield. God has placed a divine, instinctive wisdom in parents for raising their children, establishing boundaries and enforcing discipline. The children need to acknowledge and respect this. When it comes to disciplinary issues, parents may not give in to children’s demands and think they are showing them love. This is the wrong place for it.

When Roles are Reversed…

A common characteristic of dysfunctional families is the reversal or confusion of the roles defined above. Parents oftentimes try and make up for their own failures by forcing their children to succeed in some or other field, regardless of the children’s own dreams or desires. Such children become mere extensions of the parent’s ego and feel robbed of their identity. Parents then wonder why their children rebel and join a pseudo-family (such as the drug culture) where they can just be themselves and be accepted for it. (In this regard I recommend People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck).

Likewise, children who grow up indulged and without discipline, or who must “parent” a sick/addicted father or mother from an early age, oftentimes end up spending their lives going from one therapist to the other.

In Closing…

To summarise: Be a friend to your children on their terms and be a parent on your terms. The one compliments the other. Children find it much easier to submit to the discipline of a parent who sees and accepts them for who they are. And they end up with a remarkable ability to integrate God’s authority with God’s love!

(This article appeared in the Auksano magazine)

Detecting Evil

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The problem of evil has confounded philosophers since time immemorial. One would think that our age’s rationalistic bent and tendency to steer clear of moral judgments have finally led us to abandon this concept, shelving it together with everything else that our enlightened Western minds find hard to believe in, such as the virgin birth, the miracles of Christ, the resurrection and the tooth fairy.

Yet, unlike the above, the problem of evil stubbornly refuses to be denied. Kosovo, Cambodia and Nazi Germany serve as grim reminders, to name but a few.

One person who found that he could no longer deny the facts is noted psychiatrist and personality expert Dr. Michael H. Stone from Columbia University. Some time ago a New York Times article reported that Stone is now urging psychiatrists and forensic specialists “not to avoid thinking of the term evil when appraising certain offenders.” It is time, Stone said, to give their behaviour the “proper appellation.” According to the article Stone drew his conclusions after years of research and having examined hundreds of killers.

The same article quotes another scholar and professor of psychiatry, Dr. Robert Simon from Georgetown Medical School, as saying: “Evil is endemic, it’s constant, it is a potential in all of us. Just about everyone has committed evil acts.” Simon recently published his own findings in a book with the telling title “Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream.”

When we can no longer deny the reality of evil in our world, perhaps we shall find reason to reconsider the reality of the cross. The cross is God’s response to the problem of human evil and sin, and no less a myth or invention. When we come to terms with the problem, it should only follow naturally that we come to terms with the solution.

The Power of Grace

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Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? May it never be! Romans 6:1

The man who wrote most of the New Testament had to defend the notion that his radical message of grace could give people an excuse for sinning. That says something about just how extreme Paul sounded to some of his hearers. It also tells you what you can expect if you preach grace as shamelessly as Paul did.

Grace does not lead people into sin, Paul says. On the contrary, it leads them out. But it has to be true grace, not the cheap counterfeit that masquerades as God’s forgiveness. False grace is what Satan offered Eve when he told her that she can sin, and that everything will be all right. It’s what Esau relied on when he sold his birthright and thought he could get it back. It’s what Saul had in mind when he disobeyed God and expected to be excused because of his intention to sacrifice later. False grace is a deception, a sanctified justification, a fake alibi.

True grace does not provide an excuse for sinning, but a motive for never sinning again. Read the rest of Romans 6 and see Paul’s reasoning: Christ did not only die for us. We died with him. No one can receive God’s grace without becoming a new creation in the process. God’s grace does not only pardon sin. It transforms the sinner. People who have encountered it are changed people. God’s will is no longer something they have to do. Rather, it is something they want to do.

There is only one legitimate motivation for obeying God, and it is not fear or legalism. It is the very motivation that characterises the new creation in Christ, and that refutes the notion that grace may lead us into sin. In the words of none other than Jesus Christ himself: “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.”

Christ the End of the Law

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My conversion had an interesting effect on me. It left me with a knot on my stomach. You know that feeling you get when you hear your puppy has been run over? Well, that’s more or less what it felt like. For four, long torturous years.

I had to do something, and so I sought help from fellow Christians. There were, of course, quite a few who were more than willing to comply. At the first Bible college I attended, two of the lecturers decided I needed deliverance from the knot, and so they invited me to one of their sessions after hours. I happily obliged, and before long found myself on a chair in a deserted classroom, with a bucket strategically placed in front of me. The bucket was for vomiting, you see, which happened to be the way many deliverance sessions were going in the early eighties. I now suspect Linda Blair had more to do with it than the gospels, but back then I knew nothing. And so I really tried, but I could only produce a few feeble burps. These initially encouraged my would-be deliverers, one of whom was assisting with rhythmic back-pats. But in the end we all just gave up. The knot did not end up in the bucket. Instead, it responded by giving itself an extra tight twist, leaving me with the distinct impression that it knew exactly what I was trying to do.

The knot made me backslide quite regularly. It had a rather nasty habit of untying itself whenever I gave myself up to sin. But whenever I repented, which became a dramatic serial habit of mine, the knot would reappear out of the blue. And it would stay, until I gave up again and fell headlong into sin. Of course this made absolutely no sense to me. Why on earth was I tortured whenever I wanted to please the Lord? And why was it such a blessed relief to simply give in and let my depraved nature take over? I simply could not figure it out.

And then there was the excommunication. During one of these seasons of knot-free depravity I did something that outraged a high official of the denomination that I belonged to. In an effort to conceal the evidence of a night of sin, committed on the property of the denomination’s headquarters (where I was living at the time), I gave an unsober friend of mine directions to a fence from where he could dump the whole foul lot onto the pavement of a Johannesburg back street. To this day I don’t know how he did it (or didn’t do it), but when he finally stumbled onto a fence and fulfilled his mission, it was not the fence I had in mind. The next morning the General Secretary of the denomination awoke to find the sordid sight of the previous night’s debauchery amongst his roses. And so I was told to pack my bags. Even the gentle Dutch pastor who had baptised me a few months earlier expressed his disappointment. I left the sacred grounds and moved in with the family of a girl that I had met at the games arcade down the street. The knot was gone. At least for a while.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not proud of the above, nor am I boasting about sin or making light of it. I am simply relating the tyrannous hold that the knot had on me. It would not allow itself to be exorcised. Or church-disciplined. Or counseled (inner healing through the healing of memories, but I’ll spare you.) Prayer did not help. Neither did fasting. Listening to many sermons proved futile. The more I tried to get rid of it through some or other spiritual effort, the more it hit back with a vengeance. I even had Reinhardt Bonnke lay hands on me, and I fell backwards, believing it was the power of the Holy Spirit. But as I lay there, the only real thing was the knot.

When I joined the Army, as all young South Africans had to do at the time, the knot made me preach the Word in the week and smoke marijuana over the weekend. It finally caused me to go on AWOL, get busted, end up in military prison, repent behind bars (I still have the confessional letter I wrote) and get horribly drunk soon afterwards.

It was during the autumn of 1984 that it happened. Miraculously. I was reading the book Turn Your Back on the Problem, by Bible teacher Malcolm Smith, when the lights went on and revelation flooded my soul. My mind was blown, and so it has remained for 27 years.

What was the revelation? Simply this: I have been trying so hard to live the Christian life all these years. I have been trying. I…

That was the problem: I. I had tried to live the life of God, a life that he alone could live. The second I realized this the knot gave me a beautiful smile, bowed gracefully and disappeared, never to return.

I was my own greatest enemy. I tried to do what God alone could do. Of course! I was never supposed to do it. That’s why Jesus Christ came to earth. To do what I could never do! Christ gave us his life because we needed it, because our lives were not, could not, work themselves out. In a flash I saw it: Christianity was the great exchange. I had to lay down my life and take up his. Christianity was not effort, effort, effort. It was resting in the completed works of God. It was allowing him to live his life in me. It was accepting his grace, and not trying to earn it. Over and over I said: “We are first forgiven, then transformed. Not first transformed, then forgiven!” Within a matter of weeks I was freed from the addictions and instability that had plagued me for so long. Naturally, for I allowed Christ to start living his life in and through me.

In the unbelievable sovereignty, mercy and providence of God, the next book that I picked up and started reading was Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Life. Here I found the theological explanation of the revelation that I had discovered in Smith’s book. I was a changed man, and I decided there and then to commit my life to spreading this simple message of the cross, a message that not a single one of the pastors, lecturers, counselors, deliverers, prophets and traveling evangelists gave me. “How can this be?” I thought. How come none of them told me?

This is what I have been doing since then, but that’s another story. The reason behind the testimony above is that I learned about the ministry of a fellow South African, Andre van der Merwe, during the past week. His website warmed my heart and stirred up these memories. You can visit it at www.NewCovenantGrace.com.

With his kind permission I post one of his articles here, which captures exactly what I have been trying to say about living under grace rather than under the law.

Did Jesus End The Law or Not?

Scripture: Matt 5:17-18. Let’s settle this issue!

Many people that still believe they have to live according to the Old Covenant Laws have thrown Matt 5:17-18 at Grace Preachers to try and prove their case. Let us now therefore look at what the Bible really says about living under the law, and if we are still bound to it, because all scripture has to be interpreted by scripture. First off, let’s start with this week’s main scripture:

Matt 5:17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

Peter Ditzel from http://www.wordofhisgrace.org explains these 2 verses as follows: “Jesus is giving us two either/or conditions here: The law cannot pass until heaven and earth pass OR the law cannot pass until all is accomplished. One or the other can do it. Heaven and earth have not yet passed, so we will leave that aside. But what did Jesus mean by ALL being accomplished? He was referring to what He had just said in the previous sentence: the fulfilling or completing of the law AND the prophets. Once He had completed the law and the prophets, the law could pass. Why is it that so many people who accept that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies have a hard time understanding that in the same way, He fulfilled the Old Testament laws — all of them?”

When you are under a contractual obligation to someone, and you fulfill all the requirements of the contract, the contract is finished & over. But if you simply destroy the contractual agreement before you have fulfilled its requirements, you are not released from its obligations, which is why Jesus said He did not come to destroy the Law. But the moment you do fulfill it you are set free from it! In exactly the same way Jesus did not come to destroy the law, but He fulfilled it, see verse 17 above again. Jesus was in all ways 100% obedient to the law for his entire life (isn’t that amazing???), thereby fulfilling its requirements. Let’s look at more verses (and there are many more than the ones below) that prove the law has passed.

Rom 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Because all the righteous requirements of the law have been fulfilled in Jesus, and since we are given the righteousness of Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit as a free gift when we put our faith in Jesus, it means that in Christ we have fulfilled the requirements of the law as well, therefore the law has ended for us as well. Rom 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Matt 11:13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. The entire law and the old testament prophets spoke of the coming of the Messiah who would forgive the sins of the whole world. The law was our tutor (schoolmaster), teaching us “right living” until we should put our faith in Jesus and begin to live by faith. Now that we put our faith in Jesus, we don’t need the tutor of the law anymore. Gal 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

Luk 16:16 “The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.” This verse implies that if you still preach law-based living, you are NOT preaching the Kingdom, because you are preaching the things that ended with John the Baptist over 2000 years ago – read the verse again. How much clearer can it get??

Gal 3:16 Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ. And also Gal 3:19 What then is the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions, UNTIL THE SEED SHOULD COME to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. This verse says that the law was given because of transgressions UNTIL THE SEED should come (and if you will read the story of Israel in Exodus you will see it was specifically the sin of self righteousness). Then when the SEED (Christ) came, the law was fulfilled and we are not under it anymore.

Rom 3:21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets. This verse says that if there were such a thing as the “court of heaven”, that the law & prophets would have stood up as witnesses, pointed their fingers to us who put our faith in Jesus and said: “This person is righteous!”

We are now not under the law anymore, but instead we live by faith. And here is a shocker, something that will no doubt shut the mouths of those who still try to be justified by obeying the law. Lets look at 2 verses first: Gal 3:12 And the law is not of faith… and also Rom 14:23b … for whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Can you see what it says when you combine these 2 verses? Can you see it??? Since the law is not of faith, and since anything that is not of faith is sin, then it means that those who try to be justified by their own good works and try to live up to some moral code (the law) are actually living in sin!!

Lastly, look at what Jesus said just after this week’s 2 key verses: Matt 5:20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. The Scribes & Pharisees prided themselves in how well they kept the laws of Moses, it’s what they did for a living! These laws included all the rituals & daily sacrifices, not just the 10 commandments. In fact most people who try to live up to the Law of Moses today would pale in comparison against your average Pharisee. No, the righteousness that Jesus was talking about was not about us trying to live more obedient or more holy, He was talking about a righteousness that comes from God, given to every believer as a free gift at the point of salvation when we put our faith in Jesus, the exact same moment where Jesus is given our sin & transgressions and we are given His perfect righteousness: 2 Cor 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Yours in Grace
Andre van der Merwe

Why We Have the Poor

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“You will always have the poor among you…” John 12:8

Why?

The answer may be simpler than what we think. God has a strange habit of coming to us in disguise, and He does it for a very specific reason. Only those who have “eyes to see” and “ears to hear” can comprehend Him. They are the ones who do not see an ordinary carpenter from a middle-class home, but the King of Kings and Lord of Lords posing as one. They do not see a field, but a hidden treasure. They do not hear senseless parables, but coded messages from another world. They do not see a human being as a “pack of neurons” or a “vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules” (as Francis Crick, codiscoverer of the structure of DNA, describes us), but as a spirit being created in the image and likeness of God. They do not judge by “mere appearances” (as Christ accused the Pharisees of doing in John 7:24), but by that which lies beyond appearance. In short, they possess the mystery of faith: The ability to see the unseen, and to think and live accordingly.

I suspect that is why we have the poor. They are in our midst as a modern parable, and the way we treat them is an indication of our ability to discern spiritual reality, to see beyond the veil. Matthew’s gospel tells us that on the Day of Judgment the poor man will take off his disguise, reveal himself as Jesus, and then judge us based on how we treated him on earth. Of course this does not mean that we will be saved by our humanitarian efforts, but that the true saving grace of God manifests itself in the grace we show others. Those who have received freely will give freely.

And so the way we treat the poor is an indication of our love for God, and the degree to which we have come to terms with his love for us. How badly we need such an indication, not on the day of judgment, but well ahead of time!

The Mark of a Good Book

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My dad was a very wise man who taught me a number of unforgettable lessons. One that stands out is “If you want people to believe a lie, print it!”

I have seen the truth of these words confirmed again and again. Books have an air of authority around them, which explains why people are oftentimes disappointed when meeting an author.

In reality there is no difference between the authority of the printed and spoken word, no matter how popular the former may be. As Robert Boston has wisely pointed out: “How a book sells is not an indication of its merit. The … public has a seemingly bottomless appetite for nonsense, as evidenced by the countless tomes about astrology, aliens from outer space, quack diets, and UFOs that have regularly graced best-seller lists over the years. Some books that sold millions have later been exposed as hoaxes. A slot on the best-seller list tells you exactly one thing about a book: that a lot of people bought it.”

The same goes for Christian books. In fact, a Christian book’s fame may oftentimes be an indication of its shallowness (The road leading to perdition is broad, remember?). A Christian bestseller list is an indication of a book’s popularity, never of its theological soundness.

The single most important criteria for judging a Christian book is never its popularity, relevance, practical usefulness or readability. Rather, it is the degree to which the centrality of Jesus Christ dominates the book.

That may sound a bit abstract, so let me assist by listing a group of Christian authors whose books fall into this category (There are many more): Andrew Murray, Watchman Nee, A.W. Tozer, Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, Major Ian Thomas, T. Austin Sparks, Jessie Penn Lewis, Oswald Chambers.

Start reading these authors and you will know exactly what I mean.

The Streets of Tripoli

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Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world shall be cast out. John 12:31

One of the central themes of the Bible (many say it is the central theme) is the coming of God’s kingdom. Christians oftentimes appreciate the idea but fail to identify themselves fully with it. The reason is not hard to find: In the past few centuries monarchies worldwide have been replaced by republics. Hereditary rule is a foreign concept in democracies, and so the ancient idea of serving under a king from a royal bloodline has mostly become an alien one. Hence the widely held view that the British Monarchy is outdated and should be abolished.

But this does not mean that the message of the Bible should become diluted in our understanding. It simply means that we should grasp it at the level where we currently make sense of political liberation and rule.

The footage on our television screens this past week, of the celebrations in the streets of Tripoli, provides us with just such a glimpse. It represents the effect of very good news, namely that an evil and corrupt ruler has fallen and that a legitimate government is about to be set up. And so the people are rejoicing as a result of their liberation. It is a parable of the gospel, of the coming of a kingdom, which is why the joy is so infectious.

There is a danger, however. The scenes of Tripoli are not unlike those that greeted Jesus Christ as he entered Jerusalem riding a donkey. The Hebrew cry “Hosanna” is not a synonym for “Hallelujah”, as many believe, but means “please save” or “save now”, implying a fervent plea for national liberation from Roman domination. This was the expectation, and when Christ failed to provide it he was rejected as the Messiah. Within days the hosannas were replaced with another cry: “Crucify him!”

Jesus knew better. The evil dictator was not Caeser, but Satan – the “prince of this world.” And Christ’s liberation was not national, but universal.The streets of Jerusalem and Tripoli provides us with a picture, but that is all it is. A shadow, a type, signifying that which is to come.

But there’s another parable in there, one that that we dare not miss. People are celebrating victory because the evil regime is something of the past. In the words of the Bible, the house is being plundered because the strong man has been bound. We saw the plundering of Gadhafi’s mansions on CNN. The once mighty ruler has been disarmed and has now become a public spectacle, to use another line from the New Testament. Yet, in spite of all this, the shooting continues and good people are still dying. Is there a contradiction in there? Not at all. In the words of Revelation 12, the dragon has lost the war and has been cast out of heaven, yet he has a season on the run before his final destruction. This is his last opportunity to inflict as much damage as possible.

Examples of this interim phase between victory and final redemption abound. On April 24, 1945, Soviet armies surrounded Berlin. It was the beginning of the end of World War II. In the ensuing week German resistance collapsed and on the afternoon of 30 April the desperate Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. The war in Europe, for all practical purposes, was over.

However, in early May people were still being tortured and killed in many of the concentration camps. Some camps, like Auschwitz, had been liberated. Others, like Stutthof, were not. Knowing that their time was short, frantic Nazis organised mass exterminations of prisoners before becoming prisoners themselves. The war was over, but for tens of thousands of men, women and children the maltreatment continued exactly as it did before.

The last days of the concentration camps provide Christians with a powerful metaphor for understanding their pain and suffering in this world: Victory and final redemption are oftentimes separated by a gap, with victory becoming a theoretical reality before it becomes a practical one, a belief before it becomes an experience. In the concentration camps victory was no more than a rumour, and the only benefit thereof was the light of faith and hope that was ignited by believing it.

This is the way the Bible authors spoke of salvation. They realized that Christ had conquered the enemy and that his Kingdom had come, yet they knew that the full benefits of the victory would only be experienced at his visible return.

This is the current state of Libya, and so we are reminded that it is quite possible for a kingdom to have arrived without having been set up. This is also the current state of the church. We have arrived, yet we haven’t. No contradiction there.

To misunderstand this is to expose yourself to a sniper’s bullet. The various versions of triumphalism, currently doing the rounds in many churches, do exactly that. If you believe you should be perfectly healed, holy, prosperous and so on, you make yourself extremely vulnerable to a deep disillusionment that has absolutely nothing to do with God’s inability to deliver on his promises and everything with your misunderstanding of the lesson above.

Let us learn from the streets of Tripoli.

(This is an expanded version of two columns that have previously appeared in Bloemnews)

Steve Jobs And Eternity

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The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. Luke 16:22-23

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs is estimated to be worth about 6 billion US dollars. This makes him one of the richest people in the world. Jobs is the co-founder of both Apple and Pixar (the studio who brought us the Toy Story movies) and, as a result of the latter, The Walt Disney’s Company’s largest single shareholder. He has (quite understandably) been named the CEO of the decade by Fortune Magazine.

A truly successful man by all measures. And enviable. In a 2009 survey he was selected the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers. Everybody wants to be like Steve, it seems.

Until now. Jobs announced this week he is resigning as CEO from his company, and the reasons are well known. He has been battling with pancreatic cancer for some time. The announcement caused Apple stocks to plummet and many to wonder if his successor will be able to fill his shoes.

In the face of death we have a tendency to reevaluate things. I suspect Steve would be happy to rid himself of all his possessions (and fame) if he could be given immortality in return. The point is: If he fails to find it, then in the bigger scheme of things, the one who does find it will be a much greater success than he, even if such a one has lived his or her earthly life as a beggar in the slums of Calcutta.

That is exactly the point of Christ’s well known story from which the above verses come. And it raises a question: How do you define success?

(This is an update of a column that appeared in Bloemnews earlier this year when Steve Jobs took indefinite medical leave)