In part five, we finished looking at the changes that took place to the law after the temple veil was torn in two pieces when Jesus died by surveying the letters that the Apostles wrote to the churches about how to understand and apply the Old Testament (OT) writings to their new situation of living in between the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ.
The following notes are from a March 2010 address delivered by Philip S. Ross. He also published a book on the same topic.
As with my other posts, here's the bird's eye view on all the posts in this series:
- Introduction
- Five Old Testament presuppositions that shape the New Testament's understanding of law
- Jesus and the Gospels
- The Apostolic Interpretation of the law in the Book of Acts
- The Epistles of the Apostles
- Conclusion
- Sabbath Extracts
Ross wants to conclude by considering the most prominent example of a single commandment cited in the context of a ethical exhortation: Ephesians 6:1 - 3. (pg. 341)
Ephesians 6:1 - 3, in Ross' opinion which he seeks to prove, is difficult to interpret in any other way than as an immediate call for obedience to the fifth commandment. (pg, 341)
It is interesting to how two contributors to From Sabbath to Lord's Day deal with Ephesians 6:1 - 3 because From Sabbath to Lord's Day is an anti-Sabbatarian manifesto. (pg, 341)
De Lacey, for example, is at pains to distance the call for children to obey their parents as coming from the Decalogue. (pg. 341)
His fellow contributor, Andrew Lincoln, is equally keen to disentangle Paul from the ten words claiming that the Apostles appeal is to a 'general sense of what was fitting and right.' (pg. 341)
When it comes to the promise in the commandment 'it is more likely to have been penned by a Jewish Christian follower.' (pg.342)
What choice does he (Lincoln) have? If the Sabbath is dismissed on the basis that Christ has fulfilled the concept of rites tied up with the Sabbath, if the Sabbath is more already than not yet then the promise in Ephesians 6 should not by there. (pg.344)
Even assuming a high degree of typology in the fourth commandment it is the same basic theme that is explicit in the fifth [commandment]. (pg. 344)
This promise (of the fifth commandment) is there (in Ephesians), because Paul sees its fulfillment as sufficiently not yet. That the promise and the moral law that accompanies it is still binding. (pg. 345)
In an article on penal substitution, Don Carson says that recent works on the subject have shown 'that historic Christian confessionalism will not roll over and play dead.' [Apparently, the Gospel Coalition's web site no longer hosts Carson's original post; however, there are number of blogs that do, so I have chosen to link to one of those blogs] (pg. 353)
If Hugh Martin's link between a person's view of the distinctiveness of the moral law and the view of how to understand the Atonement is correct then the threefold division of the law does not, and should not, roll over and die either if the source of Christian confessionalism is Scripture. (pgs. 352 - 353)
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That's it, the end of Ross' case for the Biblical and Theological Basis for the Threefold Division of the Law. Many members of the Westminster Assembly around the 1630s and 40s made similar defenses of the Threefold Division in there day, here's a list of some of the ones that I thought were the most helpful in understanding the proof texts and the wording of the Confession of Faith. However, I am not entirely done with Ross' book, or the lecture. I have purposefully left out Ross' two specific defenses in his speech about the the doctrine of the Sabbath and chosen to put those in the next post in this series. I'll explain my reasoning in that post. Ross also has a few comments in his book that are very interesting in light of the controversy around the doctrine of the Two Kingdom's that I want to share and comment upon.
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