Does God do all things solely for love? Is it wrong to confront a non-Christian with the Law?

Should Christians angrily say others aren’t saying enough about God’s love? Did Christ die for love-as-ultimate-virtue?

And are some who say such things guilty — as all Christians are, to some extent! — of salvaging Scripture in favor of a spiritual System?

That seems the main question , underlying all the others, and the subject of ongoing discussion after last week’s column on Speculative Faith, Refuting universalism slanders of C.S. Lewis, part one.

Hello again, Derek — I will try to give some rebuttals and thoughts below.

Yet first, I must also note [...] that for a guy who talks a lot about God’s love, I don’t see a whole lot of that directed toward Christians who also read and seek understanding from the verses that do, indeed, say that the Lord is holy and just and indeed does all things to glorify Himself. Shouldn’t those who are pushing more of God’s “love” show that as much as talk about it?

Secondly, I shan’t try much to defend Todd Friel. He can be annoying. But so can a lot of Christians in this wild thing we call the Church. In the past several months I’ve had in-depth discussions with professing Christians who

a) lied about C.S. Lewis and Narnia,
b) insisted that “turn the other cheek” means letting a battered wife suffer and only pray for God to make the abuser repent,
c) lied about them Calvinists, saying they believed doctrines of demons, blah blah blah (whether you like TULIP or not, that’s just more slander — and yes this was the same guy who promoted letter a).

And yet all of them just might be saved anyway, if they adhere to the essentials of the Gospel. No one should “joke” otherwise just because we happen to disagree with them personally, or even if they still have active addictions or sins (such as to reactionary, System-based conspiracy theories) that are ultimately the Spirit’s job to rout out.

So let’s move past My Guys versus Your Guys, or what-have-you, and might we also move past the argument-from-outrage? You used that a lot in your response, but it’s ineffective against anyone who hasn’t already been persuaded by better means to believe as you do. I could use argument-from-outrage to “prove” anything: man didn’t land on the Moon, God isn’t real at all, it’s “unloving” for God to send anyone to Hell for any duration with or without some “second chance,” etc.

Instead, therefore, I’ll just keep asking you: have you been reading the Bible in a way that respects its authors and Author? Or have you — most Christians do, and I know I have, so there’s no greater shame in it! — read it to salvage for parts for other stories, or else spiritual Systems?

[...]

[W]hat you believe and or I believe and whether it Sounds Sensible is irrelevant here. The fact is that you haven’t attempted to prove your beliefs with Scripture and have wrongly accused me of elevating one Biblical truth over another or trying to find some Secret Knowledge. And yet your continual rejection of the idea that God to this day maintains righteous wrath against the unrighteous — offering a System supposedly supra Romans — is itself elevating one truth, in a System, above others.

A few other issues: yes, I’ve often heard the whole “you’re like the Pharisees” angle. Please do some checking into Scriptures such as Mark 7 and find the real reason Jesus couldn’t get through to the Pharisees. The bad ones didn’t give one crap about the real God’s honor, but hijacked God’s real Law and even made up their own in place of it. The Pharisees were all Law and no love, and that was their problem is the common view only because of repetition and propaganda, but doesn’t match Scripture.

I shan’t belabor that point here, though, only point you to God’s Law and Jesus’ Love at my nonfiction site if you sincerely wish to be challenged by an opposing view that actually shows that God’s real love is far greater than you’d say.

(Excerpt from a lengthy rebuttal comment on Feb. 8 on Speculative Faith. Read the rest of it.)

Contrary to popular myth, among Christians and others, Jesus did not come to trump God’s Law with a new-and-improved presentation of His love. Clearly, Scripture tells us otherwise, and I hope this series has outlined the truth persuasively and with Christ-honoring grace.

Jesus revealed not just God’s love, or just God’s Law, but both. Anything less is not real love.

Part 1 introduced the myth, the forms it can take, and some of the reasons why people may believe it. We also must remember not to overcorrect for an imbalanced “lovey” Jesus.

Part 2 delved into the depths of Jesus’ famous (but apparently not taught enough) truth in Matthew 5, that He did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. The rest of His Sermon on the Mount shows that He wasn’t simply making the Law easier for people. He reminded them instead of how hard God’s real Law is to obey, and (by proxy) how we need Him to fulfill it.

Part 3 brought one of Jesus’ debates about the Law, with the Pharisees, into focus.

That is where I’ll pick up today, with the series’ final column. This will exegete the rest of Mark 7: 1-13, and see the reasons Jesus gave for His opposition to the Pharisees. Jesus did not defend His disciples for breaking the Law, but said that the Pharisees’ rule wasn’t real Law. And He didn’t debate the Pharisees because they pushed the real Law, but because they didn’t.

And I’ll conclude with the most important thing to learn from these Biblical truths.

2. Did the Pharisees accuse the disciples of violating God’s Law?

Answer: No. They asked why the disciples didn’t obey man-made traditions.

If the Pharisees were honestly confusing the two — God’s Law and their own made-up laws — they didn’t say so here. Jesus didn’t seem to think it was an honest mistake on their part.

3. Did Jesus say the leaders needed to lighten up, love a little more?

Jesus could not make His reasons clearer. If the Pharisees had really asked why Jesus’ disciples weren’t obeying the Old-Testament Law — and the Pharisees’ problem was that they were all about God’s rules and not Jesus’ love — Jesus’ response here makes no sense.

He does not say “you must learn to accept and love others instead of talking about God’s rules.”

Instead, He says, quoting Isaiah 29:13: You are teaching your own rules rather than God’s real rules, and your worship of God is in vain and without heart.

Answer: No, Jesus did not argue from only “you must love people more.” Instead He said they were hypocritically ignoring God’s real Law in favor of their made-up laws.

Many professing Christians¹ claim that Christians who defend God’s Law or holiness, or a plain reading of His Word, are automatically leaning toward hypocrisy and unloving attitudes in the same way the Pharisees did. But if the Pharisees were actually defending God’s real Law, why would Jesus call them hypocrites? He would have to mean they were claiming to adhere to God’s real Law, while actually ignoring it.

4. Was the Pharisees’ main problem only adding their own laws onto the real Law?

Answer: Not at all. And Jesus clearly says the Pharisees were not just naïvely confusing their own religious rules for the real Law. Even worse, they were actively rejecting the real Law and not just ignoring it — they were defying it, and teaching others to do the same.

I love His wording here: “You have a fine way … !” The sarcasm and outrage just blazes forth in His phrasing, with divine authority only He could have.

Again, Jesus doesn’t base His argument on “you must love more,” or even, “you are adding your own rules on top of God’s real Law.” He says “you are rejecting God’s real Law.” Here He cites a specific example: Moses, speaking for God, had commanded that people ought to honor their parents. But instead of following and teaching that part of the Law, the Pharisees had effectively thrown it out in favor of their own rule: you can avoid caring for your parents so long as you claim a Very Spiritual Exemption for your property, i.e., oh, well, this is “God’s money.”

Can you see it here? Jesus was disgusted. With the Pharisees’ very high-sounding, religious and “spiritual” idea about this, they were violating God’s real Law. They were making His word “void … by your tradition that you have handed down.” And that was just a small example, He added.

Conclusion

Many people have different reasons for wanting to make Jesus a dispenser of “love” apart from God’s Law. But such an approach simply isn’t found in Scripture.

The passages here and in part 2 are not isolated cases. For example, in Jesus’ righteous rant against the Pharisees in Matthew 23, He never talks about how they’re all about the real Law and He’s all about “the better way of love” or any of that. He laments and lambastes them because they have “neglected the weightier matters of the law.” What are these? “Justice and mercy and faithfulness.” All are important — and all are what God’s real Law was all about.

Anyone who believes Jesus even came close to opposing or overruling His own Father’s Law with love needs to consider the whole picture that Scripture shows us. Not one time does He play the “good cop” to God’s or His real Law’s “bad cop,” and contradict Himself in that way.

If this really sinks in, it should come as a shock! After all, we have always been taught that Jesus came not to just “make” the Law harder, but to provide a way of salvation.

And that’s true. Any of this emphasis on Jesus’ upholding God’s Law should not simply reinforce someone’s “well I guess we’d best try and obey the Law even harder” reaction! The only reaction this should bring us is gratitude, to Christ, for what He also did to fulfill His own Law.

This is the most important thing to know from busting this myth.

Christ fulfilled God’s real Law by sacrificing Himself as the ultimate atoning sacrifice (or propitiation, 1 John 4:10) for the sins of those who would repent of sins and believe in Him.

Knowing this, and that God’s real Law still applies today, helps us see our need for Christ even more. Instead of only reinforcing the Law and either calling people to obey it by themselves, or just to love each other better, His goal was to die, rise to life, redeem His people with His blood and start His Church. He fulfilled God’s Law so we would trust in Him, not in moral rules.

Thank God for His Law that shows us our need for Him. Thank God for His sacrifice that shows us His love. Thank God for the Bible that shows us both truths in perfect balance.