30 January 2024
I refer you to this week's Radix Fidem community Bible study in Galatians 3.
Radix Fidem says that we emphasize the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. That continuity most certainly includes the limitations of how much the Old Testament applies to us Gentiles in Christ. It is the Old Testament itself that testifies to its own closure in the Messiah. Were it not for the testimony of the Old Testament, Paul would not have had much to say about how the Law of Moses was like a guardian taking custody of the legal heirs of Abraham.
Those heirs had to meet certain requirements to obtain their inheritance: faith in the Messiah. There is a sense in which Jesus became everything Israel was meant to be. Israel should have been Abraham's heir, but sold the inheritance for a bowl of pottage (False Messianic Expectations). God Himself had told Abraham that his heir would bring all the Gentiles of the world to faith in the Him, as well. The Nation of Israel was displaced as the designated firstborn heir, the elder brother, and Christ fulfilled that role. The Gentiles were all the other children. Because Jews as a whole rejected their role and the covenant path to faith, they must now all enter the same way as Gentiles. Their covenant identity died on the Cross.
Moses' Law was the custody controls for that time of minority. It gave definition to faith in the sense of demonstrating what faith demands of us as humans. We look back at Moses for a contextual explanation. It builds into our fleshly minds a frame of reference for grasping the demands of faith. The Law is not faith; it cannot awaken the Holy Spirit in humans. All it does is condemn the flesh. It cannot make you part of the Elect; it cannot awaken faith that God hasn't given.
You do understand Paul's insistence that saving faith is itself a direct grant of grace from God, yes? It's in Ephesians 2:8-9, but is implied in many other passages.
In essence, the Law creates a demand for faith. It makes us aware that we need redemption, because, whether it were ever possible to obey the Law wholly, no one but Christ ever managed it. It's never been done otherwise. Whenever we read how this or that Old Testament saint was righteous in God's sight, it was on the same terms as Abraham cited in this chapter in Galatians -- only by faith. The saints managed to perceive the treasure of Abraham's promises.
Without the Law of Moses, we would not have the record of Abraham's covenant. We would not have a clear grasp of what faith would demand of us. We would not need the Messiah to come and clarify and rectify all things before ushering us into the adult world of faith.
Collate the meaning of 2 Timothy 2:15, 3:16, and Hebrews 4:12. Those refer to the Old Testament as the "Bible" for the early Christians, at least as a concrete manifestation of God's Word. It was all they had at the time, along with the as-yet oral body of teaching from Jesus. But the picture Paul paints in Galatians 3 makes it utterly silly to want to go back to the Law of Moses. The Gentiles in particular were never meant to pass through that custody order, only Israel. And that custody ended at the Cross, so it's not a valid option for anyone ever again.
The issue is that faith demands a frame of reference, and this is what we most need to learn from the Hebrew Scriptures. We don't know what faith means without that. That Jews had already abandoned it by the time of Jesus makes it all the more urgent that we do our best to recover it. Expect to see on this blog discussions of any modern books that give us a leg up on that mission.
For a long time, I honestly thought I was alone in pursuing the Hebrew frame of mind. I found no books dedicated to the task for a long time. I've seen this trend only recently where authors give us a solid academic basis for it. Every book I've stumbled upon so far (like the Unseen Realm and related books from Heiser) has only confirmed what I had worked out from bits and pieces over the decades. It's feeling less and less like a lonely burden. Thanks be to God!
Comments
Jay DiNitto
And thank God we have you to help bring a lot of this stuff to our attention.
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