Law and Gospel Vol. 1 - Jubilee Fall 2012

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Vol. 1

THE ENDURING RELEVANCE OF BIBLICAL LAW Rev. Joe Boot

A MEDIUM BETWIXT TWO EXTREMES Dr. Michael Haykin

WHEN CAN CHRISTIANS SUE? Ruth Ross

CHURCH AND CULTURE Jeffery Ventrella, ESQ

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General Editor

JOSEPH BOOT Contributing Editor

RANDALL S. CURRIE EICC Founder

JOSEPH BOOT

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Editorial:

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The Enduring Relevance of Biblical Law:

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Ryan Eras

Rev. Joe Boot

“A Medium betwixt two Extremes:” Benjamin Keach’s via media in the Neonomian controversy of the 1690s: Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin

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Church and Culture: Isolation, Accommodation, or Transformation?:

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When Can Christians Sue?

Jeffery J. Ventrella, ESQ

Ruth Ross

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Resource Corner

Jubilee is provided without cost to all those who request it.

Jubilee is the tri-annual publication of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity (EICC), a registered charitable Christian organization. The opinions expressed in Jubilee do not necessarily reflect the views of the EICC. Jubilee provides a forum for views in accord with a relevant, active, historic Christianity, though those views may on occasion differ somewhat from the EICC’s and from each other. The EICC depends on the contribution of its readers, and all gifts over $10 will be tax receipted. Permission to reprint granted on written request only.

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JUBILEE EDITORIAL: ISSUE 6 PAGE NO.

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RYAN ERAS RYAN ERAS is Operations Manager at the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Ryan holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science at the University of Toronto, where he focused on bibliographic control and the history of censorship. He has served in various educational and support roles, providing bibliographic research and critical editorial assistance for several academic publications.

He lives in Toronto with his wife, Rachel, and their daughter, Isabelle.

I suspect that many readers are familiar with William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. First published in 1954, Golding’s tale describes a group of English schoolboys stranded on a desert island.

Through his child characters, Golding hammers home a grim view of human nature and the fragility of civilization. Early in the novel, one boy exhorts the others that “we’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not savages.”1 In spite of this injunction, the story rapidly descends into anarchy, murder, and nothing less than the loss of humanity.

Lord of the Flies is widely recognized as an allegorical indictment of what Golding saw as the senseless evil of WWII. It is not my intention to baptize Golding’s moral ambiguity and general pessimism over the state of the world. Indirectly, however, a strong theme emerges from this novel of the importance of law. Golding highlights this by imagining a society’s accelerated plunge into chaos, lamenting that “the world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.”2 He indirectly reminds us that law is not only necessary, but good. At its most fundamental level, law is a safeguard against chaos. Golding fails, however, to offer any comment on the foundations of law, and describes only those negative aspects against which it guards, not the social goods which it encourages. Law is a basic element of society; it is inescapably designed to protect and uphold those things which any society values most.

This edition of Jubilee is the first of two volumes on law and gospel; the wealth of content and perspectives on this topic is impossible to contain in a single volume. Moreover, the relationship between law and gospel requires no small amount of explanation. It is commonly and erroneously maintained that these two themes are mutually

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exclusive, that the gospel–the good news–is a message of salvation by grace, and that this grace nullifies the law: “for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are no longer under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). Because of the pervasiveness of this antinomian error, Martyn LloydJones describes this chapter as the portion of Scripture “most frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted.”3 Certainly salvation is by grace, but this grace does not come at the expense of the law. In fact, grace and law work together to bring about salvation. Paul’s letter to Titus makes this plain: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people… to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:11,14). Rather than a de facto rejection of the law revealed to Moses and transcribed in the Older Testament, Romans 6 is a thorough refutation of both the doctrinal and practical assertions of antinomianism. In the same way that culturally there can be no real division between the sacred and secular realms of life, so theologically doctrine is always meant to be applied, to find its expression in our actions. This is clearly exemplified in Romans 6; how we understand the relation of law and grace has immediate implications for the way we live our lives.

The apostle Paul makes it clear that the law is far from useless or obsolete. God’s law is a reflection of his holiness and his character, and it has specific and enduring purposes in the function of God’s economy. In the first place, the law is holy; it convicts and condemns sin in order that sin might become sinful beyond measure (Rom. 7:12-13). As well, we are reminded in Romans 8 that it is the law of the Spirit of life that has set us free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death,

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in order that the righteousness requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. By exposing sin as utterly sinful through his righteous law, God reveals to sinful man that he alone is God and that we can do nothing to excuse ourselves from falling short of his righteous requirements. By sending Jesus Christ to fulfill the law, God makes Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Linebaugh sums up: “God accuses and kills sinners by speaking law; God acquits and resurrects them by speaking gospel.”4 Seen in this light, the light of God’s loving kindness and goodness (Titus 3:4), we will sing with the psalmist, “How I love your law! It is my meditation all the day”(Ps.119:97).

An integral part of our calling as the ecclesia, the called-out people of God, is that God has transferred our allegiance. We have been set free from the law of sin and death to be subject to the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). We are under the power, dominion, and reign of grace; to be under grace is to acknowledge our dependence on Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and our responsibility to live holy lives. William Tyndale concludes his Prologue upon the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans with the following exhortation, acutely summarizing the implications for living under the law of the Spirit of life: remember that Christ made not this atonement that thou shouldest anger God again; neither died he for thy sins, that thou shouldest live still in them; neither cleansed he thee, that thou shouldest return, as a swine, unto thine old puddle again; but that thou shouldest be a new creature, and live a new life after the will of God, and not of the flesh. And be diligent, lest thorow thine own negligence and unthankfulness thou lose this favor and mercy again.5

but as an expression of God’s covenant faithfulness to his people. Dr. Michael Haykin discusses the work of Benjamin Keach, inviting us to consider an historical understanding of the relation between faith and works. Ruth Ross, practicing lawyer and Executive Director of the Christian Legal Fellowship, offers practical advice for how Christians ought to conduct themselves when faced with the prospect of legal action. Legal scholar Jeffery Ventrella offers a firsthand insight into some of the ways that church denominations and ministries have sought to address the questions of law and gospel in the light of Scripture and culture; and he demonstrates convincingly that the answers to these questions are immediately relevant for the way we ought to understand and carry out the role of the church in God’s Kingdom plan.  1

illiam Golding, Lord of the Flies, (New York: PeriW gee, 1954), 53.

2 Golding, Lord of the Flies, 122.

3 Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “An Introduction” Romans, vol. 5. Sermon preached at Westminster Chapel, London.

4 Jono Linebaugh, “The Theological Dictionary: God’s Two Words–Law and Gospel.” Liberate. www.liberatenet.org. September 7, 2012.

5 William Tyndale, “A Prologue upon the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans,” in Prologues to the New Testament, 1526. Retrieved from Faith of God, http://faithofgod.net/TyNT/Prologue.htm#P-Romans.

Each of our contributors to this edition of Jubilee approaches the relationship between law and gospel from different, complementary perspectives. Rev. Joe Boot explains the socio-historical significance of biblical law, demonstrating its abiding relevance not only as an object of study,

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REV. JOE BOOT REV. JOE BOOT is the founder of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and the Senior Pastor at Westminster Chapel at High Park, Toronto.

Before this, he served with Ravi Zacharias for seven years as an apologist in the U.K. and Canada, working for five years as Canadian director of RZIM. A theology graduate of Birmingham Christian College, England, Joe earned his M.A. in Missiology with the University of Manchester. His apologetic works have been published in Europe and in North America and include Searching for Truth, and Why I Still Believe.

His forthcoming book, titled The Mission of God, is scheduled to be published in 2013.

Joe lives in Toronto with his wife Jenny and their three children Naomi, Hannah and Isaac.

THE E NDURING R ELEVANCE O F

Biblical Law

This essay is adapted from Joe Boot’s forthcoming book, The Mission of God, to be published by Joshua Press.

HISTORY, CONTINUITY, AND RELEVANCE In the ninth century A.D. King Alfred the Great began codified English law with the Ten Commandments. In A.D. 1540, King Henry VIII established seven cities of refuge based on the biblical model of Numbers 27:1-11. The Puritan settlers of New England self-consciously planned their commonwealth after the pattern of biblical law, as can be seen from the Order of the General Court of Massachusetts 1636 and the General Lawes of Plymouth Colony 1658.1 English canon law was so substantially drawn from biblical law that, in reference to biblical regulations regarding inheritance and English inheritance law, the nineteenth century jurist, Sir Frederick Pollock said of Numbers 27:1-11 that it was, “the earliest recorded case which is still of authority.”2 When the civil government of Israel was established, God addressed the seventy elders of the people and poured out his Spirit upon them - the first ‘Pentecost’ was a civic event, at the ordination of civil authorities (Num. 11:16-17). A similar ‘Pentecost’ event occurred later at the anointing of Saul, which marked the beginning of a second form of civil government in Israel, a transition from a commonwealth to a monarchy (1 Sam. 10:1-7). The early church continued such rites of coronation or anointing. The form of the rite which highlights the role of God’s law in our history remains with us. The Oath required of Queen Elizabeth II stated: Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law...3

After this Oath, the moderator of the General

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Assembly of the Church of Scotland brought to the queen the Bible, saying: Our gracious Queen: to keep your Majesty ever mindful of the Law and the Gospel of God as the Rule for the whole life and government of Christian Princes, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords.

Here is wisdom; This is the royal Law; These are the lively Oracles of God.4

This anointing rite is a clear reference to the anointing of Solomon. After this, the Archbishop of York presented the queen with the Sword of State, during which presentation she is charged to wield the sword of justice in God’s authority by stopping the growth of iniquity, protecting the church, defending orphans and widows, restoring, punishing and reforming where required, in service of the Lord Jesus Christ. When the Orb with the Cross was then given to Elizabeth II, the archbishop declared, “Receive this Orb, set under the Cross, and remember that the whole world is subject to the Power and Empire of Christ our Redeemer.”5 Though the faith was perhaps absent, the entire service bore testament to the ancient coronation service in Israel, and to the abiding relevance and authority of biblical law to the socio-cultural and political sphere. It declared that the civil order is directly under and accountable to God, being established by his decree as part of his kingdom reign.

Formerly, when the incoming President of the United States took the oath of office it was done, not on a closed Bible, but on a Bible opened to Deuteronomy 28, invoking the blessings and curses of the law for obedience or disobedience.

These oaths were taken with great seriousness because God’s law was seen as a serious matter.

All this reveals the fact that Biblical law has had a continuous history as an object of relevance and study that makes it unique amongst ancient legal systems, giving it “a claim to historical influence

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unmatched by any other legal system of antiquity.”6 This history can be traced all the way back to Moses in the late second millennium B.C.7 However, its relevance is not limited to historical study of Israel and the West. Biblical law has not only shaped the Western world, it remains relevant to solving legal dilemmas today, and “will continue to be a source of inspiration and debate when modern legal empires have long been forgotten.”8 Jonathan Burnside, professor at the School of Law, University of Bristol, and reader in Biblical Law, notes: Biblical law continues to exert a hold over popular culture at a basic level, including the structure of the working week and the idea of a day of rest, the constraints placed upon political authority, the use of everyday language (such as references to a “scapegoat”), the idea of mercy, employee rights, and the special significance historically attached to marriage and the monogamous family unit. The word covenant which is prominent in biblical law, used to be the standard word for a contract in English law and is still used in the law of property today ... biblical law is also remarkable for its revolutionary breadth and depth of vision. It has the imaginative power to disturb the world ... a great deal of modern law is an indirect engagement with biblical law (for example, the abolition of the English laws of blasphemy in 2008), but often it is so implicit that we are not aware of it. We have taken our understanding of biblical law for granted for so long that it has become unfamiliar. This is the immanence of biblical law: it is part of our culture – but it is alien ... biblical law does not function in relation to English law or U.S. law as an external or parallel body of law (cf. Islamic religious law or sharia). This is because, unlike sharia law, biblical law is nascent in the history of English law and so continues to be an influence on many citizens. It is simply unrealistic to suggest that we live in a wholly secular legal system ... nor have politicians been successful in finding a dominant alternative discourse to the ethical language of the Bible.9

The alien yet immanent character of biblical law is not only true for the political and legal

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spheres; it is true in the churches, which are largely responsible for our cultural amnesia. In many church congregations today, the law of God has been pushed to the periphery. Formerly, most Protestant liturgies involved the weekly reciting of the law, and many churches displayed the Ten Commandments in a prominent position, keeping the relevance and validity of God’s law at the forefront of people’s minds and contributing to a god-fearing society. This is implicit in the idea of law, because “law is a form of command whose validity is derived from social facts – chiefly, the fact of sovereign power and the fact of habitual obedience on the part of most of the citizens.”10 Law is thus a value-processing system that is bound up with the character and goals of a society. If the divine goals for the world remain those of the kingdom of God expounded in Scripture, then the Bible gives us God’s value-processing system based on his sovereign authority, and we are called to obedience to it for human flourishing.

The doctrine of the covenant is basic to Scripture.

The Bible is a covenant document, and therefore a legal document––covenant includes law––and the blessings and curses described for keeping or breaking God’s law are indicators of God’s covenant faithfulness.

“the civil order is directly under and accountable to God, being established by his decree as part of his kingdom reign.”

A JOURNEY INTO WISDOM We find the requirement of obedience to ancient law difficult in our day because of the absurd notion that what is new is to be valued more than what is old, as though laws were like cars.

Antiquity is not a disqualification for the truth or relevance of moral precept and law. Just because we have been born in a century of legal revolution against the Bible does not mean that we have made “progress.” Just because things are a certain way in society at present does not mean they should be that way, or that they cannot be otherwise. Repealing laws against blasphemy, sodomy, abortion, types of divorce and the like, may be modern ideas and developments, but this neither makes them right, true, or beneficial to society.

The Christian must always regard Biblical law as far superior to all other systems, since it is from God who does not change. Burnside acknowl-

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8 The Enduring Revelance of Biblical Law

“Biblical law, then, presents itself as a journey into wisdom, in which we are introduced to the essentials of justice and righteousness in a variety of literary forms.”

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edges: We find in biblical rules and judgments a level of insight that has rarely, if ever, been surpassed.

Nor do we find in any other legal system a more positive vision for humanity and the world than that found in the biblical legal collections ... we should not assume that what is, is inevitable – especially when what is, is wrong. Biblical law reminds us that the world can be other than it is – and that the actual is merely the possible.11

In his important study, The Mission of God, Christopher Wright makes some important observations concerning the law of God and its timely relevance. Amongst the most significant is that the Biblical claim for Israel’s social uniqueness was made on a world-stage with many other claimants to admirable systems of law, including the famous law code of Hammurabi in the ancient near East.14 Wright observes concerning Deuteronomy 4:5-9:

This does not mean there can be no new applications of law to new situations; it is not static in the sense of being wooden and unable to be appropriately applied to changing circumstances.

As R. J. Rushdoony points out:

Old Testament law explicitly invites, even welcomes, public inspection and comparison. But the expected result of such comparison is that Israel’s law will be found superior in wisdom and justice. This is a monumental claim….And indeed, the humaneness and justice of Israel’s overall social and legal system have been favourably commented on by many scholars who have done the most meticulous studies of comparative ancient law, and its social relevance can still be profitably mined today. From our missiological perspective, these verses articulate a motivation for obedience to the law that is easily overlooked but highly significant. The point is that if Israel would live as God intended, then the nations would notice ... here we find that at least one aspect of that blessing of the nations would be by providing such a model of social justice that the nations would observe and ask questions.15

The law is given as principles (the Ten Commandments) and as cases (the detailed commandments), and its meaning is to be hammered out in experience and in trial. This does not mean that the law is a developing thing but that man’s awareness of its implications develops as new situations bring fresh light on the possible applications of the law. The Psalmist in Psalm 119 clearly saw the law as a positive force in his growth and in his ability to stand up to the adversities of history.12

Biblical law, then, presents itself as a journey into wisdom, in which we are introduced to the essentials of justice and righteousness in a variety of literary forms. As Burnside explains, “Biblical law [is] an integration of different instructional genres of the Bible which together express a vision of society ultimately answerable to God.”13 This is God’s vision of all societies of men, that they are accountable to God and his law. St Paul declares, “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:19-20).” Here the apostle cites the law as a collection of God’s commandments and wisdom from all over the older Testament; his quotations from the Scriptures are from Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Isaiah. He makes plain that the knowledge of sin comes by the law and that the whole world stands accountable to God in terms of it.

The church’s failure to understand the relevance of this clear Biblical vision to our present social crisis leaves many without critical tools for Kingdom work and service, and leads to moral confusion and arbitrary moral judgments. Biblical law is supremely relevant, for without it moral judgements, indeed justice and injustice, are impossible to define.

AUTHORITY AND NATURE Of course, for any kind of law to exist, there must be a law-giving authority. At the heart of the question of law is the question of Lordship.

Who defines meaning, life and law for people?

Our answer must be: the God of Scripture, the God of the covenant.

All men are accountable to God, and for human society to flourish we must walk in the “old paths” in the “good way” if we would know life and rest (Jer. 6:16). The Torah and wisdom about Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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which St Paul speaks are written into the structure of the physical universe and the reality of all that is (Ps. 19; Prov. 8:22ff).

Despite all this, for many Christians today, either the law is never consulted and thus not understood, or it is dismissed as no longer relevant, or it is viewed as an embarrassment not to be discussed. To preach the law of God in much of the modern church is to be exposed to ridicule and charges of Pharisaism, legalism, dominionism, and even heresy. This is rooted in the loss of the centrepiece of old evangelical theology: the relationship between law and gospel; rightly discerning this relationship used to be regarded as the key to evangelical divinity. John Warwick Montgomery correctly identifies the problem: Confusion of law and gospel is possible in two directions. Law may be invested with the quality of gospel, thereby deceiving men into thinking that they can save themselves through personal or societal efforts. But gospel may also try to replace law, producing what Bonhoeffer has classically phrased “cheap grace.” In the one case law swallows up gospel, and the result is legalism; in the other, gospel absorbs law, yielding antinomianism. The gravity of dispensing with law for any reason – even on alleged ground that grace renders it no longer necessary – is suggested by the New Testament use of the Greek word anomos (“lawless one”) for the Antichrist. In contemporary theology the antinomian error is rife.16

This antinomian error has cost the church dearly in our day, as lawless and biblically illiterate Christians are left floundering without a guide or anchor in the confusion of contemporary Western culture. Without a concept of Christian law, and the clear teaching of God’s law in churches, young people find themselves adopting ethical theories and legal frameworks that are not only inferior to, but hostile toward biblical law. Moral progressivism in education leads many professing Christians to the conclusion that God needs to be updated, that what was morally true in the first, fifth, or seventeenth centuries can’t possibly be true today, and that therefore God’s word needs to be subject to radical revisionism or its authority essentially denied. In the West, this loss of Christian consensus over the authority of God’s law came in the wake of Darwinism and naturalEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

istic evolution–how could an ethical ‘ought’ arise from a self-generating cosmic and biological ‘is?’

Without one transcendent law, all that remains are the crumbs of judicial pluralism.

THE ORIGIN OF LAW In Christian thought, the main rival to biblical law has been variations of natural law theory.

Natural law is not an identifiable body of laws, but an abstraction. The concept was first developed by the Stoic philosophers of the late classical Greek period. After the death of Alexander the Great in 322 B.C., his empire fragmented into four realms and Greek culture became a state-worshiping culture. Maintaining classical culture required a coherent and cohesive political order – the Stoics provided the glue, namely the doctrine of natural law:

“To preach the law of God in much of the modern church is to be exposed to ridicule and charges of Pharisaism, legalism, dominionism, and even heresy.”

They argued that there is a universal law structure, and that all rational men can apprehend it. This universal law was said to be the basis of universal humanity, and therefore the basis of universal culture. The only trouble was (and is), they could provide no evidence that such a universal legal order exists, or that rational minds will universally agree about what this legal order is. In fact, self-proclaimed rational men have argued ever since about reason, “right” reason, and natural law “properly understood.”17

For the Stoic, reason itself was inherent in the universe as an impersonal principle (god) and so the rational state became the locus of divinity.

Epictetus, a student of Seneca, wrote that “When a man has learnt to understand the government of the universe and has realized that there is nothing so great or sovereign or all-inclusive as this frame of things wherein man and God are united ... why should he not call himself a citizen of the universe and a son of God.18 This error should be familiar as the illusory claim of autonomy and neutrality in knowledge, which lies at the root of paganism and the modern revival of monism. If creator and creature are not absolutely distinct in terms of the transcendent triune God of scripture, reality collapses into a continuity of being – the essential ‘sameness’ of all things; this is the essence of paganism. In such a universe human beings will deify creation, their reason, and themselves as an aspect of this self-generatFALL 2012

10 The Enduring Revelance of Biblical Law

“Without a Christian vision of God and the human person, political life is doomed to be a mere exercise of power, indifference and selfishness”

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ing, self-explanatory order, and the human mind will furnish reality with truth and law and call that an expression of nature. This Stoic paganism which St Paul confronted on Mars Hill in Acts 17 has experienced a huge revival in the twentieth century in the modified form of post-secularism, having been influenced by Romanticism and its ‘nature worship.’ This type of doctrine is at the root of the United Nations’ dream of a universal humanity under a one-world-order, as well as contemporary human rights theory based on the monistic obliteration of all distinctions (from creator/creation to gender and sexuality distinctions). Such movements are an expression of resurgent paganism. The ideas of international law and this formulation of human rights are contemporary expressions of stoicism and Romanticism.

These laws and rights that express the oneness of all things are allegedly inherent in nature or ‘humanity,’ and thus should be recognised by all nations as ‘citizens of the universe’ and ‘sons of god’ (gods). This vision can only be understood and embraced when we transcend the distinctions of Christian theism and realise the synthesis of religion and ethics in a new oneness.

In the ancient world, the Roman Empire fell as consensus eroded over classical religion and philosophy, and the door was opened for a biblical and Hebraic understanding of the creatorcreature distinction, revealed law, and freedom from the tyranny of ‘oneness’ to take root. This worldview spread freedom under God wherever it went. As a result, for Christians to try to save modern civilisation by an appeal to natural law (disconnected from the God of Scripture and his revealed law) is to appeal to classical philosophy; this is tantamount to a death wish. St Paul certainly does teach that all human beings know the work of God’s law even though they may not be consistently conscious of all its precepts–they recognise by created instinct the work of God’s law on their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to this reality (Rom. 2:14-15). However, though people know the work of God’s law, in rebellion they don’t want to obey it. Just as they see God’s attributes and power in creation but refuse to honour God and worship the creation instead, so they know God’s requirement and sanctions in their conscience but rebel against it. As a con-

sequence, God hands them over to a depraved mind (Rom. 1:24) and they then live in terms of it (Rom. 1:29-32). Thus the work of God’s law known by common grace (not by natural law) serves only to condemn people in their sin and rebellion and does not provide an alternate law structure to Biblical law (Rom. 2).

As opposed to the doctrines of classical philosophy, Scripture teaches that the human problem is essentially ethical, not a lack of information.

Sinful humanity, in the face of our better knowledge, chooses evil–the Fall radically affected human reasoning, not just a person’s soul and body.

As such, reason, with its self-generated moral and political order, cannot save. Natural law has its appeal because it pretends to neutrality and so is perceived by many Christians as a ‘non-religious’ paradigm and therefore a useful tool for engagement with the ‘secular’ sphere. But the reality is, “Natural law theory serves temporarily as a believable political philosophy only when there is a common religious agreement beforehand. Shatter that religious agreement, and natural law theory becomes useless.”19 This is simply because as soon as religious consensus is lost, people’s vision of what ‘natural law’ is becomes totally disparate or is abandoned altogether.

Without a Christian vision of God and the human person, political life is doomed to be a mere exercise of power, indifference and selfishness – the inevitable result of liberal secularism. “With its words, liberal secularism preaches freedom, tolerance, and democracy, but with its deeds it attacks precisely that Christian religion which prevents freedom from deteriorating into license, tolerance into indifference, democracy into anarchy” (Marcello Pera)  1

J onathan Burnside, God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. xxv-xxvi.

2 Frederick Pollock, quoted in Burnside, God, Justice and Society, p. xxvi.

3 The Music with the Form and Order of the Service to be Performed at the Coronation of Her Most Excellent Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the Abbey Church of Westminster on Tuesday the 2nd Day of June, 1953 (London: Novello and Company, 1953) p. 14

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4

The Music with the Form and Order of the Service, p. 15 The Music with the Form and Order of the Service, p. 67 6 Burnside, God, Justice and Society, p. xxv 7 Burnside, God, Justice and Society, p xxv 8 Burnside, God, Justice and Society, p. xl 9 Burnside, God, Justice and Society, p. xxvi-xxix 10 Burnside, God, Justice and Society, p. xxxvi 11 Burnside, God, Justice and Society, p. xxxviii 12 Rushdoony, Institutes Vol. 1, p. 242 13 Jonathan Burnside, God, Justice and Society, p. xxxii 14 Wright, The Mission of God, p. 379 15 Wright, The Mission of God, p. 380 16 John Warwick Montgomery: Law and Gospel: A Study Integrating Faith and Practice (Edmonton: Christian Legal Fellowship, 1994), p. 9 17 Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), p. 182 18 Epictetus, Discourses, I, ix (trans. P.E. Matheson) cited

by Ray Sutton, That You May Prosper, p. 182 19 Sutton, That You May Prosper, p. 183 5

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“A Medium betwixt two Extremes:” Benjamin Keach’s via media in the Neonomian controversy of the 1690s:

DR. MICHAEL A.G. HAYKIN

DR. MICHAEL A.G. HAYKIN is a fellow of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

He is currently the Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is also the Director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, located on the campus of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the editor of Eusebeia: The Bulletin of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. Dr. Haykin has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto (1974), an M.Rel. from Wycliffe College, the University of Toronto (1977), and a Th.D. in Church History from the University of Toronto and Wycliffe College (1982). He is the author of a number of books, including One heart and one soul: John Sutcliff of Olney, his friends, and his times (Evangelical Press, 1994); Kiffin, Knollys and Keach: Rediscovering Our English Baptist Heritage (Reformation Today Trust, 1996); The Armies of the Lamb: The spirituality of Andrew Fuller (Joshua Press, 2001); and The Pure Fountain of the Word: Andrew Fuller as an Apologist (Paternoster Press, 2004).

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AT THE HEART of the Reformation was one of the most fundamental questions of the Christian faith: how can I be saved from eternal damnation? The answer of all of the leading Reformers was one and the same: only by God’s free and sovereign grace. As J.I. Packer and O. Raymond Johnston have pointed out, it is wrong to suppose that the doctrine of justification by faith alone, that storm-centre of the Reformation, was the crucial question in the minds of such theologians as Martin Luther, Huldreich Zwingli, Martin Bucer, and John Calvin. This doctrine was important to the Reformers because it helped to express and to safeguard their answer to another, more vital question, namely, whether sinners are wholly helpless in their sin, and whether God is to be thought of as saving them by free, unconditional, invincible grace, not only justifying them for Christ’s sake when they come to faith, but also raising them from the death of sin by His quickening Spirit in order to bring them to faith.

For all of these Reformers the crucial question was this: is Christianity “a religion of utter reliance on God for salvation and all things necessary to it, or of self-reliance and self-effort”?1 Loyal to the heritage of the Reformation, the Puritan authors in the seventeenth century were equally insistent on the central importance of recognizing that salvation is by sovereign, free grace alone. They were thus assiduous in their efforts to combat what they saw as the legalism of Roman Catholicism. Yet, recent research has shown that they were also deeply concerned about an error at the opposite end of the spectrum, namely, Antinomianism, the denial of the necessity of a holy life as the fruit of salvation. The divines who drew up the Westminster Confession in the 1640s, for example, were especially exercised to make sure that their enunciation of God’s free sovereign grace was without any hint of Antinomianism.2 They even contemplated the public burning of

the works of an author who had been accused of Antinomianism, one Tobias Crisp (1600–1643).

Fifty years later, in 1689 and 1690, Crisp’s works were reprinted by his son Samuel, and the controversy over Antinomianism was reignited.

The charge against Crispianism was initially led by the prominent Puritan leader Richard Baxter (1615–1691), for whom Antinomian doctrine was an especial bugbear. Baxter was incensed by the reprinting of Crisp’s works and went so far as to denounce Crisp as a Jezebel.3 When Baxter died in 1691, Daniel Williams (c.1643–1716) took his place as the leader of a moderate Calvinism that emphasized that “true holiness, sincere obedience, or good works, and perseverance, are the way to heaven, and so necessary to the salvation of a believer that without them he cannot be saved.”4 Williams’ opponents, on the other hand, were sure that his position was a betrayal of the Reformation doctrine of free grace as the basis of salvation and the important discovery of Luther that justification is by faith alone.5 The controversy raged for the most of the 1690s in London and at the end of it, serious rifts had been created in the ranks of the children of the Puritans that were never really healed. Some of those upholding sovereign grace drifted by degrees into hyperCalvinism, while some of Williams’ party became Arminians, or even worse.

Benjamin Keach—Upholding the Gospel of Sovereign Grace A good way to see something of the issues raised

by this controversy, usually denominated the Neonomian controversy, is to look at writings of one of the opponents of Williams, namely Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), who was a Baptist by conviction and one of the most prolific of the Puritan authors in the late seventeenth century. Michael Mullett has identified Benjamin Keach as the leadEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

A Medium betwixt two Extremes: 13

ing Baptist theologian of his era, similar in importance for his denomination as Baxter was for the English Presbyterians, and John Owen (1616–1683) for the Congregationalists.6 He argued against the Quakers, those seventeenth-century counterparts of modern-day Pentecostals; he wrote allegories, now long forgotten, that in his day rivaled those of John Bunyan (1628–1688) in popularity and sales; he was a pioneer of the congregational singing of hymns in a day when singing was limited to the Psalter; and he published a number of lengthy collections of sermons, including Gospel Mysteries Unveiled (1701), which remains an invaluable, though largely unused, treasure for the study of seventeenth-century Puritan thought.7 According to his son-in-law, the early Baptist historian Thomas Crosby, these sermons were “full of solid divinity.”8 For most of his ministry, Keach pastored a significant Baptist congregation in London that, after his death, would be pastored by such luminaries as John Gill (1697–1771) and C.H. Spurgeon (1834–1892).

Consider Keach’s final major work, Gospel Mysteries Unveiled, published only three years before his death in 1704. This work was originally a series of sermons that exhaustively expounded all of Christ’s parables and similitudes. The discussion of the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:4–7), for instance, ran to 16 sermons and well over 100 pages in the four-volume edition that was issued in the 1810s.9 In the fifteenth sermon on this particular parable, Keach tackles head-on the controversy over regeneration and conversion, law and gospel that was raging in his day.

Keach begins by observing that this parable clearly teaches that “lost sinners cannot go home to God of themselves,” but must be carried to him on the shoulders of Christ. To Keach this doctrinal conclusion was clear first of all from the reference to the lost sheep being placed on the shoulders of the shepherd. When other passages of Scripture talk of the “finger of God” (Luke 11:20) or the “arm of the Lord” (Isaiah 53:1), these anthropomorphisms are to be understood as references to God’s power. Likewise, Keach reasons, the mention of the shepherd’s shoulders in Luke 15:5 must be a reference to “Christ’s effiEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

cacious and effectual power,” especially, given the nature of the parable, as it relates to “regenerating and converting.”10 Keach then adduces further Scriptural proof that regeneration was wholly God’s work, a work in which men and women are entirely passive.

There was, for example, John 15:5, in which Christ informed the apostles, “without me ye can do nothing.” This verse clearly has to do with the living out of the Christian life, but Keach evidently sees principles embedded in it that also apply to entry into that life. Keach understands Christ’s statement “without me” to be a reference to Christ’s “almighty arm…made bare” and his “power exerted.” If it be true, therefore, that Christ’s power is vital for the presence of “acceptable fruit to God” during the Christian life, how much more is it the case that this power is required for “a sinner’s implantation into Christ.”11 Yet, because the verse has to do with living a fruitful Christian life, which involves effort on the part of both the believer and Christ, it does not really substantiate Keach’s assertion that the sinner is passive in regeneration.

The next verse that he cites, John 6:44a—“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him”—is much more germane.

The drawing involved here, according to Keach, is “the sublime and irresistible influences of the holy God upon the heart, by which he inclines, bows, and subjects the stubborn and rebellious will to believe and receive the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Keach rightly links this verse with one later in the same chapter: “no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father” (John 6:65). That which is given, Keach emphasizes, is what enables a sinner to come to Christ: the gift of the indwelling Spirit, the affections of a new heart, grace, faith, and divine power.12

“lost sinners cannot go home to God of themselves, but must be carried to him on the shoulders of Christ.”

The third text that Keach cites is yet another Johannine one, John 1:13. The children of God, this verse asserts, are born “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Regeneration is not based on one’s physical lineage, nor on one’s “legal privileges” (so Keach reads “nor of the will of the flesh”). Nor is the new birth accomplished by any “power of man’s will, for “before a vital principle is infused” into a person, all that he or she can do are “dead works.”

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A Medium betwixt two Extremes:

The “plain and evident” declaration of this verse is that “God is the efficient or great agent in regeneration.”13

“negative holiness is not enough; we must not only forsake sin, but follow after holiness, and bring forth the fruits of righteousness; not only cease from doing evil, but learn to do well.”

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The Baptist preacher then quotes a series of Pauline verses—Romans 9:16; Titus 3:5–6; 2 Corinthians 3:5; 4:7; Philippians 2:12–13—as further confirmation of his position. With regard to the two texts from 2 Corinthians, Keach especially emphasizes that when it came to preaching, it was not the preacher who could produce the change about which he had been talking. It is not “in the power of the most able minister in the world, that the word preached becomes effectual; no, no,…it is from God” that preaching receives the power to change the hearts of men and women.14 In the next section of this sermon Keach provides additional arguments in support of his perspective on regeneration. These are based on a variety of Scripture texts, most of them drawn from the New Testament. It is in this section of the sermon that Keach defines what he understands regeneration and conversion to be. Regeneration he describes as “the forming of Christ in the soul,” a new creation or a new birth, which is accomplished by the agency of the Holy Spirit. Keach believes that regeneration takes place when the Holy Spirit comes to indwell a person, and a new nature, that of Christ, is formed within the heart of that individual.15 By this means the enmity towards God that grips the heart of every unbeliever is taken away, and a love and delight for God as their chiefest good imparted. Moreover, just as an unborn child contributes nothing towards its formation in the womb, so are “sinners wholly passive in regeneration.”16 A MEDIUM BETWIXT TWO EXTREMES Keach was very conscious that the true salvation he has been describing in this sermon on the parable of the lost sheep must issue in a life of holiness. No one is saved by works—Keach is sure of that. But then, no one is saved without them. As he had said in his A Medium betwixt two extremes (1698): “negative holiness is not enough; we must not only forsake sin, but follow after holiness, and bring forth the fruits of righteousness; not only cease from doing evil, but learn to do well.”17 And so “our Gospel-Works springing from faith, declare that our faith is true, and we

sincere believers.”18 Unlike Williams, and Baxter before him, Keach refused to see good works as instrumental in a believer’s justification: they were necessary, but as corroboration that regeneration had truly taken place.

This biblical balance that Keach was seeking to express was well-captured, he believed, by the presence of both Paul and James in the New Testament canon. Paul’s writings were there to guard against Arminianism, something that Keach abhorred, while James’ epistle “had to do with such, who might be justly called Antinomians.”19 To lose this balance, though, was tantamount to apostasy. As Keach asked at the close of this tract: Ah poor England, poor Church of God, where are thy brave old heroes that stood up to maintain the truths of Christ? What apostasy is there from the Orthodox Faith? What decay of doctrinal and practical Christianity? What dark clouds spread over our heavens?…Now that the Lord would scatter this cloud, and all other dangerous errors, let it be all our prayers both day and night.20

Such praying is equally urgent in our day!  1

Historical and Theological Introduction” to Mar“ tin Luther, On the Bondage of the Will (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1957), 58–59.

2 Chad Van Dixhorn, “The Strange Silence of Prolocutor Twisse: Predestination and Politics in the Westminster Assembly’s Debate over Justification,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 40 (2009): 415–416; Jeffrey K. Jue, “The Active Obedience of Christ and the Theology of the Westminster Standards: A Historical Investigation” in Justified in Christ: God’s Plan for us in Justification, ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Fearn: Mentor, 2007), 119.

3 Peter Toon, The Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism in English Nonconformity, 1689–1765 (London: Olive Tree, 1967), 49–50.

4 Daniel Williams, Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated (London: John Dunton, 1692), 132. On Williams, see Donal Patrick Ramsey, “Anti-Antinomianism: The Polemical Theology of Daniel Williams” (ThM thesis, Westminster Theological Seminary, 2011).

5 Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters. Vol. 1: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1978), 294–295. For the whole controversy, see Toon, Emergence of Hyper-CalEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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vinism, 49–69; Watts, The Dissenters, 1:289–297.

“Radical Sects and Dissenting Churches, 1600– 1750” in Sheridan Gilley and W. J. Sheils, eds., A History of Religion in Britain. Practice and Belief from Pre-Roman Times to the Present (Oxford/ Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1994), 205.

7 James Barry Vaughn, “Benjamin Keach” in Timothy George and David S. Dockery, eds., Baptist Theologians (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1990), 68.

8 The History of the English Baptists (London, 1740), IV, 305. The major source of information about Keach comes from Crosby. See his History of the English Baptists, IV, 268–314. For more recent accounts of his life and ministry, see Hugh Martin, Benjamin Keach (1640–1704): Pioneer of Congregational Hymn Singing (London: Independent Press Ltd., 1961); James Barry Vaughn, “Public Worship and Practical Theology in the Work of Benjamin Keach (1640-1704)” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of St. Andrews, 1989); idem, “Benjamin Keach” in George and Dockery, eds., Baptist Theologians, 49–76; D.B. Riker, A Catholic Reformed Theologian: Federalism and Baptism in the Thought of Benjamin Keach, 1640–1704 (Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 35; Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire: Paternoster, 2009); and Jonathan Arnold, “The Reformed Theology of Benjamin Keach (1640–1704)” (Unpublished DPhil thesis, Oxford University, 2010). The definitive life of Keach is Austin Walker, The Excellent Benjamin Keach (Dundas, ON: Joshua Press, 2004), now out of print. For a brief sketch of his life, see R.L. Greaves, “Keach (or Keeche), Benjamin” in his and Robert Zaller, eds., Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century (Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1983), II, 150–151.

9 Gospel Mysteries Unveiled: or, An Exposition of All the Parables and Many Similitudes spoken by Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (London: L.I. Higham, 1815), II, 321–428. On the composition of Gospel Mysteries Unveiled and its style, see Vaughn, “Public Worship and Practical Theology”, 89–127.

10 Gospel Mysteries Unveiled, II, 392–393.

11 Gospel Mysteries Unveiled, II, 394.

12 Gospel Mysteries Unveiled, II, 394–395.

13 Gospel Mysteries Unveiled, II, 395–396.

14 Gospel Mysteries Unveiled, II, 396–397.

15 Like most of his fellow Puritans, Keach regarded 6

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the work of the Holy Spirit as absolutely essential to the salvation of a sinner. “It is the Spirit indeed,” he said in one of his sermons on the parable of the prodigal son, “who is the immediate agent that meets and brings lost sinners home to God: the Father and the Son act and work in, and by the Holy Ghost” (Gospel Mysteries Unveiled, III, 57–58).

16 Gospel Mysteries Unveiled, II, 400–401, 404–405, 407–408, 412. In a sermon on the parable of the prodigal son, Keach makes the same point thus: “If God doth not meet a sinner, or move towards a sinner by his Spirit, the sinner can never meet him. …Can that which is dead move itself? Sinners are dead, or without a principle of divine life, naturally; and when life is infused, the soul must be influenced by the Holy Spirit” (Gospel Mysteries Unveiled, III, 57).

17 A Medium betwixt two extremes (London: Andrew Bell, 1698), 9.

18 A Medium betwixt two extremes, 48. See Arnold, “Reformed theology of Benjamin Keach”, 187–188.

19 A Medium betwixt two extremes, 48–49. For Keach’s abhorrence of Antinomianism, see A Medium betwixt two extremes, iii–iv 20 A Medium betwixt two extremes, 52.

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PAGE NO.

16 JEFFERY J. VENTRELLA

Jeffery J. Ventrella oversees the design and implementation of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship and ADF Legal Academy programs. He currently serves as a Research Fellow and on an ad hoc graduate thesis committee for the Department of Philosophy and Constitutional Law for the University of the Free State, South Africa. His book, The Cathedral Builder: Pursuing Cultural Beauty (2007) is part of ADF’s Blackstone Core Curriculum Project, which he also edits. Mr. Ventrella is married, and with his wife, Heather, enjoys the challenge of rearing four very active boys and one beautiful daughter: Jefferson (21), Chandler (19), Kirklan (17), Jackson (15), and McKenzie (6).

Church and Culture: Isolation, Accommodation, or Transformation?

Editor’s note: the following text is a critique of a draft statement produced by a major American evangelical organization, regarding the interaction between church and culture. For space considerations, only the first half of the text is reproduced in this issue; the second half will be released in Jubilee’s second volume on Law and Gospel. This section speaks to some of the temptations to emphasize particular activities or ministries in the service of God’s Kingdom.

Jeffery Ventrella’s responses articulate the dangers of these implications, including the truncation and compromise of the entire gospel message.

INTRODUCTION What is the relationship between Church and Culture, and how ought the Church to function in the world during the “stuff in the middle,” that is, between Cross and Consummation?

These have been, and continue to be, perpetual questions. Clear answers, however, have been less abundant.

Some communions stress “separation.” Some emphasize “witnessing” as the highest good.

Other communions ignore the question entirely.

Others simply follow the trends of the month.

Theologians have offered various answers and have suggested paradigms. Other churchmen have sincerely grappled with this gnawing and often vexing question to varying degrees of clarity. The answers do matter; this is not an abstract inquiry. Answers have consequences and bad answers have bad consequences.

Are there answers given that actually undercut the glorious gospel? Are there approaches that compromise the church’s redemptive mission? At some point, reality occurs: Christians and their communions must “put their faith in gear” because they actually do live in the world. What are the sideboards for living faithfully in this way?

Can those sideboards be articulated? And, if so, can common mistakes be avoided?

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In late 2008, key leaders from a major American evangelical organization asked me for input regarding a document they had crafted. This document attempted to set forth affirmations and denials relating to how the church ought to interact and function within the world. I dropped my other projects and accepted their invitation.

What follows is my interaction with this one communion’s attempt to articulate the relationship between Church and Culture. While this organization’s approach speaks only for its communion, the reality is that this approach reflects numerous assumptions (and errors) common in evangelicalism. Put differently, the answer to the Church and Culture question is emblematic and thus, those errors, unless identified (and corrected) will have a rippling effect in Christendom.

My hope is that by graciously engaging with the proposed answer, many will be edified, all to the glory of God’s only Son, Jesus the Lord, who saves us from something for something.

THE BACKGROUND AND THE OCCASION

As one will notice, the “Church and Culture” document, though well-intended, manifests many analytic and theological deficits and defects. This organization had explicitly invited me to be candid and critical—iron sharpening iron and all that. I was. I completed the project as asked.

I received no response whatsoever until finally I had to inquire as to whether my input had even been received. I was assured it had been and was perfunctorily thanked . . . and that was the last of it until now.

I began this project by writing to the leaders who had invited me to critique their document.

That letter’s language is reproduced here. Following this, I quote the document itself and then provide my interactions with it.

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Church and Culture: Isolation, Accommodation, or Transformation 17

Quotations from the document are italicized, and my comments appear in regular type.

MY PREFATORY LETTER Brothers, this project is significant; it should not be considered an “addendum” to the movement’s mission, but rather, a natural and essential explication of that mission.

Because of this, I am deeply honored and humbled to participate, albeit in this small way. I do believe that my participation is an expression of what the Lord has gifted me to contribute to His Kingdom. And, I am encouraged to participate precisely because this ministry has so blessed my family’s Christian life.

We have benefited from community, conferences, biblical fellowship, community group and community group leadership, Youth community group leadership, being a conference seminar leader, growth, accountability, and Christian love. In fact, I have been so affected by what the Lord has been doing via this ministry that I included an “acknowledgement” to the movement in my most recent book, The Cathedral Builder— Pursuing Cultural Beauty (2007). I am belaboring my affection for the organization, but I do so in the context of my Christian walk, a walk that has included experiencing other facets of God’s church. I say this because while this ministry does many things well, (and several things exceptionally well), I have observed that at times—at least locally—a mistake is made by functionally assuming that what it does well defines the entire universe of the Christian life and mission—that there exists no room for growth and “institutional” sanctification.

And, just so you all know my heart: I find it quite distasteful when someone “flashes” his résumé, but in certain limited cases, such action can be beneficial as when Paul does so to drive home a particular point regarding the Law—“Hebrew of Hebrews, tribe of Benjamin, Pharisee” etc..

To that end, please know that before coming to this organization, I had been ordained in two Reformed denominations (CRC and OPC), served as Chairman of the Presbytery’s Candidates and Credentials Committee for several years, planted

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six churches, taught at two Reformed seminaries (ethics and apologetics), and currently teach and train throughout the world on “cultural” public square matters. In addition to my ADF work in training Christian law students and attorneys, I am a Research Fellow for the University of the Free State in South Africa for the Department of Constitutional Law and Philosophy of Law. Because the Lord has called me, equipped me, and prospered me in these particular disciplines, I think that by God’s grace I do have something to share and contribute to this project.

I make these biographical points (uneasily and reluctantly) because at some points in evaluating this draft statement, there are significant paradigmatic considerations (and differences) that arise in analyzing this “Church and Culture” question.

One reason for these differences stems from some significant theological omissions and deficits in the draft that affect its direction, conclusion, and application—at least as its bare language implies.

(Plainly, some of the implications I discuss below are not intended by the drafters, but the draft’s literal language supports such erroneous implications and this should be addressed and corrected.)

the “Church and Culture” document, though wellintended, manifests many analytic and theological deficits and defects.”

Moreover, this document is also incomplete for the task it addresses: For example, a document of this type should include language defining and/ or addressing: • The cultural mandate • The Great Commission • The moral law of God • Anthropology, including Imago Dei • Culture Because you have invited my input, including critical input, I am endeavoring to provide it, hopefully in the spirit of Paul who—in another context—noted that one does not become an enemy by telling the truth.

I will be writing fairly bluntly and often critically, but I hope and trust you understand from this preface the spirit in which it is offered, not as quarrelsome nit-picking or polemical ping pong—and when in doubt, please feel free to telephone me directly—email and the written word can often miscommunicate despite righteous intentions.1

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18 Church and Culture: Isolation, Accommodation, or Transformation

In the end, there are probably some areas in which we must agreeably disagree. However, there are other areas in which I would encourage and exhort the leaders of this ministry to deeper reflection in order to conform this statement ultimately to the image of the beloved Son and Savior.

MY INPUT AND RESPONSE THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH2 We affirm that the agenda and priorities of the church are established by the word of God. Our essential mandate is the preservation and proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The church has been instituted by the risen Savior and is structured to carry out its unique mission of preaching and applying the Scriptures, administering the sacraments, growing in grace, and proclaiming the gospel.

“the fact that the “essence” of the church’s mission is not political does not imply that the implications of its message are not political.”

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• The key predicate of this draft statement seems to be a particular (unacknowledged) formulation of “the gospel.” In this regard, “the gospel” seems to be understood as meaning “Jesus died for our sins.” This seems truncated and (unintentionally) man-centered, rather than textually rooted and fully-orbed theologically. John Piper puts it succinctly: God is the Gospel3 • As Peter Jones notes, this sort of truncation has significant implications for the public square, culture, and the church’s mission: A compromised church finds itself parked in a back alley of cultural irrelevance. Meanwhile, other Christian groups have finally risen up to “defend the family” or to “fight for traditional values” and stand as unconscious accusers of the church, which has sometimes equated the gospel with “Jesus died for our sins.” The Christian gospel has been truncated and diluted in two ways. It has become either a take-it-or-leave-it Christian version of contemporary ideology, or it remains a mere program for personal salvation—a high speed gospel train to heaven.

As society implodes into lawlessness in the name of choice and freedom, Christian believers may no longer read the gospel through the “insights” of modern culture, nor may they dispense it as a “gos-pill” for aching souls. We must understand the scope and intentions of the gospel, not

through the buzz words of diversity and choice, nor as a quick, one-way ticket “outta here,” but as the New Testament authors did, through a fullyworked-out biblical doctrine of creation.4 • The draft fails to specifically address the Great Commission, but implies a construction of the Great Commission as if the text read: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and do personal evangelism.”

• The Great Commission in Matthew 28:1820 is much broader in scope than the “essential mandate” of doing personal evangelism; it involves discipling the nations to do all things commanded by Christ and His Word.

• Query: Should a clear distinction be made earlier—that is, at the outset–regarding “church” as institution and “church” as “gathered believers?” Without this distinction clearly articulated, equivocation leading to confusion arises.

We deny that the essence of the church’s mission is the reformation of morals, the transformation of social structures, or the promotion of political agendas. We also deny that the ultimate priorities of the church are established by cultural issues or current events. Sociopolitical concerns must never displace the centrality of the gospel in the life of the church.

• On one level, the “essence” of the ministry’s care group practice is predicated on “applying the gospel” and thereby effectuating the reformation of morals (personal sanctification) and the transformation of social structures (e.g., marriage and parenting), all of which lead to promoting [some, but not other] social agendas. Therefore, the operative question is whether this application leading to moral reformation is limited solely to personal and family ethics. Because Christ has come, our expectations have necessarily been altered—all things have become new cf. Rev. 21:5.

• Moreover, the notion of “essence” needs to be circumscribed: the fact that the “essence” of the church’s mission is not political does not imply that the implications of its message are not political.

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Church and Culture: Isolation, Accommodation, or Transformation 19

• Clarity is needed as to the definition of the gospel: The gospel textually is the “good news” that the King has come in the work and person of Jesus Christ, which connotes something more than personal salvation and personal evangelism—the gospel focuses on the King— to be sure a redeeming King5—but “personal evangelism” deftly shifts focus to man, even in an ostensive Reformed context.

• John Frame explains: Again, the gospel is the coming of a great King. The gospel is not just about us. It is not limited to justification by faith. It is focused on God and his coming.

It is almost political in its force.6 • Frame then observes that this understanding of “the gospel” includes intrinsic ethical (that is, cultural) matters as the King rules his kingdom: The gospel, then, is the coming of the kingdom; that is, the coming of the King to make things right. Incidentally, there is no dichotomy here between gospel and law. The coming of the King means he will enforce his law in the world, that he will bring righteousness. That is the gospel, the good news.7 • This truth regarding the non-truncated gospel in no way negates the absolute necessity for cultivating a personal saving relationship with this King, nor does it diminish the necessity for personal evangelism. In fact, it enhances the urgency of both.

• Scripturally, no dichotomy exists between the “personal” and the “cultural.” This is because “salvation” means (among other things) healing: individual, familial, corporate, cultural, et al. Scripture does not categorize the salvation Christ offers as if to say, “individual” then “cultural.” Rather, the Bible offers salvation as a benefit of a Redeeming King who has come (the “good news”), a salvation that affects every area in which sin reigns, which is why the King’s reign is comprehensive. Cornelius Van Til puts it this way: The individual believer has a comprehensive task. His is the task of exterminating evil from the whole universe. He must begin this program in himself. As a king reinstated, it is his first battle to fight sin within his own heart. This will remain his first battle till his dying day.

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We must go one step further. It is our duty not only to seek to destroy evil in ourselves and in our fellow Christians, but it is our further duty to seek to destroy evil in our fellow man . . .

Still further we must note that our task with respect to the destruction of evil is not done if we have sought to fight sin itself everywhere we see it. We have the further obligation to destroy the consequences of sin in this world as far as we can . . .8

• There is also a need to address the cultural mandate and the institute church’s role with respect to it. See the RMCC 1993 Statement9 for an exemplar.

• As to the “reformation of morals,” if the Great Commission is the plumb line, i.e., the “marching orders,” then “reforming morals” and “transforming social structures” does seem to be at least part of the essence of the church’s mission.10, 11 • As to “social structures” note that scripturally speaking, opposition to the Anointed One occurs via the structures of authority politically exercised in the public square (see e.g., Ps. 2— kings and rulers counsel together to break the ethical and legal constraints imposed by the Messiah); furthermore, Jesus posits that persecution directed against the disciples likewise occurs via these same structures: courts and kings (Matt. 10:17,18); these structures are inexorably linked to a faithful Christian life and therefore ought to be at least contemplated, rather than dismissed, when articulating the church’s mission.

“Scripturally, no dichotomy exists between the “personal” and the “cultural.”

This is because “salvation” means (among other things) healing: individual, familial, corporate, cultural,”

• In fact, the gospel in history is the progressive narrative of “conflict serving redemption” along the lines of the God-initiated covenantal antithesis, beginning with the first proclamation of the evangel: Gen. 3:15. God declares war in order to bring peace. So while “conflict is NOT redemption” a la liberal theology (“historical developmentalism,” a baptized version of Hegel), conflict does serve redemption—legal reformation and spiritual reformation are linked correlates—this is an implication of Hebrews 12:25-29—a shaking that occurs in culture/creation as a consequence of the coming of the Kingdom.

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20 Church and Culture: Isolation, Accommodation, or Transformation

“Identifying one thing as “the priority” can lead to a distorted view of the Christian life, including church life. ”

Both J. Gresham Machen and D.A. Carson are helpful in this respect. Machen observes how God’s redemptive power effectuates itself within particular contexts, contexts which the church should endeavor by grace to facilitate: [A]s a matter of fact God usually exerts [his redemptive power] in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel. False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.12 • This observation implies that “reforming morals” and addressing “social structures” can facilitate conditions precedent for individual redemption—all by grace, of course.13 • Carson articulates how merely focusing on individual regeneration falls short of the Christian’s duty: Yet, it is possible so to focus on the rescue and regeneration of individuals that we fail to see the temporally good things we can do to improve and transform some social structures. One does not abolish slavery by doing nothing more than helping individual slaves. Christian educational and academic structures may help countless thousands develop a countercultural way of looking at all reality under the Lordship of Christ.

Sometimes a disease can be knocked out; sometimes sex traffic can be considerably reduced; sometimes slavery can be abolished in a region; sometimes engagement in the arts can produce wonderful work that inspires a new generation . . . More importantly, doing good to the city, doing good to all people . . . is part of our responsibility as God’s redeemed people in this time of tension between the “already” and the “not yet.”14 • Surely, the institutional church plays at least some role in equipping the redeemed to understand, serve, and obey these aspects of a redeemed Christian life. Accordingly, the church’s mission vis a vis culture ought to ac-

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knowledge, develop, and deploy strategies to that end.

THE PRIORITY OF EVANGELISM We affirm the priority of evangelism in the church’s mission to the world. It is the privilege and responsibility of all believers to boldly speak the message of Christ crucified for our sins. We affirm that ministries of mercy carried out by the church should be related to the witness of the congregation and should ultimately aim at promoting the gospel in the community.

• This statement requires further clarification: what is connoted by “evangelism,” and by “promoting the gospel in the community?” If the intended meaning is “promote personal evangelism,” then the gospel is being truncated, which is a form of reductionism.

• Clarity is also needed to distinguish between the work of the institute church and the work and life of individual believers as equipped by that institute church.

• It is usually unwise (and potentially dangerous) to identify one thing as “the priority” in the Christian life because depending on context, there are competing priorities, and each could be “equally ultimate.” Identifying one thing as “the priority” can lead to a distorted view of the Christian life, including church life.

Examples: űű Prayer is also a priority (“pray without ceasing” is a command—1 Thess. 5:17), and yet, not providing for one’s family makes one “worse than an infidel”—which dictate deserves priority?—the language utilized should be more guarded. űű Providing for one’s family is a priority and one who fails to do so is deemed to have “denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever,” (1 Tim. 5:8) a category that seems significant to avoid—as a priority. űű Personal evangelism is never commanded to be done “without ceasing,” nor is failing to personally evangelize ever scripturally deemed to make one “worse than an unbeliever.” If evangelism is not “the priority” of the individual, it is difficult to see how the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Church and Culture: Isolation, Accommodation, or Transformation 21

institute church ought to hold it as being the “top priority” when other matters form “higher priorities” in the life of the believer. űű John Frame has discussed the ethics of “priorities” in this regard more generally.

We deny that social action is equal to evangelism in urgency and importance. We also deny that evangelism can be done without words, through acts of kindness and deeds of mercy alone. The social and cultural implications of the gospel must always be distinguished from the gospel itself.

• These are important points to guard against liberalism, BUT believers are deemed to be “living letters” and believers are told to let their actions shame the unbelievers (1 Pet. 2:13-17).

This, of course is technically different from proclaiming the evangel, but the dichotomy may not be as bright as this statement implies.

Jesus is the WORD made FLESH; disciples are LIVING EPISTLES. Modernism bifurcates these modes more than the Bible does, yet the point of preventing the error of equating them is critical to maintain and to prevent deception.

• St. Francis and his often-quoted quip are instructive: “Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.”

• Jesus informs us that we honor him by providing a cup of cool water; caution must be used to avoid committing the distributive error (fallacy) of expecting every individual believer to do every specific evangelist activity.

As a body, believers have different giftings and should work together to accomplish the Great Commission; the role of leaders is to collectively “equip the saints for the work of ministry…” which is broader than personal evangelism done by each individual (Eph. 4:12a). [the remainder of this article will appear in the next issue of Jubilee]  1

y friend, Ken Sande, once counseled: “Speak M to be understood; and speak so as not to be misunderstood.”

2 Throughout this article, the text of the “Church and Culture” document is presented in italics using a different font.

3 John Piper, God Is the Gospel, (Wheaton: Cross-

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way, 2005).

P eter R. Jones, Capturing the Pagan Mind, (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2003), 118, 119 (emphasis added).

5 It is instructive to note that it was the liberal “progressive theologians” who viewed the proposition of “God as King” as an obstacle to promoting the “social gospel” which merged religion and politics. Indeed liberal pied-piper Lyman Abbott in 1915 rejoiced that “for the conception of God as King, the conception of God as Father [has replaced it].” Richard M. Gamble, The War for Righteousness—Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation.

(Wilmington: ISI Books, 2003), 30. This theological prestidigitation led to the fatally flawed rallying cry trumpeting the “Universal Fatherhood of God and the Universal Brotherhood of Man” which severed the nerve of evangelism and biblical faith. Recapturing the gospel as the “good news” of Jesus as the Coming King, far from deforming the gospel, actually helps inoculate it against the reduction of faith to “social betterment” and politics.

6 John M. Frame, Salvation Belongs to the Lord, (Philipsburg: P&R, 2006), 158.

7 Id. at 248.

8 Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theistic Ethics, (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), 86-87 (emphasis added).

9 Rocky Mountain Community Church, PCA located in Billings, MT produced this document in 1993, and offers a cogent, robust response to the question.

10 Again, the function of the Care Group testifies to the reforming effect of “applying the gospel.”

11 The whole point of the Book of Romans is to show how God has comprehensively undertaken in Christ to accomplish the “reformation of morals” as comprehensive as the sweep of sin.

Salvation means the progressive, though not total (until consummation), removal of sin.

12 J. Gresham Machen, Education, Christianity, and the State, 2nd ed. (Hobbs: The Trinity Foundation, 1995), 51 (emphasis added).

13 See also, David Wells: “The gospel was meant for a moral universe.” http://www.monergism.com/ thethreshold/articles/onsite/rejection.html 14 D.A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 217, 218 (footnotes omitted).

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PAGE NO.

22 When Can RUTH A.M. ROSS

RUTH A.M. ROSS is the Executive Director and General Counsel of Christian Legal Fellowship (CLF), a national not-for-profit association of legal professionals in Canada. Ruth oversees CLF’s day-to-day operations and coordinates court interventions and government consultations on a wide variety of issues from a Christian perspective. CLF, among other functions, explores the complex interrelationships between the practice and theory of law and Christian faith.

The Fellowship has some 550 active members from several dozen Christian denominations working together to integrate Christian faith with law. www.ChristianLegalFellowship.org

Christians Sue

Frequently the question is asked, “As a Christian is it right for me to go to court, file a lawsuit, or seek a judicial remedy?” In our day and age, is it realistic to go through life by simply ‘turning the other cheek?’ Conflict is inevitable, because God has created us differently, with individual capacities to think, react and respond.

Unresolved and prolonged conflict within church congregations or between Christians is particularly troubling, because of the Scriptural mandate to “love one another” (1 Jn. 3:11, 4:7).

According to Scripture, a Christian suing another Christian is “already a defeat” (1 Cor. 6:111). It appears from this text that Paul is speaking specifically to Christians, by his use of such words as “believer” and “brother,” as well as the exhortation not to go to court before the “unrighteous.”

Paul recommends that we take our disputes before “the saints”—wise believers who are in a position to render a judgment. Recognizing the scandal caused by litigating Christians, as well as the devastation to the Christian witness, Paul says it would be far better to accept wrong than to go before unbelievers to resolve a dispute. Some may contend that this passage also limits lawsuits against unbelievers. However, the clear reference to “brother going to law against another” rules out such a conclusion. Certainly, there may be reasons why a Christian would decide not to sue a non-Christian and some of these will be examined below.

Civil courts were established in order to settle disputes between parties who cannot reach a resolution on their own. While the courts do their best, many disputes arise from basic issues of sin or wrongdoing in the heart of mankind, which secular courts are ill-equipped to address. Christians are not immune from these struggles, and

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often cannot find a solution to the root cause of their disputes. These heart issues are best ministered to by the church, as God ordained it. Thus, Paul’s unambiguous admonition is to take these disputes before the “righteous.” The early church took Paul’s instructions seriously and appointed their own elders to judge civil disputes between their members. First-century “courts” apparently gained such a strong reputation that they attracted non-Christians, and for six centuries they were considered the most important courts in Europe.

Can a Christian ever Sue another Christian?

Christians often disagree over how to apply this passage from 1 Corinthians. One cannot state categorically that this passage rules out all lawsuits between Christians today. Reality dictates that there will be times when Christians will be involved in lawsuits, either at their institution or because they have been sued. While no one enjoys the conflict of court proceedings, in some cases it may be necessary. However, before commencing legal action, it is recommended that a number of conditions be met.

Most importantly, Christians (and where appropriate, those Christian lawyers who counsel them) should exhaust all available recourse using Biblical methods through the church or other avenues of peacemaking. While Jesus praised peacemakers (Matt. 5:9), the Gospels record little of his teachings about the practical means to accomplish it. Scripture instructs that believers are to resolve their disputes according to Matthew 18:15-20: If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he

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When Can Christians Sue? 23

does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.

In fact, this is the only scriptural passage setting out a procedure to be followed in dispute resolution. Where necessary, it carries the responsibility of initiating peace by meeting face-to-face to communicate openly, discuss differences honestly, and to genuinely listen to one another’s views.

In so doing, it may be necessary to seek out wise counselors or mediators to assist in reconciliation. In most cases, this should bring resolution.

It may be possible to have your church leaders arrange a meeting with your adversary (or his/ her church leaders) to resolve the dispute. Both parties may choose to appoint a third person or persons and agree to be bound by the decision of such person(s). Where the matter involves physical or sexual abuse, parties should consider involving the police or the courts from the outset, and where appropriate, concurrently with the church. Because of the complexities of most disputes, the potential for imbalance of power, and the need for independent legal advice, parties would be well-advised to include a Christian lawyer in the process.

Ultimately, the dispute may find its way into the hands of lawyers, with or without a believer’s sanction and notwithstanding one’s best efforts to resolve the issue. Many lawyers will recommend alternative forms of dispute resolution (ADR) rather than proceed with a lawsuit. Most contracts signed between Christians should include a clause requiring ADR, in order to avoid potential lawsuits if a disagreement arises. Most lawyers today are trained in mediation and alternative forms of dispute resolution, especially in family matters. An example of such a model is known as Collaborative Law. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Before proceeding to discuss other pre-conditions to litigation, it should be emphasized that some may call themselves Christians but may not qualify as a “believer” or “one among you” in accordance with 1 Corinthians 6. This may be because they have been removed from fellowship through internal church discipline, or because they refuse to come under church or appropriate spiritual authority. Such an “offender” may not qualify as a “believer” within the context of this passage.

Enforcing a “Right” A “right” may be defined as anything to which one has a moral or legal claim, as to defend one’s rights. If you are seeking to enforce a right, remember that not all “rights” are Biblically-based.

Rather, in many instances, a Christian is taught to give up rights, go the extra mile, give his brother his tunic, and lay down his life for another. While God covenants with his children to provide for them and to bestow upon them many blessings, he also expects them to play their part in return.

God has a very keen sense of balancing rights and responsibilities. In fact, this might be an occasion for you to limit your rights and show concern for your brother even though he may not deserve it. Ask yourself, “Will this action bring glory to God, help another, or advance God’s Kingdom in some way” (1 Cor. 10:23-33)?

When entertaining whether to enforce a right or enter into a dispute, consider the following: 1. How will this affect me spiritually, emotionally and physically?

2. How will this affect my true freedom, i.e. will I be in bondage to it?

3. How will this affect others? Will it cause another to stumble?

4. Will this glorify God? Are my actions compatible with his nature?

not all “rights” are Biblicallybased. Rather, in many instances, a Christian is taught to give up rights, go the extra mile, give his brother his tunic, and lay down his life for another.”

Other Conditions and Considerations before Instituting a Lawsuit

Acknowledge how Christ has forgiven you, and in obedience to Christ, forgive your trespassers.

Often lawsuits are commenced with the wrong motivation. Take care to ensure that your motive is not to seek revenge, and is provoked by a purpose greater than self-interest (Phil. 2:3-5; Matt. 6:11-15). Listen to the counsel of your FALL 2012

24 When Can Christians Sue?

“Count the cost.

Litigation can be very costly, not only in financial terms but in emotional, physical and spiritual terms as well”

church leaders and additional wise spiritual overseers. Consider the advice of a Christian lawyer in weighing the issues and consequences of appropriate action. If your church leadership and wise spiritual counsel believe it is inappropriate to proceed, you would be well-advised to discontinue (Prv. 11:14).

Make sure your actions in pursuing the lawsuit are consistent with Scripture.

Conversely, make sure Scripture does not forbid the action you plan to take (Mark 10:11-12).

Count the cost. Litigation can be very costly, not only in financial terms but in emotional, physical and spiritual terms as well. In the end, it takes its toll on more than just the main parties to the dispute. The ripple effect of protracted legal action impacts extended families, friends, and entire churches.

Weigh the importance of this matter in the light of eternity. If this will have a harmful impact upon your witness or cause another to stumble, perhaps the Lord would ask you to suffer loss rather than proceed. As a fellow Christian, bear in mind that you will spend eternity with the person you seek to sue (Rom. 14:13; I Cor. 10:2333; 1 Tim. 4:12).

Consider how you may prefer to spend or invest your time. It is not uncommon for litigation to take years to resolve. Ask yourself, if you had only a limited time to live, how critical would it be to continue the lawsuit (Ps. 90:12)? Explore alternate methods to settle the matter quickly with your adversary. As time passes, it often becomes more difficult to resolve conflict (Matt. 5:25).

Examine the attitude of your heart. Consider whether this is a process whereby God would show himself strong and reveal his divine purposes through your suffering, rather than in the moment find personal satisfaction, clear your name, or protect your reputation (Phil. 2:3-11; 3:7-14; 1Pt. 1:6-7).

Consider your ways. Are they pleasing to the Lord, or is there a need to make amends, ask forgiveness, or change your actions in order to defuse the dispute and heal the relationship? Following the right course of action may actually cause your enemy to be at peace with you (Prv. 16:7).

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Examples of Unjust Treatment from Scripture Joseph (Gen. 37-47) Joseph was unfairly treated by his brothers, tossed into a pit, and sold into slavery. Many years later, he was wrongfully accused of assaulting Potiphar’s wife, and was thrown into prison.

Things seemed to go from bad to worse for Joseph. The natural response would have been to grow bitter and insist his rights be recognized, especially given his divine dreams. When God delivered Joseph’s brothers into his hands, Joseph could have demanded revenge. Instead, Joseph decided to trust God for the outcome. God exalted Joseph in due time and ultimately raised him up to save a nation.

Esther (Esther 2-9) The story of Esther, the young Jewish woman who rose to be Queen of Persia, sounds somewhat like a fairytale. The king’s right-hand man, Haman, had a deep hatred for the Jewish people, seeking to put the entire nation to death.

Esther could have responded with resentment and revenge. Instead, she fasted and prayed and asked all the Jewish people to do the same. She requested an audience with the king, something unheard of, and which could have meant her immediate death. She sought the king’s favour not for herself, but for the lives of her people. Rather than remain silent and hide behind the protection of her high office, she entered the king’s inner chambers, risked her life, and announced, “If I perish, I perish.” Esther gained the right to be heard before she opened her mouth to speak. She used the opportunity to rescue the innocent and oppressed rather than focus on herself.

Conclusion This has been an abbreviated attempt to discuss a very broad and complex topic, and like all good lawyers, we may be wise to end with a caveat. As each and every set of circumstances is unique, it would be impossible to address every appropriate response. You would be well-advised to seek wise counsel, through a pastor, elder, Christian lawyer, or Christian counselor.

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God has called us to the ministry of reconciliation, and thus he has called us to reconcile relationships by imitating Christ. We are to pursue peace and not selfish ambition (Ps. 41:14; Jas. 3:13-18). Remember what Jesus said when he warned us not to be caught up with legal rules, but to consider the more significant matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness (Matt.

23:23, Micah 6:8). Remember your Christian heritage, the power of prayer, the promises that God will vindicate, and the Righteous Judge in whom you put your trust (Is. 54:17; 2 Tim. 4:1-8). Consider the vulnerable who may be affected. Reflect upon the example of the Greatest Advocate as your most excellent illustration. In the end, you must accept and submit to what the Lord requires of you.  Milne, Weir. “The Meaning of Christian Peace”, in Ross, Ruth A.M. (ed.). Christian Legal Journal , Spring 2002; Ferris, John. “If Someone Takes Your Tunic, Can You Ever Get It Back?.” in Ross, Ruth A.M. (ed.)., Christian Legal Journal, Spring 2002; Sande, Ken. The Peacemaker – A Biblical Guide to Resolving Conflict, (3rd ed.). Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004.

Ericsson, Samuel E. “Considering A Lawsuit?,” Advocates International 2002. *Portions of this article were first published in Business.LIFE Magazine, a quarterly publication of Christian Business Ministries Canada. This article is reprinted with the permission of the author.

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“Reflect upon the example of the Greatest Advocate as your most excellent illustration.

In the end, you must accept and submit to what the Lord requires of you.”

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