Since the last week, I realized a further word or two on God’s “secret” in relation to law—His covenant—is necessary if we want to appreciate the cosmic consequences of a Christian’s view of law and how that translates into the politics and legal advocacy we observe day in and day out.
I honestly wanted to avoid today’s topic, but I think it’s too important. It is what God used to help me see that that my understanding of politics and law was influenced more by Darwin’s and Nietzsche’s cosmology—their understanding of how the cosmos works—than by one grounded and centered in Christ. To get there, though, a bit of review is necessary.
The Real Nature of Law
In previous episodes, I demonstrated that a Christian view of law as it pertains to human beings—what it means to be human—entails the Biblical precepts that law is fundamentally spiritual and covenantal. That is the true nature of law, and it is such according to the mind and will of God. Metaphorically speaking, we might say God “created” law this way. This law is real, though invisible.
The Implications of Real Law Are Cosmic in Scope
Because the law of our nature is real and is of God, its violation incurs real, objective guilt before the high bar of God’s justice. That is why I said last week, quoting Galatians 3:10, that humanity as a whole is under a “curse.” However, the consequences of its violation extends beyond humanity.
The covenantal law of our Adamic nature, i.e., human nature as such not just that of the person named Adam, was fine tuned to correspond to what human beings were created for in relation to the rest of creation. Therefore, transgression of that law would have cosmological effects. The disordering in Adam would affect how the world would be used; it would be use for man’s ends and self-glorification, not God’s.
This unity in relation Adam’s fall and the rest of what God created is expressed in Romans 8:20-22 (NKJV):
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.
The nature of the curse, being cosmological, meant any “cure” by which all of creation could achieve its intended end—an on-going and maturing revelation of the glory of God—would have to be cosmological in nature. This could only be affected by the God who created the cosmos in the first instance.
This death-imbued state of affairs brings us back to the “secret” of God’s covenant. But, what I didn’t previously note was Adam’s relationship with God was direct (unmediated). This presents us with a couple of “problems” to think through, only one of which I’ll take up today.
The Adamic “Problem” in Relation to Law
Even though Adam was “made upright” (Ecclesiastes 7:29 )—he conformed to the law of his nature—his being was necessarily mutable. Only God’s being is immutable because his is independent of all things, including our transgressions.
Being mutable, the first human beings would either mature in righteousness in accordance with the telos of the law of their nature or die, a rather “natural” consequence of having severed themselves from the law of their nature. Think of plants deprived of light and you get the picture.
One problem, therefore, is how a created human nature could ever be made immutable, especially one that is now polluted. But the second that I will focus on today is why Adam’s personal transgression didn’t bring about his immediate death. God had told Adam, the person, that “on the day” he ate the fruit forbidden to him “thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17).
Why didn’t that happen? The answer points to the “heavenly things” that Jesus told Nicodemus he could not understand if he couldn’t even understand “earthly things” (John 3:12), such as the covenants with Abraham and David.
The Covenant Solution I Knew Nothing About
By the on-going work of God over the centuries, theologians began to discern in God’s written Word two covenants that preceded any covenant with Adam or the one with Abraham. Today, though, I’ll skip to the one most familiar to our ears, the covenant of grace.
This covenant is between God the Father and God the Son. (Click here for John Owen’s explanation of how the triune nature of God makes possible such an agreement). By this covenant, a cosmic solution, which only God could effect, would undo the cosmic curse under which mankind had fallen and creation groans (Romans 8:22).
In this covenant, the Son of God agreed to take to himself a distinct human nature in which and by which he would hold the office of mediator between God and mankind. In filling these mediatorial offices (first as prophet, then as priest, and King) and bringing them to their intended end, the covenantally created order of all things would not just be restored, but be brought to its intended end. (For the covenantally created law-order of all things, see Jeremiah 33:20-25.)
But what does this covenant have to do with Adam and Eve not dying on the day of their transgression and the ensuing dissolution of rest of the cosmos? Jesus didn’t appear on the scene for thousands of years.
Why Adam and Eve Did Not Die and Things Continued
I only came across a clear and straightforward answer to this question six to eight months ago. I found it glorious and mind-expanding in my consideration of the knowledge and wisdom of God. It also explained why Adam and Eve did not die on the day of their transgression. But, just as importantly, if not more so, it blew my subconscious Darwinian and Nietzschean informed cosmology to bits, and further reformed the way I see legal and public policy advocacy.
The answer is from John Owen’s Christologia, modernized by me for readability:
The bringing forth of our nature in Jesus wherein it should really and truly relate unto the first Adam, yet so as not in the least to participate of the guilt of the first sin, nor of the defilement of our nature thereby, must be an effect of infinite wisdom beyond the conceptions of any created understanding. And this, as we know, was done in the person of Christ; for his human nature was never in Adam as his representative, nor was he comprised in the covenant wherein he stood.
Christ’s nature (as Messiah) was derived legally only from and after the first promise, when Adam ceased to be a common person. . . . For I take it for granted that, from the beginning, from the giving of the first promise [Genesis 3:15] the Son of God did, in an especial manner, undertake the care of the church — as unto all the ends of the wisdom, will, and grace of God; and I take it for granted here, because it evidently followeth on the eternal compact between the Father and him unto this end. . . . In this instruction and illumination consists the discharge of the prophetical office of Christ.
This “instruction” became the Word of God that fallen mankind was now to embrace, by which they were to live by faith. God never left mankind without a means of salvation by faith! (See Hebrews 11:12, 12:24 as respect’s Abel’s offering).
And why might Owen take the Son of God’s assumption of this particular office “for granted”?
It was the person of Christ, his incarnation and mediation, that were promised under the name of the “seed of the woman,” and the work he should do in breaking the head of the serpent, with the way whereby he should do it in suffering, by his power. Though the accomplishment hereof was in God’s sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, in the fulness of time, made under the law, or by his manifestation in the flesh, to destroy the works of the devil.
This assumption of a mediatorial office sounds preposterous for those who, like me, have been influenced by a Darwinian cosmology of development and cause and effect. Jesus, the Christ, wasn’t even incarnate yet!
And to those who, like me, have been taken captive by a Nietzschean cosmology devoid of metaphysics and cosmology, this metaphysical and cosmological proposition regarding Christ and the initiation of his office of prophet sounds preposterous.
Being the instrument of God that he was, Owen met in his own time the objection we might have that the work of Christ’s mediatorial offices could not have commenced and did not commence until the Son of God’s incarnation or Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God.* After explicating various scripture passages, Owen offers the following:
There are some who deny that faith in Christ was required from the beginning, or was necessary unto the worship of God, or the justification and salvation of them that did obey him. They suppose it is only faith in God under the general notion of it, without any respect unto Christ.
[T]his supposition, if logically pursued to its end, strikes at the very foundation of Christian religion for . . . Christ is the very foundation of the faith of the church; and if it be denied, nothing of the economy or dispensation of God towards it from the beginning can be understood. The whole doctrine and story of the Old Testament must be rejected as useless, and no foundation be left in the truth of God for the introduction of the New.
Conclusion: What This Means for a Christian View of Law
In sum, Jesus Christ is the revelation of God on which the Christian’s metaphysic and cosmology for both the first creation and the new creation are grounded and centered.
Therefore, He is also the defining point for a Christian’s understanding of what law is and what it is for. A Christian view of law must have the person, offices, and work of Christ’s mediatorial offices as its center and ground, otherwise it nature—the essence of it—is not Christian.
That, I hate to say, has not been my understanding of law; it was not Christian. But I’ve come to conclude that any other approach to law is a righteousness work of filthy rags (Isaiah 64: 6). We and our works of law will fade away. And most of the “good” laws I was part of putting on the books over 30 years of labor have had no salutary effect, except in now bringing me to Christian view of law.
However, there is good news. The apparent strictness and exactitude of this view of law ought not discourage those of us interested in public policy and legal advocacy any more than the sins that entangle us keep us from “press[ing] toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14 KJV).
We will look at why that is so next week, and then take into consideration how a Christian view of law translates into the "real world.”
*Owens metaphysical and cosmological understanding of Christ and his work answers those who ask why God would create people he would send to Hell. Faith in God’s word about Christ, and the work of Christ has left all men without excuse for living by faith in the promises of God. The promise was given and not believed. The promise came (see Galatians ), and it is still not believed.
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