Seek First The Kingdom

SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM
The Kingdom of God as a Framework

for Theological Instruction in the Church
Integrative Paper Assignment

Reformed Theological Seminary
Dan Claire, Advisor
Mark Leone
April 2002
Seek First The Kingdom i Mark Leone

SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM
The Kingdom of God as a Framework
for Theological Instruction in the Church
Abstract:
The Kingdom of God is an important theme woven throughout the biblical revelation, one
which has undergone significant development over the course of redemptive history. A
vast amount of study has been devoted to this theme, yielding valuable biblical insights
with relevance to virtually all theological disciplines. The biblical significance of the
Kingdom of God, however, and its subsequent theological development, is not
proportionally reflected in the general sensibilities of Christian lay people today. The
theological consciousness of the laity, generally speaking, is not significantly conditioned
by the biblical concept of the Kingdom of God. An appreciation by the church for our
place in the general scheme of the Kingdom’s manifestation in history is particularly
lacking.
This paper addresses this disparity by presenting a discussion of the biblical treatment of
the Kingdom of God, illustrating how this theme can be incorporated into the teaching
and preaching regimen of the church today, specifically the Presbyterian Church in
America (PCA). Foundational to this discussion is an understanding of the revelation of
the Kingdom of God as a phenomenon in history, and an appreciation for how this
understanding is conditioned by the biblical concept of time itself. This paper begins,
therefore, with an examination of the Kingdom of God in the context of redemptive
history and the structure of time. We then consider what it means to live today in the
Kingdom of God, by examining, in turn, the ethical stances of Jesus and Paul, and
demonstrating how they are integrally related to the Kingdom framework. The paper
concludes with a reflection on the pastoral use of the material presented.
This material is prayerfully offered as a framework for instilling a more robust and
fruitful theological conception of the Kingdom of God throughout the PCA.
Copyright 2002 Mark Leone All Rights Reserved
Seek First The Kingdom ii Mark Leone

Seek First The Kingdom iii Mark Leone
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................1
THE KINGDOM MOTIF IN SCRIPTURE....................................................................................... 5
THIS PRESENT FUTURE: REDEMPTIVE HISTORY AND THE INTRUSION OF THE ESCHATON.............10
REDEMPTIVE HISTORY AND TIME.......................................................................................... 11
THE OVERLAP OF THE AGES................................................................................................ 14
THE MEANING OF ESCHATOLOGY..........................................................................................16
DISCERNING THE KINGDOM..................................................................................................19
CHRIST, THE LAW, AND RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE ESCHATOLOGICAL MANIFESTATION OF THE
KINGDOM.............................................................................................................................25
THE ETHICAL STANCE OF JESUS............................................................................................. 27
Righteousness and the Law in the Messianic Kingdom.............................................27
The Social Trajectory of Kingdom Ethics..................................................................33
PAUL’S TEACHING ON CHRIST AND THE LAW......................................................................... 42
2 Cor. 3:7-11: The Law as a Ministry of Death.........................................................43
Gal 3:15-25: The Law as a Conductor to Christ......................................................44
Rom 10:4: Christ is the Telos of the Law.................................................................. 45
Christ the Fulfillment of the Law...............................................................................47
Law and Spirit in the Messianic Kingdom................................................................ 50
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND LIFE: THE ESCHATOLOGICAL GIFT.......................................................... 51
The Unity of Paul’s Thought......................................................................................52
Paul and the Synoptic Gospels.................................................................................. 57
CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................58
LIVING IN THE KINGDOM.......................................................................................................60
SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM.................................................................................................. 60
Matthew 6:33.............................................................................................................60
Two Kingdoms........................................................................................................... 62
A PEOPLE FOR GOD’S OWN POSSESSION............................................................................... 64
THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD............................................................................................... 66
The Postmodern Context........................................................................................... 66
Finding the Center.....................................................................................................67
Recovering the Antithesis.......................................................................................... 70
The Democratization of the Spirit............................................................................. 74
THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD..............................................................................78
PREACHING THE WORD....................................................................................................... 80
CHRISTIANITY AS A WORLDVIEW.......................................................................................... 82
A FRESH LOOK AT ECUMENISM............................................................................................84
BUILDING A COMMUNITY.....................................................................................................86
JESUS THE KING.................................................................................................................89
ESCHATOLOGICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS: THE CURRENT CRISIS IN PAULINE THEOLOGY...................93
THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE................................................. 95
Seek First The Kingdom iv Mark Leone

THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL....................................................................................... 101
A Theological Sea Change...................................................................................... 103
N.T. Wright’s Approach............................................................................................ 110
Critical Analysis...................................................................................................... 120
A WAY FORWARD............................................................................................................ 127
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................133
BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................137
Seek First The Kingdom v Mark Leone

INTRODUCTION
Introduction
One of my most memorable airline experiences is the time I flew from Baltimore to a
connecting flight in Phoenix seated next to an aggressively argumentative member of the
Sri Rajneesh cult. His female partner, noticing a Christian book in my hands, engaged me
with a polite question as to why I believed in Jesus; but before I could barely begin my
answer I was interrupted by her partner with a loud and angry denunciation of Christian
belief, delivered with a venomous snarl and flashing eyes. In a voice that carried
throughout the otherwise quiet passenger cabin of the American Airlines MD-80, this
poor lost soul lambasted me with questions and commentary apparently designed to keep
me off balance, laced throughout with tortured Scripture renderings and highly selective
quotes from the mouth of Jesus.
Although this was perhaps the most memorable encounter I have ever had with
unbelief, there was one particular argument thrown at me that stands out in my mind to
this day. After quoting Rev 4:9-11 to me from memory (this is the account of the twenty-
four elders casting down their crowns before the throne of Almighty God), my inquisitor
stared intently into my eyes and said “If you’re so smart, when was that Scripture
fulfilled?” After several seconds of stunned silence, I replied with obvious irony “As far
as I know, it hasn’t been fulfilled.” I then was informed that the correct answer to his
question was “1974, at the Houston Astrodome,” a reference, as I eventually understood,
to the blasphemous culmination of a large cult gathering in which Sri Rajneesh was
Seek First The Kingdom 1 Mark Leone

worshipped as God the Father. I continued the debate, politely and firmly, for the sake of
our captive audience, but I think I have never encountered one who seemed so lost as this
man with flashing eyes, insisting that Rev 4:9-11 was fulfilled in 1974.
I wonder if I would induce a similar sense of incredulity if I were to sit next to a
typical Christian on a flight to Phoenix and forcefully insist that the end of the world has
already occurred. I could probably defuse the tension by explaining about the overlap of
the ages and the delay of judgment, but I expect that the best I could do by the time we
landed would be to demonstrate that I’m not out of my mind. My scheme would have a
certain logical coherence, but I don’t think it would resonate with what this average
Christian has been taught, or how he reads his Bible, or how he understands the dynamic
of the Christian life. Furthermore, I am not any more hopeful of success if I were to try
this exercise in a randomly selected pew of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA),
my own denomination. My pessimism is based on several years spent occasionally
explaining just this concept to my brothers and sisters in the PCA. My experience has
been that it takes much longer than the time required to fly to Phoenix, because I can’t
seem to find anyone who has not been to seminary who has heard anything about the
overlap of the ages, or even has any inkling that the last days they so eagerly await have
qualitatively intruded into the present age, the very days in which we are now living.
This is disconcerting to me for two reasons. First, this scheme is taught in the
seminaries from which the PCA draws her ministers, and there is generally no principled
or practical objection raised there against the assertion that it captures the sense of the
Bible’s teaching on the meaning of Christ’s appearance in history. Why, then, does no one
in the pews seem to understand it? Second, the intrusion of the eschaton is no small

matter. It is true that the essence of this intrusion is plain enough to the typical Christian.
He knows intuitively that something other-worldly has gripped him, that he has crossed
over from days of death to days of life, that God’s Spirit has been given to him. What
scheme, however, is generally available to provide a coherent explanation of what the
Christian has experienced and what he believes to be true?
There is no commonly valid answer to this question, because there is a wide variety
of competing and often contradictory theological frameworks extant in the evangelical
church. Christians make sense of their experience and grapple for ways to explain their
beliefs as best they can, using schemes that range from simplistic formulaic explanations
like “the four spiritual laws” to complex soteriological arguments and anthropological
analyses, and many options between these extremes. By and large these schemes contain
assertions that are precious truths of Christian doctrine, but in general they do not give a
compelling account of what it means to be a Christian. Christians are in need of a
Christian worldview if they are to live faithfully in this world, and this requires a
coherent scheme that accounts for as much of the biblical data as possible, while also
explaining the relevance and significance of this data to the Christian’s daily life.
We in the PCA are blessed with a wonderfully coherent set of doctrinal standards that
provide a faithful summary of the Bible’s teaching on a number of topics. These
standards constitute a reliable system for interpreting our Christian experience, but such a
comprehensive summary of Scripture is not easily appropriated by the typical PCA
member, and many are sadly ignorant of our standards. Our flock is badly in need of a
framework with which to interpret even that excellent framework of Scripture passed
down to us from the Westminster Divines. This suggestion may appear arbitrary and

conducive to an endless proliferation of frameworks, except that the Bible itself provides
us with just such an overarching scheme, namely the Kingdom of God.
In the pages that follow, I will survey the Scripture’s treatment of the Kingdom, and
elaborate a framework for theological instruction that is rooted in this Kingdom motif.
This paper is addressed to pastors and other church officers, especially Ruling and
Teaching Elders in the PCA, in the hope also that a general readership will find the
material interesting and useful.

CHAPTER ONE
The Kingdom Motif in Scripture
The sustained focus on the Kingdom motif in this paper is not intended to suggest
that there is any absolute significance to the Kingdom of God as an overarching template
for understanding Christian life and doctrine. Other organizing schemes may certainly be
found to be profitable. There is, however, much to recommend the Kingdom of God as a
scheme by which we may enable God’s people to more effectively appropriate Christian
truth into the warp and woof of their daily life.
Jesus himself adopts the Kingdom motif as a summarizing scheme for his mission.
The announcement of the inauguration of the Kingdom is central to Jesus’ public ministry
and figures prominently in his teaching. In the synoptic gospels, the very commencement
of Jesus’ ministry is identified as the proclamation that the Kingdom of God is at hand 1.
This focus on the Kingdom as a summary statement of Jesus’ mission continues
throughout the gospels, identified repeatedly as something fundamental to it. Not only do
Jesus and the gospel writers associate Jesus’ ministry with the coming of the kingdom,
but his followers often raise the subject of the Kingdom in questions addressed to him,
and the devil himself seeks to tempt him with an alternative vision of the Kingdom 2.
1 Mt. 4:17; Mk. 1:15; Lk. 4:18-19. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are from the New
American Standard Bible (NASB).
2 Mt. 4:8;18:1;20:21; Mk. 11:10;15:43; Lk. 1:33; 17:20;19:11;23:42.

The centrality of the Kingdom as seen in the ministry and teaching of Jesus is set in
the larger context of the comprehensive relevance and dominant position of the Kingdom
of God motif throughout the Bible. From the vantage point of Scripture’s eventual clear
and explicit revelation of the Kingdom of God, the significance of the Kingdom motif is
readily seen in the earlier biblical revelation as well. The fallen man and woman are
banished from the realm of God’s special presence, where God’s protection, provision,
and personal governance (kingdom artifacts in the nature of the case) are the dominant
features of their existence. This banishment is pronounced in almost the same breath as a
promise to send a savior for the woman’s seed who will, by implication, return to their
progeny the lost Kingdom blessings. The accounts of contrasting and adversarial
bloodlines (the descendents of Seth versus those of Cain, the seed of the woman versus
the seed of the serpent) imply a kingdom dynamic throughout the ensuing human history.
As the Kingdom motif is eventually made explicit in the biblical revelation, its
centrality and comprehensive significance for all of salvation history is self-evident. The
very occasion for the writing of the introductory books of Scripture is the founding of the
Kingdom of God among the community of nations,3 and Moses expounds the meaning of
the Kingdom in terms of a cosmogony, acts of divine election, and subsequent bloodline
descent that have their culmination in the Kingdom he has been appointed to inaugurate.
Thus all that precedes the time of Moses and the Exodus is teleologically tied to the
establishment of God’s people in the wilderness. All that follows, furthermore, is
presented as the organic development of a Kingdom that has its roots in those wilderness
events.
3 It is difficult to identify a single event as the founding of the Kingdom of God. For the purposes of the
current argument, Moses may be seen as the founder of the Kingdom in the sense that he establishes for the
first time a large political body that constitutes the People of God.

Under the Davidic dynasty the Kingdom subsists in its most perspicuous form, while
also adumbrating future meanings of the Kingdom that are yet to be fully revealed. The
life of God’s people for all time is thereby irrevocably tied to the Kingdom rubric.
Kingdom blessings during the Davidic dynasty are mediated through prophet, priest, and
king; yet these very blessings point to a future transformation of the Kingdom motif that
establishes its significance for all time. Not only do the priestly sacrifices anticipate
God’s all-sufficient sacrifice, but the prophetic ministry also points to a future, universal,
permanent Kingdom dynamic. The early prophets do business with the kings, not the
people at large, until the corruption of the kings leads to a turning point with the coming
of the prophet Elijah. Subsequently the prophets prosecute Yahweh’s covenant with his
people directly, and their message turns more and more to the coming judgment of
national Israel, and the call for a remnant to bind themselves to Yahweh through
faithfulness to his covenant, that they might be graciously preserved in the coming
judgment.
Jeremiah speaks of a future transformation of the Kingdom, when God will establish
a new covenant written on the hearts of his people; 4 Ezekiel writes about a new and
vastly superior temple;5 Isaiah paints a sublime picture of the renewal of all creation
under God the King;6 and many other prophets proclaim this coming transformation in
various ways. All these descriptions of a transformed dynamic of Kingdom life are
realized by the character of the Christian life in the present age.
Far more significant than that of prophet and priest, however, is the development of
the Kingdom with respect to the King. If the coming of Christ is the central defining
4 Jer. 31:27-40.
5 Eze. 40-48.
6 Isa. 65:17-66:24.

moment for all of human history, then the centrality of the Kingdom motif is self-
evident for the coming of Christ is the coming of the King, and therefore the coming of
the Kingdom, into history. This is not merely an inference from the nature of Christ’s
ministry. Christ himself, when he sums up his ministry in a single thought, speaks of the
coming of the Kingdom.7 The establishment of the Kingdom of God, therefore, is widely
regarded as the main focus of Christ’s ministry.
Furthermore, inasmuch as Jesus’ ministry represents fulfillment without
consummation, the Kingdom is the central motif for the future as well. Both Jesus and his
followers speak repeatedly of the Kingdom as something coming in the future. 8 This
expectation is made more explicit in various passages of the New Testament, including 2
Thessalonians 2:1-12 (the prediction of Jesus’ overthrow of the man of lawlessness by
“the breath of his mouth”) and Revelation 11:15ff (the announcement at the opening of
the seventh seal that “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and
of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever”).
Thus the Kingdom of God is an all-encompassing summarizing scheme for what
God has done in ages past, the life we have in Christ in the present day, and all that we
await in the culmination of salvation history. It is a comprehensive rubric for
understanding God’s acts in history, including the Christian’s personal history, and it
fundamentally represents our current state of affairs and expectations for the future. That
God chose to establish his people as a kingdom is of great significance. A kingdom, a
political entity by definition, makes fundamental, comprehensive, and irresistible claims
on its subjects. We readily recognize how critical to our well-being is the earthly kingdom
7 See note 1.
8 Mt. 6:10;7:21-23;8:11-12;20:21;25:31-34; Mk. 11:10;15:43; Lk. 11:2;13:22-30;14:15;17:20-21; 23:42.

to which we live in subjection. How infinitely more significant is our life in the Kingdom
of God, a biblical motif of inestimable value for making sense of the life we live in Christ
and the precious truths to which we cling.
Having seen the great significance that Jesus assigned to the Kingdom of God, and
that the Kingdom of God motif is woven comprehensively throughout the biblical
revelation, we now turn to an exploration of this great biblical theme. In Chapter Two we
will explore the general scheme of the Kingdom’s manifestation in history and the way
that the New testament’s concept of time conditions our understanding of the Kingdom as
a dynamic force in the world. In Chapter Three we will explore the ethical implications of
the presence of the Kingdom today, considering the teachings of Christ and Paul and how
we may obtain a unified view of them. In Chapters Four and Five, respectively, we will
present some general principles of application and a discussion of how the Kingdom
framework can be promoted within the church. An appendix is also provided, which
presents a critical analysis of a current issue in the church that has a significant bearing
on our discussion of the present manifestation of the Kingdom, namely the debate
concerning the so-called New Perspective on Paul.

CHAPTER TWO
This Present Future: Redemptive History and the Intrusion of the Eschaton
To the extent that the Kingdom of God is contemplated today in the church, there is a
general tendency among Christians to appropriate the concept in contemporary terms,
often as a rallying point for aspirations for the future. This amounts to a more or less
abstract conception of the Kingdom as something offered to us today in some limited,
inward sense, which will make its real mark upon the world in the great future. This view
of the Kingdom is essentially accurate as far as it goes, but what is missing is a proper
sense of the specific nature and meaning of the Kingdom of God as revealed to God’s
people throughout salvation history.
When Jesus announced his ministry he could speak of the Kingdom of God, making
reference to a subject that was well established in the conceptual landscape of his hearers.
Although he lamented the hardness of heart and dullness of mind of the generation to
which he appeared, and brought into history a manifestation of the Kingdom that was
ultimately unrecognizable to the majority of that generation, he nevertheless appealed to
the contemporary conception of the Kingdom of God to identify what he was
inaugurating. Present day recipients of Jesus’ message should likewise be given a
conception of the Kingdom that is mediated by its explicit revelation in salvation history
and the pregnant sense of expectation that prevailed among Jesus’ generation.
A proper historical perspective is an effective antidote to a merely abstract
conception of the Kingdom of God. This requires more than an interpretive historical

narrative, however. A proper understanding of the Kingdom in the context of redemptive
history also requires an appreciation for the New Testament’s unique conception of time
and the fundamental restructuring of time brought about by the coming of Christ into
history. This will be illustrated below in terms of the redemptive-historical implications
of the coming of Christ into history.9 We will then investigate how a biblical view of the
nature and meaning of eschatology can greatly invigorate these redemptive-historical
insights and enhance their appropriation in the daily life of the Christian.
Redemptive History and Time10

Oscar Cullmann calls attention to the uniqueness of the Christian practice of marking
time forward and backward from Christ, and argues that this is indicative of a significant
theological tenet—namely, the central and controlling position of the Christ-event within
a linear time process in history. The New Testament, he argues, presupposes a linear
concept of time, in contradistinction to the Hellenistic conception of time as a circular
process. This is not merely a metaphysical distinction, but one with significant
theological implications. If time is a circular process, unique significance cannot be
assigned to any division of time. History is not under the control of a telos, or goal, and
9 The redemptive-historical approach to Biblical theology takes as its point of departure the assertion that
the essence of divine revelation is the redemptive history revealed in the Bible, of which the appearing of
Christ is the determining event. Over against systems of Biblical interpretation that seek to establish their
center in some controlling thematic principle or systematic conceptual framework, the redemptive-
historical approach seeks its center in the historical events of redemption themselves, which are in turn seen
to be thoroughly conditioned by and organically related to the “Christ-event,” such that all of redemptive
history is seen as a “Christ-process.” (Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time, (Westminster Press, 1950) 24-25.)
See also Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, (Eerdmans, 1975). Noting the
fundamental tension within Paul’s theology between the “already” and the “not yet,” Ridderbos asserts that
Paul is not a systematic theologian but a preacher of the Christ revealed in history. “For he was not a
theologian who thought in terms of the aeons, but a preacher of Jesus Christ, who has come and is yet to
come. Here is the reason why this eschatology is ambivalent and fits into no single schema, and why he can
employ the eschatological categories at one time in a present, and another time in a future sense, apparently
without concerning himself about the ‘unsystematic’ character of it” (53). Elsewhere, Ridderbos asserts that
the historical death and resurrection of Christ determines the fundamental theological conceptions of the
New Testament, which are pictured as radiating outward in concentric circles from this central historical
fact. (85).
10 The discussion in this section of the New Testament’s concept of time draws heavily on Cullmann, Christ
and Time.

therefore has no ultimate meaning. Redemption cannot occur in history, for the salvation
sought is a salvation out of history. The idea of salvation in Hellenistic thought is
dominated by a spatial contrast rather than a time contrast between “now” and “then,”
such that salvation is always available in the timeless realm of the great beyond, rather
than something worked out as a process in history.
The New Testament knows nothing of this circular concept of time, but everywhere
presupposes a model of time as an upward-sloping line. This paradigm is warranted by
the Biblical emphasis on the distinction of the beginning from the end, and the pervasive
tone of expected culmination. The New Testament recognizes a qualitative difference
between the time before creation and the time after the eschatological culmination of
history, and this distinction can only be maintained within the framework of linear time.
If the eschatological expectation of culmination within history is replaced with a
metaphysical distinction between this world and the timeless beyond, the entire
theological program of the New Testament is rendered meaningless and arbitrary. For if
there is no distinction between the “time” before history and the “time” after, there can be
no significance for the events that happen in between.
Therefore, Cullmann argues, the meaning of each age within time is not determined
in reference to a timeless eternity, but each segment of time has its own unique meaning
which is determined by its relationship to a decisive mid-point, namely the appearing of
God in history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.11 This is the event that gives meaning
11 Cullmann argues that time is not bound to the created realm, but is simply everything that God causes to
happen. Thus for Cullmann God is not timeless, but exists necessarily in a segment of time that has no
beginning and no end. Cullmann grounds his concept of the mid-point of history in this assertion, arguing
against any opposition of time to timelessness. This view of time is problematic at best, and impossible to
prove or disprove definitively from the biblical data, although both general and special revelation seem to
support a concept of time that is, like space, bound to the created realm.
Cullmann’s argument, however, highlights an apparently insurmountable problem that arises when
time is considered to have a beginning and an end. If eternity is nothing other than the absence of time, then
it is impossible to claim any significance for the events that occur in time; for it is impossible then to assert

to all of history. The events that come before this mid-point have their meaning as
preparation, and the events that follow have their meaning as culmination. Thus Christ is
presented as the mediator of the creation event, the one in whom God’s people are
predestined before the foundation of the world, and the second Adam who is predestined
as the pattern after which redeemed humanity will be fashioned. Likewise for the period
beyond revealed history, Christ is presented as the goal toward which all history is
aiming, the one in whom all things are summed up, and the mediator of the new creation.
The events within the period of revealed history have their meaning only in reference
to Christ. This fact is prophetically asserted12 in the scriptures for the events of
redemptive history, such as the history of Israel as the preparation for the coming of
Christ, or the character of the Church as the Spirit-mediated locus of his redemptive
power. Yet this decisive mid-point gives meaning to all of history in addition to the
special case of redemptive history, for the slim line of salvation history interprets and
judges the entire line of history. It is part of the great offense of Christianity that the
seemingly insignificant events revealed in Scripture give meaning to all of history, for the
Christ-line of Biblical history “is entitled to render a final judgment even on the facts of
general history and on the contemporary course of events at any period.” 13
any distinction between eternity past and future, those words being meaningless in a timeless realm. If we
are therefore unable to make a distinction between before history and after history, how can the events of
history have any significance?
We can solve this problem more satisfactorily with a modification of Cullmann’s thesis. If time is
held to be bound to the created realm, then let us postulate for it a beginning but no end, consistent with our
view of the spatial realm. In viewing time as having a beginning, we avoid Cullmann’s problem of making
God subject to time. In arguing that time continues forever along with the rest of creation, we maintain a
sound basis for asserting genuine meaning for the events in history. This modification of Cullmann’s thesis
regarding the nature of time does not invalidate his argument about the mid-point of history.
12 Cullmann, Christ and Time 98. Cullman defines prophecy as redemptive history as a whole, whose
character is such that it must be apprehended by faith. Prophecy serves to unify what Cullmann refers to as
myth and history in its process of revelation, since both historically verifiable and unverifiable events must
be apprehended by faith. The creation of Adam is an example of a historically unverifiable event that can
only be apprehended by faith. The assertion that the Holy Spirit was at work in the growth of the primitive
Church is an example of a historically verifiable event that nevertheless requires a prophetic apprehension.
13 Ibid. 20.

Thus the appearance of Christ in history is the central and decisive mid-point, giving
meaning to all of history. Events at all points along the timeline of history have their own
unique significance, but this significance is determined by their relationship to this
decisive mid-point. Baptism, regeneration, physical death, for example, each have a once-
for-all significance in the lives of individual people; but the meaning of each of these
unique events is determined by its relationship to the decisive mid-point of history, the
Christ-event.
The Overlap of the Ages

The radical nature of the Christ-event can be seen in the fact that it brings about an
entirely new division of time, with profound implications for the manner in which we
perceive the events of salvation history. Cullmann explains this division in terms of the
diagram on the following page, reproduced from Cullman’s work. 14
A three-fold division of time is drawn to demarcate three stages of time: the time
before creation, the time between creation and the Parousia, and the time after the
Parousia. Superimposed on this scheme in Judaism, without discarding it, is a two-fold
division in which the coming of the Messiah divides the timeline between this age and
the age to come. The boundary of the two-fold division coincides, in Judaism, with the
boundary between the second and third stages in the three-fold division. In the Christian
scheme, the boundary of the two-fold division is drawn so that it occurs in the middle of
the second stage of the three-fold division.
14 Ibid. 82 (slightly modified).

Judaism Mid-Point of History
The Age
This Age
to Come
Today
Time Before Creation Between Creation After the Parousia

And the Parousia
Christianity
Mid-Point of History
The Age
This Age
to Come
Today
Time Before Creation Between Creation After the Parousia

And the Parousia
The significance of this change is that while for Judaism the mid-point of history lies
in the future, for Christianity it has already occurred. Thus Christ has brought a new
division of time. Judaism looked forward to the coming of a new age, associated with the
coming of the Messiah. With the coming of Christ, the decisive mid-point now lies in the
past. With regard to the two-fold division, Cullmann argues, the part that follows the mid-
point is already in the new age. But in terms of the three-fold division, which is still valid,
the final period is yet to come. This is, in schematic form, the already/not-yet tension that
the New Testament asserts for the present age. This is how it is that Jesus preaches that
the kingdom of God has come and is yet to come.
This tension is possible because in Christ time is divided anew. A future is still
expected, just as in Judaism, but the center of the timeline is no longer in the future. The
center lies in a historical event. It has been reached, but the end is yet to come. The
eschatological expectation of Judaism is still valid for Christianity, but it is no longer the
center. The focal point is not the eschatological expectation, but the conviction

concerning the Resurrection.15 In other words, the eschatological hope of Judaism is
replaced by the eschatological faith of Christianity—faith in the historical
accomplishment of events that constitute the mid-point of history.
So long as the mid-point lay in the future, the relationship with the future was
primarily characterized by hope, for the specific details of the events of the mid-point
were not known. But now that the mid-point lies in the past, its events are the objects of
specific knowledge. The decisive event that exclusively determines and interprets our
existence now lies in the past. Our expectation for the future is not simply rooted in hope,
but is characterized by faith in the already-accomplished reality of Christ’s incarnation,
death, and resurrection. Our hope for the future is no longer the central element of our
religious consciousness, for this hope now concerns only the culmination of the process
already initiated by the decisive mid-point events that lie in the past and are apprehended
by faith.
This is not to say that our hope for the future is not intensified by our present
experience of Christ, but only that it is no longer the center. In actuality our intensity of
longing is increased by virtue of the fact that we are already tasting the life of the future
age. It is characteristic of the overlap of the ages in which we live that we are actually
tasting rather than merely hoping.
The Meaning of Eschatology

The significance of the foregoing discussion is made more apparent when we
consider the primarily ethical function of eschatology. Let us briefly review the nature
and function of eschatology in Old Testament times and then consider, in light of this
15 Ibid. 84-85.

insight, the ethical implications of the new division of time resulting from the coming of
Christ into history.
The prophetic strand in Judaism was characterized by an all-embracing conviction
concerning a God who was active in history. 16 While the salvation awaited in the future
required an inbreaking of God into history, it was nevertheless a salvation in time that
was pictured.17 The God who would act in the great eschatological drama was the God
who was acting in the present day and who would act in the immediate future. This is
why the prophets often did not distinguish between the near-term judgments of God and
the great eschatological judgment awaited for the future. The specific timing was not
significant—what was significant was that God was going to act.
The ethical commandments of the prophets were rooted in the eschatological vision
of God’s redemptive acts. Eschatology was not intended by the prophets as a means of
providing a timeline of God’s redemptive acts, but as a means of revealing the broad
sweep of God’s redemptive plan and the character of his redemptive acts, in the light of
which the people were called to interpret the issues of the present day. “They proclaimed
God’s will for the ultimate future, that in its light they might proclaim God’s will for his
people here and now.”18 For the Old Testament recipients of the prophetic messages, the
mid-point of this redemptive plan was in the future. Therefore they were motivated by an
16George Elden Ladd, The Presence of the Future, (Eerdmans, 1974) 87-94. This characteristic of the Old
Testament prophetic strand is especially apparent in contrast to the later apocalyptic interpretation of Old
Testament prophecy, in which God was seen as having abandoned history to the forces of wickedness, and
salvation was awaited in a supra-historical realm.
17 Ibid. 52-59. The historical forces presently at work could not bring about the necessary salvation, thus
requiring an apocalyptic intervention from God; but the prophets make no sharp distinction between history
and eschatology.
18 Ibid. 65. Elsewhere Ladd points out that historical judgments and the eschatological judgment could be
blended together in the prophetic writings, because “the focus of the attention was the acting of God, not
the chronology of the future” (67-68).

eschatological hope, as they sought to interpret the ethical and religious issues that faced
them in the light of God’s promised decisive action in the future.
We have seen, however, that with the coming of Christ a radical shift has occurred
regarding the point of view with respect to redemptive history. Now the decisive mid-
point is in the past, and the future expectation is for the consummation of what already
has been inaugurated. Therefore, the eschatological hope of Judaism is replaced by the
eschatological faith of Christianity. As with the Old Testament Jews, the eschatological
pronouncements are brought to bear on us that we might interpret the ethical and
religious issues of our day in the light of God’s revealed plan of redemption in history.
But we have experienced a shift in perspective that is of tremendous significance. The
decisive event that gives meaning to all of history has already occurred, and is known by
us and apprehended by faith. We are called to interpret the issues of our day not merely in
terms of our hope for the future, but primarily in terms of the decisive redemptive act of
God at Calvary, which now for us lies in the past.
Life in the present aeon is not to be determined by mere hope for Christ’s return, but
by faith in the Christ who has already come and who will come again. We are not
empowered merely by a hope in the Spirit who will one day transform our bodies, but by
the reality of the Spirit who is already present within us, who has already installed
himself within us as a deposit of that incorruptible life that one day will take hold even of
our bodies. The life of the age to come is already available, and it is this fact that
primarily determines our present existence. The eschatological pronouncements of
Scripture provide us with a picture of the culmination of this process that has already
begun in us.

This is the meaning of the eschatological focus of scripture. It is not a reportorial
prediction of future events that is provided, but an all-embracing presentation of the
redemptive program of the God who acts in history—a program whose decisive and all-
determining mid-point lies in the past, the benefits of which are received in the present
day, by faith. Eschatology, properly considered, is not about the future but the present. It’s
primary purpose is not to reveal narrowly specific details of the future, but to provide a
meaningful context for ethical thought and action in the present. History has a goal, and
what we do in the present is related to that goal. This is the manner in which the Old
Testament prophets applied their eschatological pronouncements. This ethical function of
eschatology is intensified in the New Covenant, for the eschatological drama has already
begun. The life of the age to come has been born within us, and we are already ripening
as the first-fruits of the new creation.
Discerning the Kingdom

The foregoing discussion is no doubt largely a review for many with formal
theological training, and for others a strange new teaching that nevertheless seems to
resonate with Scripture. Let us explore how we can make this resonance more apparent.
A useful starting point might be a recovery of the New Testament sense of the
centrality of eschatology in the Christian life and its pervasive presence in the Scriptures.
There is a strong tendency in the church today to view eschatology as a separate
discipline that we tackle periodically or when we’re feeling especially brave. This
tendency is fueled by the common misconception that the study of last things is almost
exclusively focused on the future, and relevant for the present only in an indirect sense.
The elements of the present which happen to figure in the eschatological scheme are

conceived as having no significance in themselves, but only insofar as they point to some
impending future that is qualitatively different from the present age. Thus, for example,
wars and earthquakes in the present day may be discerned as vital components of the
eschatological focus; but they have no qualitative significance or ethical meaning for the
present day, and they are significant only because they are believed to presage the
impending appearance of Christ.
Contemporary Christians must be shown that the eschatology of which the New
Testament speaks is vitally concerned with the present in a qualitative sense, and that this
establishes an essential ethical function for eschatology. The eschaton is significant not
merely because it lies on the horizon and is eagerly awaited, but because it has in a
qualitative sense already arrived.
How, then, do we understand, appropriate, and explain this intrusion of the eschaton
in a way that will be meaningful for the typical Christian? The Kingdom of God is an
effective scheme for accomplishing this task, and, as we saw in the Introduction, the
scheme of our Lord’s own choosing. The Kingdom parables in particular, when
understood in their redemptive-historical context, can be used to bring home the reality of
the Kingdom in our present day. The problem that Jesus was addressing with these
parables, a failure to appreciate the hidden and progressive character of the Kingdom, is
also prevalent in our day.
Jesus was teaching that the new age had dawned, that the eschatological Spirit was
poured out, that the kingdom of God was present, and that Satan’s kingdom was being
looted. Although signs of these things were apparent to those who were willing to receive
them, many of the things commonly associated with the coming of the kingdom were not

being observed. God’s enemies had not been judged, Israel remained oppressed by a
foreign power, and the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed seemed to be small and insignificant.
It turns out that Jesus had brought a hidden kingdom, which was only later to be made
visible to all the world. It was this special character of the Kingdom that Jesus sought to
explain with the parables of the Kingdom in Mark 4 and Matthew 13, which he described
as revealing “the mystery of the Kingdom.” A thoughtful reading of these parables
demonstrates that for Jesus “the mystery of the Kingdom is the coming of the Kingdom
into history in advance of its apocalyptic manifestation.” 19
The parable of the four soils (Mt 13:1-23; Mk 4:1-20), for instance, is not intended
merely to teach that one must be careful how one receives the word that Jesus sows,
which seems to be a common use of it in the church today. The parable, like all the
Kingdom parables, teaches redemptive-historical truth, and not merely a general moral
lesson.20 The point of the parable is to answer the disciple’s question as to how the
Kingdom can be present while very little on earth appears to have changed. Jesus
explains that the Kingdom is like a field being sown with a crop. The seed sown is
received differently from one place to another. In some people the word is received and
takes root, while in others it fails for various reasons. But even in the places where it
takes root, it will take some time before it bears its large volume of fruit. The Kingdom,
Jesus explains, is a dynamic reality, an organic process that has been inaugurated in their
midst with his coming.
19Ibid. 222.
20Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962) 121-123. This is not to argue
that it is inappropriate to draw from parables moral lessons that are not explicitly connected to the parable’s
redemptive-historical context. Moral applications may and should be drawn from all Scripture, including
parables, since Scripture consists of the very words of God. The Kingdom parables, however, are clearly
intended to assert redemptive-historical facts, and any merely moral application of them misses their
fundamental point.

The parable of the wheat and the tares (Mt 13:24-30) teaches a similar truth, with
emphasis on the fact that Jesus had not come to establish a separatist group. “The
Kingdom had come into the world without effecting a separation of men; this awaits the
eschatological consummation.”21 The mystery that had to be explained was the delay of
the Judgment, for Jesus had come this first time to bear the Judgment rather than to bring
it.
The parable of the mustard seed (Mt 13:31-32; Mk 4:30-32) explains how the great
eschatological Kingdom can be present and yet seem so insignificant. It may be
unobtrusive in its seminal form, but it will one day be the most prominent feature in the
garden of history. In similar fashion, the parable of the leaven (Mt 13:33) teaches that the
Kingdom will eventually “prevail so that no rival sovereignty exists.” 22 The parables of
the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price (Mt 13:44-46) teach that the Kingdom is
of inestimable value, even though at present it seems crude and inconsequential. The
parable of the growing seed (Mk 4:26-29) explains that the Kingdom seed grows by its
own power and that the crop is produced gradually, “first the blade, then the head, after
that the full grain in the head.” And finally the parable of the net (Mt 13:47-50) explains
the strange character of Jesus’ followers.23 The Kingdom of God has come into the world,
but it is not now making a separation among men.
When these parables are understood by the church in their redemptive-historical
context, we will take Jesus’ pronouncement of the presence of the Kingdom far more
seriously. We will understand that the Kingdom is not any less real because of its
21 Ladd, Presence of the Future 232. Ladd notes that the fact that the wicked will not be separated from the
righteous until the end of the world was well-accepted in Judaism and could not be the point of the parable.
The fact that the Kingdom had come and yet not brought about this separation is the secret truth that Jesus
is teaching his disciples.
22 Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom 237.
23 Ibid. 241.

hiddenness nor any less powerful because it subsists as an actual process in history. This
realization of the exercise of God’s dynamic power, through the eschatological Spirit that
has been poured out in this age, changes our perception of history as well as the present.
We look back on 2,000 years of Kingdom history and see striking evidence of the organic
process Jesus spoke of in the Kingdom parables. This conditions our view of the present
day, for we discern in the past no ordinary history, but the ever widening wave front of
some other-worldly impulse that entered history long ago. That wave front is advancing
still today, and it is nothing other than the dynamic power of God.
We do not forget, however, what Jesus taught about the tares, the thorns, the rocky
soil, and the birds that swoop down and steal the seed. Nor do we regard this present age
as insignificant by virtue of the fact that the decisive salvation event has already
occurred. Precisely because of the fact that we speak of a culmination of history, we
understand that a process in time is required to continue. The decisive mid-point of
history is not interpreted in a “metaphysical or existential sense, but as a real point in
time.” That which lies before it really precedes it, and that which lies after it really
follows. “The fact that sin is still present although the Holy Spirit is already at work
demonstrates that it is a redemptive necessity for time to continue in order to carry the
redemptive history to its goal.” 24
The Kingdom is therefore a powerful paradigm for confronting the myriad problems
facing the church today. Theological dullness, devotional apathy, racial divisions,
preoccupations with wealth and power, worldly values, worship of comfort these
should not exist in the Kingdom, but we understand that its history is still unfolding.
24 Cullmann, Christ and Time 92-93.

Furthermore, the Kingdom paradigm is a powerful antidote for these remnants of the old
order. Not only is the Kingdom a transforming agent bringing God’s dynamic power to
bear in history; it is also the purveyor of invincible hope, offering a certain vision of the
comprehensive renewal of all things that is grounded in what has already been decisively
accomplished, the culmination of which is being worked out before our very eyes.

CHAPTER THREE
Christ, the Law, and Righteousness in the Eschatological Manifestation of
the Kingdom
In the preceding chapter we outlined the basis for claiming that the “end of the
world” has already come, and we illustrated the sense in which this is asserted. We now
consider what it means to live in the Kingdom of God in this eschatological moment. It is
the presence of the King which reveals and defines the presence of the Kingdom, and our
King is now present in a transformed way. The ascension, not merely the resurrection,
determines the character of our present experience of the Kingdom, as the poured-out
eschatological Spirit mediates the presence of Christ to his people in these last days.
The eschatological Spirit is also the Holy Spirit, which indicates the significant place
of ethics in the Kingdom. Kingdom ethics must, however, be considered in the
fundamental redemptive-historical and theological context of the Kingdom. In other
words, our assessment of what it means to live in the Kingdom today should include an
examination of how the coming of the King relates to the fundamental ethical construct
of the preceding age, namely the Law, and that of the age that has come, namely the
theological teachings of the New Testament on law and righteousness. When the
Kingdom is considered in its essential ethical framework, it becomes apparent that
Kingdom righteousness involves far more than forensic justification, which seems to be
the dominant concern in contemporary Protestant thought and life.
This is not intended as a deprecation of the Protestant doctrine of justification, which
is one of the most precious of Christian truths, and, as Luther wisely observed, a doctrine

so critical that the very existence of the church is dependent on a right view of it. It is one
thing, however, to assert the necessity of embracing the doctrine of justification by faith
alone and the critical role that doctrine plays in the life of the Christian, and another thing
to treat the doctrine of justification as a uniquely central and all-controlling principle in
Christian theology that serves as the entrance point to all other doctrines. A sincere and
earnest belief in the former does not require an affirmation of the latter.
The Scripture’s revelation of the Kingdom presents an ethical landscape far broader
than is generally possible when forensic considerations are taken as one’s starting point
for thinking about God’s salvation. This will be illustrated below through a consideration,
first, of the ethical teachings of Christ, followed by an analysis of Paul’s view of the
validity of law in the Messianic age. It will then be demonstrated through a unified
analysis of Christ’s and Paul’s teachings that the eschatological manifestation of the
Kingdom of God has its center not in forensic justification, but in the revelation of Christ
and the believer’s union with him, and that the doctrine of justification is more properly
understood within this Kingdom rubric.25
25Any discussion today of Christ, the Law, and righteousness must occur against the backdrop of an
important theological controversy in the contemporary church the debate concerning the so-called New
Perspective on Paul in which the historic Protestant doctrine of justification is seriously challenged and
fundamental revisions to it are advocated
The claims made by the New Perspective proponents should not be summarily dismissed, for they
are made on the same basis that Luther pleaded his case at Worms an appeal to Scripture as a corrective
for theological error in the church and they include alleged new insights into first century Palestinian
Judaism, an important component of the backdrop against which Paul developed and communicated his
theology. If these claims are true, however, we should conclude that the Protestant doctrine of justification,
a doctrine that was central to the Reformation, which constitutes the primary discriminator between the
Roman Catholic and Protestant branches of the church, and which has played a critical role in the life of
Protestants throughout the world for nearly 500 years, is fundamentally flawed and requires radical
revision. Thus the controversy cannot be ignored.
A detailed analysis of the New Perspective debate is presented in the Appendix of this paper. The
material in the present chapter is loosely based on the findings presented there, which are summarized as
follows. The New Perspective presents interesting and provocative arguments for a reinterpretation of
Paul’s doctrine of justification, but these arguments ultimately fail to justify an abandonment of the
classical Protestant position on that critical doctrine. There are, however, certain aspects of the New
Perspective argument that resonate with Scripture in such a way as to suggest that they should not be
discarded, despite the problematic conclusions that have been drawn from them. An attempt should be
made to account for these observations in a manner that gives due consideration to the historic doctrines of
the church, while maintaining a commitment to their integration with the whole teaching of Scripture.

The ethical stance of Jesus
Righteousness and the Law in the Messianic Kingdom
When we reflect on the Jesus of the gospels from our present vantage point in
redemptive history, certain impressions of him stand out immediately in our mind: the
miracles he worked, the wisdom he imparted, the love he expressed, the judgment he
threatened, the traditions he trampled, the enemies he denounced, the death he died, his
resurrection from the dead. While these must have figured prominently also in the
impressions of him held by his contemporaries, an understanding of Jesus in his time
suggests a dominant impression among his contemporaries that is not so prevalent in our
minds today the note of fulfillment which he sounded so clearly and so powerfully.
More than four hundred years of Yahweh’s silence, followed by the Roman conquest,
had served only to heighten the sense of expectation among the Jewish people in
Palestine, an expectation of national deliverance from oppression and the vindication of
Israel before the nations as Yahweh’s covenant people. 26 Jesus dared to proclaim in this
setting that the Kingdom was at hand, the time was fulfilled, the Day of the LORD had
arrived, the culmination of history was about to unfold before their eyes. 27 He must have
known that his words would be like fire on dry timber. This note of fulfillment, therefore,
must be taken as an essential aspect of his mission and central to his teaching.
The fulfillment he preached, however, besides being hidden and provisional (a
fulfillment without consummation, as discussed in Chapter Two) was also quite strange to
Jewish ears. One by one, he grasped each of the pillars of Judaism and turned them on
their heads. There was but one God, but Jesus claimed identity with him forgiving
26 F.F. Bruce, New Testament History (Doubleday, 1969) 170.

27 Mk. 1:15; Lk. 4:16-21; Mt. 10:9-11;11:20.

sins,28 commanding the elements,29 receiving worship,30 teaching with divine authority.31
Israel was the elect of God, but Jesus warned them more than once that the Kingdom
would be taken away from them and given to the Gentiles. 32 The Law was their great
privilege and source of life, but Jesus unflinchingly rejected much of the interpretive
tradition of that Law, not keeping the Sabbath in the way they expected, 33 eschewing
ritual washings,34 denouncing the Pharisees, keepers of the Law, as hypocrites, brood of
vipers, whitewashed tombs.35
From our historical distance in the 21 st century, we can place the idiosyncratic
characteristics of Jesus’ mission in the overarching framework of God’s redemptive plan;
but to his contemporaries it must have seemed at times that everything was up for grabs.
Perhaps that is why Jesus delivered such a clear and unequivocal statement about the
continuing validity of the Law in the messianic age.
Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not
come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth
pass away not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law,
until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these
commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in the kingdom
of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in
the kingdom of heaven.36
Critical to the understanding of this text is what Jesus intends by the word fulfill.
Before considering this question, however, let us note some additional statements of
Jesus concerning the continuing validity of the Law. Bahnsen notes that “Jesus rebuked
Satan (and many modern ethicists) by declaring that all people should live ‘on every
word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matt. 4:4),” and that “when our Lord called us
28 Mt. 9:2;26:28; Mk. 2:5; Lk. 5:20; 7:47; Jn 20:23.
29 Mt. 8:23-27.
30 Mt. 2:11; 14:33; 28:8,17; Lk. 24:52; Jn. 9:38.
31 Mt. 7:28-29; Mk 1:21-22; Lk. 4:31-35; Jn 5:24-27.
32 Mt. 21:43; 8:10-13; Lk. 4:24-29; 13:6-9 (provisionally stated);
33 Mt. 12:1-14; Mk. 2:23-3:6; Lk. 6:1-11; 13:10-17; 14:1-6; Jn. 5:10-18; 7:20-24; 9:13-16.
34 Mt. 15:1-2; Mk. 7:1-2; Lk. 11:37-38.
35 Mt. 15:1-9; Mt. 23:1-32; Mk. 7:1-7.
36 Mt. 5:17-19.

to recognize ‘the more important matters of the law’ (Matt. 23:23), he immediately added
that the lesser matters should not be neglected.” Bahnsen also reminds us of Jesus’ words
“If you love me, you will obey what I command (John 14:15).” 37
We may add to this list those chilling words of Jesus concerning some on the last day
who will claim to have taught and worked miracles in his name: “Then I will declare to
them, ‘I never knew you. Go away from me, lawbreakers!’”38 Jesus also warns that on the
last day “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather [for eternal judgment]
from his kingdom everything that causes sin as well as all lawbreakers,”39 and that “it is
easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tiny stroke of a letter in the law to
become void.”40 Finally we note that when Jesus is asked which of the commandments
handed down from Moses is the greatest, he does not dismiss the question as irrelevant in
light of the inauguration of his ministry, but answers by highlighting the commands to
love God and one’s neighbor, asserting that “on these two commandments depend the
whole Law and the Prophets.”41
It is clear therefore that Jesus saw a continuing necessity of obedience to law in the
Kingdom he had inaugurated, and that he often had recourse to the Mosaic Law while
discussing this. His appropriation of the Mosaic Law, however, has certain idiosyncratic
features that are significant for our discussion. One who “annuls one of the least of these
commandments, and so teaches others” is spoken of not as excluded from the kingdom,
37 Greg L. Bahnsen, The Theonomic Reformed View in Five Views on Law and Gospel, Wayne G.
Strickland, ed. (Zondervan, 1993) 113-115.
38 Mt. 7:23 (NET). The Greek text reads ἐπγαζόμενοι τὴν ἀνομίαν, literally workers of lawlessness or
those who do “not law.” The NASB rendering is “you who practice lawlessness.” It would be difficult to
make the case that the Mosaic law is exclusively in view here. Neither should we conclude that it is
excluded, however, especially in light of the other statements of Jesus noted in this section.
39 Mt. 13:41 (NET). The NASB rendering is “those who commit lawlessness.” See note 38.
40 Lk. 16:17 (NET).
41 Mt. 22:34-40.

but rather “called least in the kingdom of heaven.” He then, however, concludes
somewhat paradoxically that “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees,
you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”42 The meaning of these statements is more
readily apparent when we read the continuation of Jesus’ sermon.
As noted above, Jesus apparently felt the need to point out that he was not abolishing
“The Law and the Prophets.” Now as he continues his discourse he makes it clear that
neither is he advocating a loosening of our obligation to the Law. He argues not only for
the enduring validity of the Law, but also for an intensified relationship to it. He
explicates the Law as concerned not merely with the external manifestation of
righteousness, but having its true genius in commanding an inward disposition and
commitment to its requirements. The law prohibits murder, but Jesus notes that “everyone
who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court...and whoever shall say,
‘you fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell” 43 The Law prohibits adultery,
but “everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her
already in his heart.”44 The sermon continues with a list of commands extracted from the
Law and its interpretive tradition, each one followed with a related command from Jesus
to possess inward righteousness.
This is neither a hyperbolic restatement of the Law’s commands, nor a proleptic
pronouncement of the Law as it will be kept after the consummation of the Kingdom. The
preceding context (1:1-5:16) highlights Jesus as the new Moses, the lawgiver of the
messianic age, and the succeeding context (6:1-24) emphasizes the necessity of inward
obedience in addition to outward conformance to the law. Poythress shows that Matthew
42 Mt. 5:19-20.
43 Mt. 5:21-22.
44 Mt. 5:27-28.

1-7 reveals Jesus as fulfilling the purpose and meaning of the first five books of Moses,
with Matthew 1-4 representing the narrative and Matthew 5-7 the didactic sections. 45
Jesus speaks on his own authority as the new Moses, articulating a shift in perspective on
the Law from primarily concerned with outward obedience to being focused on inward
disposition. “Jesus’ teaching does not contradict the true meaning of the law of Moses,
but neither is it a straightforward expression of the obvious meaning of Moses.” 46
Poythress argues that Jesus is not establishing another external rule that replaces that
of Moses, but rather announcing a transformation of the Law through his fulfillment of it.
This fulfillment is not merely his successful obedience to all of the Law’s requirements,
but the appearance of the person of Jesus, representing the embodiment of everything the
Law was intended to be, the fulfillment of the purposes of the Law in the deepest sense.
The coming of the kingdom of heaven means a fundamental advance in

the working out of God’s purposes. God’s promises of His reign and His
salvation, as given in the Old Testament, are being accomplished. What
the law foreshadowed and embodied in symbols and shadows is now
coming into realization…Jesus’ teaching represents not simply the
reiteration of the law but a step forward, bringing the purposes of the law
into realization. The law is to be written on the hearts of his disciples (see
Jeremiah 31:31-34).47
Jesus’ transformation of the Law does not take the Law in a new direction but is
accomplished in accordance with the true character of the Law and represents the
fulfillment of its very purposes. This transformation, however, fundamentally alters our
relationship to the law. In contrast to Bahnsen’s approach of carefully analyzing the Law
in the hope of discerning which parts are applicable to the New Covenant and how their
application is transformed by virtue of our redemptive-historical and cultural distance
45 Vern S. Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991) 252-255.
46 Ibid. 258.
47 Ibid. 264-265.

from the Old Testament,48 Poythress argues for a Christocentric understanding of the Law
that comprehends its transformation in terms of the very person of Christ.
Jesus in His person and His ministry brings to realization and fulfillment
the whole warp and woof of Old Testament revelation, including the
revelation of the law. All the commandments of the law are binding on
Christians ([Mt.]7:19), but the way in which they are binding is
determined by the authority of Christ and the fulfillment that takes place in
his work…Since Jesus commands us to practice and teach even the “least
of these commandments” of the law ([Mt.]5:19), we are bound to do so.
But we do so as disciples who have learned how to discern the function of
the law of Moses as a pointer to the realities of Jesus Christ our Lord. The
way in which each law is fulfilled in Christ determines the way in which it
is to be observed now. Since the law foreshadows the righteousness of
Christ and the kingdom of heaven, the practice of the law in the deepest
sense takes the form of replicating the character and grace of Christ in our
lives and imitating our heavenly Father.49
Jesus’ unprecedented note of fulfillment, therefore, is of critical importance for our
understanding of Kingdom ethics. Although Jesus represents the transformation of the
Law into a personal mode, however, its particular expression in the Mosaic writings
continues to have great importance for us. The written commands of the Law are
invaluable guides as we seek to be obedient to the Law through personal faith in and
commitment to Jesus Christ, God’s personal expression of the Law. We are ever mindful,
however, of the mediating function Jesus performs with respect to the Law. The writings
of Moses are not the last words from God on ethics, and we have “the prophetic word
made more sure” (1 Pe. 1:19) in the revelation of the person of Jesus.
In all this, something more far-reaching than forensic righteousness and double
imputation is in view. The King who comes to bear in his own body the judgment due his
people nevertheless preaches the necessity of living according to law. Although his
concept of law-keeping is integrally connected to his epoch-making appearance in history
and the regenerative effects of spiritual union with his people, there is nevertheless a
48 Bahnsen, The Theonomic Reformed View 100-124.

49 Poythress, The Shadow of Christ 268-269 (emphasis added).

content to his ethics that has a significance in its own right, quite distinct from the reality
of the substitutionary atonement. The Kingdom which Jesus inaugurated makes ethical
demands on its subjects that represent essential aspects of what it means for the Kingdom
to come into history.
The Social Trajectory of Kingdom Ethics

It is one thing to assert that Jesus taught and personified the continuing validity of
the Mosaic law, and quite another to insist that his words or example are normative today
on the societal level. So disputed is the question that J. H. Yoder found it necessary to
provide a book-length argument for the proposition that Jesus taught a normative social
ethic.50 An objection to the normative relevance of Jesus for contemporary society may be
raised on the basis of three general lines of argument. 1) The vast cultural and temporal
distance between Jesus’ day and our own makes it difficult or impossible to extract
ethical norms from his life that may be applied today at the societal level. 2) Jesus’
unique identity as God incarnate and the Jewish Messiah severely limits the normative
relevance of his deeds for those who believe in him, and his unique and all-consuming
mission of providing atonement for the people of God calls into question the very
assertion that Jesus taught a normative social ethic. 3) Many of the teachings of Jesus
were thoroughly conditioned by the unique redemptive-historical moment in which he
lived, and their normative relevance is therefore limited accordingly.

50 John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Eerdmans, 1972 (1996)). The mainstream ethical arguments
historically raised against a normative social ethic in Jesus are identified as follows: 1) “The ethic of Jesus
is an ethic for an ‘Interim’ which Jesus thought would be very brief. 2) “Jesus was…a simple rural figure…
His radical personalization of all ethical problems is only possible in a village sociology where knowing
everyone and having time to treat everyone as a person is culturally an available possibility.” 3) “Jesus and
his early followers lived in a world over which they had no control…[Christians] must accept
responsibilities that were inconceivable in Jesus’ situation.” 4) “The nature of Jesus’ message was
ahistorical by definition. He dealt with spiritual and not social matters, with the existential and not the
concrete.” 5) Jesus’ concept of the radical discontinuity between God and humans served to relativize all
human values. “The will of God cannot be identified with any one ethical answer.” 6) Jesus came to
provide atonement for sins and justification with God, and this has no connection to ethics (1-13). Yoder
does not provide a dogmatic response to these positions, but offers instead a sustained articulation of what
he takes to be Jesus’ social ethic in the remainder of the book.

These lines of argument identify considerations that must be accounted for as we
seek to apply the teachings and example of Jesus to contemporary society; but to justify
the dismissal or substantial abrogation of the normative relevance of the Son of God
would require a more compelling basis than these arguments provide. Furthermore, it is
abundantly clear from Scripture that Jesus had a profound effect on the society of his day,
and although he repeatedly exerted his influence in unexpected and perplexing ways, he
did not seem to regard his influence on society as irrelevant. Much of his teaching was
couched in communitarian language and expressed social ideals. Given that the modern
idolization of the individual self is the exception and not the rule of history, the burden of
proof lies on the one who would argue for a personalist interpretation of Jesus. The prima
facie evidence of the Gospels is of a Jesus who had something to say primarily to his
society, and who seemed to encourage the appropriation of his life and teaching in a
communitarian setting.
Yoder argues that the relevance of Jesus’ social ethic is most plainly shown by the
fact that he was crucified, that both the Roman and Jewish authorities were sufficiently
threatened by him to violate their respective laws to be rid of him. “His alternative was so
relevant, so much a threat, that Pilate could afford to free, in exchange for Jesus, the
ordinary Guevara-type insurrectionist Barabbas.” 51 Jesus offered not a rejection of the
relevance of social ethics, but an assertion of a competing understanding of what it means
to be human at the social level. “He did not say (as some sectarian pacifists or some
pietists might), ‘you can have your politics and I shall do something else more
51 Ibid. 106-107.

important’; he said, ‘your definition of polis, of the social, of the wholeness of being
human socially is perverted.’”52
It is precisely this social trajectory of Jesus’ ethics that the Kingdom of God motif
addresses. A kingdom is a society, operating according to its own distinctive values,
norms, and mores. The tendency within the evangelical church to overlook the
significance of the Kingdom framework has contributed to a radical personalization of
the believer’s relationship with Jesus and appropriation of his ethical teachings. The
Kingdom motif should inoculate the church against an overemphasis on such images as
walking privately with Jesus in the garden or enlisting him as one’s copilot. 53 Such
radically personalized perspectives on Jesus have little or no basis in the biblical text. The
Jesus of the Gospels is intensely social, and as such is scarcely recognizable to many in
the evangelical church who reject the social Jesus, perhaps in part because they can
conceive of him in no other terms than those of the liberation theologians. The Kingdom
rubric enables us to embrace the social Jesus presented in the Gospels without retreating
from the essential Christian truths traditionally recognized by evangelicals.
The abstract representation of Jesus that is a natural consequence of
underemphasizing the Kingdom framework results in a flattening of his image into a safe
and comfortable “Sunday School” character a historical myth, a future King, a
comforting presence. To see Jesus in his Kingdom-of-God context is to see him in three-
dimensional relief. He does not fit into the believer’s personal grid of assumptions and
52Ibid. 107.
53This is not to say that images of intimate and personal relations between the believer and Jesus are
inappropriate, but that the believer’s relationship with Jesus should be considered within the Kingdom
rubric and not against a merely personal horizon. Although such images are not prominent in the PCA, we
nevertheless fail to provide an effective antidote to the popular evangelical distortion of Jesus’ relationship
to his people to the extent that we have a less than adequate appreciation of the significance of the Kingdom
motif in Scripture.

expectations, but the believer’s expectations are made to fit into the Kingdom scheme
that Jesus reveals and brings into history.
Jesus’ distinctive and repeated pronouncements of eternal judgment for the
unrepentant, for instance, make sense in the Kingdom framework, but are at odds with
the generally accepted abstract view of him. The abstract Jesus is to a great extent a
product of our expectations, and his words of judgment are therefore taken as dissonant
chords that represent a problem to be solved if we are to obtain a coherent view of him.
Jesus in his Kingdom-of-God context is not encumbered by our expectations as he
reveals God’s grand design for history. Thus there is no problem to be solved when he
who is stricken for the sins of his people also warns of a great cataclysm approaching for
the wicked, for the Kingdom by its very nature brings about a radical and final separation
among men while ushering in the reign of God.
Jesus therefore speaks to society, not merely to individual believers, unveiling and
actualizing God’s purposes on a cosmic scale. In this capacity Jesus is revealed as the
culminating voice of the Jewish Old Testament prophets, who, as we saw in Chapter Two,
revealed God’s will for the people of their day in light of God’s will for the great future.
Furthermore, we argued, with the coming of Jesus a new division of time has occurred,
such that our expectations for the future are centered on the decisive events that have
already come to pass. Although the coming of Christ into history has a once-for-all
significance in the life of every individual believer, the new division of time also has
implications at the societal level. The Gospels make it clear that Jesus has brought
something into history that is to function in its own right, a way of living that is to be
applied now and have its intended effect in this age, and not merely serve as a pointer to a

merely apocalyptic deliverance “off the map of human experience, off the scale of time,
in that [it] announce[s] an end to history.”
The Kingdom of God is a social order and not a hidden one. It is not a
universal catastrophe independent of the will of human beings; it is that
concrete jubilary obedience, in pardon and repentance, the possibility of
which is proclaimed beginning right now…That the hearers would refuse
this offer and promise, pushing away the kingdom that had come close to
them, this Jesus had also predicted.54
The Kingdom which Jesus proclaimed and inaugurated, therefore, is not subject to
marginalization on either spatial or temporal terms. It is neither a proclamation of some
entirely other-worldly good, brightly but irrelevantly shining on the “real world” of
human history, nor a purely proleptic statement of the fulfillment of history destined to
occur beyond history. It is a proclamation of salvation in history a salvation grounded
in the possibility of miracle and the necessity of divine intervention, and yet operating as
a genuine historical quantity.
This salvation-in-history, however, operates on a peculiar principle, which is often
summarized in Christian theology as the way of the cross. The power which Jesus held
over society was wielded paradoxically as the very negation of power that is, the
negation of power as it is understood in the world. The victory of God is accomplished in
the defeat of Jesus. This truth is well-known among Christians, but a truth that is perhaps
not so well-remembered, at least in relation to the nature of God’s victory in Christ, is
that a servant is not greater than his master. “If they persecuted me, they will also
persecute you.”55 In evaluating the social ethic of Jesus, we should not be surprised to
find that his people are to operate on the same peculiar principal, the way of the cross.
54 Yoder, Politics of Jesus 104-105.

55 John 15:20.

Yoder argues that the way of the cross consists not merely in opposition to the
application of coercive means, but also in opposition to any attempt to order history in
accordance with an asserted good. This is not indicative of a lack of concern on Jesus’
part for the outcome of history, but the conviction that God would order history for his
ends, apart from any (ultimately fruitless) attempt by God’s servants to understand and
direct the movement of history. This conviction, furthermore, would have resonated with
the people of Israel, whose apocalyptic expectations of national deliverance were
conditioned by the biblical stories of God fighting victoriously for his people. “[Jesus]
could very easily have been understood as updating the faith of Jehoshaphat and
Hezekiah, a faith whereby a believing people would be saved despite their weakness, on
condition that they “be still and wait to see the salvation of the LORD.”56
That this salvation may not come in quite the same way as it did for Jehoshaphat and
Hezekiah, even when the people of God wait quietly in faith, can be seen from the early
history of Christianity. Our mothers and fathers entrusted their fate to God and the lions
tore them to pieces. Through the faithfulness of these martyrs the Christian faith was
launched onto a trajectory from which in due time it changed the course of human
history. This is another well-known fact, but what is currently lacking is perhaps an
appreciation of just how different is the Christianity we know today from that of those
who worshipped in the shadow of the coliseum. This is not to say that some essential
aspect of Christianity is inaccessible to a society that does not live under the threat of
painful persecution, but rather that those early martyrs displayed an understanding of the
Kingdom that is lacking and needful even in our relatively comfortable existence in 21 st
century America.
56 Yoder, Politics of Jesus 84.

They understood that God was acting in history even when his people were tortured
and killed, when his name was dishonored and the cause of Christianity was severely and
effectively opposed by those in power. They understood the power inherent in their
witness to the truth, and were content to rest in that power. This sensibility is largely
unknown in the church today. One can only wonder what the outcome would have been if
we had stood against the abortionists in the same way that those early Christians had
faced the lions, not budging one inch in their witness to the truth but refusing to take up
the means wielded by their tormentors. This is not merely a call for non-violence,
however, for the abortion clinic bombers are merely the extreme case of taking up
worldly means. Ours is a civilized society, and we wield our weapons humanely on the
battlefield of power politics. Political power is not immoral in itself, and it has a useful
place in our society, but it does not become the Kingdom of God to take its place among
the power brokers in the public square. That this fundamental truth could be missed by so
many is both tragic and telling.
The social ethic of Jesus is the way of the cross the embracing of suffering as a free
choice made after counting the cost, the acceptance of servanthood and subordination in
place of dominion, the refusal to participate in the corrupt power structures of society, the
assertion of a jubilee ethic of forgiveness and restoration. This way of the cross is the
singular aspect of Jesus’ life that the New Testament literature enjoins as binding on
every Christian.57 It is enjoined, however, for Christian society the Kingdom of
God not for profane society, the world at large, or individuals considered abstractly
apart from any social structure. It is the church as the church that is forbidden coercive
means. Jesus presents a social ethic to his people, to those who will be ruled by him, and
57 Ibid. 131.

he has nothing to say on ethics to fallen society at large, other than to command them to
repent and submit to his rule as members of his Kingdom. This is readily apparent in his
earthly ministry, as he explicitly limits his interest to the lost sheep of Israel. Even after
the expansion of the Kingdom to all peoples at Pentecost, however, it is still the Kingdom
of God that is being proclaimed. People from all nations are invited into the Kingdom,
but the social ethic proclaimed to them is by definition an ethic for God’s people. 58
The Kingdom framework shows us how the way of the cross is to be reconciled with
our life in the present age. Because the Kingdom has come, the Christian lives in the
world according to Kingdom ethics. Because the Kingdom is coming, the Christian has
no anxious compulsion to take responsibility for the outcome of history. In contrast to a
troubling tendency in the church, Jesus’ social ethic argues against too sharp a distinction
between the here and the hereafter or between the real world and the spiritual world..
“What we are doing now leads to where we are going…The universe that the seer of
Patmos sees ahead is a universe that is, a single system in which God acts and we
act, with our respective actions relating to each other.” 59 The refusal to accept these false
distinctions is grounded in the recognition of the Kingdom of God as participating
equally in both poles in each set of supposed dialectical choices. It is genuinely here, but
the inaugural realization of an unprecedented hereafter. It is not of this world, but it is in
58 Yoder argues that Jesus asserted an individual ethic of non-violence as well, an ethic which individuals
are obligated to obey even in their capacities as citizens of this-worldly kingdoms. His argument seems to
ignore or dismiss some fundamental considerations, viz. that Jesus’ ethics are consistently presented in a
Kingdom of God framework, that Jesus may have refused the sword because he had another mission (i.e.,
the crucifixion) rather than because he intended to establish a normative ethic of non-violence in the midst
of the fallen world, and that Israel’s chastisement for relying on worldly means is inseparable from her
identity as the geopolitical representative of the Kingdom of God, which Kingdom must come by God’s
doing and not man’s. It is one thing to note that Jesus forbids his people to advance the Kingdom of God
through worldly means, and quite another to insist that individual Christians make their participation in
secular institutions conditional upon such institutions adopting the same restrictions on means that Jesus
commanded for his Kingdom.
59 Yoder, Politics of Jesus 242.

this world in the fullest sense of that word. A docetism of the Kingdom is no less a heresy
than a docetism of the King.
The Kingdom is a society, already established, moving on a trajectory fixed by the
immutable counsel of God. The church, and indeed individual Christians, are not to think
that their role is to be the managers of history. Faithfulness, rather than effectiveness, is
our watchword, and participation in and emulation of the dying of Christ is our way of
living in history. “The cross of Christ is the model of Christian social efficacy, the power
of God for those who believe.”60
* * *
Jesus’ ethical stance is far broader than is generally indicated by the common
emphasis in the church today on forensic righteousness and the substitutionary
atonement, as vital as those doctrines are. Jesus has a significant place for law in his
ethics, and this is meaningful on both the individual and the societal level. In the process
of appearing in the flesh to make atonement for his peoples’ sins, Jesus also inaugurated a
manifestation of his kingdom as a social phenomenon in history.
The concept of law is significant for Kingdom ethics, but the role it plays is
conditioned by the redemptive-historical fact of Jesus’ entrance into history. That
redemptive-historical fact, what Cullmann refers to as the “Christ-event,” is the central
focus and organizing principle of the synoptic gospels. It is also the center of Paul’s
thought, notwithstanding the general tendency in contemporary Protestantism to view
forensic righteousness as constituting the core of Paul’s theology. This will be argued
below by demonstrating that Paul, like Jesus, holds to the continuing validity of law in
60 Ibid.

the messianic age, that he sees the character of law and the believer’s relationship to it as
thoroughly conditioned by the redemptive-historical fact of Christ’s coming into history,
and that he views the central reality of the messianic age as union with Christ, of which
both forensic righteousness and ethical transformation are necessary corollaries.
Paul’s Teaching on Christ and the Law

To discuss Paul’s teaching on righteousness is to answer again, now from the
perspective of Pauline theology, the question of the validity of the Law in the messianic
age. Now that the Kingdom age has begun and the eschatological Spirit has been poured
out, what place does Paul give to law61 in the life of the believer in Christ? One potential
answer is offered by F.F. Bruce, who makes the provocative statement that “It is plain that
Paul believed and taught that the law had been in a major sense abrogated by Christ.” 62
Bruce acknowledges that Paul speaks of the “law of love,” but he understands this to be
“a completely different kind of law, fulfilled not by obedience to a code but by the
outworking of an inward power.”63
Such a reading of the Pauline texts would imply that the Apostle views life in Christ,
in the new aeon, with the Spirit poured out, as incompatible with obedience to a code.
This is difficult to reconcile with the particular character of Paul’s paraenesis, 64 and the
61 For the purposes of our Pauline analysis, we will consider both law in the general sense and the Mosaic
Law, since Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith raises the question of the validity or binding nature of
any normative standard for Christian living.
62 F.F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Eerdmans, 1977) 190. Bruce further argues against
Calvin’s concept of the third use of the law. Acknowledging that in the tradition derived from Geneva, the
law is not seen as a means unto salvation but as a rule of life, he nevertheless argues that although this may
be cogently maintained as a position within Christian ethics, it has no basis in Pauline theology (192). The
Pauline usage of phrases such as “law of the Spirit” or “law of Christ” in the context of giving guidance to
the church, according to Bruce, involve the use of law in a “non-legal sense.” Paul’s use of law is certainly
complex, but if by “non-legal” Bruce means “non-justifying,” the point may readily be conceded. But we
then have a trivially true statement; for the significant question is not whether law is a means to obtain
merit, but whether or not we may discern in Paul any assertion of normative standards operating in the
context of grace.
63 Ibid.
64 That is, the presence of an objective ground for his exhortation to live appropriately in Christ. There is a
content to Paul’s ethics, which is expressed authoritatively, often with recourse to the Mosaic Law. This
assertion will be illustrated below from the Pauline texts.

fact that he hears the righteousness of faith speaking from within the Law (Ro 10:6-10).
This illustrates the crux of the problem concerning the relationship of law to believers in
the present age. Should we draw a sharp antithesis between Christ and law such that
obedience to a code is incompatible with life in Christ? Is the Mosaic Law, in particular,
of such a radically different character that Christ could have no dealing with it except to
terminate it?
That such an antithesis between Christ and the Law exists does appear at first
consideration to be precisely the point of several Pauline passages. We will briefly
examine two of these passages below, showing that an opposite conclusion can be
supported. We will then look more carefully at a third passage, which provides a basis
for a more definitive characterization of the relationship between Christ and the Law.
2 Cor. 3:7-11: The Law as a Ministry of Death

In this passage Paul speaks of the Law as a “ministry of death and “a ministry of
condemnation,” which is surpassed in glory by the ministry of the gospel such that
relatively speaking it has no glory, and therefore “fades away” in contrast to the ministry
of the gospel, “which remains.” Cranfield observes that the contrast between the letter
and the Spirit in this passage is not to be taken as a contrast between a religion which had
a written code and one which now operates in an inward manner and knows no law. The
contrast is rather between “the legalistic relation of the Jews of Paul’s time to God and to
His law and the new relation to God and to His law established by the Holy Spirit and
resulting from Christ’s work.”65 It is the Spirit who gives life, not because He operates
apart from the Law, but because the sinfulness of the flesh is such that the spiritual, holy,
65C.E.B Cranfield, St. Paul and the Law, in Scottish Journal of Theology 17:54 Mr 1964. See the Appendix
for a discussion of the New Perspective on Paul assertion that this is a misrepresentation of Judaism, and
Gaffin’s argument that a legalistic element was not entirely lacking in Judaism, and was quite likely present
in Paul’s opponents.

and good Law produces only death in the flesh, apart from the regenerating and life-
giving activity of the Spirit.
Gal 3:15-25: The Law as a Conductor to Christ

After establishing that the law could not set aside any aspect of the covenant of
promise (which was given 430 years prior), Paul here asks the question, Why the Law?
His answer is that the Law was given as a guardian or custodian to conduct us to Christ,
and that “now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (NET). There is no
doubt that Paul wishes to deprecate the concept of law in the mind of his “bewitched”
Galatians, but the superior nature of the covenant administration given to Abraham need
not imply a completely provisional or ancillary character of the Law. Three further
observations are apposite.
1. There are indications that law is used here by Paul in a narrow sense, especially in
view of the polemical nature of the letter. Cranfield summarizes Calvin, describing Paul’s
usage here as the “bare law” (nuda lex), asserting that it is “this law-apart-from-Christ,
this law that is less than its true self” which Paul is presenting as temporary. 66
2. The law has several uses, and that one of those uses—namely the pedagogical
function of the law—is exhaustively discharged in leading us to Christ need not imply
that the law in its entirety is of a provisional nature and destined for obsolescence.
3. The sense of the law which is provisional, and is therefore terminated upon our
being successfully conducted to Christ, is not the function of law as a norm for living, but
the enslaving aspect of the law under which we groaned while in its custody. 67
66 Cranfield, St. Paul and the Law 63.

67 Ridderbos, Paul 148.

Rom 10:4: Christ is the Telos of the Law
Paul asserts in this passage that “Christ is the end ( τέλος) of the law.” The word
τέλος has a multitude of possible meanings, among which “termination” and “goal” are
the two most commonly translated in this passage. The context of the passage is of course
significant for determining the intended meaning of τέλος. In particular, the meaning of
9:30-33 is determinative.68
What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness,
attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel,
pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because
they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works.... (Ro 9:30-
32)
Paul is here contrasting the Gentiles’ attainment of righteousness with the failure of
the Jews to attain the same. The fact that Paul introduces the term law when he speaks of
the righteousness which the Jews sought may be said to be “because, in contrast to that of
the Gentiles, Jewish piety is inextricably tied to the law, the Torah.” 69 These are parallel
statements of the pursuit of piety by Gentiles and Jews, and both statements for this
reason are to be taken in a positive manner. Likewise, the success of the Gentiles in
attaining righteousness is compared to the failure of the Jews to “arrive at the law.” Israel
is not faulted for pursuing a law of righteousness, but for the manner in which they
pursued it (by works instead of by faith), and for their failure to arrive at that law. 70
That 10:1 does not introduce a new subject, but expounds on this contrast, is shown
by Paul’s lament that Israel has zeal without knowledge, and that therefore “not knowing
about God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject
themselves to the righteousness of God” (10:3). It is immediately following this that we
68 C. Thomas Rhyne, Nomos Dikaiosynes and the meaning of Romans 10:4, in The Catholic Biblical
Quarterly 47:487 Jl 1985.
69 Ibid. 488. See note 65.
70 Ibid.

find the important statement of 10:4, introduced by the conjunction γάρ, and therefore
correlated with what was stated in 10:3. The fact that Israel pursued their own
righteousness in opposition to the righteousness of God is explicated with the contrasting
statement “For Christ is the τέλος of the law for righteousness to everyone who
believes.” Since righteousness is what the Jews failed to obtain and what the Gentiles did
obtain, the statement that Christ is the τέλος of the law for righteousness seems to be an
affirmation that τέλος is here used in the sense of goal; for the failure of the Jews to reach
the “goal” of righteousness is ascribed to their failure to understand that the Law was
pointing to righteousness in Christ.
Since we have already seen that Paul’s statements about law in 9:30-32 were not
negative put positive, and that Israel was not faulted for pursuing a law of righteousness
but for pursuing it by works, it is difficult to understand τέλος here as a termination of the
law. Furthermore, since 9:30-32 deals with the question of the end to which the Gentiles
and the Jews are progressing, and the means by which they are pursuing those respective
ends, it is reasonable to interpret τέλος here as goal.71
Christ is the goal to which the law was aiming not merely because Christ was
prefigured in the law or because the law was preparing and leading men to Christ but
because the righteousness which the Gentiles found and which the Jews failed to find is a
71Since Paul is arguing that Christ is the goal of the Law, we may ask why the Law should not be
understood to be terminated, since the goal to which it was aiming has been reached. When one reaches the
finish line in a race, one stops running. This analogy, however, is not entirely appropriate. Christ is the goal
of the Law with respect to the fact that he embodies it fully and can therefore accomplish what the Law
could not, applying all the benefits of the Law to his people through their personal union with him. Jesus
accomplishes in his people what the Law by its nature was designed to do for them but was rendered
powerless to do because of the corruption of sin. Christ is not presented in Scripture as the goal of the Law
in the sense of providing a new code of conduct that replaces that contained in the Law. Thus the Law is
terminated as an enslaving and condemning agent, and as a conductor to Christ, but not as a code of
conduct. We will see in the remainder of this chapter that although Paul teaches that believers fulfill the law
through their union with Christ, he continues to have recourse to the code of conduct contained in the Law
when he describes life in Christ in the Messianic age.

righteousness of faith, which comes through faith in Christ. This is developed in the
subsequent verses, as Moses is quoted in verse 5 regarding the righteousness which
comes from practicing the law, and this righteousness is strongly contrasted (Gk.ἀλλά)
with the righteousness of faith, which is also explicated from the law (vv. 6-10). The
apostle, looking back from the vantage point of the revelation of the Gospel, sees faith in
Christ implicit in the Law because Christ is the goal toward which the law has always
been aiming.72
The righteousness of God is a righteousness of faith, and it is found in and witnessed
by the Law. The Jews pursued this law and failed to attain it not merely because they
were unsuccessful in keeping the requirements of the Law, but because in their zeal
without knowledge they failed to perceive that the righteousness of which the Law speaks
is a righteousness of faith. Christ is the goal or culmination of this Law of righteousness
(i.e., a law leading to righteousness, namely the righteousness of Christ), whom the
Gentiles have embraced by faith and the Jews have failed to so embrace because they
were pursuing the Law of righteousness according to works.73
Christ the Fulfillment of the Law

How, then, should we understand Paul’s teaching on the place of the Law in the life
of the believer specifically, his assertion that in Christ we fulfill the requirements of the
Law? An important passage in this regard is Ro 8:3. After demonstrating the inability of
the law to bring about righteousness due to the sinfulness of the flesh, Paul writes
72 Rhyne, Nomos Dikaiosynes 492.

73 See the Appendix (esp. note 160) for the argument advanced by Westerholm that Second Temple
Judaism, while not legalistic in a rigorous sense of that word, nevertheless saw Law as something “that
needed doing.” Westerholm maintains that the Jews saw the Law as a gracious source of life, but that that
life was bound up with the “doing” of the Law. Paul realized after meeting the risen Christ that the doing of
the law could never bring life, since human sinfulness rendered the law powerless to save and highlighted
the necessity of salvation by faith in Christ, which God must have intended as the goal and purpose of the
Law from the beginning.

For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did:
sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for
sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the law
might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but
according to the Spirit.
Although the Law lacks any power to enable us to live according to its precepts, the
life which the Spirit provides in contrast to the powerless Law is a life which fulfills the
requirement of the law. That Paul here contrasts Spirit, rather than faith, with law shows
that it is not simply faith in Christ’s fulfillment of the law on our behalf which he is
picturing, but also the new life principle in us which is a fulfillment of the good, holy, and
righteous law. Paul asserts that life “according to the Spirit” accomplishes what the Law
was intended to do but was powerless to accomplish because of sin. In light of the fact
that Paul has been describing the Law and its intended purpose not merely in legal terms
but also as a genuine ethical force and source of life, we may construe this assertion as
indicating that the law is fulfilled in believers not merely in an imputational, forensic
sense, but rather as a new principle of life indwelling them by virtue of their union with
Christ.74
This fulfillment motif is explicated further in Ro 13:8-10, where Paul writes that “He
who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law,” and then explains this assertion by quoting
from the Decalogue and claiming that these and other commands are summed up in the
commandment, quoted from Lev 19:18, that “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Ridderbos comments on verse 8 that Paul “speaks of the fulfilling of the law, however, as
74Cf. Ro 6:1-14, where Paul follows his explication of justification by faith with an assertion that life in
Christ involves far more than this astounding forensic benefit. Those baptized in Christ are said to be
unable to sin deliberately as a response to the freedom implied by grace, because of a new life principle
indwelling the believer that is characteristic of a new redemptive-historical situation. They are no longer
“slaves to sin,” death and sin are no longer masters over them, and sin is said to no longer reign in their
mortal bodies.

something that is required of believers, and which presupposes a continuing significance
of the law”.75
This commandment from Leviticus is quoted again in Gal 5:14, where Paul writes
“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement ‘you shall love your
neighbor as yourself.’” That Paul should make such explicit statements of the law’s
fulfillment in love, in these two letters where the negative uses of the law and its
powerlessness to save are emphasized, is striking.76 Paul’s negative statements about the
law are not to be taken as precluding its positive and continuing validity. Ridderbos sums
up this view of the law as fulfilled in love: “Love functions here not as a new Christian
ideal or as a new norm, which comes in the place of the law or makes it superfluous. It is
precisely required here as the summary of the law.” 77
Furthermore, the Christological determination of Paul’s view of law is sharply
focused in 1 Cor 9:21, where Paul refers to himself as “under the law of Christ,” and in
Gal 6:2, where he refers again to the “law of Christ.” 78 As Ridderbos notes, “Christ, the
Spirit, and love form a unity in Paul, and therefore Christ, the Spirit, and the fulfillment
of the law are not to be separated.”79 It is our life in the Spirit which makes it possible for
us in any degree to do what the law requires; but the law continues to serve as an
objective statement of the nature of life in Christ.
Paul focuses this concept of the law fulfilled in Christ more explicitly when he writes
in the letter to the Romans, after deprecating the law as having no justifying power or

76 Ibid. 76.
77 Ibid. 282.
78 These passages indicate the continuing validity of some concept of law in Paul’s thinking, but not
necessarily the Law of Moses. That the Law of Moses is nevertheless in view as well cannot be ruled out,
especially in light of the other statements of Paul discussed in this section.
79 Ibid.

function, and asserting that we are saved by faith in Christ apart from obedience to the
law, “[d]o we then nullify the law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we
establish the law” (Ro 3:31). The antithesis for Paul between law and faith in Christ
concerns only the mode of operation of law versus faith. For all the glorious advantages
and superiority of faith over law, Paul nevertheless speaks of an essential unity between
the two, as the former is described as the very establishment of the latter.
Because the law continues to be a valid expression of God’s character and the rule of
life for His people, we discern in the Scriptures an objective description of righteousness
which is not superseded or invalidated by the mode of Spirit that characterizes the present
age. The category of Spirit has to do with the power to live according to the law, and does
not imply a shift from an objective to a subjective content of the law. The continuing
validity of the law, if understood properly so as to avoid the very real danger of legalistic
law-keeping, provides a valuable corrective against a false interpretation of Paul’s
teachings as witnessing to a life principle which cannot be expressed in propositional
terms. Because the law continues to be valid as a rule of life, God’s holy character can be
expressed for us in a manner which can be apprehended by our minds.
Law and Spirit in the Messianic Kingdom

The foregoing analysis of Paul’s teaching on the law indicates that the presence of
the eschatological Spirit has profound implications for Kingdom ethics. The Spirit is the
agent of God’s dynamic power in this final aeon of redemptive history, breaking the
dominion of sin over us so that we fulfill the law of God by virtue of our union with
Christ through faith. The presence of the eschatological Spirit, however, and the
fulfillment of the law that results from his presence, do not abrogate the validity of the

law as a code of conduct that is normative for God’s people in these last days. The Spirit
exerts a principle of love within us, but it is the law of God which objectively sets forth
the content of that principle, in effect setting His holy character before our eyes and
providing an object toward which this love may be directed. The Pauline paraenesis, in
setting forth this object of love in the pronouncements of the law, calls forth and excites
that love which is born in us by the Spirit.
Thus Christ, Spirit, and law retain their essential unity in the Kingdom age. The
Spirit given by Christ to his people enables them to fulfill the law, the expression of
God’s holy character, the complete revelation of which is the culmination of God’s
redemptive acts in history. The appearance of Christ in history, and especially his
inauguration of the last days in accordance with his essential unity with law and Spirit, is
the center of Paul’s preaching, the superstructure on which his theology is built. This will
be illustrated below in terms of the internal unity of Paul’s thought as well as the unity
between Paul’s writings and the synoptic gospels.
Righteousness and Life: The Eschatological Gift
Let us now determine what manner of unity can be discerned between Christ’s and
Paul’s teaching on the relevance of Law to life in the eschatological manifestation of the
Kingdom of God. From what has been argued in the preceding sections of this chapter,
the beginnings of a unified schema are apparent, based on Poythress’ argument that
Christ transforms the law from its written, legislative mode to the personal mode of his
own existence, as well as the Christocentric approach to Law which was discerned in
Paul’s teaching. In fact, Poythress argues explicitly for such a unity between Paul and
Christ, asserting that although Paul emphasizes the discontinuity of Christianity with

Judaism to preserve the unity of Jews and Gentiles in the faith, and Matthew emphasizes
the continuity of Christianity with Judaism to assert Jesus’ identity as the Jewish Messiah,
Jesus is nevertheless the unifying principle in Paul and Matthew by virtue of his identity
as the transformed embodiment of the law. 80
Ridderbos shows that the perception of a disjunction between the Pauline corpus and
the synoptic gospels is actually rooted in an improper fragmentation of Paul’s teaching
that has resulted from a failure to appreciate its redemptive-historical character; that is,
the manner in which the revelation of Christ and his uniquely determinative place in
redemptive history is the center of Paul’s preaching and the key to understanding the
unity of his thought. We shall examine Ridderbos’ argument in some detail for the
balance of this chapter.
The Unity of Paul’s Thought

Ridderbos argues for an understanding of Paul’s theology as having its center, not in
any thematic principle, but in the historical revelation of Jesus Christ, of which Paul is a
witness. To ask what is the center of Paul’s preaching, he argues, is to ask “from what
point of view can Paul’s preaching be approached most adequately? The entrance to this
imposing edifice is our concern.”81 Anticipating in his 1957 work some of the concerns
later addressed by the New Perspective on Paul, Ridderbos argues that the Reformers,
conditioned by their “great struggle with Roman Catholic legalism and mysticism,” found
the main entrance to Paul’s preaching in his doctrine of justification by faith. 82 The
80 Poythress, The Shadow of Christ 282.
81 Ridderbos, When the Time had Fully Come 44. Some may ask why there has to be a center to Pauol’s
preaching. Is it legitimate to search for an underlying superstructure in his theology? Ridderbos’ use of the
term edifice to describe Paul’s system is instructive. A theological system is indeed constructed, like a
building or other physical edifice, with one thought supporting another, and the whole structure being
subject to analysis with respect to logical precedence and the underlying framework that supports the entire
system.
82 It is important to note that Ridderbos does not propose any revision to the doctrine of justification. His
concern is that placing it at the center provides too narrow a window on Paul, and results in a fragmentation

Reformation tradition continued this approach, with the result that the Pauline concept of
Christ-for-us came to be a more powerful influence on the “conscious mind of
Reformation faith” than the Pauline “we-in-Christ,” even though the latter is treated more
thoroughly in Paul.83
This incipient dichotomization of Paul’s thought became more explicit when certain
ideas were introduced “under the influence of the pietistic and mystical decline of the
church.” Two main trends emerged “the forensic idea of justification, and the mystical
idea of the Pneuma, the being-in-Christ. And more and more the stress in the
interpretation of Paul shifted from the former to the latter.” 84 Eventually, a distinction was
made between the Jewish Paul and the Greek Paul, with the former being concerned with
the Jewish legal terminology of justification, satisfaction, etc., and the latter concerned
with the mystical concepts of flesh vs. spirit, the dying of the old man and the rising of
the new man, etc. The Pauline corpus was divided, for example with Romans 3 through 5
and Galatians 3 through 4 opposed to Romans 6 through 8 and Galatians 5, as
representing the proper entrance to Paul’s teaching, depending on whether one discerned
the Jewish or the Greek Paul. Furthermore, the unity of Paul’s teaching with Christ and
the gospels was broken.
On the one hand, in this view, Jesus preached the eschatological kingdom
of God, and the original Christian community in Jerusalem, in accordance
with this, expected Jesus as the shortly returning Son of Man; on the other
hand, however, to Paul the eschatological expectation was scarcely of any
real importance. He lived, it was contended, in the consciousness of the
of the Pauline corpus and indeed of a great deal of the New testament revelation. “Our concern is a way of
approach. In a sense the contents of the preaching of salvation are outside our scope.” Ridderbos, When the
Time had Fully Come 57.
83 Ridderbos does not argue that the Reformers held these to be opposing concepts in Paul, but that they
were merely differentiated. By virtue of the polemical environment in which the Reformers found
themselves, however, the forensic aspects of Paul’s preaching came to have a dominant place in their
consciousness. Calvin was more balanced than Luther in this respect, he argues, but even for the former,
justification was taken to be the proper entrance to Paul’s thought. This tendency was continued and
intensified as the Reformation tradition developed.
84 Ridderbos, When the Time had Fully Come 45.

vertical proximity of Christ. Jesus was to him the Spirit, and the words of
2 Corinthians 3:17, “The Lord is the Spirit,” should thus be looked upon
as the most typical statement of the whole of Paul’s kerygma.85
Ridderbos argues that all this bears, to him, “a clear mark of untruth,” because it
“greatly minimizes the historical and forensic character of Paul’s proclamation of
salvation,” and because one cannot find this supposed tension in Paul between the
forensic and the Pneumatic. For this reason
[i]t may be doubted if one makes one’s view really comprehensive enough
by continuing to seek the real core of Paul’s kerygma in his doctrine of
justification by faith. Paul is not only the author or Romans and Galatians,
but also − as is to be maintained on historical grounds, too − of
Colossians and Ephesians. And here the approaches are rather different
from those of the Epistle to the Romans. On what ground, then, can we
regard justification by faith as the real starting-point and the only center of
Paul’s preaching? And…how can we make sufficiently transparent the
intrinsic relation between Christ’s preaching of the Kingdom of God and
Paul’s preaching, if we qualify the latter as the preaching of justification?
Is not then the viewpoint of Paul’s preaching rather more restricted than
Christ’s?86
Ridderbos maintains that this problem can be solved, and the unity of Paul’s teaching
with the gospels thereby established and illustrated, by taking the center of Paul’s
thought, the entrance to his kerygma, in the redemptive-historical revelation of Christ to
which he was a witness. For Luther, he argues, “justification by faith is the deliverance
from a religious crisis. It is for him, before anything else, the reversal of the ordo salutis
in which he had become mired.”87 Luther recovered from Paul the proper expression of
the ordo salutis, but in so doing he missed a wider relation that was present in Paul. The
soteriological insights that Luther so powerfully applied as a corrective for the errors of
his day became for him the sole entrance, not only to Paul’s teaching, but to the whole
Bible, as his criticism of the Epistle of James amply shows. 88
85 Ibid. 46.
86 Ibid. 46-47.
87 Ibid. 47.
88 Ibid. 48.

Paul’s crisis, however, was of a different sort altogether. The revelation of Christ he
received on the road to Damascus resulted in a shift, not in his view of the ordo salutis,
but of the histroria salutis. He came to possess a “new, overpowering certainty, that in the
crucified and risen Savior the great turning point in God’s times had come.” What had
been hidden from men since ancient times had now been revealed, today, in the “fulness
of the times,” the now of salvation, of which Paul is the herald. “The nature of his
mission and ministry, therefore, is defined by the history of redemption. He is not merely
a religious genius, he is not merely a church reformer, he is a witness of revelation in the
original, historical sense of the word.”89
Thus Paul’s apprehension in Christ of the great turning point of the historia salutis is
the viewpoint from which “the central motive of justification by faith can be understood
in its real, pregnant significance.” Paul does indeed preach justification by faith, but his
starting point is the redemptive-historical revelation of Christ. This Ridderbos illustrates
from “the great thematic pronouncement in Romans 1:17, repeated in Romans 3:21.”
“But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested
[from faith to faith− v. 17].’” Every word can be used as evidence. “But
now” − now that the great day of salvation has become present time,
“Hath been manifested” − not, in the first place, made known as a noetic
piece of information, but has appeared as an historical event. Now the
righteousness of God has come to light, without the deeds of the law.90
But why, Ridderbos asks, is this proclamation of salvation especially identified as the
“righteousness of God”?
Because this righteousness which God awarded to man represents the

salvation of the great future. Righteousness as such is an eschatological
gift. That is why Jewry sought for righteousness, that is, for future
acquittal in the judgment of God. “Righteousness and Life” are together
the contents of the messianic salvation. The former is the condition, the
latter the purpose of the salvation.91
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid. 49-50.
91 Ibid.

This is, in part, the great mystery made manifest in Paul’s preaching. Righteousness,
that great eschatological gift, has been made present now, apart from the deeds of the
Law, through the death and resurrection of Christ. It is for this reason “an historical, not
only a noetic notification.” Furthermore, righteousness is not the only eschatological gift
that has been manifested in the present time. The Spirit also is an eschatological gift,
identified as such throughout Old Testament prophecy. This provides the proper view of
the forensic and the pneumatic in Paul’s preaching.
In Paul’s preaching Dikaiosune Tou Theou [righteousness of God] and

Pneuma [Spirit] are both functioning as the gifts of the great time of
redemption, which in the coming of Christ became present time. This
holds true for the Spirit in no less an extent than for righteousness. The
Pneuma in Paul is not in the first place a matter of mystic experience…In
the whole framework of his ministry the Spirit represents first and
foremost an objective reality, namely, that of the new dispensation.92
Thus for Paul’s preaching, the Lord and the Spirit belong together by virtue of the
redemptive-historical reality to which they mutually witness. “The Spirit represents
before anything else the stage of salvation which the church of Christ had reached by the
coming of the Son.” This is why Spirit is also opposed to flesh in Paul’s thought, for flesh
is also for Paul a redemptive-historical and not an existential category. It represents “the
mode of existence of man and the world before the fullness of the times appeared. Flesh
is man and world in the powers of darkness. And opposing this is the Spirit, the
Pneuma…as a new way of existing which became present time with the coming of
Christ.” Spirit is not a mystical but a redemptive-historical category. “It means: You are
no longer in the power of the old aeon; you have passed into the new one; you are under a
different authority.”93
92 Ibid. 51.
93 Ibid. 52.

The forensic and the pneumatic can be distinguished but never separated, for
righteousness is the condition on which the Pneuma is present. Inasmuch as
righteousness can be paraphrased as “life’ (cf. Ro 5:18 “justification of life”), to be
righteous is to have life, that is, the Spirit.
What can be analyzed and distinguished here is never anything but the
analysis of the one Christological, eschatological gift of salvation, which
was hidden for ages on end, “but hath now been manifested by the
appearance of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought
life and immortality to light” (2 Tim 1:10).94
We conclude therefore that an opposition of the forensic to the pneumatic in Paul is a
false dichotomy, and that to take justification by faith as the center of and entrance to
Paul’s teaching has a tendency to truncate Paul’s vision. Paul is a witness to the
eschatological manifestation of Christ. His center is union with Christ, from which both
the forensic and the pneumatic realities of being in Christ necessarily follow. The forensic
is not rooted in the pneumatic (the Thomistic view), and yet the two are not to be
separated. Righteousness and Life are simply predicates that are necessarily true of one
who is in union with Christ, the savior of the world who appeared in the fullness of time.
Paul and the Synoptic Gospels

The application of these insights about the unity of the Pauline corpus to the broader
context of the relation of Paul’s preaching to the synoptic gospels is readily apparent.
Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom is not to be understood in opposition to what came to
be seen as Paul’s dominant focus on life “in Christ.” Paul’s proclamation of life in Christ
is nothing other than a proclamation that the great future has intruded into the present
day, and that this fact has been made manifest in the death and resurrection of Christ.
Jesus proclaimed the inauguration of the eschatological Kingdom, and Paul explicated the
meaning of life in that Kingdom in terms of the great eschatological gifts that are
94 Ibid. 54.

predicted everywhere in the prophets namely righteousness and the Spirit, the forensic
declaration of God and the corresponding Kingdom life that is mediated by the Spirit.
That Paul does not speak explicitly of the Kingdom in the manner that the synoptic
writers do is no indication of a disjunction between the former and the latter. It is
certainly Kingdom language that we find on Paul’s lips when we hear him saying “do not
let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts…for sin shall not be
master over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Ro 6:12-14). Paul’s frequent
use of the image of freedom vs. bondage, in fact, should be understood in the
eschatological context we have been discussing. Furthermore, it is clear that the κύριος of
Paul’s preaching is the bearer of a new aeon, the revelation of God’s decisive
eschatological act for the salvation of his people today, the fullness of the times. This is
nothing other than the Jesus of the synoptic gospels.
Conclusion
We have sketched in this chapter a selective outline of the New Testament
theological framework relating to the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. This outline
has been focused on the place of the Law and righteousness in Kingdom life, from the
perspective of Jesus’ life and ministry as revealed in the gospels, Paul’s treatment of Law
in the Kingdom age, and Paul’s apprehension of the redemptive-historical implications of
the coming of the Kingdom. We have seen that both Jesus and Paul retain a significant
place for Law in the Kingdom, although the mode in which Law now operates is
fundamentally altered by the advent of Christ. We have also seen that the Kingdom
inaugurated by Jesus brought into history a redemptive-historical reality with significance
at both the individual and societal level, and that what are often taken merely as

existential dichotomies in Paul’s teaching (flesh/spirit, old-man/new-man,
natural/spiritual) are actually redemptive-historical markers that reveal the great
transition of the ages and indicate the manner of life that is offered to the believer in the
present day.
The revelation of the Kingdom concerns a redemptive-historical reality that is far
richer than is generally apparent when forensic righteousness is taken as one’s starting
point. The coming of the Kingdom is the coming of a new authority, a qualitative change
in the mode of existence of God’s people, realized through an intrusion of God’s Holy
Spirit into history. A proper understanding of the redemptive-historical implications of the
coming of the Kingdom into history makes it clear that the forensic and the pneumatic are
neither dialectical concepts nor mutually exclusive options in Paul’s theology. One is not
rooted in the other, but each is rooted in the fact of the believer’s union with Christ.
Our focus in this chapter has been on explicating a theological framework. In the
following chapter we will reflect on the projection of this framework into the Christian’s
life in the Kingdom of God.

CHAPTER FOUR
Living in the Kingdom
Our study of the Kingdom of God would not be complete without a discussion of
how the theological framework presented in this paper can be applied to the minds and
hearts of the ordinary believer in Christ. Such a discussion is provided below in the hopes
that it will serve to some extent as a concrete illustration of what has been stated in the
preceding chapters in mostly theoretical terms. It can serve as little more, however, than a
starting point for practical reflection on the Kingdom of God; for theological truth is most
fruitfully applied to the church in an explicit life-context, freshly formulated to address
the specific concerns, weaknesses, triumphs, challenges, aspirations, capabilities, etc. of a
particular gathering of the body of Christ. The following is offered as a template,
therefore, for the translation of the Kingdom framework provided in Scripture into the
various life and ministry contexts that exist in the church today.
Seek First the Kingdom

If we search for a suitable imperative statement from Jesus that we may apply to the
overarching expression of the indicative reality of the Kingdom, we need look no farther
than Matthew 6:33: “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these
things shall be added to you.” Embedded in Jesus’ foundational statement of ethics for
the messianic Kingdom, these words of Jesus provide a suitable starting point for our
consideration of the practical import of the coming of that Kingdom.
Matthew 6:33
Three things can be observed immediately from the text.

1. That Jesus commands us to “seek first His kingdom” implies that there are other
objects competing for our attention and devotion. There are other things which we might
seek, and which we are indeed prone to seek, which is apparently the reason for Jesus’
command. The Kingdom is presented to us as our first priority. It is offered, therefore, not
as something to be combined with an existing order, but as something that comprises an
order in itself.
2. We are told to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.” This is a
confirmation from the mouth of our Lord of what we observed in Chapter Three
regarding the centrality of ethics in the Kingdom. Jesus’ manner of expression is also in
consonance with what we observed widely throughout Scripture, namely that
righteousness especially eschatological righteousness is a righteousness of God.
Whether this righteousness is a subjective quality in God or something objectively
provided to man is not deducible from this text, but we are thrown back by the words of
Jesus onto all that was discussed in the preceding chapters (and in the Appendix) as
something of great importance for our life in the Kingdom. Life in the Kingdom is a life
of righteousness, and the Christian is not following tangents or becoming unnecessarily
mired in details when he seeks to understand as fully as possible the Bible’s teaching on
righteousness and related terms such as justification.
3. “Seek first His kingdom and His Righteousness and all these things shall be
added to you.” In these words we are warned against an ascetic understanding of life in
the Kingdom. What to eat, what to drink, what to wear, these things which the Gentiles
[unbelievers in our context] seek and which our heavenly Father knows full well that we
need, are not set in opposition to the Kingdom, but in subjection to it. The implication is

that the Kingdom alone provides the proper context for this-worldly blessings, since we
are not to seek what the Gentiles seek, but receive the same instead as something given
along with the Kingdom. Whitherspoon observes that some portion of “the world” is
indeed necessary to our felicity, but it is not for us to determine what that part is. 95 This is
consonant with Jesus’ view of the Kingdom, for he offers it to us with the assurance that
our heavenly Father will provide all our this-worldly needs.
Two Kingdoms
We are reminded further by this text that the Kingdom of God motif lays bare the
great conflict in the midst of which we live. Even as we read Jesus’ command to seek first
God’s Kingdom, we know by direct experience that the world is a kingdom also, a
kingdom of darkness, where sin and death have reigned over us, a kingdom that is
according to man and his pretensions apart from God. To seek first the Kingdom of God
is of course to reject the kingdom of man. Augustine shows us, however, that we are not
to reject it absolutely, but insofar as it is in opposition to God’s revealed Law and his rule
over us. The City of God and the City of Man make common cause in this world, despite
their radical differences in origin, destination, orientation, etc. 96
Thus, ironically, faithfulness to the Kingdom of God implies a certain study of and
familiarity with the kingdom of man. Given the inextricable relatedness of the two
kingdoms in this world, we cannot seek God’s Kingdom apart from understanding the
world-context in which we live. The expression of the Kingdom of God in this world has
its very definition, in a sense, over against what it is not. This is true not merely in terms
of the contrast between the two kingdoms, but also in terms of their symbiosis. In the
95 John Witherspoon, The World Crucified by the Cross of Christ, Sermon on Gal. 6:14.
96 Augustine, City of God, Books XIV-XX1.

words of Dr. Eric Alexander, the world exists as the scaffolding for the great Kingdom
edifice that God is building in history.97 One day it will be dismantled, but for now it
plays a vital part in the establishment of the Kingdom. Christians must take it as their
Kingdom duty to understand the world in which they live, including both the structural
aspects of creation and the world system that fallen man has built. The Kingdom of God
is not of this world, but it is developing in history. Our part in that development,
therefore, should not, and ultimately cannot, be taken up apart from the tools that are
necessary to build anything in history.
A judicial engagement of the Christian with the world, in short, is being argued. It
should be judicial because we must not overlook or underestimate the very real dangers
posed to us by our involvement with certain aspects of this world. But it must be an
engagement nevertheless, a vigorous interaction with and appropriation of what one is
tempted to refer to as culture, but which actually encompasses a wider scope than that
word often implies. Science, art, entertainment, business, philosophy, sports, government,
charity, education, and virtually any category of activity or existence in this world; to
engage thoughtfully and worshipfully in these is our Christian duty.
The Christian, however, is to engage the world, as it were, with heaven in his heart.
The Law of God, revealed to us now in the very person of Jesus, is to be the absolute
concern that relativizes all other concerns. But heaven has come to us already, so to
speak. To seek first the Kingdom is to understand the role of heaven in this age, to live
according to the new reality that has broken in on us. We can engage the world, in part,
97Dr. Alexander offered this illustration in a sermon heard in person by the present author at Fourth
Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland.

because sin no longer rules over us, because we live not in the age of flesh but of Spirit,
because the eschatological gifts of righteousness and life have been given to us.
We can engage the world for profit and not loss to the extent that we discern the
Kingdom of God rightly, as the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price. This view of the
Kingdom saves us, as it were, when we are discouraged by the tenuous character of this
life, when we suffer loss, disappointment, and setbacks, when other pearls vie for our
affections, when we are tempted to place our hope someplace outside the Kingdom of
God, when we find that we are investing our hope and affections in the scaffolding which
is destined only to be torn down when the true edifice is revealed in wonder for all to see.
The Kingdom parables ground us in the right view of history, as God’s domain and not
man’s, as certain and not contingent, as working inexorably to that culmination that has
already been decisively determined.
A People for God’s Own Possession

The biblical framework of the Kingdom of God provides a much-needed shift from a
merely personal perspective to a personal-in-light-of-the-cosmic perspective. In other
words, the Kingdom of God teaches us that the personal and cosmic are not in dialectical
tension but rather are complementary aspects of a unified perspective. We are not called
to pick one or the other as our primary point of reference, nor to choose our point of
compromise along some personal-cosmic continuum. Rather we are given a cosmic
picture of God’s overarching purpose in history, and then instructed to interpret the
personal in terms of the cosmic. The Kingdom of God motif sets before our eyes a view
of history as something of infinite gravity and incomprehensible scope, and yet deeply
personal. The Kingdom is larger and thicker than we can imagine, but we are not cogs

spinning in some far-flung corner of its vast workings; we are subjects, personally
known, bought with the blood of the King, children of promise, heirs to the Kingdom’s
blessings.
It is difficult to imagine a more significant question that can be asked of history than
what God is doing in it. It is precisely this to which the Kingdom addresses itself,
providing a framework for understanding God’s purpose in history. However we might be
tempted to interpret history, the Kingdom motif lays bare its fundamental dynamic; God
is creating a people for himself to reveal his glory. It is for this that he created us and for
this that he is building his Kingdom. The Kingdom motif argues eloquently against a
view of history as aimless or contingent. There is a goal, and all of creation is freefalling
inexorably toward it. The unfolding of events in the world is not to be understood as
radically personal. That is, they are not to be interpreted merely in subjective terms, with
God’s plans for the believer considered abstractly, and all the freight of the God-creature
relationship bundled into a single instance of it. The events of our lives have significance
only in reference to that life lived in history by the Author of life, and, by extension, to
the Kingdom he brought into history.
The Kingdom of God provides a framework for understanding the place of evil in the
world. This is not to argue that it solves “the problem of evil,” that great question that
seeks to justify God with human reason, the very definition of futility. The Kingdom
does, however, quite clearly and coherently reveal evil’s trajectory in history. The
mustard seed will fulfill its destiny, evildoers will be but a memory, and the earth will be
full of the goodness of the LORD. Furthermore, in revealing the fate of evil in history, the
Kingdom motif highlights the centrality of God’s justice. The vindication of the righteous

and the punishment of the wicked are found at the center of God’s purpose for history.
And justice is bound up with mercy, for the righteous have their righteousness from God.
Because the Kingdom is the overarching framework of history, we know that the
affairs of this world are ordered for the Kingdom’s purposes. All proximate purposes are
bound up in this invincible teleology. Whatever is happening to us, we know the ultimate
purpose it is serving. For the Christian, both the blessings and privations of this age are
accomplishing the same end, the salvation of his soul. “And we know that God causes all
things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called
according to his purpose” (Ro 8:28). The Kingdom teaches us that our this-worldly
affairs are of critical importance, but not as ends in themselves. They are the theater in
which the drama of our salvation is unfolding.
Thus we are called to discern the Kingdom of God in our midst. In this very
discernment we find assurance that our hope is well-founded. It is a convincing sign of
grace that we should see the Kingdom in our midst, for it is hidden to all eyes but those of
faith. By seeking first the Kingdom, we assure ourselves that God has indeed called us to
be his very own, that we are part of that remnant being preserved by his grace for his
glory.
The Church in the World

The Postmodern Context
The church is the institutional expression of the Kingdom of God in the world, and
its manner of existing in the world (in the world but not of it) illustrates the
interpenetration of the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man as discussed above. Our
discussion of the two kingdoms has so far included some general observations of a

timeless character. The nature of the church’s relationship with the world, however, varies
considerably throughout history, and it is therefore important to consider it also with
respect to the time-bound features that are characteristic of the present day. A discussion
of the church in the world in its postmodern context 98 is therefore in order.
Finding the Center

One of the central tenets of a well-reasoned sociological critique of modernity is the
claim that modernity has tended greatly to fling everything to the periphery and render
our lives void of a center.99 Our world is fragmented into numerous unrelatable spheres,
and we become accustomed to drifting from one virtual world to another with no sense of
grounding in a single transcendent context. Wells argues that much of this centrifugal
movement has been fueled by the modern Capitalistic economy, as society is increasingly
organized around the production, distribution, and consumption of material goods.
The most easily discernible aspect of this flight from the center is perhaps our
geographical habits. Proximity to one’s workplace, shopping malls, or transportation
facilities is by far the chief criterion in selecting a location in which to make one’s home.
Career advancement necessities or inscrutable corporate exigencies often compel the
uprooting of entire families and their removal to distant cities, overruling all
considerations of significant community ties, local church affiliation, or other personal
interests.
98 It is assumed that the reader is generally familiar with what is meant by the term postmodernism, and a
thorough treatment of it is not intended here. Since we are concerned in this section with the church’s
manner of existing in the postmodern world, our discussion will be more sociological than epistemological.
We will discuss the church’s interaction with the world in the context of a few of the salient characteristics
of the postmodern social structure, briefly illustrating the Kingdom of God’s interaction with the kingdom
of man in the present day.
99 David Wells, No Place For Truth (Eerdmans, 1993) 40-43; God in the Wasteland (Eerdmans, 1994) 13-
16. Since we are focusing on sociological rather than epistemological aspects of the current zeitgeist, I will
follow Wells in using the label modernity rather than postmodernity to describe the current global social
context. From a sociological viewpoint, what is generally called postmodernity because of the
epistemological shift that it entails is more accurately characterized as an extension and intensification of
the sociological phenomenon modernism. Wells argues that it is actually a sort of hyper-modernism.

It would be naive to assume that one could simply decide to ignore these modern
scattering forces; but presumably there are opportunities to resist them. The essential
communitarian character of the Kingdom of God can be a help in this. The church as a
social structure can be a beneficial and competing force for geographical centering in
opposition to the centrifugal forces of modernity. Although modernity tends to lead us to
think of our co-workers as our primary community, the Kingdom framework helps us to
see that our primary desire and responsibility is (or should be) to be in regular contact
with the members of Christ’s body whose fellowship he has appointed for our mutual
edification.
With this observation we have moved from the geographical aspect of recovering a
center to some broader implications. Although geography plays a significant role in
establishing a sociologically centered life, the primary driver is a commitment to a
communitarian ideal. One must first of all be willing to assert that it is necessary to
belong to a community, which assertion in itself is contrary to the ambient forces of
modernity. Having made such an assertion, it is then necessary that one be willing to have
communitarian concerns be a primary shaping factor in the structure of one’s existence.
Inserted into a Christian context, this translates into a realization that it is not
sufficient simply to hear the Word preached each Lord’s Day, if one is to obey the Lord’s
command to build a life upon this Word as its foundation. 100 The preached Word is made
far more effectual when the people one encounters in the day-to-day living of one’s life
are the people who are hearing the same Word preached each Lord’s Day. We are then
more readily held accountable to what we are taught. More significantly, however, the
100 Mt. 7:24-27.

positive application of what we have been taught is far more effective when done in the
midst of the same community as the community in which we have been taught. If a
discussion of the sermon following the worship service is beneficial to our apprehension
of its truth, how much more beneficial it is to continue this discussion in the practical
terms of our daily living throughout the week.
Thus a re-centering of one’s life in the face of modernity’s fragmentation requires a
commitment to organizing the external structures of one’s life in accordance with a
religiously and theologically informed social framework. A deliberate organizing
principle is needed to overcome the de-facto orientation imposed by the sociological
structures of modernity. The Kingdom of God in its essential communitarian character
provides just such an organizing principle, and the theological and religious framework
inherent in the biblical revelation of the Kingdom is an objective expression of this.
Establishing a center for one’s life involves more than proper organization, however.
A philosophical commitment to the integration of the disparate spheres or elements of
one’s existence is also required. We cannot reasonably expect to eliminate the elemental
reality of the fragmentation which modernity imposes. There is a sense in which our lives
truly are fragmented, and many of the forces that induce and support this fragmentation
are often found to be intractable. In the absence of a genuine organic sociological whole,
therefore, a conceptual integration is required. Although the modern Christian may not be
able to escape the reality of living in the largely separate worlds of home, work, church,
school, and public discourse, he can discern and maintain a sense of the unified reality
which in fact encompasses all of these disparate worlds. The Kingdom of God motif
provides just such a conceptual integration of modern life.

With the Kingdom in view, the Christian is not merely reminded that Jesus is the
Lord of his workplace even if his co-workers do not acknowledge that fact. What is
further implied is that Jesus is the Lord of the Christian’s life in his workplace. God has
not simply decreed that there should be spheres of life in which ignorance of and
rebellion toward the Divine is the dominant ethos. He has also decreed that his people
should live and move within such spheres, and that such interaction with unbelief should
constitute a significant part of their sanctification. The Christian knows that he lives as
wheat among tares, that the great separation is reserved until the last day, and that his
Lord has decreed this interpenetration of the two kingdoms as an essential characteristic
of how the Kingdom of God is to be developed in history.
The modern Christian living in the overlap of the ages, possessing and possessed by
the eschatological Spirit, is, in a sense, the very point of integration among the disparate
spheres of life. The new aeon, the age of Spirit, touches all the spheres. The transition of
the ages far outshines the transition between the spheres in the Christian’s consciousness.
What is most fundamental and most critical about his life remains constant as he walks
among the spheres. He has passed from death to life, from the kingdom of darkness to the
kingdom of light, from the age of flesh to the age of Spirit. He is a citizen of a kingdom
which penetrates into all the spheres, and which ultimately is destined to be revealed as
the unified expression of God’s victory over all the spheres in every age.
Recovering the Antithesis

Although integration and centering are concepts which are generally antithetical to
modernity, it is nevertheless possible to be integrated and centered on modernity’s terms.
A further antidote for the disease of modernity is, therefore, a recovery of the sense of the

antithesis between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this fallen world, organized
in rebellion against God.
The goal of integration and centering is to recover a sense of the unitary world which
God has created, apart from the fragmentation superimposed on our consciousness by the
forces of modernity. To start from the fragmented world which rebellious man has
created, and attempt to put it back together like Humpty-Dumpty, would be nothing less
than a complete surrender to modernity’s lie. If one’s centering principles consist of
anything other than the centralizing, saving truth of Scripture, then one’s cure for
modernity will be found to be nothing other than a re-injection of the disease in a more
organized, efficient configuration. Thus the Christian must recover the sense of the
antithesis between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man if he is to be anything
other than a more systematic expression of modern man’s rebellion against his creator.
Recovering the antithesis implies a due sense of the fundamental and radical
discontinuity between two realities so divergent as to be referenced in Scripture as two
kingdoms, two worlds, two soul-principles, light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, life vs.
death. Since the antithesis is fundamental, the Christian must be prepared to encounter its
manifestation continually, in a myriad of situations. It may not be avoided, but will show
itself in potentially every conversation, every decision, every endeavor, every dream.
Because the antithesis is radical, the Christian must expect that it will cut to the
heart both his heart and that of his unbelieving neighbor. It will not merely show itself
in the secondary matters of existence, but in the ones which matter the most. It will be
concerned with the matters which people are most exercised about, the ones for which
throughout history men have been willing to kill and to die.

The Christian must, to summarize it in a word, be willing to be irrelevant. Cultural
irrelevance implies being of such a nature as to have no meaningful place in the values or
teleology of a society. We do not value what they value, and we live on a completely
different trajectory. Inasmuch as relevance itself is largely a modern invention, cultural
irrelevance cannot be an unlikely antidote.
The Christian is relevant of course, but he is relevant to God rather than to modern
society. If the world cannot satisfactorily discern just where we fit in their program, just
how we contribute to their values and objectives, then so much the better for us. The
Christian whom the world qua world makes abundant use of has reason to fear what is
the nature of his relevance to God. While the excellencies of our gifts may by God’s
grace taste sweet in the mouths of our unbelieving neighbors, if they have no convulsive
need to spit out the bones, we have cause to wonder how deep and how sincere is our
commitment to the Kingdom.
The world-spirit can be self-masking and thus remain undiscovered to the non-
discerning Christian. For one element of it is the sovereignty of the market; and the
Christian who accepts this ungodly principle opens himself thereby to receive many other
notions antithetical to the Christian worldview. In the pragmatic ethos which must of
necessity subsist in a world bereft of transcendent values, whatever sells is often used as a
replacement for whatever is good and true. Democracy in its most naked expression
exerts itself in the marketplace rather than in the voting booth, and the “laws” thus
enacted are far more penetrating than the ones which the legislature is privileged to make.
In this environment, popular notions and ideals are imbued with a powerful sense of
legitimacy and appropriateness. It is easier than generally imagined to lose one’s bearings

in this ideological and ethical fog. The corruption of the worship service of the church is
an extreme although fairly common example. It is extreme not in the sense of being a
marginal phenomenon, but by virtue of what has been surrendered. For large sections of
the church now offer as worship to God a service which is partly designed to worship him
and partly designed to appeal to the sensibilities of his enemies. 101
There are other examples where the antithesis may be asserted. Consider the
irrelevance of suffering in the kingdom of man. The world has no use for suffering. It
brings nothing valuable, and leads to no place worth suffering for. Some of the nobler
thinkers in this fallen world may discern some ancillary benefit which may be extracted
from suffering once it is encountered; but there is no place in the world’s thinking for
suffering as a necessary condition of well-being. So radical is the thought that the
sentence appears self-contradictory on its face.
But that is precisely what is asserted by the antithesis, the worldview of the Kingdom
of God. The world is fallen and desperately in need of redemption. Redemption comes
only through suffering, a truth so unsatisfying to human nature that even the perfect
human being, the man whom God the Son became, asked if there were another way. The
Christian antithesis is shown in the answer he embraced, which, as he made abundantly
clear, applies to all who would follow after him in his Kingdom. This is not a truth to be
glibly asserted, but one to be thoughtfully and persistently digested and engaged. One can
perhaps never fully embrace this truth until one has realized its ultimate fulfillment; but
many occasions will nevertheless present themselves on which it will be necessary to
embrace it in some relative measure.
Adapted from a quotation of Ken Myers, reference unknown. The reference is to “Seeker sensitive”
101
worship services and the excesses of the Church Growth movement.

Christians must steer a course, with respect to suffering, between the Scylla of
inattention and the Charybdis of over-contemplation. Suffering finds us all quite readily
in this world, so the former danger is not the potential avoidance of it. The danger is
rather that suffering would find the believer ill-prepared to understand its nature and
purpose, and so be slow to perform its redemptive work in him. The latter danger is that
by fearful contemplation and expectation of suffering which one does not know will even
come to pass, one thereby induces suffering of a type which is better avoided, if God
permits.
The Kingdom of God is by its very nature a framework for recovering the antithesis
between the ways of God and the ways of man. The antithesis is expressed in this
framework as two contrasting redemptive-historical situations; and the contrast between
them is so critical, so fundamental, that the mid-point of history lies precisely in the
transition between them. This transition is accomplished by the Lord himself, and sealed
with the eschatological Spirit. The Kingdom therefore teaches us that asserting the
antithesis is ultimately a work of God, given by grace and certain to be fully vindicated in
the culmination of history.
The Democratization of the Spirit

The antithesis does not exhaustively define the relation of the Kingdom of God to the
Kingdom of man. Common grace is manifested throughout the world in many ways,
including the apprehension of genuine truth by fallen men. The postmodern critique of
modernism, for instance, is valid in certain respects, and this can be argued without
accepting the denial of ontological realism that comprises the postmodern response. The
postmodern concern about what is seen as the exclusion and marginalization of various

groups of people is addressed in the Kingdom framework by what is often referred to as
the democratization of the Spirit.
This is a reference to an important difference in the way God works savingly among
his people since the eschatological manifestation of the Kingdom was inaugurated by
Christ. Whereas in the Old Testament economy the Kingdom was administered through
the offices of prophet, priest, and king, the Kingdom now is administered through God’s
direct involvement with his people, as the eschatological Spirit is poured out on all flesh.
This intensification of the covenant blessings is a key feature of the New Covenant. The
eschatological Spirit is the same Holy Spirit who regenerated the saints in Old Testament
times, but now he is poured out so profusely that his work is accomplished more
effectively, as the covenant is written on hearts of flesh that have been given in place of
hearts of stone (Jer. 17:1; 31:31-33).
In addition to this intensification of effectiveness, the Spirit’s ministry is also
intensified in scope. The Kingdom of God has burst the bounds of Jewish nationalism,
and God's people are now being called from all nations and tongues; the "whole world"
now is being saved. The great mystery hidden since ancient times now has been revealed;
God has established his kingdom as a transnational, transcultural, transgender community
of people united in Christ. People from all nations and stations in life, Jew and Gentile,
slave and free, rich and poor, male and female, are now united in Christ. The
eschatological Spirit is the agent of this union, and Christ himself is the one in whom it is
accomplished.
The unity of the church is therefore a primary component of its witness to the world,
giving evidence of its other-worldly impulse. This unity is generally perceived as greatly

obscured in the present day church, which is divided into numerous denominations, racial
groups, and nations. The knowledge that the Holy Spirit is at work in the church is a
motive for seeking a clearer expression of its unity, but it is also an encouragement and a
reminder that the unity of the church is merely occluded, not taken away. The very
existence of the church in a prominent posture in such diverse non-Western nations as
Korea and Nigeria, and the strength of the church in China in the face of severe
persecution, for example, belie the common dismissal of the church as a phenomenon of
Western culture and testify to a unity grounded in an other-worldly impulse.
This is not to deny that there is much work to do in perfecting the unity of the
church, particularly in the United States where the church has had so little effect on the
considerable racial division that has proven to be quite intractable. The Kingdom
framework teaches us to discern the unity of the church in spite of its occlusion. This
unity is ontologically grounded in the redemptive-historical facts that characterize the
present day the presence of righteousness and life in the new aeon as mediated by the
eschatological manifestation of the Lord and Spirit. The redemptive-historical moment
trumps whatever doubts are engendered by the church’s imperfections. To despair
because of the church’s impotence in the world is to view her from a worldly point of
view and to recapitulate the crisis of faith that prompted the question of John the Baptist:
Is this the one, or are we to expect another?
The church is the concrete expression of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God in
history. She is the witness to the Resurrection, the locus of the eschatological Spirit's
activity among us today, the mustard seed that we with the eyes of faith see growing into
her appointed dominance and splendor. Though her unity is somewhat obscured, the

activity of the Spirit of unity is everywhere visible in her, as people of all nations and
tongues are filled with the righteousness and life that was spoken of by the prophets since
ancient times, and is now made manifest to us, “upon whom the ends of the ages have
come” (1 Cor. 10:11).

CHAPTER FIVE
The Church and the Kingdom of God
Living in the Kingdom Christ, the Law, and Righteousness in the Eschatological
Manifestation of the Kingdom The Kingdom of God motif is powerfully woven
throughout the Scriptures, reaching its climax in the historical and apocalyptic revelation
of Christ in the New Testament. Furthermore, the coming of the Kingdom of God is Jesus’
own summary of the meaning and import of his mission. We have argued therefore in this
paper that the Bible’s teaching on the Kingdom of God provides an effective framework
for theological instruction in the church. We have seen that redemptive history is
fundamentally a revelation of the Kingdom of God, and that the ethical teachings of Jesus
and of Paul are presented within this Kingdom framework.
A widespread appreciation of the significance of the Kingdom motif in Scripture
should serve as a bulwark against certain distortions of Christian doctrine which have in
fact become prevalent in the church today. The Kingdom scheme guards against a
solipsistic appropriation of Christian doctrine by highlighting the social character of the
gospel, and it promotes a deeper, richer, more robust understanding of salvation as rooted
in union with Christ, the graciously tendered divine gift that fundamentally determines
Christian life and doctrine.
The foregoing discussion raises once again the question with which we began this
paper. Why is the Scripture’s teaching on the Kingdom so inadequately understood and
appreciated in the church today? The information presented here should be largely a

review for most of the Teaching Elders in the PCA. These concepts are taught in our
seminaries, where they are apparently well-received. Why then have they not been
successfully communicated to the people? Are they not well-understood in the seminary
classrooms after all? Are they not as well-received as they appear to be? Is there in
general a lack of commitment to these ideas or an inadequate vision of how these truths
can be preached and translated into terms meaningful for the typical Christian? Or are
there are other obstacles to the appropriation of the Scripture’s teachings on the
Kingdom?
The paucity of knowledge and understanding among the laity with respect to the
Kingdom would seem to argue that there is a corresponding lack of understanding or
flagging commitment on the part of the pastorate. 102 Although no legitimate pastor would
oppose the Kingdom motif, and a certain degree of familiarity with it is nearly universal,
one cannot help but notice while surveying the contemporary evangelical scene that a
great many church leaders are preoccupied with a variety of competing schemes. To the
extent that a pastor is intent on being relevant to the contemporary culture or to the
prevailing ethos in broad evangelicalism, his commitment to the Kingdom motif is
proportionally decreased, for the Kingdom is the very essence of the antithesis.
102The controversy in the PCA today over the Redemptive-Historical/Biblical Theology approach is hardly
conducive to a favorable consideration of the Kingdom motif in Scripture. As illustrated in this paper,
redemptive-historical considerations are indispensable for an adequate view of the Kingdom of God. This is
not intended as an endorsement of the trend among the current generation of Redemptive-Historical
preachers to deprecate imperative preaching in favor of a nearly exclusive focus on the indicative. This is a
recent innovation, and not a feature of the Redemptive-Historical theologians referenced in this paper.
Ridderbos, for example, argues that the imperative and the indicative are presented by Paul with
equal force as categories applicable to the new life in Christ. The imperative is rooted in the indicative, but
the indicative is conditioned on and serves as a touchstone for the imperative. Both the indicative and the
imperative each denote the human and the divine share in the new life, each are asserted as an appeal to
faith, and each involve both the already and the not yet aspects of the current redemptive-historical
situation (Ridderbos, Paul 253-258).

The extended analysis and elaboration of the Kingdom scheme provided in this paper
is offered as a principled plea for officers in the PCA and church leaders in other
denominations to take a closer look at the centrality and comprehensiveness of the
Kingdom motif in Scripture, and to think prayerfully about how this framework should be
expressed in their ministry. As a further aid for any who may find a renewed commitment
to teaching within the Kingdom framework, or for those whose commitment was flagging
merely from neglect, or who have encountered external obstacles to preaching with a
Kingdom focus, some practical considerations and recommendations are provided below.
Preaching the Word

The Kingdom of God is mediated by Word and Spirit. As goes the preaching,
therefore, so goes the Kingdom. The preaching of the Word is of course the primary
responsibility of Teaching Elders in the PCA, and by and large this responsibility is
faithfully discharged. The following observations, however, are offered in the interest of
increasing the fruitfulness of these faithful endeavors.
It is a fair question whether the centrality of the preaching of the Word is being
compromised in the PCA today. The very notion of authoritative discourse is out of favor
in the contemporary culture, and the PCA has certainly not been immune to that trend.
The shift within broad evangelicalism from a ministry primarily consisting of preaching,
teaching, and pastoral care, to one with a heavy programmatic focus, has occurred also in
the PCA. The motives behind this shift are noble the desire to reach out to more people,
to draw people into the ministry of the Word by appealing to their felt needs. Pastors may
convince themselves that the Word remains central in all their programs, and there is no
reason this cannot be the case. But that the preaching of the Word is no longer central

when there is an excessive emphasis on programs is true by definition. God has ordained
the preaching of the Word as a primary means of grace, and we dilute it at our peril.
It is not so much what is done within a particular program that is the problem, but the
ethos that is engendered by the program mentality. What view of the Word of God is the
church advancing when she treats it as something that must be sweetened with all manner
of diversions and gimmicks to make it palatable to God’s people? What sense of
responsibility with respect to the faithful application of the means of grace is she teaching
her children when they are motivated to receive the Word in accordance with some trite
and often incongruous ancillary benefit? The church that truly believes in the
incomparable power of the Word of God will let the Word stand on its own.
We do not deny the human component in the preaching and receiving of the Word.
Our preaching must be excellent, sensitive to the capacities of our flock, targeted to their
life situation, even relevant within the parameters provided by the Word we are
preaching. But the preaching must be preaching, offered boldly and with confident
assurance of its inherent power. This sort of preaching will bring the Kingdom vividly
into focus, for the Kingdom is made known to God’s people primarily through the Spirit-
mediated preaching of the Word.
Another aspect of the centrality of the Word is the degree to which the Word of God
is permitted to set the agenda for the church. The Word is treated as central when the
concerns, priorities, and organizing principles of Scripture come through in the
preaching. The comprehensive role that the Kingdom motif plays in Scripture should
therefore be reflected in the church’s preaching. It is not enough to treat the Kingdom of
God as one of many thematic threads running through Christian theology, while operating

by default in the individualist framework that has seeped in from the ambient culture.
Jesus did not reveal himself first as an intimate personalized savior for all who would
receive him, and then connect the dots to reveal the Kingdom framework. He announced
his ministry from the beginning as the coming of the Kingdom, and he proclaimed a
Kingdom ethic, a Kingdom theology, and a Kingdom eschatology. Those who became
subjects of his Kingdom learned from within the Kingdom framework what it means to
have a personal relationship with Jesus, the King.
The preached Word therefore should live and breathe the language and reality of the
Kingdom. This can be a much-needed antidote for the emphasis in popular “Christian”
culture on Jesus as a comfort and guide to sustain us in a chaotic world. Our experience
of the world is certainly chaotic at times, but the Kingdom framework reveals to us the
order that underlies our chaotic impressions of it. To preach the Kingdom is to set before
the people’s minds and hearts a picture of what God is doing on the grandest scale, and to
give them assurance of a meaningful place in that new order that is coming upon all
creation. Word-centered preaching will be dominated by this vision. Where beleaguered
lambs seek mere comfort in the chaos, Kingdom preachers proclaim a cosmic and radical
transformation of all creation that has already begun in our very souls.
Christianity as a Worldview
The Bible’s teaching on the Kingdom of God serves to highlight the worldview
character of Christianity. It is thereby illuminated as a comprehensive framework of basic
and not-so-basic beliefs about God, the world, and our place in it. A worldview tends to
be transparent, a lens we look through so regularly that we eventually become insensible
to its existence. Thus Christians may fail to maintain awareness of the worldview

character of their religion, as well as the worldviews necessarily maintained by non-
Christians espousing a range of other beliefs. When this happens, evangelism and
apologetics may be reduced to throwing evidence at the unbeliever without consideration
of what he does with that evidence as dictated by his worldview.
The preaching of the Kingdom of God should be used to counteract these tendencies.
Pastors should give increased attention to the interconnectedness of the various elements
of Christian truth. The Kingdom of God gives an account of this world and of our
existence in it that should be effectively leveraged against non-Christian belief systems. A
sustained elaboration of the Kingdom framework will energize the laity for increased
interaction with non-Christians, and will give them the conceptual tools for formulating
an effective response to a variety of expressions of belief and unbelief. The Christian who
is aware of the Bible’s teaching on the Kingdom of God is especially equipped to give the
reason for the hope that lies within him (1 Peter 3:15).
In addition to paying greater attention to the Kingdom framework, elders in the PCA
will do well to call to their people’s attention the very existence of worldviews as a
conceptual construct. Our people should be taught to discern the worldviews of others, to
identify presuppositions (especially ones borrowed surreptitiously from Christianity),
inconsistencies, unacknowledged consequences, and inadequate bases for acknowledged
aspirations, and to demonstrate the salient features and satisfying qualities of the
Christian worldview. Such training in worldview thinking will help the laity to better
appreciate and more effectively appropriate the Bible’s worldview teaching, namely the
teaching on the Kingdom of God.

A Fresh Look at Ecumenism
The Kingdom framework can be a blueprint for an ecumenical impulse that is based
on a genuine commitment to biblical truth, rather than a quest for institutional unity at the
expense of theological precision or biblical faithfulness. The Kingdom of God teachings
serve to overcome the truncation of vision that tends to settle in on established
theological traditions, providing a full-orbed expression of Christian truth in a coherent
framework. In particular, the insights into the redemptive-historical determination of the
biblical doctrine of salvation, discussed in Chapter Three, illuminate the central role that
Union with Christ plays in the biblical scheme. This understanding provides the basis for
a balanced theological system that does justice to both forensic justification and ethical
transformation, to both the social and the individual implications of the
gospel theological positions that define a large part of the contemporary polemical
landscape.
Without winking at Roman Catholicism’s critically defective doctrine of grace, nor
denying that the genuine believers who exist in that communion are made so in spite of
rather than because of Rome’s doctrine, are we not nevertheless compelled to admit that
the polemical dynamic in which we have been engaged with Rome has resulted in a
popular expression of Protestantism that simplistically asserts forensic justification at the
expense of other vital theological concepts?103 Are we so single-minded in our opposition
to the erroneous Thomistic concept of divine grace meritoriously infused in the believer
103It is not “official” Protestant doctrine, as expressed in the doctrinal standards of Presbyterian and
Reformed churches, that is being criticized here, but the popular expression of Protestant belief and
practice. The latter is a real theological and cultural force to be reckoned with, with an effect arguably at
least as great as the formal denominational standards. As argued in the Introduction to this paper, being
attentive to the Kingdom of God framework in Scripture can make the entire biblical revelation more
perspicuous, and help bring popular Protestant belief and practice in line with the better angels of our
formal theological commitments.

that we can find little place in our practical theology for the considerable benefits of
union with Christ that are non-forensic in character? 104
This is not to argue that the Protestant and Roman Catholic errors are mutually
egregious and we must therefore meet in the center. Clearly, the doctrines of sovereign
grace have preeminence. The point is that certain aspects of the Roman Catholic critique
of modern day Protestantism ring true, and we should not miss this fact because we are
preoccupied with their deficient understanding of grace. The Kingdom framework sets
the doctrine of justification in its redemptive-historical context, promoting a full-orbed
theological expression that accounts for both forensic justification and ethical
transformation in the present age. This may perhaps remove a stumbling block from
before those under the sway of Rome’s doctrine.
A similar argument can be made with respect to the liberal critique of evangelical
Protestantism. The evangelical failure to formulate a compelling social ethic is evident
both within the church and throughout non-Christian society. As with the issue discussed
above, the polemical context is a significant factor. Perhaps it is difficult for evangelical
protestants to conceive of any social trajectory for Christian faith apart from the liberal
program founded on materialist suppositions. The Kingdom of God teaching in Scripture
provides a compelling vision of the social dimension of the Gospel, rooted neither in the
denial of miracles, the attempted management of history, nor a belief in the ultimacy of
this-worldly justice. The Kingdom is a society founded on the miracle of the Christ-
event, with the way of the cross as its formulative ethic, and the presence of the future as
104For an explication of the non-causal but necessary connection between evangelical obedience and
justification, see Jonathan Edwards’ discourse on the doctrine of justification (Justification By Faith Alone,
in The Works of Jonathan Edwards Vol I, ed. S.E. Dwight, Edward Hickman (Edinburgh: Banner of
Truth Trust, 1974) 622-654).

its witness to an ultimacy beyond the present age. This is not at all what the liberal
church has in mind with respect to the social dimension of Christian faith, but it is
certainly a coherent and compelling account of what it means to be a Christian on the
societal level a dimension that is lacking in many quarters of contemporary evangelical
Protestantism.
Thus the preaching of the Kingdom can lead the way to a revitalized view of
ecumenism, with a sound commitment to intellectual honesty and a robust theological
vision. If the Kingdom framework were laid bare throughout the PCA, we would
understand more clearly what unites us and what divides us, and we would have a
blueprint for an ecumenical project in which unity would indeed be cultivated in the soil
of truth.
Building a Community
Perhaps one of the most troubling obstacles to effectively preaching the Kingdom is
the relative lack of communitarian values in our society today. It is difficult for Kingdom
preaching to take root or resonate in a society such as ours, where individualism and
personal freedom are highly prized, the very concept of authority is often treated with
suspicion, and notions of the common good are not very well developed. The difficulty is
two-fold. There is a danger, first of all, that the preacher will be reluctant to speak with
recourse to communitarian ideals because he senses intuitively that his people are living
and thinking primarily in an individualist framework. If the preacher explicates the
Kingdom framework faithfully, however, there is still the danger that such a corporate
vision of God’s involvement with the world will have little currency for many of his
people.

All that we have said so far has been aimed at avoiding the first of these dangers, by
demonstrating the centrality and comprehensiveness of the Kingdom motif in Scripture,
and presenting some motivations for ensuring that this reality is reflected in the church’s
preaching. It is equally important that we address the second danger. One way that Ruling
and Teaching Elders may do this is to pay particular attention in their preaching as well as
their exercise of spiritual leadership to developing a genuine covenant community and
cultivating an appreciation among their people for the very concept of community. Since
it is not simply community, but Christian community, that is comprehended in the
Kingdom of God framework, it is critical that our sense of community be defined by the
Word of God. It is only in the preaching of the Word and the administration of the
sacraments that we discern the covenant community in our midst. The preacher, as it
were, calls the local covenant community into existence by preaching that Word from
God which in a larger sense calls into existence the church universal.
It is perhaps in this community-building task that a programmatic focus can be quite
profitable. A community may very well develop and grow more or less spontaneously,
especially among a people who are indwelt by the Spirit of God and to whom the Word of
God is being preached. There is a vital place in this age, however, for both ordinary and
extraordinary means. Deliberate, purposeful, and orchestrated community-building
efforts are therefore very much in order, and should not be neglected. These efforts
should, moreover, be thoroughly integrated with the preaching of the Word, since it is the
Word that defines and helps sustain the community of Faith. This does not mean that
community events must always include the preaching of the Word, but that a Scripturally
derived self-consciousness of the community as the people of God must be cultivated in

the people. It is the preaching of the Word at the appointed times in the community which
makes it clear to all in attendance at any community event, no matter what the nature, that
this gathering is a local expression of the Kingdom of God, and that it is governed and
characterized by Kingdom values and Kingdom truths.
It is important that community events and activities not be perceived as mere
enticements to encourage attendance at some preaching-of-the-Word event. A common
example of this is a Bible study targeted for a narrowly-focused demographic group (say,
young couples with small children), which is billed as an opportunity for people in a
certain life situation to come and receive practical guidance to help them deal with the
special stresses and concerns they are facing, and to help them become a more effective
[fill in the blank]. This is not a Word-inspired and Word-mediated community, but an
arbitrarily defined community being used to make some small advance in the preaching
of the Word. It really should be the other way around. A genuine Kingdom community
exists because the Word is being preached, not so that the Word may be preached. The
Word is simply preached, and the community comes to life because of that.
If a church is to have programs, therefore, these programs should be designed to
facilitate the community-building impulse that is being imparted by the preaching of the
Word. They should not be crafted as carefully polished veneer coverings for the
preaching of the Word, but as community events in their own right that give expression to
the Kingdom life that is present because of the preaching of the Word. If the Word is
being preached effectively in a local church, then any social gathering is a genuinely
spiritual gathering that is advancing the Kingdom, even if (or especially if) there is no
formal theological program for the gathering.

A community that gathers only for formal teaching, preaching, etc. activities is
hardly a Christian community at all. It matters little how many are gathered for a teaching
event, quietly listening, taking notes, nodding their heads. (If there is discussion time
after the teaching, there is some advantage then to a group gathering, and of course the
sacraments are designed for a group setting.) The real benefit of community is felt,
however, in the unscripted meeting over coffee or a meal, the leisurely chat, the shared
recreational activity, and myriad other social venues. It is during such activities as these
that relationships are built and maintained, trust and familiarity are allowed to blossom,
and brothers and sisters who heard the same Word preached at the most recent formal
gathering can now help each other apply it in their specific life context.
A genuine Christian community thus requires opportunities for both formal teaching
and preaching and informal gatherings in the “real world” life context of the members of
the community. Church leaders who are designing programs for their church should keep
both these needs in mind, and they should be careful to preserve the distinction between
them. Thus if a church leader is looking for some practical step he may take to bring to
his people a greater appreciation of the significance of the Kingdom of God framework,
he may consider some community-building effort with the above considerations in mind.
Jesus the King

This paper has only scratched the surface of a very rich and complex topic, about
which many volumes have been written. Our discussion has nevertheless been fairly
complex, and we have encountered issues that are difficult to resolve, particularly in the
area of law and righteousness in the context of the New Covenant. We conclude therefore

with a final observation with respect to the pastoral presentation of this material in some
form.
A critical challenge that will be encountered in that effort is the need to effectively
translate the Kingdom of God teaching from its technical language and esoteric focus into
a form of instruction that is appropriate for the people in a given ministry context.
Although a continuing vigorous engagement of the full council of God (to the best of a
congregation’s ability) is always to be encouraged, church officers should not lose sight
of the equally valid truth that the Christian life consists in a union with Christ that is
sustained by the Holy Spirit despite the cognitive limitations or failings of any genuine
believer. The account of the repentant thief crucified with Christ (Lk. 23:39-43) illustrates
this point.105
The words of the repentant thief are astounding for what they reveal of his
understanding of Jesus. He knew that Jesus was dying, as did all who witnessed this
Roman execution. Looking upon this dying man, however, the thief utters the incredible
words “Jesus, remember me when you come in your Kingdom!” This man knows
something amazing about Jesus, for he says to a dying man “remember me...” He knows
not only that Jesus will survive the grave, but that he is bringing into history a Kingdom.
Furthermore, he knows Jesus as the coming King, for he refers to “your” Kingdom, and
his request to be remembered shows that he understands that the Kingdom is Jesus’ to
give.
Those whom Jesus taught by word and deed throughout his ministry, those intimate
friends and disciples to whom the Kingdom parables were explained in private, have all
The following exhortation is loosely based on the writer’s recollection of a sermon heard in person
105
nearly a decade ago; the preacher’s name is unknown.

deserted him. This crucified thief therefore shows himself at this precise point in time to
be the world’s greatest theologian, for where others see a dying leader of a failed
movement he sees a coming King. That his knowledge of Jesus was supernaturally
revealed to him is obvious, but not necessarily in any way different from how we come to
faith in Christ today. This man awoke that morning in a Roman dungeon, lying in his own
filth, without a friend to help him, destined to die a torturous death. Hanging on the cross,
he has come to the end of himself. He is utterly helpless in the world, with no resources at
his command, and he sees the Son of Man hanging on his cross beside him. While the
disciples are fleeing, still clinging to the illusion that they can do something to help their
situation, this man sees his desperate situation aright and calls upon the name of Jesus.
This is as precise a picture of the sinner saved by grace as the Bible offers. We, like
the thief, have come to the end of our resources, and understand our utter inability to save
ourselves. Looking upon Christ and his cross, we cry out to him for mercy. Like the thief
we hear those words of inestimable value, “…you shall be with me in paradise.” There is
in the repentant thief (apparently) no reflection on the proper way to speak of double
imputation. The ordo salutis is not a subject of discussion but an existential reality. Those
issues will be treated by the apostles in due time, and therefore their importance is not to
be minimized. The fact remains, however, that for this repentant crucified thief,
membership in the Kingdom has come down to a simple exercise of faith in the crucified
Christ.
We are not, in a physical sense, hanging on a cross beside our King. We are reading
of him in our Bibles, reflecting on that word and seeking to apply it in our lives. We are
therefore in a position to look into the deeper mysteries, to grapple with the difficult

issues, such as those surveyed in this paper. But none of this changes the fact that in the
final analysis our most cogent reflections and deepest musings on the Kingdom of God
are summed up in this simple transaction with our Lord: Jesus, remember me when you
come in your Kingdom!

Appendix
Eschatological Righteousness: The Current Crisis in Pauline Theology
This appendix is an attempt to orient the discussion in this paper with respect to a
very serious debate that is currently underway in the field of Pauline studies the debate
concerning the so-called New Perspective on Paul. It is certainly no exaggeration to refer
to this as a crisis, for the debate does not merely touch, but impinges heavily upon, the
doctrine of justification that doctrine upon which Luther asserted the church stands or
falls. This debate is important in its own right, but insofar as it can be characterized as a
debate concerning the extent to which Paul’s soteriological landscape is controlled by a
corporate versus personal conception of the Christ-sinner dynamic, it is also important for
our discussion of the Kingdom of God.
If the New Perspective school were to prevail, we should conclude that a doctrine
which was central to the Reformation, which constitutes the primary discriminator
between the Roman Catholic and Protestant branches of the church, and which has played
a critical role in the life of Protestants throughout the world for nearly 500 years, is
fundamentally flawed and requires radical revision. These charges are made, however, by
appeal to Scripture as a corrective for defective doctrine on the same basis, as it were,
that Luther pleaded his case so that we dare not summarily dismiss them without
serious investigation. New insights into Palestinian Judaism are adduced, which even the
opponents of the New Perspective generally agree represent significant and valid
advances in our understanding of the backdrop against which Paul developed and
communicated his doctrine of justification. It is a crisis indeed.

This paper does not attempt to provide a definitive analysis of the claims advanced
by the proponents of the New Perspective. What is offered instead is a summary of some
important recent critical works on the subject, followed by an assessment of the debate as
it has proceeded so far, and some suggestions for how the debate may be carried forward
more fruitfully. The purpose of this discussion is to enable us to take a position regarding
the extent, if any, to which the Kingdom of God preaching advocated in this paper should
embrace the New Perspective views on the corporate focus of Paul’s soteriololgy.
Before proceeding with this task, a brief survey of the historical development of the
church’s doctrine of justification is in order, since the New Perspective’s deviation from
the Protestant formulation of this doctrine is the main point of contention. We will trace
the development of this Protestant doctrine back to its roots in Augustine, to gain a wider
perspective on the present debate. At least one historical theologian has characterized the
New Perspective as a “fundamental repudiation” not just of Reformation Protestantism,
but “also of virtually the entire Western tradition on justification from at least as far back
as Augustine.”106 Inasmuch as Augustine embraced a view of justification as thoroughly
characterized by grace alone and yet operating in a non-forensic mode it is important
to identify the points of agreement and disagreement between Augustine and the New
Perspective as we evaluate the New Perspective claims against the backdrop of nearly
two thousand years of church history. Thus to Augustine and the Protestant Reformation
we now turn.
106Carl Trueman, A Man More Sinned Against than Sinning? The Portrait of Martin Luther in
Contemporary New Testament Scholarship: Some Casual Observations of a Mere Historian, delivered for
the Tyndale Fellowship Doctrine Lecture (2000).

The Doctrine of Justification in Historical Perspective
For Augustine, justification could be conceived of only as the grace of God moving
toward the sinner, apart from any merit whatsoever in the one justified as a potential
ground or motive for that justification. Opposing the heresy of Pelagius for the first time
in writing,107 Augustine writes “there is, therefore, no reconciliation except by the
remission of sins, through the one grace of the most merciful saviour through the one
sacrifice of the most veritable Priest.” 108 That this remission of sins is founded entirely
apart from any supposed merit in the one justified is asserted everywhere in Augustine’s
anti-Pelagian writings, of which a few passages are adduced here. “What merit, then, has
man before grace which could make it possible for him to receive grace, when nothing
but grace produces good merit in us; and what else but His gifts does God crown when he
crowns our merit?”109
Even our act of turning toward God that we might receive God’s grace is, for
Augustine, a gift of God’s grace. “When we turn to Him, therefore, God helps us; when
we turn away from Him, He forsakes us. But then He helps us even to turn to Him.” 110
Elsewhere he writes, “He does not, indeed, extend His mercy to them because they know
Him, but that they may know Him; nor is it because they are upright in heart, but that
they may become so, that He extends to them His righteousness, whereby He justifies the
ungodly.”111
Augustine’s view of the nature of justification may be summarized as “an objective
interpretation of the construction iustitia Dei [the righteousness of God] as the
107Augustine, Retractions II.23.

108Augustine, On The Merits And Forgiveness Of Sins, And On The Baptism Of Infants I.56.
109Augustine, Letters, Sister Wilfred Parsons ed. (Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1955) Ep. 194, p. 313.
110Augustine, Merits II.5.
111Augustine, On The Spirit And The Letter Ch. 11.

righteousness with which the sinner is endowed by God, rather than the righteousness by
which God is Himself righteous.”112 This is, of course, precisely what Luther discovered
over one thousand years later. In an autobiographical note written in reflection on his
evangelical breakthrough, Luther relates the welcome discovery that Augustine also
taught a view of passive righteousness, but adds that “this is expressed somewhat
imperfectly, and he does not explain everything about imputation clearly”. 113
While Luther and Augustine agree on the nature of justification as entirely by God’s
grace, they have quite different conceptions of the mode in which justification operates.
Although Luther’s view of justification is fundamentally and comprehensively
Augustinian, it nevertheless represents an innovative development of Augustine’s
thought a development, however, that is consistent with Augustine’s unalloyed reliance
on grace and arguably an explication of a truth implicit in his scheme. Luther and
Augustine each conceived of justification and intrinsic righteousness as inseparable in
reality, although Luther allowed for at least a conceptual distinction. In Augustine’s
writings we find not even this conceptual distinction. 114 Justification is identified with
intrinsic renewal in Augustine’s thought. The sinner
is quite aware that his justification results from no merits of his own, but
from the grace of God. ‘For it is God’ says the apostle ‘who worketh in
112McGrath, ‘The Righteousness Of God’ from Augustine to Luther, in Studia Theologica 36:65 1982.
113Martin Luther, WA 54.185.12-186.21. Cited in McGrath, Luther's Theology Of The Cross 96-98.
114 Luther’s view of alien and extrinsic righteousness did not relegate righteousness to mythical status in the believer.
The righteousness obtained by faith was a “real” righteousness, attended by substantive changes in the believer. The
forensic issue was determinative for Luther, so that as far as it touched the issue of justification, his doctrine allowed
for no view of righteousness as anything other than alien and extrinsic to the believer. Intrinsic righteousness for the
believer was certainly asserted in his doctrine, but it was incomplete at best, and could not function even in part as any
ground for justification coram Deo.
Augustine did not draw a distinction in his view of salvation between an objective forensic declaration and a
subjective renewal, and such was the view of the theologians of Luther’s day. Neither would Luther draw such
distinctions, except for didactic or conceptual reasons (Gordon S. Dicker, Luther's Doctrine of Justification and
Sanctification, in The Reformed Theological Review 26:14-5 Ja-Ap 1967 16.) Although these two aspects of salvation
were made distinct in the theology of later Reformers, they do not come apart cleanly in Luther’s thinking. (cf. Martin
Luther, Works Of Martin Luther Vol II (A.J. Holman Co., 1915) 318, 329, 331; and the following translated citations
from Latin texts: WA 2.146.34-35 (Cited by Scott S. Ickert in Review Essay: Iustitia Dei. A History of the Christian
Doctrine of Justification by Alister McGrath, in Dialog 27:309 Fall 1988, 30; WA, II, 13/29 (Cited by Lowell C. Green
in Faith, Righteousness, and Justification: New Light On Their Development Under Luther and Melanchthon, in The
Sixteenth Century Journal 4:75 Ap 1973); LW 32.24 (Cited by Scott S. Ickert in Review Essay 312.)

you both to will and to do of His own good pleasure.’ This then is the way
in which spiritual regeneration is effected in all who come to Christ from
their carnal generation.115
Here Augustine seamlessly treats of justification and regeneration within a unitary
conception of God’s salvific activity on man’s behalf. Justification is conceived of as God
working within the sinner, rather than on the sinner’s behalf by means of an extrinsic
forensic principle, as with the Protestant view. Elsewhere in the same treatise Augustine
writes with reference to the Pelagians that “[t]hey fail to observe that men severally
become sons of God when they begin to live in newness of spirit, and to be renewed as to
the inner man after the image of Him that created them.” 116 Augustine here describes sons
of God as those who are intrinsically renewed, rather than those who are the objects of a
forensic declaration.
Many other passages could be adduced to demonstrate Augustine’s doctrine of
justification through intrinsic renewal. The following are offered from his treatise On the
Spirit and the Letter, in which he argues for a subjective transformation by the Spirit of
God, identified with justification, in opposition to the letter of the law, which brings
death.
[Commenting on 2 Cor 3:3] See how he shows that the one [the letter of
the Law] is written without man, that it may alarm him from without; the
other [the Spirit] within man himself, that it may justify him from within.
The letter of the Law justifies no man... until it shall be turned to grace,
and be understood that from Him accrues to us the justification, whereby
we do what He commands.117
Nevertheless, it is not by that law that the ungodly are made righteous, but
by grace; and this change is effected by the life-giving Spirit, without
whom the letter kills.118
115Augustine, Merits I.62.

116Ibid. II.9 (emphasis added).
117Augustine, On The Spirit And The Letter Ch. 30.
118Ibid. Ch. 34 (italics added).

What is now promised [in the New Testament] is a good for the heart
itself, a good for the mind, a good of the spirit, that is, an intellectual
good.119
It is vital that we interpret Augustine’s view of the mode of justification (intrinsic
renewal) within the rubric of his conception of the nature of justification (unmerited favor
sovereignly bestowed), or we will miss the sense of Augustine entirely. That justification
is accomplished within rather than on behalf of the sinner in no way implies a view of
justification as grounded in human accomplishment. Justification is inward renewal, but
that renewal is fundamentally and comprehensively God’s work.
For example, when Augustine asserts intrinsic righteousness, rather than an objective
justifying principle, as a discriminating determinant relative to eternal life, the nature of
this righteousness is nevertheless seen as graciously provided by God. Asserting that in
baptized adults the guilt of concupiscence remains, though not in a way as to harm “those
who yield no consent to it for unlawful deeds”, he asserts that it will indeed harm unto
death those who do not receive the healing balm of intrinsic renewal.
Such [baptized adults], however, as yield consent to it for the commission

of unlawful deeds, it holds as guilty; and unless, through the medicine of
repentance, and through works of mercy, by the intercession in our behalf
of the heavenly High Priest, they be healed, it conducts us to the second
death and utter condemnation.120
There is here no retreat into imputational conceptions of objective righteousness to
soothe the anxious heart. One’s intrinsic state is taken at face value. The sinner does well
to despair of any self-righteousness, but when he flees to grace it is conceived of as
arriving intrinsically. There is no extrinsic righteousness applied to weather the storm of
intrinsic decay, no accommodation of subjective experience of sinfulness to faith in some
alternate objective reality. Such conceptions would comfort the troubled soul of Martin
119Ibid. Ch. 36.


Luther many centuries later, but Augustine did not conceive of justifying grace in this
fashion.
Both Luther and Augustine asserted a doctrine of man as simul iustus et peccator [at
the same time just and a sinner], but the phrase seems to have been used differently by
each of them. For Augustine this well-known phrase meant that man was “to some degree
righteous, to some degree sinful”,121 but Luther used the phrase to express the idea of an
extrinsic righteousness co-existing with intrinsic sinfulness.
Augustine asserts a righteousness which is “real”, though not complete.
It is therefore the first-fruits of the Spirit which we now possess, whence

we are already really become the children of God....But inasmuch as we
are not yet actually saved, we are also not yet fully renewed, nor yet also
fully sons of God, but children of the world.122
There is no place in Augustine’s thought for a sinner as entirely righteous while
retaining any intrinsic sinfulness, except as grounded in a proleptic apprehension of the
completed process of inward renewal. “Now what means this variety in the expressions
“we are,” and “we shall be,” but this we are in hope, we shall be in reality.”123 Thus
simul iustus et peccator involved, for Augustine, a proleptic pronouncement of a
perfected intrinsic renewal, while Luther intended by the same phrase an immediate
forensic declaration entirely independent of the sinner’s intrinsic condition. 124

121John F. Johnson, Luther On Justification, in Concordia Theological Monthly 38:416 Jl-Ag 1967.
123 Ibid (emphasis added).
124
These divergent emphases among Augustine and Luther are intertwined with complex historical factors, a full
treatment of which is beyond the scope of this paper. One scholar, however, argues that they are driven by a significant
change in the church’s concept of personal sin and the mode in which salvation is mediated, which occurred between
the fifth and sixteenth centuries. James F. McCue argues that Luther’s theology can be seen as “an Augustinianism
transformed...in confrontation with the dialectic of the complacent and the despairing conscience.” He maintains that
the church’s view of sin shifted from one in which one’s personal sins were beyond counting and beyond remembering,
to one in which specific sins were to be recounted and stripped of any consent to pleasure. Consequent to this, he
argues, was a shift in emphasis from receiving forgiveness according to one’s willingness to forgive one’s own debtors
(as promised in the Lord’s Prayer), to a view of salvation as mediated by “the purified conscience and confession.”
Asserting that Augustine’s frequent acknowledgment of every Christian remaining a sinner is always given as a
secondary affirmation, he argues that Augustine’s conception of the sin which remains in the believer is trivial in
comparison to “Luther’s conception of the ineradicable egoism of all human beings, even Christians.” James F. McCue,
‘Simul iustus et peccator’ in Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther: Toward Putting the Debate in Context, in Journal of the

By the middle of the sixteenth century, a doctrine of forensic justification in
opposition to Augustine’s view of justification through intrinsic renewal had gained
“widespread acceptance among the churches of the Reformation.” 125 Calvin
acknowledges the disjunction, writing of Augustine’s view of justification, “The
sentiment of Augustine, or at least his way of expressing it, cannot be wholly approved
of.”126
Let us conclude this section, then, with a summary of the Protestant doctrine of
justification by faith that was developed from the Augustinian framework of salvation by
God’s grace alone. Martin Luther’s evangelical breakthrough, a perception of the sinner’s
complete passivity in justification, is thoroughly Augustinian in its fundamental genius. It
led, however, to an innovative advance beyond Augustine’s thought. Luther came to see
that the “righteousness of God”, rather than being a quality which God possessed in
opposition to man, was a quality which God imparted to man, according to the unmerited
favor bestowed by His grace.127 On this point, Luther is operating within an Augustinian
framework.
This doctrine of passive justification, however, does not exhaustively define the
Protestant view of justification. It is rather an implicit principle pertaining to the nature of
justification, which exerts a formative influence on more explicit assertions regarding the
mode of justification. These assertions may be summarized according to the following
three points.
American Academy of Religion 48: 84-92 Mr 1980.

125McGrath, Forerunners of the Reformation? A critical examination of the evidence for precursors of the Reformation
doctrines of justification, in Harvard Theological Review 75: April 1982, 223.

126John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion III.11.11.
127McGrath, Luther's Theology Of The Cross (Basil Blackwell Inc., 1985) 96-97.

1) Justification is the forensic declaration that the Christian is righteous,
rather than the process by which he is made righteous, involving a change
in man’s status rather than his nature.
2) A deliberate and systematic distinction is made between justification
(the act by which God declares the sinner to be righteous) and
sanctification or regeneration (the internal process of renewal by the Holy
Spirit)
3) Justifying righteousness, or the formal cause of justification, is the alien
righteousness of Christ, external to man and imputed to him, not a
righteousness inherent to man, located within him, or in any way
belonging to his person.128
We are now ready to draw these thoughts together for comparison with the treatment
of justification in the New Perspective. When either the Augustinian or Protestant view of
justification is considered, it is the individual sinner that is primarily in view. In this
sense, the New Perspective assertion of the corporate focus of justification is raised in
opposition to Augustine as much as to the Reformation. The New Perspective’s objection
to forensic righteousness, however, engages Luther and the Reformers. To the extent that
the New Perspective’s corporate view of justification embraces a participatory versus
forensic mode of salvation, it is a fair question whether this may be considered in some
sense a development of Augustine’s thought on justification along an alternative path to
that taken by the Reformers, and whether Augustine’s doctrine lends support to the thesis
that forensic righteousness need not be at the center of a theology that properly embraces
salvation by grace alone.
The New Perspective on Paul

It is doubtful whether the work of any human author has been written about so much
or interpreted in such divergent ways as that of the apostle Paul. The literature available
on Paul today is “staggering…[and] few can be said to have mastered it.” 129 Thus it is not
at all surprising that a revision of such a foundational Pauline doctrine as justification
128McGrath, Forerunners of the Reformation?, 223.

129 Stephen Westerholm, Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith (Eerdmans, 1988) vii.

would be proposed today. That such a proposal has gained traction in evangelical circles
is both unexpected and significant. The New Perspective is far from a monolithic
movement, but rather encompasses a range of viewpoints that nevertheless have certain
common features. We will briefly survey these common features, but our critical analysis
will be focused primarily on the expression of the New Perspective that has found some
adherents among evangelicals, as represented by the writings of N.T. Wright.
Although the label New Perspective is relatively new, coined by James D.G. Dunn in
response to the “groundbreaking” work of E.P Sanders in the late 1970s,130 the roots of
Sanders’ and other New Perspective proponents’ insights can be traced back at least as far
as the work of William Wrede and Albert Schweitzer in the early part of the 20 th century.
Assertions by Wrede that forensic justification is not the center of Paul’s theology, that
justification for Paul is a secondary doctrine forged primarily for polemical purposes, 131
that “Paul’s concern is not with the individual but with the race, with humanity as a
whole,” and that “no attempt is made to define the psychological state of the believer” 132
are forerunners of New Perspective findings. Schweitzer likewise anticipates the New
Perspective; questioning the conventional wisdom that Paul’s was a troubled
conscience,133 announcing that “righteousness…belongs to the future: to be righteous is to
have a claim to be pronounced righteous at the coming judgment,”134 pronouncing Paul’s
doctrine of justification a “subsidiary crater which has formed within the rim of the main
130 Kim Riddlebarger, Reformed Confessionalism and the “New Perspective” on Paul,
http://www.alliancenet.org/pub/articles/riddlebarger.perspective.html.
131 Westerholm, Israel’s Law 19-20.
132 Ibid. 19.
133 Albert Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters (Adam and Charles Black, 1950 (1912)) 105, cited in
Westerholm, Israel’s Law 27.

134 Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (Seabury, 1931) 205, cited in Westerholm, Israel’s Faith
29.

crater the mystical doctrine of redemption through being-in-Christ,” 135 and asserting
that Paul neither tried to nor was able to base his ethics on the doctrine of justification. 136
In addition to these assertions by Wrede and Schweitzer, the increased attention
given to the Jewish context of Paul following the Second World War, fostered by the
writings of W.D. Davies and others, began to set the stage for the New Perspective. 137 In
1963 an article appeared in the Harvard Theological Review, by Krister Stendahl, entitled
The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West. Stendahl’s argument has
been characterized as asserting that “Paul is not to be seen through the lens of the soul-
searchings of a Luther or an Augustine,” and that in the light of Phil 3:2ff, “there is no
hint that before his Damascus Road experience he was laboring under a bad
conscience.”138 Stendahl writes, “the Pauline awareness of sin has been interpreted in the
light of Luther’s struggle with his conscience. But it is exactly at this point that we can
discern the most drastic difference between Luther and Paul.” 139
According to Stendahl, Paul “never urges Jews to find in Christ the answer
to the anguish of a plagued conscience.” The Western mind errs, as did
Luther, by reading transgression language individually and therefore
psychologically, rather than corporately as Paul intended. This means that
Paul’s point is not about an individual finding peace with a gracious God
and relief from personal guilt, but about how Jew and Gentile, as distinct
ethnic groups, fit into salvation history respectively.140
A Theological Sea Change
The “turning of the tide” (Wright’s phrase) in support of the New Perspective is
widely regarded as occurring with the publication in 1977 of Paul and Palestinian
Judaism by E. P. Sanders. In this book Sanders argued that the popular view of first
135 Ibid. 225, Cited in Westerholm, Israel’s Faith 31.

136 Ibid. 295, Cited in Westerholm, Israel’s Faith 31.
137 Stephen Neil and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New testament 1861-1986 (Oxford University
Press, 1964) 369-370.

138 Ibid. 372.
139 Krister Stendahl, The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West in Paul Among Jews
and Gentiles (Fortress Press, 1976) 79, cited in Riddlebarger, Reformed Confessionalism.
140 Riddlebarger, Reformed Confessionalism.

century Palestinian Judaism as a religion of works righteousness was erroneous. He
exposed the way in which certain German scholars
expounded Judaism in terms borrowed, totally anachronistically, from

Reformation polemic…The rabbis are accused of holding more or less
exactly those doctrines of which Luther had suspected Rome…Paul, of
course, is held to expound more or less exactly those doctrines which
Luther and others had put forward instead.141
Sanders characterizes first century Palestinian Judaism with the term Covenantal
Nomism. By this he means “the view that one’s place in God’s plan is established on the
basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man, his
obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for
transgression.”142 Behind the rabbinic commitment to understanding and keeping the
details of the law lies a conviction “too self-evident to require continual articulation” that
the law is a gracious gift from God and obedience to its requirements is a privilege and
covenant obligation. God’s commitment to Israel as a people was believed to be
unconditional, and rabbinic explanations of the election of Israel involved an
unsystematic combination of divine grace and human merit, which were not perceived as
being mutually exclusive.143 Divine justice was administered in the framework of the
covenant, such that the people of Israel were judged by their conformity to the covenant’s
law.
The ‘righteous’ Jew in rabbinic writings is thus not one who earns divine
approval by compiling an impressive list of good deeds, but simply ‘one
who accepts the covenant and remains within it.’…Not perfect, or even
fifty-one percent fulfillment of the law’s commands, but membership in
Israel, the covenant community of God, is the basis of the Jew’s standing
before God…God’s mercy prevails and will be granted to all Israelites
whose basic intent is one of obedience”144
141 Neil and Wright, Interpretation of the New Testament 373.

142 Sanders, cited without reference in Riddlebarger, Reformed Confessionalism.
143 Westerholm, Israel’s Law 47-49.
144 Ibid. 49-50.

For Sanders, both Paul and Palestinian Judaism are in agreement about the nature of
righteousness, with each one describing it from a different perspective. Paul is said to
speak of righteousness as “how one gains one’s standing before God,” and to declare that
this cannot be by works. The Jews of Paul’s day, he argues, would agree with this. They
spoke of being righteous by obeying the law, but this meant “that such works are required
for one to maintain such a standing.”145 This of course raises the question, what was the
nature of Paul’s polemic against Judaism when he argued that righteousness is by faith
and not by the law? Sanders would reply that Paul did not argue from plight to solution,
noting man’s guilt of sinfulness and searching for a solution. He argued rather from
solution to plight, noting the transfer of the aeons accomplished by Christ and concluding
that
the only thing wrong with the old righteousness is that it is not the new
one… There is a righteousness which comes by law, but it is worth
nothing because of a different dispensation. Real righteousness (the
righteousness of or from God) is through Christ. It is this concrete fact of
heilsgeschichte which makes the other righteousness wrong, not the
abstract superiority of grace to merit.146
Thus for Sanders the redemptive-historical context is the primary determinant of
Paul’s doctrine of justification, and this context indicates that Paul is not thinking about
atonement or forensic righteousness. The substance of his polemic against Judaism is not
grace over against merit, but that the Jews have failed to recognize the transition of the
ages and are consequently relying on obedience to the wrong covenant administration to
demonstrate their continued participation in God’s covenant.
Sanders’ work has had a dramatic effect on Pauline studies, such that it is a
meaningful distinction to reference works on Paul as Pre-Sanders or Post-Sanders.147
145 Ibid.
146 E.P. Sanders, cited without reference in Riddlebarger, Reformed Confessionalism.
147 N.T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Eerdmans, 1997) 18.

While some have argued that Sanders relied on a fairly selective sample of Jewish
literature in arriving at his thesis, it is generally accepted that our view of first century
Palestinian Judaism has been significantly altered by his insights. 148 Sanders’ reworking
of Pauline theology on the basis of his new insights into Palestinian Judaism, however,
has suffered much criticism from both advocates and opponents of the New Perspective,
such that his influence is more or less limited to the momentous paradigm shift he
brought about in our understanding of the nature of first century Palestinian Judaism. 149
The primary problem with Sanders’ scheme is a spectacularly weak account of Paul’s
polemic against Judaism, an account which does not do justice to the vehemence,
urgency, and depth of conviction displayed in Paul’s debate with the Judaizers.
One of the most important advocates of the New Perspective is James D.G. Dunn. A
prolific writer, he has launched the more scholarly and carefully reasoned New
Perspective attacks on the traditional viewpoint. 150 He begins by responding to Sanders,
and then using Sanders’ insight into the true nature of Palestinian Judaism as a basis for a
methodical reworking of Paul’s theology, especially his doctrine of justification. He
argues that Paul came to understand through his confrontation with Peter at Antioch (Gal
2:11-18) that
‘justification through faith’ applied not simply to the acceptance of the

Gospel in conversion, but also to the whole of the believer’s life. That is to
say, he saw that justification through faith was not simply a statement of
how the believer entered into God’s covenantal promises (the
148 Riddlebarger, Reformed Confessionalism. While arguing strenuously against Sanders’ doctrine of
justification, he nevertheless affirms that “Sanders in particular has demonstrated that the monolithic
interpretation of Palestinian Judaism as a religion of works righteousness typical of much of Protestant
scholarship, is certainly in need of correction. The Palestinian sources do indeed contain (but not
exclusively so) a sola gratia element.”
149 Ibid.
150 Ibid. “It is University of Durham, New Testament professor James D.G. Dunn, who has done the most to
‘fill the lacuna which Sanders originally left between Paul and his background.’ As Moises Silva notes, ‘we
could say that the distinctiveness of Dunn’s position lies precisely in his attempt to build upon Sanders’
analysis of Judaism so as to provide a more satisfactory and consistent understanding of the law in the NT,
especially in Paul.’”

understanding of the Gospel agreed at Jerusalem); It must also regulate his
life as a believer. The covenantal nomism of Judaism and of the Jewish
believers (life in accordance with the law within the covenant given by
grace...) was in fact a contradiction of that agreed understanding of
justification through faith. To live life `in Christ' and `in accordance with
the law' was not possible; it involved a basic contradiction in terms and in
the understanding of what made someone acceptable to God. To begin
with the Spirit and through faith rules out not just justification by works of
the law, but life lived by law (covenantal nomism) also the very
argument which he develops in the rest of Galatians.151
Thus “Paul is concerned not with the Lutheran idea of justification by faith but ‘with
the relation between Jew and Gentile.’ His basic assertion is that faith in Christ abolishes
national and racial distinctions made on the basis of circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath
observations.”152 Dunn then proceeds to argue that Sanders’ Paul is “only a little better
than the one rejected….The Lutheran Paul has been replaced by an idiosyncratic Paul
who in arbitrary and irrational manner turns his face against the glory and greatness of
Judaism’s covenant theology and abandons Judaism simply because it is not
Christianity.”153
Seizing the opportunity that Sanders apparently missed, Dunn re-works the
traditional understanding of Paul on justification, arguing that when Paul claims that we
are justified by faith rather than works, he is referring to works in a very narrow
sense specifically the works that a Jew relied on to identify himself as a member of
God’s covenant people (i.e., circumcision, observance of Jewish purity, food laws, and
the Sabbath). Both Christianity and Judaism agreed that we are justified by faith, and the
point of contention for Paul was Israel’s reliance on any works-based covenant badge as a
means of remaining in God’s covenant. Paul wanted to disabuse the Jews of any notion of
works righteousness, even within the covenant framework. Thus while Sanders’ Paul had
151 James D.G.Dunn, The Incident at Antioch (Galatians 2:11-18), cited in Riddlebarger, Reformed
Confessionalism.
152 Ibid.
153 Ibid.

advocated a transformed covenantal nomism, with covenant obedience understood as
maintaining one’s salvation by obedience to Christ as the newly revealed Lord of the
covenant, Dunn’s Paul rejected covenantal nomism entirely. Riddlebarger summarizes
Dunn’s argument as follows.
When Paul denies that works of the law justify, he is really denying that
“God’s justification depends on ‘covenantal nomism,’ that God’s grace
extends only to those who wear the badge of the covenant.” What Paul
does mean is that “God’s verdict in favor of believers comes to realization
through faith, from start to finish, and in no way depends on observing the
works of law which hitherto had characterized and distinguished the Jews
as God’s people.” …Faith in Jesus Messiah begins to emerge [for Paul]
not simply as a narrower definition of the elect of God. From being one
identity marker for the Jewish Christian alongside the other identity
markers (circumcision, food laws, Sabbath), faith in Jesus as Christ
becomes the primary identity marker which renders the others
superfluous.154
Thus Dunn has succeeded at least in building a more coherent system than Sanders
had on the latter’s celebrated insights into Palestinian Judaism. This system comes full
circle and supports Stendahl’s thesis that Paul was not concerned with the individual
sinner’s relation to God (i.e., forensic justification), but with the relation of Jew to
Gentile and the question of how God’s people are identified. 155 Riddlebrger, however,
gathers together the numerous objections that have been raised against Dunn’s position,
and thereby delivers a withering critique. He begins by noting the considerable number of
inaccuracies that have been identified in the historiography that serves as the foundation
of the New Perspective.156 He further observes that even in light of the genuine
historiographic findings of the New Perspective, the case can be made even stronger for
the traditional position.

155 Ibid.
156 Cf. also Carl Trueman, A Man More Sinned Against than Sinning? Trueman demonstrates quite
convincingly that Dunn has levied some harsh and pointed accusations at Luther based entirely on
secondary sources, while demonstrating no familiarity whatsoever with statements by Luther that are
clearly exculpatory. By Trueman’s own reckoning, his accusations, if true, are not fatal to Dunn’s system,
but raise suspicions about the reliability of his other assertions.

More significant, Riddlebarger argues, are what Moises Silva refers to as the “false
dilemmas and forgotten verses” which demonstrate the shaky foundation on which the
New Perspective has been built. A list of verses entirely ignored in Dunn’s work is
presented (Rom 4:5; 11:6; Eph 2:8-10; and Phil 3:9), each of which include direct
assertions that seem to contradict Dunn’s thesis. “According to Silva, the methodology
‘consistently ends up lording it over the data.’”157 Rom 4:4-5 is presented as “especially
damaging to the Sanders-Dunn thesis since ‘Paul states so sharply the antithesis between
working and believing that the latter is virtually defined by the negation of the
former.’”158
Another interesting observation provided by Riddlebarger is that Sanders’ notion of
covenantal nomism is remarkably similar to the via moderna of the “schoolmen” of
Luther’s day. That Sanders resurrects a scheme that was previously discredited does not
prove that it is incorrect, but Sanders’ apparent failure to even recognize the similarity is
indicative of a lack of thoughtfulness regarding the integration and interaction of his
thesis with historic Christian doctrines. Other powerful rebuttals of the New Perspective
are also noted by Riddlebarger, especially Stephen Westerholm’s Israel’s Law and the
Church’s Faith (referenced often in this paper), which “defends the thesis that the law-
Gospel antithesis is the key to interpret Paul’s writings, and that Luther’s interpretation of
Paul was therefore, substantially correct,” and Frank Thielman’s From Plight to Solution,
which, while agreeing with Sanders that there is little evidence that Paul opposed
legalism, nevertheless undercuts Sanders’ foundational thesis that Paul’s thought moved
from solution to plight.”159

158 Ibid.
159 Ibid.

What we have said so far about the New Perspective suggests the view that there is
much food for thought in the writings of its proponents, but that on the whole there are
far more problems with the approach than could be accepted for a system that claims the
task of revising the classical Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. 160 Absent from
the criticisms we have reviewed so far, however, is any sustained response to the writings
of N.T. Wright, whose brand of New Perspective thought enjoys some support in
evangelical circles. We will now attempt to determine whether Wright has been able to
integrate the New Perspective distinctives into a theological system that is not subject to
the criticisms raised against Sanders and Dunn, and whether Wright is able to make a
valid case for reinterpreting Paul’s doctrine of justification.
N.T. Wright’s Approach

Our survey of Wright’s contribution to the New Perspective on Paul will rely
primarily on his 1997 work What Saint Paul Really Said, described by Wright as
“something of an interim report” that is awaiting a more comprehensive treatment of
Paul’s theology in an upcoming, much larger, volume. Pulled together from a series of
lectures, and leaving “large swathes of Pauline thought still untouched,” this work
nevertheless provides a coherent presentation of Wright’s thinking on Paul’s theology in
the aftermath of the Sanders revolution. Wright focuses on some “key areas of Paul’s
160We have focused here on explicit interaction with New Perspective authors. A more indirect approach is
taken by Stephen Westerholm in his Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith. He takes the New Perspective
quite seriously, conceding some of their points in a limited sense, but provides a clear and convincing
argument for the traditional approach to Paul. He argues that Paul understood Law as something that
“needed doing,” even apart from any self-righteous intent, and that it was even in this non-legalistic sense
that Paul abandoned Law when he met the risen Christ. The law was offered as a means to life, not
necessarily by merit but because obedience is in itself life-giving. This function of the Law was rendered
inoperable by sin, and God, being God, had planned all along for life to come to his people through Christ.
Paul realized this on the road to Damascus, and consequently rejected not just legalistic law-keeping, but
any form of law-keeping as a means to life, now that salvation in Christ had been revealed. Westerholm’s
analysis is helpful fore refuting the New Perspective position, but his denial of the ongoing validity of the
law is problematic. He does not consider the possibility that the law was inadequate as a means to life only
apart from Christ.

proclamation and its implications,” apparently selecting these areas of focus in part on the
basis of what he perceives to be gaps in the present day understanding of Paul. 161
After summarizing and briefly interacting with selected twentieth century voices on
Paul, culminating in a presentation of the key points of the Sanders revolution, Wright
describes his own place in that revolution as walking a fine line between the new insights
and their disruptive effects on the classical Protestant doctrine of justification.
Some still use Paul to legitimate an old-style ‘preaching of the Gospel’ in

which the basic problem is human sin and pride and the basic answer is
the cross of Christ. Others, without wishing to deny this as part of the
Pauline message, are struggling to do justice to the wider categories and
the larger questions that seem to be a non-negotiable part of Paul’s whole
teaching. This, indeed, is the category into which I would put myself.162
In this statement Wright is telegraphing an important aspect of his approach to Paul
that his readers will do well to keep in mind as they assess his thinking. Wright’s
theology is greatly determined by evangelistic considerations. He is primarily interested
in correcting what he sees as misunderstandings of Paul that have weakened and muddled
the church’s preaching of the Gospel. He is quite willing to acknowledge, as implicit
truths or secondary doctrines, much of what his opponents are zealous to protect; but he
maintains that the Gospel is something quite different than a carefully thought out
explanation of just what is going on when sinners are saved by the grace of God in Christ.
Wright’s view of the nature of the Gospel therefore emerges as the center of his
thinking on Paul. He does not start there however, but with a look at Saul the Pharisee
and Paul the Apostle, and their points of continuity and discontinuity. He identifies Saul
as “a Shammaite, a hard-line Pharisee.” But the strictness of the Shammaites, Wright
argues, was more complex than a hard-line stance toward obeying the commands of the
161 Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said 7-8.

162 Ibid. 22.

Torah. “The issue was as much ‘political’ as it was ‘theological.’” Indeed his portrait of
the first century Jewish zealot brings to mind the modern-day Muslim fundamentalist.
“For the first century Jew, ‘zeal’ was something you did with a knife… ‘Zeal’ thus comes
close to holy war: a war to be fought (initially, at any rate) guerrilla-style, by individuals
committed to the cause.” 163
The point is that Saul was not merely zealous for obedience to Yahweh, he was
eagerly awaiting (and hastening, to the best of his ability) national deliverance for Israel.
He was looking for the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies of the restoration of
Israel with the coming of the Kingdom of God. Yahweh would come into history and
crown himself as King, and if Israel were keeping Torah when he arrived, she would be
vindicated and avenged of her enemies in the judgment of the Gentiles. Saul’s thinking,
Wright argues, was dominated by this expectation of salvation in history, and he had
relatively little interest in thoughts of heaven as we tend to think of it today or salvation
in an abstract timeless sense.
Since Saul’s expectation was centered on Yahweh’s covenant with Israel,
justification in this context would be understood in law-court terms the judgment of
those nations who had been oppressing Israel. “‘Justification’ thus describes the coming
great act of redemption and salvation, seen from the point of view of the covenant (Israel
is God’s people) on the one hand and the law court on the other (God’s final judgment
will be like a great law-court scene, with Israel winning the case).” 164 Since the
justification sought by Israel involved the culmination of history, that “great climactic
moment in which everything would be sorted out once and for all,” justification for Saul
163 Ibid. 27.

164 Ibid. 33.

was ineluctably eschatological. “The Jewish eschatological hope was hope for
justification, for God to vindicate his people at last.” 165
Wright applies this picture of Saul the zealot to illumine our understanding of Paul
the Apostle. When Saul was confronted on the road to Damascus by the risen Christ, the
fact of Jesus’ resurrection shook his worldview to the core. Lying there on the road to
Damascus, he realized that
The one true God had done for Jesus of Nazareth, in the middle of time,
what Saul had thought he was going to do for Israel at the end of time.
Saul had imagined that Yahweh would vindicate Israel after her suffering
at the hand of the pagans. Instead he had vindicated Jesus after his
suffering at the hand of the pagans.166
Furthermore, “if the Age to Come had arrived, if the resurrection had already begun to
take place, then this was the time when the Gentiles were to come in.” 167 Thus Paul’s
evangelistic mission, Wright argues, was instigated by and centered on his understanding
of the resurrection of Jesus as the breaking into history of the beginnings of the
eschatological justification which the nation of Israel was eagerly awaiting, a justification
which also included the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant’s promise of blessing
through Israel to the Gentile nations.
Thus Paul did not “abandon Judaism for something else,” inventing a new religion.
Rather he accepted the vocation of proclaiming to the whole world the fact that
“Judaism’s long story had reached its climax, its fulfillment, in Jesus of Nazareth.” He
was, in short, entrusted with the preaching of the gospel. This word gospel, Wright
claims, is greatly misunderstood in the modern church. He does not approve of the
165 Ibid. 33-34.

166 Ibid. 36.
167 Ibid. 37.

equating of the gospel with what used to be called the ordo salutis, or order of salvation.
The gospel is not
a description of how people get saved; of the theological mechanism

whereby, in some people’s language, Christ takes our sin and we his
righteousness; in other people’s language, Jesus becomes my personal
saviour; in other languages again, I admit my sin, believe that he died for
me, and commit my life to him.168
Wright points out that he has no quarrel with asserting that these things are true and
ought to be preached and believed. He just doesn’t believe that this is what Paul had in
mind when he talked about preaching the gospel. Appealing to Paul’s Jewish and
Hellenistic backgrounds, Wright asserts that the term was understood in Paul’s day as a
pronouncement of conquest or the establishment of rule by a king. The Jewish
background of the term is illustrated by its usage in certain climactic statements in Isaiah
40− 66, summing up that section of Scripture’s great double-theme of “YHWH’s return
to Zion and enthronement, and the return of Israel herself from her exile in Babylon.” 169
The Greek usage of the term, Wright explains, refers to “the announcement of a great
victory, or to the birth, or accession, of an emperor,” which brings “the promise of peace,
a new start for the world.” This usage is illustrated by an inscription from 9 BC
commemorating the accession of Caesar Augustus as emperor of Rome. 170
Wright then argues that Paul used the term gospel in a way consistent with its Jewish
and Greek heritage, while applying it specifically to the message of Jesus’ resurrection,
which represented the victory of Israel’s God, the one true God, over all the world. He
elaborates four aspects of this “gospel of God”: the crucified Jesus, the risen Jesus, Jesus
as the king of Israel, and Jesus as the Lord of the whole world. 171 Wright emphasizes that
168 Ibid. 40-41.

169 Ibid. 42.
170 Ibid. 43.
171 Ibid. 45-57.

the gospel is not “a system of how people get saved,” although “the announcement of the
gospel results in people being saved.”172
When the herald makes a royal proclamation, he says ‘Nero (or whoever)
has become emperor.’ He does not say ‘If you would like to have an
experience of living under an emperor, you might care to try Nero.’ The
proclamation is an authoritative summons to obedience in Paul’s case, to
what he calls ‘the obedience of faith.’173
To put this in terms relevant to the current debate between the New Perspective
theologians and their opponents, Wright does not think that the gospel, as Paul used that
term, was an explanation of double imputation or even an invitation for the gospel
recipients to have their sins imputed to Christ and his righteousness to them. What place,
then, does he think double imputation has in Paul’s theology, and what place does he
think it should have in contemporary Christian thought and practice? It is difficult to
answer this question from what he has written so far, since he is largely silent on it and
the other aspects of the ordo salutis; although as quoted above, he places himself in the
group of New Perspective sympathizers who do not wish “to deny [that what used to be
called the ordo salutis is] part of the Pauline message.”174 Since he alerts the reader in his
introduction that there are “large swathes” of Paul’s thought unaccounted for in the
present work and that a comprehensive treatment will be forthcoming, 175 it hardly seems
fair to conclude that Wright has abandoned these doctrines, but his silence on them is
quite troubling.176
Wright does explain what he thinks Paul meant by the doctrine of justification, and it
is quite removed from the classical Protestant doctrines of double imputation and the
172 Ibid. 45.

173 Ibid.
174 Ibid. 22.
175 Ibid. 7-8.
176 The acute concern and suspicion that the current omission has engendered among his opponents is
nevertheless understandable. It is important, however, that Wright be given room to explain more explicitly
just what he believes about the classical Reformation doctrines that he seems to be deprecating.

substitutionary atonement. His view of justification is essentially that of Dunn as
described in the previous section. Wright argues that
Paul continued to believe, as Saul had done, that one could tell, in the
present, who was a member of the true people of God. For Saul, the badge
was Torah: those who kept Torah strictly in the present were marked out as
the future true Israel. For Paul, however, that method would only intensify
the great gulf between Jew and Gentile, which the death and resurrection
of Jesus the Messiah had obliterated. Rather, now that the great act had
already occurred, the way you could tell in the present who belonged to
the true people of God was quite simply faith: faith in the God who sent
his Son to die and rise again for the whole world.177
Justification is thus, for Wright, not about “getting in” or “staying in,” Sanders’ terms
for what justification meant for Paul and first century Jews, respectively. Wright’s Paul is
in agreement with Dunn’s Paul that justification is a matter of identifying the community
of believers. As such it is something quite distinct from the gospel, and not something
that should ordinarily even be included in the gospel proclamation.
[The doctrine of justification] was not the message [Paul] would announce
on the street to the puzzled pagans of (say) Corinth; it was not the main
thrust of his evangelistic message. It was the thing his converts most
needed to know in order to be assured that they really were part of God’s
people.178
Wright explains the Pauline doctrine of justification by first clarifying what is meant
by the related term righteousness of God. What is not meant by it, Wright assures us, is
righteousness objectively imparted to us. This would involve a category mistake, for
righteousness is a term taken from the law-court, and in that context objectively imparted
righteousness from the judge to the plaintiff makes no sense. The righteousness which the
judge has is “a complex matter to do with the way he handles the case.” It requires that
“the judge must try the case according to the law; that he must be impartial; that he must
punish sin as it deserves; and that he must support and uphold those who are defenseless
and who have no-one but him to plead their case.” 179
178 Ibid. 94.
179 Ibid. 97.

For the plaintiff, righteousness has none of these connotations. Nor does the term
even connote for the plaintiff, in this law-court context, his moral rectitude. It simply
denotes the status granted to him by the judge in the legal proceeding at hand. In this
forensic context, therefore, we cannot coherently speak of the judge granting his
righteousness to the plaintiff, for righteousness means something entirely different for the
judge than it does for the plaintiff. Applying this argument to God’s justification of his
people, Wright asserts that it cannot be God’s own righteousness that is imparted. The
righteousness of God is not, he argues, a “righteousness given to humans,” but God’s
own righteousness. It is, furthermore, both a possessive genitive and a subjective genitive
construction that is in view. That is, it describes a moral quality of God (his covenant
faithfulness) and a salvation-creating power of God (his acts of covenant faithfulness). 180
Wright claims to find support for this meaning of justification in various New
Testament Scriptures. The most notable of his arguments, by virtue of its novelty, is his
claim that when Paul writes in 2 Cor. 5:21 that “we might become the righteousness of
God,” this is not a reference to God’s righteousness being imparted to the believer in
Christ. The “we” in the verse is Paul and his evangelistic team, and by virtue of the
subjective genitive construction of the term, the passage is understood to refer to God
demonstrating his covenant faithfulness through the ministerial activities of the apostolic
team.181
Wright gathers together these thoughts on the meaning of the gospel and the
righteousness of God, and explicates what he takes to be the Pauline doctrine of
180 Ibid. 100-103. Wright argues that the distinction between these two senses of justification in this context
is not meaningful. “Since, for Paul, God is the creator, always active within his world, we should expect, in
the nature of the case, to find his attributes and his actions belonging extremely closely together.”
181 Ibid. 104-105.

justification as something “organically and integrally linked to what [Paul] meant by the
gospel.”182 This is asserted in opposition to the understanding of justification by faith
current in the church the supremacy of grace with respect to merit. He wants to
distance himself, however, from the treatment of justification as a secondary Pauline
doctrine, as with Wrede and Schweitzer, although justification cannot be put “right at the
centre, since that place is already taken by the person of Jesus himself.” 183 Asserting that
the understanding of the Pauline doctrine of justification “got off on the wrong foot” with
Augustine and his intellectual descendents, he claims support for this position from no
less an authority on justification than Alister McGrath.
[The doctrine of justification] has come to develop a meaning quite

independent of its biblical origins, and concerns the means by which
man’s relationship to God is established. The church has chosen to
subsume its discussion of the reconciliation of man to God under the aegis
of justification, thereby giving the concept an emphasis quite absent from
the New Testament. The ‘doctrine of justification’ has come to bear a
meaning within dogmatic theology which is quite independent of its
Pauline origins…184
McGrath asserts that this lack of an adequate Pauline basis does not undermine the
significance of the doctrine which the church has long embraced (presumably because he
believes that the doctrine is supported by other biblical data), but Wright sees a problem
in that Paul is continually invoked in the church’s discussion of justification. He therefore
argues what he believes to be the Pauline use of the term. He first, however, attempts to
deflect the anticipated criticism of his position by observing that the classical doctrine of
justification is generally valued as a defense against Pelagianism, but that he is not a
Pelagian, that there are very few Pelagians left in the world, and that Paul does not use
the doctrine of justification to assert what we would recognize as an anti-Pelagian answer
182 Ibid. 113.

183 Ibid. 114.
184 Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei. A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 1986, Volume 1 2ff.,
Cited in Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said 115.

to the question of how humans can be right with God. “[I]f we come to Paul with these
questions in mind the questions about how human beings come into a living and saving
relationship with the living and saving God it is not justification that springs to his lips
or pen.”185
Paul’s answer to this question is the Gospel, the announcement, as described above,
of the message of God’s victory over sin through the death and resurrection of Christ.
Through the preaching of this message, the Holy Spirit “works upon their hearts; as a
result, they come to believe the message; they join the Christian community through
baptism, and begin to share in its common life and its common way of life.” 186
Wright then summarizes his understanding of Paul’s doctrine of justification under
three headings: covenantal focus, use of the law-court metaphor, and integral connection
with eschatology. Justification is Paul’s way of talking about God’s covenant faithfulness
and how we can be assured that we are participants in that covenant. By means of the
law-court analogy, Paul proclaims that God’s expected vindication of his people has
already been announced in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul uses this doctrine,
Wright argues, to assure those who have faith in Christ that they are thereby marked out
as ones who will certainly be vindicated on the last day. Thus justification for Paul was
not “so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology,” not about how one becomes a
Christian, but how one knows who are the people of God.187
For Paul, the gospel creates the church, ‘justification’ defines it. The
gospel announcement carries its own power to save people, and to
dethrone the idols to which they had been bound. ‘The gospel’ itself is
neither a system of thought, nor a set of techniques for making people
Christians; it is the personal announcement of the person of Jesus.188
185 Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said 116.
186 Ibid.
187 Ibid. 119-122.
188 Ibid. 151.

Critical Analysis
We have developed Wright’s argument at some length. Such a treatment is offered as
a corrective for what appears to be an opposite phenomenon in much of the critical
analysis of the New Perspective. Stendahl, Sanders, and Dunn are often treated quite
extensively, with powerful arguments brought against them, and somewhere in the
process a few vaguely worded shots are fired at Wright, noting that he too has said some
bad things about Luther and that he is responsible for spreading these erroneous ideas
into the evangelical camp.189 From what was presented above, it should be clear that
Wright is deserving of critical treatment in his own right.
One exception to this inadequate treatment of Wright is a recent article by Richard
Gaffin, Review Essay: Paul the Theologian, providing a sustained analysis through (in
Gaffin’s words) “a somewhat selective survey” of Wright’s What Saint Paul Really
Said.190 We will briefly review Gaffin’s critique of Wright and then proceed with some
additional critical analysis.
Gaffin begins where Wright begins, with Wright’s assertion that Saul was a
Shammaite Pharisee, a zealot, and that this significantly determined the development of
his theology, even after his conversion. Gaffin pronounces himself not so convinced of
this, noting his own limited reading on the topic, but seeing no reason not to trust the
judgment of Sanders that he “[does] not believe we have any information that would
enable us to deal with such a question.”191 A more detailed positive argument from Wright
189 Cf. Trueman, A man More sinned Against?, Riddlebarger, Reformed Confessionalism. Serious treatments
of Sanders and Dunn are accompanied by a refutation of Wright that is asserted without being argued, and
includes virtually no engagement of Wright’s material, as if refutation of Wright follows naturally from the
refutation of Sanders and Dunn.
190 Richard Gaffin, Review Essay: Paul the Theologian, Westminster Theological Journal 62 (2000) 121-41.
191 Ibid. 122. The citation is from E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM, 1977) 138, n.
61.

could possibly allay this criticism, especially given the agnostic nature of Sanders’
statement.
Gaffin then proceeds to two items in which he objects to an improper nuance on the
part of Wright and a gap in his system, or at least in his manner of presenting it. The
former concerns the proper balance of recognizing the time-bound character of
redemptive history while at the same time acknowledging that salvation is timeless in the
sense that it is valid until Jesus returns. The latter concerns Wright’s emphasis on Paul’s
preoccupation with eschatological deliverance in such a way as to fail to give a proper
account of Paul’s interest in heaven for the present age or to adequately address the
earth/heaven and body/soul dualism present in Paul’s thought.
Gaffin then addresses what he takes to be the central aspect of the book, Wright’s
assertions about the true nature of the gospel. Gaffin notes “a certain vagueness in how
this gospel proclamation ‘works,’ how it becomes effective in the hearers. He notes
specifically, and quite significantly, the absence of any discussion of faith in relation to
Wright’s view of the gospel. This is the same point we observed earlier, namely that there
is a great need for Wright to give an explicit explanation of how he understands Paul to
speak about the ordo salutis apart from the doctrine of justification. Gaffin argues that
Wright gives an account of faith as a “lived out confession of Jesus as Lord, as the badge
of already being a member,” and that this highlights a missing, or at least muted,
treatment of the “fiducial aspect of saving faith” as described in the Westminster
Confession of Faith.192 He notes that Wright’s position can at least be construed as
arguing that we have Jesus as our savior because we are living in relation to him as Lord,
192 Ibid. 125

which obviously tends to moralism. Gaffin is not accusing Wright of holding this
position, but pointing out that his failure to properly account for the role of faith in the
proclamation of the gospel is problematic.
Noting that Wright is in agreement with Herman Ridderbos when he argues that Paul
was more interested in the history of salvation than the order of salvation, Gaffin states
that he finds both Ridderbos and Wright somewhat unbalanced on this. “Issues in the
application of salvation to the individual may not be Paul’s primary concern, but they are
a concern and a crucial one at that.” 193 He then observes that the question put to Paul by
the Philippian jailer [“What must I do to be saved?”] is certainly an ordo salutis question,
and that Paul “has a ready (gospel) answer (Acts 16:30-31, which, by the way, includes
more than the declaration that Jesus is Lord; see v. 32 [And they spoke the word of the
Lord to him]).”
This is true enough, and we have already observed that Gaffin has put his finger on
something that needs to be corrected in Wright’s explanation of the nature of the gospel.
It should be kept in mind, however, that there is no indication as to whether the “word of
the Lord” spoken to the jailer did or did not include an explanation of double imputation
or other concepts that Wright asserts are improperly associated with the Gospel
proclamation. We can assume no more about what “the word of the Lord” refers to in this
passage than what appears in the New Testament. Verse 32, therefore, does not take us
any further than we can get by assessing Wright’s characterization of the gospel against
the whole of the biblical data. There are other New Testament passages where the
193 Ibid. 126.

contents of the gospel proclamation are stated more explicitly, and these (discussed
below) are a more fruitful avenue of investigation.
Gaffin addresses Wright’s construction of the righteousness of God, asserting that
“while a subjective genitive sense is probably correct, an objective or origin sense,
favored by the Reformers, is also in view (as can be argued successfully, I believe, at
least for Rom. 1:17). Wright, however, dismisses that sense as ‘mak[ing] no sense at
all.’”194 This is an important point, and it would therefore have been more helpful if
Gaffin had argued the point rather than merely asserting that it can be argued (perhaps
because Luther’s treatment of this verse is so well known). At any rate, this must be at the
top of the list of items that require further discussion. Gaffin points to Calvin [Institutes,
3:11:4, toward the end] for a defense of an interpretation of 2 Cor 5:21 [“that we might
become the righteousness of God”] as referring to imputed righteousness.
Gaffin concludes his summary and interaction with Wright with perhaps his strongest
argument, perhaps because it is against Wright’s weakest claim, his treatment of
justification as “the great ecumenical doctrine.”
In response to a statement by Wright that “Many Christians, both in the Reformation
and counter-Reformation traditions, have done themselves a great disservice by treating
the doctrine of ‘justification’ as central to their debates, and by supposing that it described
the system by which people attained salvation,” 195 Gaffin argues that Wright errs in
making the ethnic considerations of Jew versus Gentile the primary consideration in
justification.
We are told that one lesson today of Galatians 2, where Jewish and Gentile
Christians learn that they may eat together, is that Roman Catholics and
194 Ibid.

Protestants should have eucharistic fellowship. [This] involves an obvious
category jump. The issue of ethnic division and attendant soteric privilege
overcome by the gospel of grace is muddled with the issue of conflict,
decidedly nonethnic, about the grace of the gospel.196
Gaffin is certainly on target with his observation about Wright’s category jump.
Wright is primarily insisting that the argument between the Catholic and Protestant
branches of the church has proceeded on the wrong terms. ‘Justification,’ he claims, is the
doctrine of the unity of the church and not a basis for division, since it mandates equality
between Jew and Gentile believers in Christ. But what if a doctrine is asserted that calls
into question whether its adherents are in fact believers in Christ? Surely Wright would
agree that this would be a legitimate debate. Yet he seems to leave no room for allowing
such a debate between the Roman Catholics and Protestants under some heading other
than justification, as one would expect based on his repeated claim that he accepts as
legitimately Pauline what people usually mean by the gospel, but that he just doesn’t
think it belongs under Paul’s doctrine of justification. One should take him at his word
that he has indeed retained the traditionally held Pauline doctrines, but it seems that he
has relegated some of them to a remote area of his system from which they cannot really
exert any discernible force, at least not according to their traditionally held function.
Following his summary of Wright, Gaffin identifies some “much discussed” issues
with the New Perspective regarding its “reassessment both of Second Temple Judaism
and of Paul’s own assessment…of it, and of the Reformation tradition’s assessment of
Paul and Judaism.” Directly addressing some critical deficiencies of Wright’s system, he
outlines some “viewpoints needing to be elaborated and argued more carefully.” 197
196 Ibid. 128.

197 Ibid. 132.

1. He is not convinced that it is entirely incorrect to assert meaningful similarities
between Rome and “the present Jerusalem” (Gal 4:25). While granting that the first
century world was not as “introspective” as the West since Augustine, and that we may
not with any degree of certainty argue that Paul experienced the sort of crisis of
conscience which Luther did, he raises other considerations that far outweigh these
concessions. He responds to Sanders’ contention that Second Temple Judaism was a
religion of grace, not merit, with the wry observation that “Rome conceives of salvation,
from beginning to end, as by grace” and seeks to “subordinate or contain the notion of
merit within that of grace, to make merit attainable by grace.” 198 He further asserts that
“saving grace is meaningful and has reality only as the revelation of the righteousness of
God in Christ, and then only as that divine righteousness…is reckoned, by faith alone that
unites to Christ, as the believer’s.” Where this concept of the righteousness of God
objectively imputed to the believer by faith alone is not accepted, “any and all speaking
about grace is ultimately pretense pretense that masks the effort, however conceived, at
securing myself before God and so is merit-oriented effort, whether or not it is recognized
as such.” This, he asserts, is true of “Rome and the present Jerusalem…despite all [their]
differences.”199
2. While the New Perspective seeks to reduce the distance between Paul and Second
Temple Judaism, and to increase the distance between Paul and the Reformers, Gaffin
notes that there is little appreciation in this effort for the need to distinguish between Old
Testament Judaism and the various Judaic currents extant in Paul’s day. Paul did not
198 Ibid., 133.

199 Ibid.

abandon Old Testament Judaism, but “he certainly did abandon the dominant streams of
Judaism of his day, relentlessly opposed first by Jesus and then by himself.” 200
3. In response to the New Perspective allegation that the Reformers were too quick to
read their own preoccupation with Pelagianism into Paul, Gaffin relates the saying
attributed to Charles Hodge that “it’s not so much the ghost of Pelagius that he fears as
the ghost of semi-Pelagius!” Thus Wright is criticized for his silence on the imputation
of guilt from Adam and because “his preponderant emphasis, by far, is on sin as a power
that overcomes and enslaves; in distinction, sin as guilt and its consequences are at best
left ambiguous because largely ignored.” 201
Some additional arguments by Gaffin are presented against the New Perspective in
general.
1. The issue of metaphor in Wright is asserted by Gaffin to be indicative of a serious
deficiency. Wright argues that “the law-court forms a vital metaphor at a key stage of the
argument. But at the heart of Romans we find a theology of love.” He then argues that
“unless we transcend the notion of ‘righteousness’ as a law-court metaphor, the
impression left is of “a legal transaction, a cold piece of business, almost a trick of
thought performed by a God who is logical and correct but hardly one we would want to
worship.” What gets us beyond this metaphor in Wright’s view is God’s love. Gaffin
paraphrases his argument accurately. “Here apparently, God’s justice is a function of his
love, a penultimate, always metaphorical expression of the nonmetaphorical reality of
divine love.” Thus, Gaffin concludes, “Wright does not seem to find a place in Paul for
200 Ibid. 134.

201 Ibid. 135.

the equally ultimate reality of God’s judicial wrath terminating on the finally unrepentant,
as enunciated, for instance, in 2 Thess 1:8-9 (cf. 2:10, 12; Rom 2:8; 1 Thess 1:10)” 202
2. Wright’s sustained emphasis on the gospel as the message of God’s victory in
Christ over the whole world and over sin is evocative of the classical Christus Victor
view of the atonement. While commending Wright for this much-needed emphasis of the
theme of the cross of Christ dethroning the power of sin, he questions whether it really
has the “sort of priority in Paul [that] Wright assigns it.” Wright leaves unclear, he notes,
what are the other “equals” in Paul’s teaching about the cross, among which, Wright
affirms, the defeat of the power of sin has priority. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find
in Wright a substantive doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. “What is missing in
both Dunn and Wright is the recognition that for Paul what God effects in Christ’s death
has reference first of all not to the needs of sinners but to the demands of his own person,
specifically his justice and holiness.” Also missing from Wright, Gaffin asserts, is any
serious treatment of imputation and predestination. 203
A Way Forward
Gaffin’s penetrating analysis has revealed some deeply troubling aspects of Wright’s
theology. If there is a unifying principle that summarizes these problems, it is Wright’s
failure to adequately address and integrate into his system those ordo salutis concerns
that he assures us have not been rejected in his system, but only recognized as not
subsumed under Paul’s concept of justification. Given the incompleteness of Wright’s
ongoing project of attempting to rework our understanding of Paul in light of the New
Perspective insights, it would be premature to conclude that Wright cannot properly
202 Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said 110. Cited in Gaffin, Review Essay 137.
203 Ibid. 140.

integrate these concerns into his system. The general temper of his argument, however,
seems to afford them little significance, and the prospect of successful integration by him
seems fairly dim.
Whether this integration will be accomplished, however, is quite a different matter
from whether it could or should be accomplished. In other words, the question presents
itself from Wright’s analysis: has he after all identified significant aspects of the modern
Protestant reading of Paul that should be reworked, and that can be reworked in a manner
that remains faithful to the classical Protestant view of the ordo salutis, despite his
apparent failure to do so? There are several reasons for raising this question rather than
simply tossing out his system in the face of Gaffin’s convincing critique.
1. We have already noted that proponents and detractors of the New Perspective alike
generally agree that the former’s new insights into Second Temple Judaism have a certain
degree of merit and can arguably lay claim to requiring some re-evaluation of Pauline
theology in their light. The generally accepted view that there is at least some merit to the
New Perspective assertions about the introspective conscience of the West also lends
some support to this argument. Note, for example, Gaffin’s comment alluded to above.
Granted, the first century Mediterranean world of Paul may not have been
as “introspective” as the West since Augustine (Stendahl et al.); nor should
we impose Luther’s conversion experience and spiritual biography on
Paul…Paul may not have passed through a crisis of conscience as Luther
did, but neither should we exclude the possibility of that, at least in some
respect…204
These are not insignificant concessions.
2. Gaffin and others agree with Wright that the subjective genitive construction of
Paul’s use of the righteousness of God is legitimate, although Gaffin says that “an
204 Ibid. 133.

objective or origin sense, favored by the Reformers, is also in view” (see note 194).
Without diminishing the significance of Gaffin’s endorsement of the Reformers’ position,
we nevertheless note that an effort to properly account for the subjective genitive sense is
not in itself inappropriate. Furthermore, McGrath’s comment cited above (see note 184)
that the contemporary Protestant formulation of the doctrine of justification has no
adequate basis in Pauline theology also provides some support for Wright’s project of
reassessing that doctrine, even though his attempted redefinition has serious problems
that cannot be ignored.
Ridderbos lends support to Wright’s description of the forensic and eschatological
nature of justification as well, asserting that Paul thinks of justification, in
characteristically Jewish fashion, as the forensic declaration of God. (It is only in its
interpretation within a Greek system, according to Ridderbos, that the concept “to justify”
loses its forensic significance and becomes an ethical concept.) Yet Paul departs radically
from Judaism in the manner in which this forensic justification is applied.
Whereas for Judaism it was an incontrovertible matter that this

righteousness, as the crucial, decisive factor in the judicial declaration of
God, was not to be spoken of other than in a future-eschatological sense,
Paul proclaims this present righteousness as a present reality already
realized in Christ.”205
Although Ridderbos was not impugning Luther’s concept of forensic righteousness,
his description of justification resembles the corporate law-court image that is a critical
component of Wright’s system more than it does the dominant Protestant image of a
personal transaction between God and the sinner.
3. Wright’s description of the gospel as a proclamation of the lordship of Christ
rather than a description of the process of salvation has a certain Scriptural resonance and

seems to powerfully address some crucial and heretofore intractable problems in the
modern church.206 Addressing the issue of Scriptural resonance first, let us consider the
usage of the word εὐαγγέλιον (gospel or good news) throughout the book of Acts, a book
closely associated with Paul in which that word is used to depict the gospel in the very
act of its proclamation.
Acts 14:15 presents the account of Paul and Barnabus in Lystra, where they are
mistaken for Zeus and Hermes and with difficulty restrain the pagans from worshipping
them. The apostles respond, “Men, why are you doing these things? We too are men, with
human natures just like you! We are proclaiming the εὐαγγέλιον to you, so that you
should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the
earth, the sea, and everything that is in them.”
The context of this description of the proclamation of the gospel is stated clearly in
terms of the redemptive-historical situation in which the pagans live. Men have lived in
all ages with a witness of God’s goodness to them, yet they have not turned to him. In the
past God patiently overlooked their rebellion, but now that Christ has come the day of
patience has ended. Judgment is now being declared, with the present age characterized
by an overlap of the day of patience and the day of judgment. The gospel is here pictured
as a time-bound proclamation of the redemptive-historical moment that has now arrived,
and not as a message regarding how individual sinners may be reconciled to God. This
resonates more with Wright’s description of the gospel than with the classical Protestant
view.
206 I.e., simplistic and formulaic understandings of salvation, man-centered theologies, cheap grace, etc.

A survey of all occurrences of εὐαγγέλιον in Acts overwhelmingly supports Wright’s
characterization of the gospel. Of all occurrences where the proclamation of the Gospel is
described with some qualifying statement (that is, excluding those occurrences where it is
simply stated the gospel was preached), all but two (13:32-33; 20:24) carry the sense of a
proclamation about Jesus, sometimes in the context of asserting his Lordship or bringing
peace (two explicit features of Wright’s characterization). In none of these occurrences
(nor in the two exceptions that do not carry the sense described above) is a personal
transaction between God and the sinner in view; nor is there any sense communicated
that the gospel is about what happens in or to the sinner. It is an authoritative
proclamation about the Lordship of Christ.
5:42: And every day both in the temple courts and from house to house,
they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the εὐαγγέλιον that Jesus was
the Christ.
8:4-5: Now those who had been forced to scatter went around proclaiming
the εὐαγγέλιον of the word. Philip went down to the main city of Samaria
and began proclaiming the Christ to them.
8:12: But when they believed Philip as he was proclaiming the εὐαγγέλιον
about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they began to be
baptized, both men and women.
8:34-35: Then the eunuch said to Philip, “Please tell me, who is the
prophet saying this about—himself or someone else?” So Philip started
speaking, and beginning with this scripture proclaimed the εὐαγγέλιον
about Jesus to him.
10:34-36: Then Peter started speaking: “I now truly understand that God
does not show favoritism in dealing with people, but in every nation the
person who fears him and does what is right is welcomed before him. You
know the message he sent to the people of Israel, proclaiming the
εὐαγγέλιον of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all).
17:18: Also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were

conversing with him, and some were asking, “What does this foolish
babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign

gods.” (They said this because he was proclaiming the εὐαγγέλιον about
Jesus and the resurrection.)207
In addition to this Scriptural resonance, Wright’s characterization of the gospel has
the salutary feature of being conducive to the alleviation of a serious intractable problem
that has plagued the church’s appropriation of the gospel in varying degrees since the
Reformation. Luther’s and the other Reformers’ insights into the personal character of the
gospel turned out in due time to be a Pandora’s box of sorts. Even those of us who
consider the Reformation doctrines to be sound cannot fail to notice the problematic ways
in which these doctrines have often been worked out since the Reformation. Overly
simplistic process-oriented depictions of the Gospel (such as “The Four Spiritual Laws”)
and an unbalanced unhealthy focus on “what’s in it for the sinner” are rampant today,
often proving disruptive to the church’s mission and demeaning to the gospel. No doubt
these problems spring from complex factors, and the Reformation doctrines are not to be
blamed for them. But the fact remains that Wright’s characterization of the gospel is an
effective antidote for such misappropriations of the gospel. This is offered not as a proof
of Wright’s position, but rather as apologetic support for it.
This defense of Wright’s characterization of the gospel is not in any way intended to
discount or de-emphasize the serious problems with his approach as argued by Gaffin
above. Wright’s conclusions are in large part not to be approved of for the reasons so
skillfully presented by Gaffin. But to the extent that we have shown that Wright’s insights
about the gospel are supported by Scripture and accurately reflect the idea that Paul had
207Lest the reader think this usage is unique to Acts, a survey of occurrences of εὐαγγέλιον in the epistles
reveals the same tendency. In Romans, for instance, where the gospel is a central theme, the εὐαγγέλιον is
“the gospel of God “(1:1; 15:16), “the gospel of his Son” (1:9), “the power of God for salvation” (1:16),
“the revelation of God “(1:16), “my [Paul’s] gospel” (2:16; 16:25, emphasizing the apostolic proclamation,
not the action on or in the sinner), “the gospel of Christ” (15:19), “the proclamation of Jesus Christ”
(16:25). Furthermore, in 10:14-16, the gospel is explicitly tied to the proclamation of royal victory and
peace in Isaiah 52-53. Nowhere in Romans is the individual in-the-sinner sense expressed.

of the gospel, we should not throw up our hands, but rather set about the task of doing
justice in our theology to what Wright has shown the Scriptures to teach with respect to
the nature of the Gospel. This is not to deny, however, that the ordo salutis elements
become a critical part of the gospel by implication due to the manner in which they are
presented as real components of the sinner’s experience of the gospel and that Wright’s
failure to adequately account for them is unacceptable.
Conclusion
It will be useful at this point to ask why Wright has failed to adequately integrate his
insights into the ordo salutis elements supported by Scripture, so that a way might be
found to succeed where Wright has failed. The answer offered here applies in general to
those who developed and propagated the New Perspective insights. In a word, 500 years
of historical theology was unreflectively discarded on the basis of what were perceived
by many to be compelling insights that produced a Copernican revolution in Pauline
studies. Regardless of how compelling those insights were found to be, the Holy Spirit’s
activity in the church throughout history is more compelling still. There was very little
attention given to the Reformation doctrines in the proposed wholesale revision of Paul’s
theology that followed the Sanders revolution. That these were not infallibly inspired
doctrines is true enough, but the Holy Spirit’s salvific use of them throughout 500 of the
most remarkable years of church history is a cogent and powerful witness that should not
have been ignored. This is not to argue (against Luther) that tradition always trumps any
new reading of Scripture, but that certain traditions are so manifestly used by God as to
demand that any proposed reinterpretation must be advanced only with a great degree of

interaction with the existing tradition. This was not done with the New Perspective, and it
was a serious error.
The New Perspective seeks to take from the church one of its most precious
doctrines. Our sense of sin is real enough, even if we are more introspective than the
ancients, and the doctrines of grace are clearly aimed at this fundamental datum of our
existence. We know with certainty even without reading the Scripture that we are guilty
of high treason, and we see all around us the terrible effects of our sin and the portents of
a coming judgment we cannot possibly bear. The cosmic and corporate scope of God’s
covenant is a powerful Scriptural image, giving us a perspective on God’s salvation that
witnesses to the fact that it is immeasurably larger than ourselves and stronger than
anything arrayed against us. But we bear personhood as a fundamental feature of the
imago dei, dim reflections of the true underived personhood found only in the Godhead.
The Scripture reveals therefore that God saves us as persons also, not as mere cogs in a
towering covenantal juggernaut. The New Perspective proponents seemed to say that this
wasn’t true after all.
This explains, perhaps, the intense polarization on this topic that exists in the church
today, and the often vitriolic response to the New Perspective. This reaction is at the same
time both understandable and detrimental to the well-being of the church. Because we
know that the Reformers’ doctrines are true and Scriptural, it is thought, we must reject
the New Perspective wholesale, lest we compromise the gospel. If someone cannot see
that Luther was right, how can they possibly have anything to teach us? This tendency
must be resisted, for the New Perspective does have much to teach us, provided we are
willing to see that our system is not beyond adjustment even today, and that we are

willing to do the hard work of integrating any new insights into what we have learned and
tested through many generations. For all of the problems with Wright’s position on
justification, he attempts to support his argument with numerous exegetical arguments,
and yet there is little engagement of his exegesis by his critics. This is just as problematic
as his failure to properly integrate his position with the classical Protestant doctrines.
We must walk a fine line between openness to change and commitment to
communally recognized truths. On the one hand, the very principle on which Luther
stood so courageously at Worms demands that we be willing continually to see what the
Bible is showing us, regardless of past prejudices or external pressures. On the other
hand, our experience of the Holy Spirit’s preservation of the church teaches us to be
exceedingly cautious about changes to long-held doctrines and to continually do the hard
work of doctrinal integration and experimental verification of Scripture truths. The New
Perspective proponents have embraced the former while neglecting the latter. Let us not
respond by rejecting the former because we take a simplistic view of the latter.
A serious attempt must therefore be made to integrate all aspects of the classical
Protestant doctrines of salvation with those insights from the New Perspective which
have Scriptural warrant or merit. A sustained analysis and engagement of Wright’s
exegetical arguments is indispensable for this task. Gaffin’s work cited above provides a
good summary of the points of integration that are lacking. A comparison and integration
of the Pauline doctrines with the Petrine, Johanine, and other epistolary documents, as
well as with the theology of Jesus presented in the Gospels, must also be attempted. Too
often these distinct theologies from diverse human authors are treated as if there were no

divine author whose overarching purpose and vision enables each corpus to
authoritatively interpret the others.
If the New Perspective authors are not willing to do this integration, then the task
must fall to others, in lieu of mere criticism and arguments for wholesale rejection of the
New Perspective findings. Who among us can pretend that our doctrine is not in need of
improvement, seeing that doctrinal confusion among people who love God is at least as
prevalent today as blatant sinful rejection of unpalatable truths?

Bibliography
Augustine, City of God (Penguin Books, 1984)
Beker, J. Christiaan, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Fortress
Press, 1980)
 . Paul’s Apocalyptic Gospel: The Coming Triumph of God (Fortress Press, 1982)
Bruce, F.F., New Testament History (Doubleday, 1969)
 . Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Eerdmans, 1977)
Cranfield, C.E.B., St. Paul and the Law, Scottish Journal of Theology 17:54 Mr 1964
Cullmann, Oscar, Christ and Time (Westminster Press, 1950)
Dunn, James D.G., Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians
(Westminster/John Knox, 1990)
 . The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Eerdmans, 1997)
Ellis, E. Earle, Pauline Theology: Ministry and Society (Eerdmans, 1989)
Gaffin, Richard B., Jr., Review Essay: Paul the Theologian, Westminster Theological
Journal, 62(2000) 121-41
Käsemann, Ernst, New Testament Questions of Today (Fortress Press, 1969)
 . Perspectives on Paul, translated by Margaret Kohl, (Fortress Press, 1971 [1969])
Kline, Meredith G., Kingdom Prologue, 1989
Ladd, George Elden, The Presence of the Future, (Eerdmans, 1974)
McGrath, Alister E., Iustitia Dei. A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2
volumes (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
Neill, Stephen and Wright, Tom, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861 – 1986
(Oxford University Press, 1988 [1964])
Poythress, Vern S., The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991)
 . Understanding Dispensationalists (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1994)

Rhyne, C. Thomas, Nomos Dikaiosynes and the meaning of Romans 10:4, The Catholic
Biblical Quarterly 47:487 Jl 1985
Ridderbos, Herman, The Coming of the Kingdom (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing,
1962)
 . Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Eerdmans, 1975)
 . When the Time had Fully Come (Eerdmans, 1957)
Riddlebarger, Kim, Reformed Confessionalism and the “New Perspective” on Paul,

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals online publication,
http://www.alliancenet.org/pub/articles/riddlebarger.perspective.html
Sanders, E.P., Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 1991)
 . Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Fortress Press, 1983)
 . Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Fortress

Press, 1977)
Schweitzer, Albert, Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History, translated by William
Montgomery (MacMillan, 1950 [1912])
Stendahl, Krister, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Fortress Press, 1976)
Strickland, Wange G., ed., Five Views on Law and Gospel (Zondervan Publishing House,
1996)
Trueman, Carl, A Man More Sinned Against than Sinning? The Portrait of Martine Luther
in Contemporary New Testament Scholarship: Some Casual Observations of a Mere
Historian
Westerholm, Stephen, Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith (Eerdmans, 1988)
Wright, N.T., The Challenge of Jesus (Intervarsity Press, 1999)
 . The Climax of the Covenant (Fortress Press, 1992 [1991])
 . The New Testament and the People of God (Fortress Press, 1992)
 . What Saint Paul Really Said (Eerdmans, 1997)
Yoder, John Howard, The Politics of Jesus (Eerdmans/Paternoster Press, 1994 [1972])

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SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM

The Kingdom of God as a Framework

Integrative Paper Assignment

Seek First The Kingdom i Mark Leone

Copyright 2002 Mark Leone All Rights Reserved

Seek First The Kingdom ii Mark Leone

Seek First The Kingdom iv Mark Leone

Seek First The Kingdom v Mark Leone

connecting flight in Phoenix seated next to an aggressively argumentative member of the

quotes from the mouth of Jesus.

question was “1974, at the Houston Astrodome,” a reference, as I eventually understood,

Seek First The Kingdom 1 Mark Leone

I wonder if I would induce a similar sense of incredulity if I were to sit next to a

my own denomination. My pessimism is based on several years spent occasionally

Seek First The Kingdom 2 Mark Leone

scheme, however, is generally available to provide a coherent explanation of what the

Christian has experienced and what he believes to be true?

of competing and often contradictory theological frameworks extant in the evangelical

compelling account of what it means to be a Christian. Christians are in need of a

provide a faithful summary of the Bible’s teaching on a number of topics. These

comprehensive summary of Scripture is not easily appropriated by the typical PCA

Seek First The Kingdom 3 Mark Leone

us with just such an overarching scheme, namely the Kingdom of God.

material interesting and useful.

Seek First The Kingdom 4 Mark Leone

truth into the warp and woof of their daily life.

This focus on the Kingdom as a summary statement of Jesus’ mission continues

Seek First The Kingdom 5 Mark Leone

establishment of God’s people in the wilderness. All that follows, furthermore, is

Seek First The Kingdom 6 Mark Leone

realized by the character of the Christian life in the present age.

Seek First The Kingdom 7 Mark Leone

regarded as the main focus of Christ’s ministry.

Furthermore, inasmuch as Jesus’ ministry represents fulfillment without

Thessalonians 2:1-12 (the prediction of Jesus’ overthrow of the man of lawlessness by

of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever”).

Thus the Kingdom of God is an all-encompassing summarizing scheme for what

await in the culmination of salvation history. It is a comprehensive rubric for

God chose to establish his people as a kingdom is of great significance. A kingdom, a

political entity by definition, makes fundamental, comprehensive, and irresistible claims

Seek First The Kingdom 8 Mark Leone

and the precious truths to which we cling.

concerning the so-called New Perspective on Paul.

Seek First The Kingdom 9 Mark Leone

general tendency among Christians to appropriate the concept in contemporary terms,

abstract conception of the Kingdom as something offered to us today in some limited,

people throughout salvation history.

ultimately unrecognizable to the majority of that generation, he nevertheless appealed to

the contemporary conception of the Kingdom of God to identify what he was

inaugurating. Present day recipients of Jesus’ message should likewise be given a

A proper historical perspective is an effective antidote to a merely abstract

Seek First The Kingdom 10 Mark Leone

history. This will be illustrated below in terms of the redemptive-historical implications

nature and meaning of eschatology can greatly invigorate these redemptive-historical

Redemptive History and Time10

concept of time, in contradistinction to the Hellenistic conception of time as a circular

theological implications. If time is a circular process, unique significance cannot be

Seek First The Kingdom 11 Mark Leone

sought is a salvation out of history. The idea of salvation in Hellenistic thought is

than something worked out as a process in history.

presupposes a model of time as an upward-sloping line. This paradigm is warranted by

tone of expected culmination. The New Testament recognizes a qualitative difference