Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Paul's Writings Twisted
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Romans 3:20-22
The book of Romans contains some of nominal Christianity's favorite lines. Nominal Christianity really belts out those parts of the book. During other parts, though, where the lyrics are not as familiar, it hums and does a little head-nodding to get through those lines until it returns to familiar lyrics, at which point it sings with gusto once again. Yet, if nominal Christianity really grasped the song's meaning, it would sing a different tune. Like a song by a skilled musician, some lines are memorable, but their full meaning comes from their place in the overall work. One stanza does not make a song. While Peter's caution extends to all of Paul's writings (II Peter 3:14-18), it is common within nominal Christianity to use select verses in Romans to support the idea that God's law has been “done away”—or at least certain parts. Indeed, hardly anyone argues that idolatry, adultery, or murder are acceptable since Christ died for our sins. Charges of legalism are rarely laid when considering most of the Ten Commandments. For example, when men and women consistently uphold their marriage vows, we call them “faithful” or “committed.” When a man is careful about honesty, we consider him “trustworthy”—and wish there were more like him! However, when the fourth commandment is under discussion, the tune changes. The seventh-day Sabbath—which Jesus and the apostles clearly kept—quickly brings out the hostility to God's law in the carnal mind (Romans 8:7), which often uses various verses in Romans to defend breaking it. Further, the carnal-minded frequently call those who keep the fourth commandment “legalistic” or “Pharisaical” or accuse them of trying to earn salvation. These allegations are never made about the other nine commandments. Why the double standard? Due to how Paul arranges the material in Romans, he sometimes appears to contradict himself. Yet, such is not the case because God's Word cannot be broken (John 10:35). What he does is explore one side of the issue in one passage, then in the following passage, he switches to another side of the issue and explains it before returning to the first side. But what commonly happens with the untaught and unstable (II Peter 3:16) mirrors what we experience when singing a song we do not know well. Nominal Christianity will jubilantly belt out those sections that sound as if Paul says the law is done away (Romans 3:28; 4:2-3; 5:1-2), but when the apostle changes keys and upholds God's law, it hums and mumbles and looks around uncomfortably. Later, when the lyrics sound like they might indicate it can ignore the fourth commandment, nominal Christianity cranks up the volume and resumes singing. It lasts until Paul again upholds God's law (Romans 2:12-13; 6:1-2; 7:12), at which point worldly Christianity gets quiet and fidgety, waiting for the next line that sounds like he asserts that God's law no longer applies. Peter was right to say some things Paul wrote are hard to understand! Despite some considering it to be so, the apostle who wrote so much New Testament theology is not contradicting himself. On the contrary, all he writes is true; otherwise, God would not have included it in His Word. However, such things as timing, context, and purpose, among others, are critical factors in properly understanding Paul's arguments and explanations, aspects that many misunderstand or miss altogether.
David C. Grabbe
How Does Faith Establish the Law? (Part One)
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1 Corinthians 11:23-25
While many consider Passover to be a Jewish festival, it should also be a sacred observance for all Christians. This is Jesus' own command, communicated through the apostle Paul, for the church to celebrate the Passover "on the night in which He was betrayed," which was the evening of the Passover, Nisan 14 on the Hebrew calendar. This was the practice of the New Testament church—in fact, it kept all of the holy days of Leviticus 23—as long as the original apostles lived. However, like all men, the apostles died one by one until only the apostle John was left. Around the turn of the second century, John died. For a few generations under the leadership of John's disciple, Polycarp (AD 69-155), and a successor, Polycrates (c. 130-196), the Ephesian church remained faithful to the teachings and traditions of the early church, including the keeping of the Passover on Nisan 14. Those few who stubbornly resisted the change to the celebration of Easter, which had supplanted Passover throughout most of Christendom, were called Quartodecimans ("fourteenthers") and Judaizers. By Origen's day (c. 185- 254), they were, he wrote, "a mere handful" among the millions living in the Empire. Even so, the Roman Church did not effectively ban the practice of keeping the Passover on Nisan 14 until AD 325 at the Council of Nicea, when rules were set down to calculate the date of Easter for the entire Church. Canon 29 of the Council of Laodicea (held in 363-364) later anathematized those Judaizers who kept the seventh-day Sabbath, many of whom were also Quartodecimans. The controversy over Passover or Easter boils down to following Scripture versus following Roman Catholic tradition. Frankly, the reason that the Roman Church chose to keep Easter rests on two faulty pillars: 1) an intense prejudice against "the perfidy of the Jews" in the crucifixion of Christ (which has come to be known as the "blood libel") and 2) the widespread celebration of Easter among pagan cultures throughout the Empire. The convoluted theological arguments that have come down from the so-called apostolic fathers, repeated endlessly by their successors, are window-dressing to obscure these unpleasant factors. Even during the first century, an anti-Jewish element had begun to creep into the church of God. In his epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians, the apostle Paul had attempted to explain the place of God's law under the New Covenant, but as Peter later testified, in Paul's epistles "are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction" (II Peter 3:16). And twist them they did, moving the church away from the truths written in the Old Testament and expounded by Christ and His apostles. Soon, many Greek-speaking Christians, not wanting to be constrained by the "Hebrew" law, entertained Gnostic ideas that encouraged spiritual license. Finally, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 ratcheted up anti-Jewish fervor to a fever pitch, and across the Empire, association with Jews and things Jewish was generally avoided. In this way, the church that appears in second-century history is quite different from its first-century counterpart. It is largely Gentile, keeping Sunday rather than the Sabbath, and growing in power and political influence. It is also attracting new converts, not only out of Greco-Roman paganism, but also from the gods and goddesses of the frontier areas like Britain, Germany, and Dacia. This church found it easier to assimilate these new converts by syncretizing the Easter celebration with their pagan spring festivals, often called after the name of the widely worshipped fertility goddess, Ishtar (or some close variation: Astarte, Eoster, Ostara, Isis, Aphrodite, etc.). It is from these heathen influences that the Easter Bunny, dyeing eggs, giving candy, and other non-biblical Easter traditions have sprung. Conversely, the Christian Passover is not a celebration but a solemn observance that commemorates the agonizing blood-sacrifice of Jesus Christ to pay for our sins (Matthew 26:28; Romans 4:25; I Corinthians 15:3; Ephesians 1:7; Titus 2:14; I John 1:7), to redeem us from spiritual bondage (Matthew 20:28; Galatians 1:4; Ephesians 2:1-3; Hebrews 2:14-15; I Peter 1:18-19; Revelation 5:9), and to open the way to fellowship with the Father (Romans 8:34; Ephesians 2:18; Hebrews 7:25; 10:19-22). Each year in the Passover ceremony, baptized Christians wash one another's feet to follow Christ's example of selfless service (John 13:1-17), as well as partake of the bread and the wine, recommitting themselves to the everlasting covenant that they have made with God. As Paul writes in I Corinthians 11:26, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes." Easter, however, celebrates, not the Savior's death, but His resurrection, which most professing Christians believe occurred at sunrise on the Sunday morning after His death (please see "After Three Days" which explains from the Bible that this is not the case). Neither Jesus nor His apostles mention anything about observing or memorializing His resurrection. In fact, His death is the only event of His life that the Bible consistently commands us to remember (Luke 22:19; I Corinthians 11:24-25; see the principle in Psalm 116:15; Ecclesiastes 7:1). And, yes, this excludes His birth too, making Christmas another non-biblical addition to the liturgical calendar. Despite the human desire to mark such times, Christians must be careful to do only what God's Word commands lest they be guilty of adding to or taking away from it (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Joshua 1:7; Proverbs 30:5-6; Revelation 22:18-19). When we add to or take from what God has said, we alter His revelation to us and are sure to veer even farther from His way.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Why Passover and Not Easter?
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2 Peter 3:14-18
Peter cautions that some of the things the apostle Paul writes are hard to understand, as though some people do not truly understand Paul's lyrics and thus end up with wrong impressions of his compositions. Knowing a couple of lines from a piece of music is not the same as grasping the totality. Yet, nominal Christianity gives an embarrassing performance before God because it latches onto some memorable lines from Paul and believes it knows the whole song. The terms Peter uses provide clues about what is on his mind. When we perceive where he is coming from, we can know what lyrics from brother Paul we should listen to extra carefully to ensure that we are not mishearing. In verse 14, Peter commands diligence, meaning we must exert ourselves and be zealous. He emphasizes robust and focused effort instead of offhandedly grabbing a line or two from Paul and believing our understanding is complete. Peter urges us to “be diligent to be found by God in peace, without spot and blameless.” Since he is telling us to be diligent, it means that the spotlessness and blamelessness he has in mind are not what God imputes to us. Christ's righteousness was imputed to us when we accepted His blood, and then, in a legal sense, we became without spot and blameless. But accepting Christ's blood did not require the diligence Peter talks about here. After we come under His blood, though, we must submit to God in living up to that imputed spotlessness and blamelessness. Doing so requires significant effort; thus, Peter uses “diligent.” In verse 16, he warns that misusing Paul's words leads to destruction, a term frequently used concerning God's judgment on the disobedient. Jesus says that “wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction” (Matthew 7:13). In other words, the easy way does not end well. The future “man of sin” is called “the son of perdition [destruction]” (II Thessalonians 2:3), at least in part because he is destined for the Lake of Fire—his sins lead him to destruction. Earlier in the chapter, Peter warns of the fire that characterizes the coming day of judgment (evaluation against a standard) and destruction of ungodly men (II Peter 3:7). To summarize, then, the unstable and untaught will interpret Paul's teaching in such a way that will lead them into God's judgment—to destruction or perdition. In verse 17, Peter adds another warning, this time against apostasy, or as he puts it, “fall[ing] from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked.” He describes a change from a good spiritual state to a bad one. The New King James Version uses the phrase “the wicked,” giving the impression that Peter is talking about deeply depraved people. However, the people the apostle describes do not have to be characterized as extreme at all. Several translations interpret the phrase as being “carried away with the error of the lawless.” The Greek word translated as “wicked” or “lawless,” athesmos (Strong's #113), indicates a person who is against what has been instituted as law, custom, ordinance, precept, or rule. The wicked do not have to be mass murderers but simply those who disregard the established standards. In this context, the established standards are the laws of God. To summarize, Peter warns us to check ourselves regarding Paul's material so we are not led away by false teachers (the theme of Peter's previous chapter) or our own incorrect impression of what Paul says. If we fail to hear it correctly, we will fall into the error of those who disregard God's law, those who are ignorant of the whole counsel of God (“untaught”), and who thus are not steadfast (“unstable”). These individuals avoid the narrow way because they find it constraining, even though it leads to eternal life.
David C. Grabbe
How Does Faith Establish the Law? (Part One)
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