Posted by Michael Bunker
editor@lazarusunbound.com
“There were present
at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had
mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye
that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they
suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all
likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and
slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in
Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise
perish. He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and
sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his
vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and
find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto
him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it
down”
(Luke 13:1-9).
February
21, 2005 – Some who were mingled among the disciples of Jesus Christ came and
told Him of how the ruler Pilate had slain some Galileans while they were
participating in the sacrifice about the time of Passover. It is often supposed that they were relating
the events, 20 years earlier, of the disciples of one Judah of Galilee, who had
gathered a following after himself and who was subsequently attacked and killed
by Pilate for rejecting Roman rule and for teaching against the paying of Roman
taxes. There is a hint, here, that
Christ and His disciples may meet a like fate, since it seemed to these who are
telling the story that the teachings of Jesus were similar to this Judas of
Galilee. Jesus does not answer the
inference, but instead applies His sword to the heart of the matter. It was obvious that these men thought that
these slain Galileans must have been great sinners (above other Galileans)
because they suffered these things.
Likewise, these men must have reasoned that the eighteen who were killed
when the tower of Siloam fell were sinners above all men in Jerusalem. But Jesus says to all that are present, “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise
perish”. Jesus will use the
erroneous ideas of these religious men to teach the truth He would have those
who can hear to apply.
Pilate
had slain the disciples of Judas of Galilee while they were engaged in ritual
purification. The tower of Siloam stood
over the pool of Siloam, and likely fell upon men who were going through the
ritual purification at the pool. A wrong
application and understanding of the Providence and Justice of God, caused men
to think that these who were killed, were killed because their sacrifices were
not acceptable to the Lord and that their sins were too great to be
forgiven. In both cases, the men were
killed while in a religious ceremony of atonement and purification. The carnal interpretation would have run
along the lines of that of the priest who is found unworthy and is killed by
God while in the Holy of Holies. But
Jesus does not accept this carnal interpretation at all. All alike are sinners to Christ, and unless
those that hear the words of Christ should repent of their own sins, they will
all likewise perish.
It
is the way of the carnal man to seek ritual purification from sin. For the Pharisees and other such legalists,
purification is sought in the works of the flesh (touch not, taste not), while
for the Antinomian, purification is assumed through the religious concept of
“resting on promises”. Jesus said that
all men must repent of sins. The
Legalist believes that his works (primarily ceremonial and traditional)
intervene on his behalf as mediator, while the Antinomian wrongly assumes that
Christ has kept the law for him so
that there is no need to ever engage in works, even those works that
are commanded by God. In both cases and
in both erroneous systems, repentance is never required.
The
Legalist believes that repentance is achieved through the keeping of ceremonial
and traditional laws.
The
Antinomian believes that repentance consists of merely agreeing or accepting
that Christ paid for his sins.
In
both cases, no real repentance is worked in the sinner. There is no turning from sin unto
righteousness, from darkness to light, or from the power of Satan to the power
of Jesus Christ.
In
this series we are dealing primarily with Antinomianism. Antinomianism is founded in a false concept
that we will call “rest theology”. So
from where does this false rest theology find its root?
We
will examine the Biblical teaching on rest in context, and see where those who
have been blinded from the truth err; and we will do it in the form of a
conversation between Mr. Antinomian and the Editor.
Mr.
Antinomian:
“Christ has bid us to rest from our
works. Only the legalist, those who are
devoid of the Spirit, do works.”
Editor: “Indeed
John in the Revelation spoke of some who rested from their labours. You will find them mentioned in Revelation
14:13, ‘And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord
from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours;
and their works do follow them’. It is
the dead in the Lord alone who are permitted to rest from their labours,
because their good works on earth do follow them.”
Mr.
Antinomian: “You
take that scripture out of context, because Christ taught that all those who
were weary and heavy laden were to come to Him for rest!”
Editor: “Yes,
He sure did. You will find that promise
in Matthew 11:28. But that is not a
promise to rest from all works, rather to rest from those works which are
wearying and burdensome. Read the next
two verses, they say, ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek
and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’
(Matthew 11:29-30). To rest from
wearying labor is to be yoked to Christ.
We are not loosed from burdens or yokes; rather we are yoked to the one
who can best make the burden easy and light.
It was the Pharisees who bound upon the people great burdens, difficult to
be borne, and Christ defines these as the traditions of the elders, which bound
men to the minutia of concocted traditions and interpretations, while He
accused the same men of omitting the weightier matters of the law. John tells us that keeping the commandments
of God is NOT grievous (1 John 5:3), so the moral law codified in the Ten
Commandments cannot be the ‘traditions of the elders’ that Jesus said were
grievous to be borne.” David, who loved
and delighted in the commandments of God, said that his soul rested in hope
(Acts 2:26), because God had made known to him the ways of life. The Bible says, “For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction
are the way of life (Proverbs
6:23). The churches of Judea, Galilee and
Samaria were said to be at rest from division and strife, only when they walked
in the fear of the Lord (Acts 9:31).” 1
Samuel 12:14 says that the fear of the Lord is continuing in obedience to the
commandments of God.
Mr.
Antinomian:
“But you omit all the 4th
Chapter of Hebrews, because you know that herein is our strength. The apostle teaches that there was a Sabbaths
rest for those who would only enter in.
It plainly teaches that we are to rest from our works and “cease from our
works, as God did from His.’”
Editor: I do
not omit it at all, because this chapter of Hebrews is the Antinomians greatest
weakness; instead, I waited for you to spring the trap yourself, as your ilk is
always going to do. The Apostle indeed
speaks of the seventh day, and reasons that since David spoke of a rest that
was still to come (Psalm 95:11), and since that rest did not refer to the rest
of Joshua who entered into the land of Canaan, then there must indeed still be
a rest that is promised to those who believe.
This we do not deny. The point
being made by the Apostle is that believers *will* enter into rest by the
promise of the Gospel. However, the
Antinomian wrongly teaches that all who merely accept this promise
intellectually as being made to them, and so rest from all works, have somehow
entered into the promised rest. This
teaching could not be more wrong. The
rest spoken of here is the rest promised to those who die in the Lord (Rev.
14:13), and therefore the Apostle does not invite the Roman Hebrew to rest,
rather, if you will read the whole chapter, he encourages them to ‘fear, lest,
a promise being left us of
entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it’ (Hebrews
4:1). The same Apostle in the same
chapter explains what he means by rest, and how we are to be assured that we
will enter therein:
‘There
remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into
his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore
to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief’
(Hebrews 4:9-11).
Using the same
reasoning used by this Apostle, we can be assured that he was not speaking of
some carnal rest on earth, or he would not have spoken in the future tense
that, ‘there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God’. In order to reach this rest, which the Bible
tells us the people of God will enjoy after they die in the Lord, we are to
LABOUR to enter into that rest, lest we be convicted of unbelief! This is not an admonition for believers to
rest from works on earth, but rather it is the opposite; it is a command that
they should labor in good works on earth, that they may have evidence and peace
in their souls that they are not yet in unbelief. Remember that the Israelites in the desert were convinced that
they were God’s elect by their blood.
All they wanted was the Promised Land, but were not willing to labour to
enter therein. The Apostle commands
that labor is necessary, lest we ‘fall after the same example of unbelief’ that
destroyed the Israelites in the wilderness.
The full condemnation of Antinomianism can be found in the next few
verses:
‘For
the word of God is quick, and
powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder
of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart’
(Hebrews 4:12).
The ‘Word of God’
is the Word that God speaks. It is His
perennial and perpetual commandment. It
is not abrogated by men or the traditions of men. It shows forth the wickedness of the thoughts and the heart. The Antinomian hates the commandments of
God, because he is a rebel, and finds any requirements at all to be too
burdensome.
Mr.
Antinomian:
“You Pharisees and your incessant
rambling about the commandments of God.
Can’t you read? Jesus told us
there were only two commandments, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself’. Jesus
plainly and clearly taught that on these two hung all the law and the prophets. Jesus cancelled the Ten Commandments and
replaced it with just two.
Editor: “Nothing could be further from the
truth. Jesus Himself said, ‘For verily
I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no
wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled’ (Matthew 5:18). What you Antinomians never can do, is you
can never study the Word of God by the power of the Spirit of God. When Jesus gave us His summation of the
commandments, He was not at all annulling anything that went before. In fact, the question He had been asked was
not, “What are the commandments of God”, but “What is the great commandment
of the law”. It was the Pharisees, in trying
to entrap Him, who were trying to get him to abrogate some of the law. They wanted Him to say that the law was no
longer in effect. Had Christ’s answer
been that some of the moral law was now cancelled there would have been a riot
and probably an attempted stoning right then.
Christ entrapped them by NOT abrogating the moral law at all. They asked Him what the great commandment of
the law is. Christ responded by giving
them all ten of the Ten Words in summation.
Every Hebrew there knew that the first four commandments dealt with HOW
we are to love God with all our hearts. We love God by not having any gods before Him, by not having or
making or bowing down to graven images, by not taking the name of the Lord in
vain, and by keeping the Sabbath as a perpetual memorial to Him. Every Hebrew there knew that the 6 next
commandments dealt with HOW we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We love our neighbor when we honor our
parents, when we don’t kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or
covet. Jesus taught that all of the
words of the moral law and the prophets were entailed in these great
commandments, and that none of the commandments were “little” in the eyes of
God. When an Antinomian says that you
are just to love God and love your neighbor, and that this is the whole keeping
of the law – you should always ask Him “How do I do those things?” The Antinomian is stuck in a trap. John teaches us that to love God is to keep
His commandments (1 John 5:3), and again John teaches us in 2 John 1:6 that
love is the keeping of God’s commandments.
So, just as Jesus Christ taught, the HOW of loving God and the HOW of
loving our neighbor is embodied in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments of God. Without it, or by denying it and abrogating
it, we show our disbelief and our own wickedness.”
Mr.
Antinomian: “Well,
you sir, and your kind of self-righteous Pharisees, can go on trying to please
God by your works. I will rest from
mine.”
Editor: “You will do so to your own peril.”
Note that we do not rest our argument on
the words of the great Church fathers, or on the words of the Reformers, the
Puritans, the Pilgrims (all who kept the commandments of God, including the
actual Sabbath). We do not rest our arguments
on all the Godly confessions of faith, which also support our view. The perennial and obligatory nature of the
moral law is codified forever in the whole Bible, and is reasserted strongly by
the words of Jesus Christ and His Apostles.
It is for this reason that both the Westminster divines and the great
men who wrote the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 said this:
“The moral law does
forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience
thereof; and that, not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also
in respect of the authority of God the Creator, who gave it. Neither does
Christ, in the Gospel, any way dissolve, but much strengthen this
obligation. Although true believers be
not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or
condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a
rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty, it directs and
binds them to walk accordingly; discovering also the sinful pollutions of their
nature, hearts and lives; so as, examining themselves thereby, they may come to
further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against sin, together with a
clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of His
obedience. It is likewise of use to the regenerate, to restrain their
corruptions, in that it forbids sin: and the threatenings of it serve to show
what even their sins deserve; and what afflictions, in this life, they may
expect for them, although freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law.
The promises of it, in like manner, show them God's approbation of
obedience,and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof:
although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works. So as, a man's
doing good, and refraining from evil, because the law encourages to the one and
deters from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law: and not under
grace. Neither are the forementioned
uses of the law contrary to the grace of the Gospel, but do sweetly comply with
it; the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that
freely, and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, requires to
be done.”
(WCF, Chapter 19, parts 5-7).
This is the rule of Christianity. To deny it, is to be an Antinomian, and to
fundamentally reject Christianity. Rod
Jordan (the High-Priest of the Antinomians) has not only rejected the Christian
standards of faith as codified in the Scriptures, but has now blasphemed God by
accusing Jesus Christ of breaking the 10 commandments and annulling the moral
law. I post his statements and my
reply:
Rod Jordan: “In the New Testament, we see that Jesus and the disciples DID NOT keep a
strict Sabbath [as Michael Bunker teaches]. IN CASE you missed that, let me
repeat it... Jesus and the disciples DID NOT keep a strict Sabbath in the old
testament sense. We see this clearly in many areas of the Word. Strict, carnal,
religious Sabbath keeping was a point of great contention between Jesus and the
Pharisees OF THE DAY. It is obviously still a point of contention with those of
us who honor Jesus daily as our Sabbath. This flies in the face of legalistic
religiousites who pride themselves on throwing away their kid's cartoon videos
and doing all manner of what they consider self-effacing religious duties.
For example, we see in Matthew 12:2 these words coming from the mouths of the
ultra-legalistic Pharisees [men in the mold of Michael Bunker]:
"But when the Pharisees saw it [behavior on the carnal Sabbath that they
found an outrage], they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is
not lawful to do upon the sabbath day."
And, we see their NON-UNDERSTANDING of what THE SABBATH is really all about
again in Luke 6:2 when we read:
And certain of the Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye [JESUS and your
disciples] that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?"
Do you think that Jesus and the disciples were strictly OBSERVING some carnal
Sabbath? Nay. As for the reformers and
what they actually believed or didn't believe, I'll be glad to discuss those
who missed the boat in one area, but got it in so many others. But, lest we
fall into condemnation, let us always FIRST go to the uncompromised Word of
God, PROPERLY DIVIDED, for the REAL and TRUE measuring stick. Let’s adhere to
the Biblical record.”
Michael Bunker: Ok, Rod Jordan says that Jesus and the
disciples did not keep the OT Sabbath. Note that Rod did not say that Jesus
disobeyed the "traditions" of the Pharisees, but that Jesus did NOT
keep the OT law (called "The Law of the Lord" - Is 5:24) regarding
the Sabbath.
First, let’s define “sin”. Sin is a
transgression of the law (1 John 3:4).
To defy the commandment in Exodus chapter 20 to keep the Sabbath holy is
a sin. Rod Jordan says that Jesus
Christ sinned.
"For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us,
leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin,
neither was guile found in his mouth" (1 Peter 2:21-22).
The Bible declares that Jesus kept the moral (royal) law perfectly, and there
was no sin in Him. The Holy Spirit claims throughout the scripture that a
violation of the moral law is sin. Rod claims that Jesus and the Disciples
broke the moral law (the Decalogue).
To prove his blasphemy, Rod points out where Jesus and the Disciples rebuked
the Pharisees for their "traditions" which were NOT codified in the
moral law, but were their own creation.
Let me show you how tricky these devils are. Rod says that Jesus violated the
OT law, and to prove it he quotes Matthew 12:2. Matthew 12:2 does not at all
imply that Christ was violating the Sabbath commandment. We have to use the
Bible to interpret the Bible. The Pharisees considered a violation of the
traditions of the elders to be a violation of the "law". What Rod
doesn't want anyone to read is"
Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they
wash not their hands when they eat bread. (Matthew 15:2)
What Jesus taught is explained by the same Gospel writer in the same book!
Jesus rejected the elders traditions regarding the Sabbath, NOT the ROYAL LAW
OF THE LORD!
You
see now how that God, when He gives a man over to defile himself and to
transgress, He first let’s that man slander and attack the children of God and
His living servants. Later, He will allow
that man to rail and bring slanderous accusations against God’s faithful
martyrs and teachers of old. The next
step is that they will wrest the scriptures to their own destruction (2 Peter
3:16). Then they will ultimately bring
charges and accusations against Jesus Christ Himself. They will condemn Him as a sinner, so that they themselves will
feel vindicated.
In
our opening text, you see where Christ tied the production of fruit to
repentance. You will know that a tree
is a good tree when it produces fruit, and you will know a man has repented
when He turns from His sin and rebellion, to a new and Spirit-led obedience to
the commandments of God. God is
longsuffering us-ward, not willing that any of us should perish. But know that all are not wheat who appear
in His field, and all are not sheep who appear in His fold.
“And think not to
say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones
to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root
of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn
down, and cast into the fire” (Matthew 3:9-10).
In
the parables of the fig trees, Christ likens the false professing Christians to
the false professing Jews. Think not
that you have Jesus to your Lord, when you disregard His commandments and
reject His doctrines. God is able to rise
up Christians from the very stones at His feet. And now the axe is to be laid unto the root of the trees, so that
only those who produce good fruit will stand.
All others are but food for the fire.
Needless
to say to all Antinomians, your judgment slumbers not.
I
remain your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael
Bunker