THEOLOGY APPLIED - Theonomy： Why Many Fiercely Oppose It with Dr. Joe Boot
Episode Stats
Words per minute
168.13928
Harmful content
Toxicity
6
sentences flagged
Hate speech
18
sentences flagged
Summary
Dr. Joe Boot of the Ezra Institute joins Pastor Joel Webbin to talk about theonomy, post-millennialism, and why Christians are so ashamed and turned off by the law of God. Dr. Boot is the founder and president of The Ezra Institute, a Christian cultural apologetics think tank.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey guys, real quick, before we get started, I have a small request.
00:00:03.420
If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show,
00:00:06.420
would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five-star review?
00:00:09.760
This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do
00:00:12.860
to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible. Thanks.
00:00:18.180
Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host,
00:00:21.220
Pastor Joel Webben with Right Response Ministries, and I am very privileged to
00:00:24.760
welcome back as a returning guest to our show, Dr. Joseph Boot of the Ezra Institute. He is the
00:00:31.460
founder and president. They are located near Toronto in Canada, but they are opening other
00:00:37.380
branches and chapters, if you will, in the UK and also in the United States and Tennessee.
00:00:43.500
And so we're excited to have him come back on the show. We have talked in the past when he came on
00:00:47.800
our show about post-millennial eschatology, but here we are focusing our attention exclusively
00:00:53.880
on theonomy. We're talking about what is theonomy, define theonomy, all these different,
00:00:59.540
there's just a lot. There's a spectrum, a wide spectrum of opinion and people who differ.
00:01:04.480
Greg Bonson doesn't agree with everything with Gary North and these guys, and then some of the
00:01:08.160
more modern day theonomist or general equity theonomist. What does that mean? And the big
00:01:13.820
thing that we come to in this conversation that I think is so relevant for us to hear today is
00:01:18.800
why do people have such an aversion Christians especially such an aversion with the law of God
00:01:26.320
why do we not see the law of God as an extension of his kindness and his love toward us and toward
00:01:33.720
human beings not just Christian people but all people made in the image of God that the law of
00:01:39.540
God is the law of liberty and that it leads towards life why do we not see that anymore why
00:01:45.480
are we ashamed and turned off by the law of God? If you're looking for an episode on that topic,
00:01:52.400
this is the place to be. Tune in now. Big news. Really big news. Our next Right Response Conference
00:01:59.380
is in the works. We've got a number of things already lined up and organized. This is what
00:02:04.580
we've got so far. The whole conference, three days long on post-millennialism and theonomy.
00:02:10.520
And the speakers, Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Gary DeMar, and of course, yours truly, Pastor Joel Webin.
00:02:23.200
If you want to find out dates and location and registration and anything else, go and visit our website, rightresponseconference.com.
00:02:46.240
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
00:02:49.160
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and I am very privileged
00:02:53.040
to welcome back to our show a returning guest, Dr. Joe Boot with the Ezra Institute.
00:02:58.720
Joe Boot, would you just introduce yourself for any of our new listeners who may not be
00:03:04.880
Thanks ever so much for having me back on the show.
00:03:08.800
And I apologize that I'm slightly dark in the background here.
00:03:12.960
We've got a very complicated bunch of things going on right now, so I'm not in my usual spot.
00:03:19.340
But yes, the Ezra Institute, we are a Christian World and Lifeview ministry, cultural apologetics.
00:03:27.400
We're essentially a think tank that was launched in Canada back in 2008.
00:03:35.140
And since I planted that ministry, the team has grown.
00:03:39.000
Our focus is teaching, writing, speaking, publishing on a Christian philosophy, Christian world and life view,
00:03:48.220
and an effective cultural apologetic to address the challenges of our time in terms of a comprehensive gospel
00:03:55.160
and in terms of the reality of the kingdom of God.
00:03:58.500
And we have an office in Canada, in the Niagara region of Ontario, and this year we are in
00:04:11.560
the process of launching an office in the United States, in Tennessee, and the United
00:04:22.540
Well, what I wanted to discuss with you is all things theonomy.
00:04:26.760
We've talked about post-millennialism the last time that you came on the show, and I'm sure that
00:04:31.080
that may come up, but I really want us to focus our attention on theonomy. And I wanted to begin
00:04:36.420
by kind of just addressing the elephant in the room. Not everybody tends to be a fan, Dr. Boot.
00:04:41.360
It seems like some people have a strong aversion towards theonomy, or at least the term. It brings
00:04:47.260
up certain connotations for people that are probably misinformed, but nonetheless, people
00:04:52.420
kind of recoil. They immediately think when you say theonomy that you're going to start rounding
00:04:58.560
up Muslims and publicly hanging them or whatever it might be. And so I wanted to just first start
0.98
00:05:06.140
with definitions. If we could just, I think there's a spectrum of theonomic thought, just like
00:05:12.400
there is with any theology, not everybody who holds to covenant theology. There are multiple
00:05:17.640
different expressions of covenant theology and so i wanted to talk about the different um variations
00:05:23.880
of of theonomic thought but first could we just get at kind of the 30 000 foot view a general
00:05:29.780
definition what is theonomy well part of the problem uh has become with with the the term
00:05:36.860
is that it's a bit like if for somebody to be called a theonomist is a bit like being called
00:05:42.400
a charismatic or an evangelical these days both of those terms need qualifying
00:05:50.640
because of exactly as you've described it that the diversity of opinion that exists around these
00:05:59.640
these terms and also that the term has become pejorative really so that it's almost used as an
00:06:09.040
insult these days. And so, I think that sort of atmosphere around the word, the sort of
00:06:16.420
connotation of the word, has come about because it's almost become a pejorative expression,
00:06:23.280
and it does need qualification. But very simply, theonomy, theos, theonomos, means
00:06:33.380
god's law so the word itself simply means god's law and uh i think in many respects that's the
00:06:43.840
that's how we should define it theonomy just means god's law and uh what what are we going
00:06:52.280
to do with god's law becomes the question now what has uh tended to happen is that the that
00:07:01.840
term has become associated with a movement, and it's generally tied to other terms like
00:07:09.160
dominionism, which is often linked to post-millennialism, and then words like
00:07:16.260
reconstruction and so on. And this all helps to generate this kind of boogeyman image for
00:07:23.240
theonomy, but it really simply means God's law. And when at the beginning of creation,
00:07:32.700
the place I start is at the beginning of creation, God speaks in Genesis 1, the 10 words,
00:07:42.380
let there be. And this is 10 times that God speaks the creative word. And then in the
00:07:53.160
book of Exodus in Exodus 20, and of course republished there in Deuteronomy 5, the scripture
00:08:01.380
actually says that God spoke the 10 words. We talk about the 10 commandments, but he spoke the 10
00:08:09.420
words. And God spoke from the glory cloud. It wasn't Moses speaking. The people drew near close
00:08:20.080
to the mountain and and and they heard the the voice of god and god spoke and he and he wrote
00:08:26.960
with his own finger uh the the 10 words what we call the 10 commandments and i think the reason
00:08:33.720
that that's interesting is that the 10 words of creation and the 10 words from the glory cloud
00:08:39.340
uh are both directly uh the word of god um creation is the instantiation of the word of god
00:08:51.320
every word of god is a law word so god's word god's law word holds all of creation together
00:08:59.800
in him all things consist all things hold together and so the let there be is both a command
00:09:07.640
it's god's law and it's a promise that that the what god has spoken into being is going to be
00:09:15.320
maintained let there be so there's a guarantee there's the creative command and then there's
00:09:20.220
a promise inherent in that that what god has created he's going to maintain and sustain
00:09:25.040
and god speaks 10 words again when he speaks his commandments his law um to the covenant people
00:09:33.540
and the fact that the creation word and the commandments are both 10 words spoken by God
00:09:43.560
himself is very, very important biblically. And I think fundamentally, that's what theonomy is
00:09:48.560
about. It's about a recognition that God governs his world, his creation by law. And there are,
00:09:57.420
of course, a variety of spheres of law. God distinguishes and separates in the book of
00:10:02.120
uh genesis he differentiates and separates different spheres of life and creation and
00:10:07.240
there so there are different spheres of law but god governs the totality of his creation by law
00:10:14.360
and we're reminded of that with the 10 words in the book of exodus that this is uh this is
00:10:20.920
the we might call it the standing law uh the decalogue this is the law of god that binds
00:10:29.000
every person just as the creation law binds all of uh the creation word binds all of creation so
00:10:35.960
god's covenant word his covenant law that he spoke from the glory cloud those 10 words bind
00:10:43.160
all human beings to me that's what uh theonomy is but you're wanting i'm sure in part to tease out
00:10:51.640
uh the some of the accretions around this uh i like the way john frame actually describes it
00:10:59.400
he says that you know theonomy this this emphasis uh on the law of god in the history of the church
00:11:06.200
and there's nothing new about it um to differing degrees different thinkers different uh church
00:11:13.720
fathers, different reformers, different Puritans, focused attention on the law of God. And so John
00:11:22.840
Frame describes theonomy, if you want to think of it as, in terms of a movement, as a tendency
00:11:30.780
within the reformed tradition, as an emphasis within the reformed tradition, when we think
00:11:38.460
about social life and the political life of man to emphasize the relevance, the centrality,
00:11:46.440
the importance of the law of God. And I think that very specifically, we can say that theonomy
00:11:55.920
in this sense within the reformed tradition is a theory within Christian ethics. So I like to talk
00:12:01.800
about theonomy from a cosmological point of view, that God's word is law, his every word is law,
00:12:08.060
there's his creation law, there's his moral law, and they're bound together. And that is the way
00:12:15.440
we are required to live within God's creation, and we violate God's law at our peril. In the
00:12:22.980
more narrow sense, we can say that theonomy is a view within Christian ethics that says we must
00:12:28.380
pay particular and peculiar attention to the law of God when we not only wrestle with the meaning
00:12:36.440
of sanctification as Christians, as a measure of our sanctification, but when we think about
00:12:41.400
cultural, social, and political life. Amen. Yeah, I mean, it just seems to be illogical
00:12:50.280
and impotent to think that God would sanctify individuals who believe the gospel and are
00:12:57.400
seeking to obey his law, and yet that would have little to no effect on the societies in which
00:13:03.600
they live. To me, it just seems like the logical next step in this equation that if people believe
00:13:12.800
the gospel and if they're seeking to live lives that glorify God, right? Jesus says, John 14,
00:13:18.400
if you love me, you'll obey me. So our response of obedience, we love because he first loved us,
00:13:25.620
1 John 4, 19. So God loves us in the beloved, gives us spiritual eyes to see that love for us,
00:13:32.540
that salvific love. We're born again by the work of the Spirit, regenerate, endowed with the gifts
00:13:39.620
of faith and repentance, really just two sides of a singular coin, turning from sin and turning
00:13:44.840
to Christ with knowledge, assent, and implicit trust. And then in that, we love God. And the
00:13:52.560
very next question is, God, how do I manifest my love for you? How do you, if I'm seeking to love
00:14:00.960
you in response to your great love for me, it would seem to beckon the question, well, I want
00:14:09.560
to love you, therefore I want to do that which you would actually deem as loving. What do you see as
00:14:14.740
loving? Obey my commands. Does Christ have any commands? Well, in fact, he has at least two.
00:14:21.520
Okay, well, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and loving our neighbor
00:14:25.420
as ourself. So can I then take it into my own liberty that, okay, I must love God and love
00:14:32.760
people, but now the onus is on me, a blank canvas for my own creative freedom and license to
00:14:39.680
determine what is loving God and how I love neighbor, or does God flesh that out further?
00:14:45.400
Does he exposit this summary law that's later fleshed out further? And we would say, well,
00:14:52.060
It is the two tables of a law that we find in God's moral law in the Decalogue.
00:14:56.180
And then, well, what about all these civil laws?
00:14:58.420
Well, the civil law seems to be a further expression of the moral law of God to the
00:15:05.080
And although we are not a nation state in the same sense that Israel was, I mean, it's
00:15:12.360
just Reformed Confessional 101, both the Westminster and the 1689 that I would prescribe
00:15:17.080
to both speak of the civil law and its general equity being applied.
00:15:23.160
I want to defend this because I'm a pastor and I feed my family.
00:15:26.500
And that's precisely what the Apostle Paul does is he takes the general equity of not
00:15:30.320
muzzling the ox while he treads the grain and says, God is concerned for more than oxen
00:15:34.860
that in the same way, the general equity of this is the worker deserves the wages.
00:15:41.460
And I don't think the Apostle Paul is saying it only applies to pastors and it would have
00:15:45.020
no application unless I, with apostolic authority, explicitly wrote it down and scripturated
00:15:50.180
it. But no, I think he's saying, he's showing us a method of this is how to use the law of God.
00:15:55.740
And I think, you know, he's making an argument from the lesser to the greater in a sense that
00:16:01.200
he's saying it applies even to pastors. And certainly I think he would say especially
00:16:06.340
pastors, but it seems to imply that he's saying this principle applies to all vocation. Outside
00:16:11.000
of vocational ministry, workers deserve wages and he's using the civil law of God to do it.
00:16:17.080
and with children obeying their parents, belonging to the moral law, the fifth commandment.
00:16:21.540
The crazy thing to me is that under the new covenant, the apostle Paul, this is after
00:16:25.720
the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and even the outpoint of the spirit, the new covenant is
00:16:31.500
here and in effect inaugurated by Christ. And the apostle doesn't blush for a moment saying that
00:16:37.020
the law is still imposed. And he also, without equivocation, says that the promise, and this is
00:16:45.760
the first commandment with a promise that it may go well the promise is still good and and and we
00:16:50.320
start to blush i think in our gospel centered everything reformed quasi camp that that we're
00:16:55.600
like well but but is that the prosperity gospel and i want to say no that's the the bible that's
00:17:01.360
the bible what what is is that part of what you're getting at yeah what you've um i mean what you've
00:17:07.780
done there is is taken taken the discussion a step further um beyond the generalities of the
00:17:15.480
abiding authority of god's law which of course let's remember that jesus fully assumed um in
00:17:21.740
fact uh there in matthew 5 17 following jesus is absolutely explicit that he came not to abolish
00:17:28.920
the law but to fulfill it certainly one of the implications of that word fulfill play root
00:17:34.340
is to put into force um and that's clear from the fact that he says heaven and earth isn't going to
00:17:41.040
pass away not not one punctuation mark i should say of the law is going to pass till everything
00:17:46.280
has been accomplished till everything is fulfilled and um and he says those who teach
00:17:52.440
and do these things will be called great not in the older covenant but in the kingdom of heaven
00:17:58.660
and those who teach people to disobey them and do likewise will be the least so there is you're
00:18:05.380
actually talking about people now who claim to be inside the covenant who actually are believers
00:18:09.780
but who actually teach people to disobey God's commands now you the issue of love there is that
00:18:17.700
you've raised is absolutely central because of course the central the core meaning of the
00:18:23.460
the moral aspect of our lives is love love to God and love to neighbor and Jesus summarizes the law
00:18:30.180
in those terms and he says if you love me you will obey my commandments and Paul basically
00:18:36.960
says the same thing in Romans 13 when he says love does no wrong to its neighbor therefore love is
00:18:43.620
the fulfillment of the law and he lifts he lists a number of the commandments from the Decalogue
00:18:47.940
he says love is doing this so oftentimes when we speak of loving our neighbor or especially when
00:18:54.820
we think about loving our enemy we tend to have in mind as evangelicals you know working up feelings
00:18:59.140
of emotional affection for people that's not what love to our neighbor means love of neighbor love
00:19:05.900
even of enemy means to obey God's law with respect to them. And that's what the scripture
00:19:11.940
is driving at. And so the reality of the abiding validity of the law that you've touched on is
00:19:19.340
actually given to us in very much in the language of the gospel in Jeremiah chapter 31, which is
00:19:26.380
quoted again in Hebrews chapter 8, where we're told that the meaning of the new covenant is that
00:19:31.660
the law of God is going to, that was written on tablets of stone, is now in the new covenant
00:19:37.700
written on the tables of our hearts. It's written into the core of our being. So the law is not
00:19:44.080
abolished. The location of the law has changed. The location of the law is no longer the ark of
00:19:50.060
the covenant. It's in the new temple, the people of God inscribed into our hearts. That is the
00:19:57.660
new covenant. And so you're right in thinking and saying that it would seem like an almost bizarre
00:20:04.500
contradiction to think that now that we are in Christ, the very law that Jesus used to defeat
00:20:11.840
the temptation of Satan, very law which he has said is not going to pass away, should somehow
00:20:19.460
now be utterly abandoned so that my arbitrary ideas and my arbitrary thoughts about what love
00:20:24.520
really looks like right um can be applied by me right well i mean that that's basically what
00:20:30.440
we're saying and people wouldn't put it into those terms but that is precisely i think the
00:20:34.620
heart of the matter is that people are saying god used to tell people what love is god used to be
00:20:41.020
the standard and now we are the standard right that the that the law of god has been replaced
00:20:46.800
by autonomy and and the god of yahweh has been replaced by demos that you know might makes right
00:20:53.700
And the, you know, the 50% plus one can impose their will on the minority.
00:21:01.740
I think it's really helpful that it's not that the law was abrogated, it was fulfilled
00:21:05.300
by Christ, but it's not that the law was abrogated by Christ and done away with.
00:21:10.020
He says precisely the opposite, but the law was just relocated.
00:21:15.040
I like that, the way that you, it went from the Ark of the Covenant, it went from something
00:21:21.280
And that's precisely what makes the New Covenant.
00:21:22.900
the new covenant is not merely bigger or wider in its scope, but it's deeper and better in the
00:21:29.700
depth of its promises. And precisely one of those is that I will cause you to walk in my statutes.
00:21:34.940
I will put the fear of myself within you. I will write my law on your hearts. No longer will one
00:21:40.300
say to the other, know the Lord, for you shall all know me from the least to the greatest. And
00:21:44.680
that seems to be the major transitioning component from the old to the new is not the doing away of
00:21:51.740
god's law but the the relocation of the law of god to where we would it would be even more
00:21:57.360
intimately known by god's people that we couldn't miss it precisely precisely but we're missing it
00:22:04.840
dr boot we are missing it it seems uh what what's going on with that well we we we we're not seeing
00:22:12.080
the the law as a gift of grace um and uh you know when god covenants with man uh it's it's a it's a
00:22:22.420
it it's a form of of treaty uh of an ancient kind um that is a greater with a lesser and therefore
00:22:31.480
his covenanting with us is an act of grace and when jesus sits at the the table the the passover
00:22:39.520
a feast, and he cuts covenant with the disciples. He is, of course, introducing a new priesthood.
00:22:50.640
We do know that the book of Hebrews is clear that the Aaronic priesthood is lesser than the
0.95
00:22:57.440
priesthood and the order of Melchizedek. Of course, we're reminded in scripture that
0.98
00:23:02.220
Abraham paid a tithe to the priest king of Salem. And Levi in his loins.
00:23:12.880
And so there is a greater priesthood that has come now in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:23:18.300
And that's, of course, a priesthood to which we belong.
00:23:21.100
We are priests in the prophets, priests and kings in the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:23:28.060
So there's been a change in the priesthood and the blood that now cleanses us from sin in a way that the blood of bulls and goats couldn't.
00:23:37.820
is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the cup of the new covenant. But you'll notice
00:23:41.500
that Jesus doesn't introduce a new 10 commandments when he cuts covenant with his disciples. What he
00:23:48.200
adds is, there's a new commandment I'm giving to you, love one another as I have loved you.
00:23:55.400
So there is something about the way in which Christians love and serve and treat one another,
00:24:01.420
this internalizing this radical internalizing of the reality of the gospel but in in this great in
00:24:08.960
the in jesus is the greater moses remember that the life of jesus recapitulates the journey of
00:24:14.660
israel so cry out of egypt i have called my son the lord jesus of course after his birth in
00:24:22.760
bethlehem because of the persecution of herod they they're down in egypt they come out of egypt
00:24:29.160
Christ goes through the waters, just like Israel at his baptism.
00:24:33.260
Then he goes out into the wilderness, just like Israel, to be tempted, to be tested.
00:24:45.000
Then he goes up onto the mountain as the greater Moses.
00:24:50.660
He doesn't say you've heard Moses said, but I need to correct that and tell you this.
00:24:54.740
he says you have heard that it was said but i say to you and what jesus does is the greater moses
00:25:00.960
is interpret that's right the law over against the distorted interpretations of the scribes and
00:25:07.760
pharisees and he every time he raises the bar he's yeah exactly he is it's expositional preaching
00:25:12.660
jesus sermon on the mount is he's taking old testament text the word of god and not doing
00:25:17.420
away with and saying well the word of god is no longer relevant and so i'm going to give you a
00:25:20.560
topical sermon of my own fancy. No, it's an expositional sermon. Here is the Old Testament
00:25:24.880
text, and this is its meaning because Jesus was coming into a context where it had been stripped
00:25:31.700
of its meaning, and it had been reinterpreted by the scribes and the leaders in Israel,
00:25:41.700
the men of the law, reinterpreted in such a way that it could be kept by them but could not be
00:25:47.400
kept by the common people and jesus comes and shows how um how the pharisees and the sadducees
00:25:54.120
and the scribes were actually not keeping the law and in some sense they were keeping the letter but
00:25:59.320
denying the very spirit in the heart of the law the equity of the law and um and also convicting
00:26:05.200
what jesus accuses them of right he accuses them of neither knowing the scriptures nor the power
00:26:12.160
of god so often christians tend to think that oh you see jesus rebuked the pharisees because they
00:26:16.380
were such law they were all focused on law no jesus actually accused them of breaking the law
00:26:22.640
uh in fact in uh in i think it's um uh i think it's mark 7 maybe um matthew or or the other
00:26:31.820
way around matthew 15 somewhere there um where jesus is dealing with parents caring for parents
00:26:38.000
and uh he actually rebukes the pharisees for setting aside god's commandments and he says
00:26:45.680
many other such things you do um so that was jesus rabbi jesus's issue with the pharisees
00:26:53.520
was their faulty uh interpretation of the law right not that they were legalistic but they
00:26:58.760
were actually a antinomian they were against law they were lawless real quick would you agree that
00:27:04.000
second thessalonians so as i've been you know evolving in my doctrine of post-millennial
00:27:09.180
eschatology and these kinds of things i've come to where i would i would now stand that the man
00:27:15.360
of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 is probably, although I may not be able to pinpoint
00:27:20.540
the precise individual, but I would see this as a partial preterist, as something that's already
00:27:24.800
been fulfilled, and that it's not some Roman emperor, not some Gentile pagan, but the man
00:27:31.920
of lawlessness who sits in the temple, that this is before the temple fell in AD 70 in the destruction
00:27:38.160
of the temple, and that it was a Jew, that it was perhaps even the high priest, that the apostle
0.66
00:27:42.960
is saying that guy who represents all the law of israel is actually he himself the lawless
00:27:48.640
one what do you think about that interpretation yeah i by myself impartial preterist so i i would
00:27:56.760
i would broadly go along with that i think what's what's significant is that uh when the bible
00:28:03.440
speaks when the bible speaks about sin it defines sin is defined in the bible as lawlessness and
00:28:10.700
Satan is the lawless one, and Antichrist is the man of lawlessness. So those things should
00:28:19.260
immediately alert us to the issue that there is a problem with lawlessness. Lawlessness is the
00:28:25.500
essence of what it means to be Antichrist. And of course, the Apostle Paul, you took us to
00:28:32.580
Thessalonians there, you've mentioned the Apostle Paul's use of the case law. His application,
00:28:39.580
of course um about you mentioned um parents and um honoring our honoring our parents
00:28:46.320
that it may go well with us and he interestingly he changes the he he adapts the promise at the
00:28:52.900
end he says instead of saying that it may go well with you live long in the land he says that you
00:28:57.360
may live long in the earth so you see the expansion of the implication of the law there
00:29:04.100
from a local promise in Canaan to this cosmic promise, and Paul, as you said, was totally
00:29:11.960
comfortable with taking a case law about the ox treading out the grain and applying that to
00:29:19.160
Christian ministry, and he was equally unashamed of taking the law and applying it to the civil
00:29:25.640
context. In 1 Timothy chapter 1, I think this is one of the most important texts for a proper
00:29:31.820
understanding a truly theonomic reading of scripture in 1st Timothy 1 7 and 8 well starting
00:29:38.960
at verse 8 he says we know that the law is good provided one uses it law legitimately we know that
00:29:46.080
the law is not meant for a righteous person but for the lawless and rebellious for the ungodly
00:29:50.700
and sinful for the unholy and irreverent for those who kill their fathers and mothers for murderers
0.99
00:29:56.960
for the sexually immoral and homosexuals for kidnappers liars perjurers and for whatever else
0.99
00:30:03.520
is contrary to the sound teaching and listen to this based on the glorious gospel of the blessed
0.99
00:30:09.840
god which was entrusted to me paul actually says there not only is he citing multiple commands out
00:30:17.360
of the decalogue and applying it in a civil sense who is the law made for he actually says that this
00:30:22.900
is based on the gospel this isn't some law gospel radical dualism this is this is rooted in the
00:30:30.320
reality of the gospel of the kingdom and the gospel of the kingdom is about the rule and
00:30:34.240
reign of the lord jesus christ if you've ever heard of a king who has no kingdom and a kingdom
00:30:39.440
with no law christ is the king he has a kingdom and his kingdom is governed by law it's the rule
00:30:47.700
of law and it's the same law for the stranger and the alien as well as for the for the covenant
00:30:52.260
member for the true Israelite. And so Paul is totally unashamed of making direct applications
00:31:04.540
of the law to the civil sphere. And he's saying that this is in accordance with the gospel of the
00:31:09.160
Lord Jesus Christ. And then he takes the case laws and he applies the general equity of those laws
00:31:14.660
into a variety of circumstances. So in some respects, we could look at it in saying that
00:31:19.460
god who is the giver of of his law of course god is above law god is god is the law giver he's not
00:31:27.720
subject to law but he binds himself to his covenant with us and in history all law is
00:31:35.260
temporal law and of course this is where the tomists and the natural law theorists and the
00:31:40.140
natural theologians go wrong they want they want an eternal abstract principle of law that
00:31:46.060
everybody's reason somehow participates in and they think that they can they don't really need
00:31:51.840
God's revealed law because the men of right reason will participate it somehow in eternal law through
00:31:59.160
natural law but God's law is actually God positivizes makes concrete applies the law of
00:32:09.520
of in giving the Decalogue. And then it's the responsibility of magistrates and the, of course,
00:32:18.980
Moses and those who are going to govern the people to then take minimal cases
00:32:25.040
where the law of God is actually applied. And so, of course, that is where we get to the
00:32:33.580
nitty gritty of all of this. And this is often where great offense is caused by God's law,
00:32:38.620
because it's not left in the abstract as sort of eternal rational principles in in the greek sense
00:32:45.120
but it's concretized and it's positivized and the first positivization of the law of love is god
00:32:54.200
himself in the decalogue and then human beings have the responsibility responsibility and
00:33:00.540
obligation to take god's revealed law to sit to look at all of the the the cases where
00:33:06.060
uh faithful people especially what we see revealed in scripture not just what maybe
00:33:12.020
alfred the great did with it that's the first codification of of um common law which of course
00:33:17.200
is all of our tradition in in the uh england america canada um you have the the uh it's it's
00:33:25.820
alfred the great who who embarks on the first codification of uh common law uh and uh and and
00:33:34.080
it builds up case by case over year after year after year. And of course, that's the beauty of
00:33:41.000
the inheritance of the common law and of the tradition that we have in the West that's given
00:33:47.160
to us directly from Israel. It comes to us from Israel, this duty to positivize and apply the
00:33:54.720
reality of God's law. We've come to a point in our history, probably mainly because of the
00:34:00.240
cultural pressure all around us where it is a tragedy to see so many christians who either
00:34:06.680
who either um we can have sympathy we should say with those who who have not been exposed to the
00:34:13.740
reality of god's law anymore the the law of god used to be hanging on the the crown the walls of
00:34:20.560
crown courts in england and canada it used to be part of our sunday liturgies the ten commandments
00:34:26.620
would have been displayed in most of our churches many of those things have have slowly disappeared
00:34:32.780
we can have sympathy with the christian who's not really been taught god's law what is more
00:34:38.200
difficult to understand is where evangelicals who should know better have an antipathy towards this
00:34:45.340
law of liberty as james calls it the law of love uh this this law that um is the god's gift to us
00:34:54.860
as not the source of life that's the lord jesus christ through the regenerating power of the holy
00:34:59.900
spirit but the way of life that's why god says this is the way walk in it that's really really
00:35:06.380
helpful real quick addressing i know that we need to come to a close here in a moment but addressing
00:35:11.880
the the concept of natural law and guys like john locke and those kinds of things i so if if i were
00:35:18.220
to borrow that term for a moment i would i would apply that term and i'm sure it'd be more helpful
00:35:23.260
to use another term, but I would say that natural law, if I find it anywhere in the scripture,
00:35:27.240
it would be Romans chapter, not one being natural revelation, but Romans chapter two,
00:35:32.420
that the Gentiles, even those who have received no measure of special revelation, God's revealed
00:35:38.100
law in his law word, they've still received a measure of God's moral law simply by virtue of
0.99
00:35:47.280
being fallen creatures. Yes, but a vestige of the image of God still remaining creatures made in
00:35:52.640
the image of God, living in God's world. By virtue of living in God's world with God's order and God's
00:35:57.620
rules for his world, working as they do, and the law of God being written on their hearts and the
00:36:03.080
conscience of man, even though he lies and attempts to suppress the truth and deeds of unrighteousness,
0.57
00:36:08.920
there's still a sense in which the Gentile who's never received a missionary, never received an
00:36:13.780
apostolic message or a scroll or anything else, he is a law unto himself so that he is rightly
00:36:20.180
judged. He's without an apologia, and I'm going back and forth between Romans 2 and 1 here, but
00:36:24.620
he has no excuse because, this is what I always say to people, when they get upset about God's
00:36:30.140
law, really they're upset about the fact that there's a God in heaven that he has a standard.
00:36:34.920
They don't think that the God who created the entire world and created them has the right
00:36:39.480
to have a standard. And what I always say is, well, do you have a standard? And you impose
00:36:46.320
your standard not oh this is the rule that i live by no you no nobody does that that's that's
00:36:50.860
hypocritical that's not honest you have a standard and you oppose impose it on others that's why you
00:36:55.640
get offended right when others do to you what you would would um say that i would never do to
0.97
00:37:02.520
anybody else that's why you're horribly offended because they did not uphold your standard you
00:37:07.440
didn't make them you didn't create them from the dust of the ground you didn't knit them together
00:37:11.780
in their mother's womb or anything and yet you think that you have the right to impose a standard
00:37:15.740
to them without even being able to objectively determine whether or not your standard is
00:37:20.760
actually moral, whether or not it's actually good.
00:37:26.440
And my point is that the Apostle Paul seems to say that the Gentiles, they themselves
0.98
00:37:30.900
have a standard and they can't even keep their own standard.
0.98
00:37:34.060
How in the world do they think that they could stand before a thrice holy God?
00:37:37.380
And so therefore they are guilty whether they've ever received a single page of scripture or
00:37:42.200
not, simply by natural revelation and the law of God. It's two components. It's God revealing his
00:37:48.360
eternal power and divine nature by what he has made, that which is physical, the cosmos outside
00:37:53.900
of them, but then also within them and the way that God has created them in his very image,
00:37:59.340
that image tarnished by the fall, but a vestige of the image of God remaining nonetheless. And so
00:38:04.800
my point is, I would want to say that if natural law is anything, it's that. It's Romans 2,
00:38:10.520
what Paul's getting at. But then what I would say is that the natural law that Paul's getting at in
00:38:15.020
Romans 2, there seems to be no distinction between that and moral law, the 10 commandments found in
00:38:20.680
the Decalogue. It seems that there's not one commandment, and I would include even the Sabbath,
00:38:24.820
again, by virtue of natural revelation. There are people who rejected God, they were deist,
00:38:29.980
or they were agnostic, who still recognize that just with agriculture, farming the land for six
00:38:36.420
years and then giving it a break on the seventh was good for producing more crops, right?
00:38:41.100
That just the fabric of the world and the way that God designed it spoke to a Sabbath
00:38:49.480
And so my point is, I really think that if there is natural law that comes apart from
00:38:53.780
special revelation, it would be the 10 commandments, that there is a God and therefore we should
00:39:00.360
love him and worship him and have no other gods before him.
00:39:05.320
that seems apparently obvious natural that we could conclude no one's seen him therefore we
00:39:09.660
shouldn't try to construct visible images but rather worship through faith faith does not come
00:39:14.080
by seeing but but rather by hearing and hearing the word of christ and and that we should worship
00:39:18.140
this god not in a trivial or trite manner but with sincerity not taking his name in vain the
00:39:22.660
sabbath principle i've already addressed and and and then paul explicitly cites many of the laws
00:39:27.440
regarding neighbors such as murder uh in romans chapter two with the gent so my point is if there
00:39:32.320
is natural law, I would see it as synonymous with moral law revealed by two parts, natural revelation
00:39:40.200
and the Imago Dei. And then that's simply, in my assessment, simply confirmed through revealed
00:39:48.480
special revelation in the Decalogue and the law, the moral law given to Moses on the mountain.
00:39:54.680
So I guess my point is to say that the guy who tries to get away from moral law and adopt
00:40:01.800
natural law he seems to be doing it as a deist or agnostic to somehow lower the bar but i don't see
00:40:08.260
how it would what how would you respond to that yeah no i think that um the the part of the
00:40:14.840
challenge with the the expressions natural law um um natural theology is of course they do tend
00:40:21.740
to mean different things to different people um and uh because of the western tradition
00:40:26.940
and the influence of the very powerful influence of Greek thought
00:40:31.820
in the Western tradition, even in the Western theological tradition.
00:40:35.080
Sometimes the word nature comes with a certain freight
00:40:56.940
And every aspect of creation is governed by his law. Yes, Paul says the work of God's law is known in man.
00:41:05.240
It's part of the fact that we're creatures of God. There is that abiding testimony, not just within the creation.
00:41:13.660
Psalm 19, of course, speaks about and talks about the way in which even though there's no verbal speech, there is knowledge that goes forth from the reality of creation.
00:41:29.260
The prophet Isaiah points out that God teaches the farmer.
00:41:33.260
So there is an encounter with God's normative structure.
00:41:36.660
Right. The problem, of course, is that in a fallen and a broken world where man is a sinner, God never left man simply to look at nature in a neutral, autonomous way and interpret it for himself.
00:41:49.720
There was always from the very beginning verbal revelation. And I don't think we can underestimate either the way in which the spread of the I mean, don't forget, we're all descended from one human family.
00:42:02.240
so the man's knowledge of what god requires is also going to be orally passed on that's right
00:42:10.820
and spread in those terms so there's both a cultural transmission and but god has to of
00:42:16.360
course call out a special people for himself where he's going to republish the reality of uh of that
00:42:23.140
law and that's what the i think ten commandments um represents i think the danger and i think
00:42:29.440
sometimes this is what's happened with uh some of the some christians some evangelicals some even
00:42:35.140
reformed people today who are uncomfortable with or hostile towards uh discussion around god's law
00:42:41.220
and its abiding validity and its applicability is they almost sort of see natural law as a place
00:42:48.020
that they could retreat to that's that's going to be more neutral it's going to be more acceptable
00:42:52.800
to non-christian people because it's just nature and it's man's reason that engages with it
00:42:57.780
whereas this this um how can a specific concrete positivized law like the decalogue and the case
00:43:05.260
law that comes with it be in any way universal and of course what you find though with the
00:43:10.480
rationalistic philosophers and the natural law theorists is they actually can't agree on what
00:43:14.780
natural law really is what what what is it actually teaching what is the body of laws
00:43:20.540
that natural law is actually delivered to man and in a in a darwinist framework you look at you look
00:43:27.800
at a hindu framework or pantheistic framework you look at the law structures that have been
0.98
00:43:32.960
present in indigenous cultures and so on i wouldn't want to live in one right the the the
0.99
00:43:39.680
you know idolatrous idol worshiping child sacrificing um uh sexually promiscuous uh cultures
0.98
00:43:48.420
that it took the evangelization of the world to bring to bear the reality of god's law and that's
0.97
00:43:55.220
an inheritance we can't squander left only to our own reason because of our fallen state
00:44:00.500
as paul says in romans 8 man is at enmity with god he cannot submit himself to the law of god
00:44:05.860
he won't do so that's why we need the regenerating work of the of the holy spirit amen well this has
00:44:12.900
been wonderfully helpful dr boot i there's so much more that we could talk about um but i think
00:44:18.020
the best solution is to call it quits for today and just have you back every single week from here
00:44:22.020
on can i get your commitment no but we'd love to come back on again and uh and and take some of
00:44:29.620
these that because there's so much more we could say we've just kind of scratched the surface and
00:44:33.040
we could talk about many scriptures and and i think a helpful discussion would be to talk more
00:44:37.620
about okay why is there what's what's behind some of the hostility and so on i think that would be a
00:44:42.840
very interesting discussion to have because when you consider psalm 1 psalm 19 psalm 119 the longest
00:44:52.100
chapter in the bible which is a song a celebration of the beauty the wonder the gift the privileged
00:44:59.300
gift of god's law when you think that the the role of the prophets was to call people back to god's
00:45:05.040
law to remind them of the covenant law when you think about proverbs and the wisdom literature
00:45:09.520
And you see that that's a father teaching his son God's law.
00:45:13.860
And then when you think about the Lord Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration and who appears with him on the mountain to speak about the exodus that he was about to accomplish.
00:45:23.240
That's the word there. The exodus. It is Moses and Elijah.
00:45:28.820
It's the unity of the law and the prophets with the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:45:32.020
And I think when we start to see the beauty and the glory of this and the gift of the gracious gift of God's law to us as his people, we don't take the when we when we wash, when we go to do our ablutions, we don't take that the law functions in many respects for us like a mirror.
00:45:51.540
And we don't pull the mirror off the wall as Christians and wash our face in the mirror.
00:45:55.880
No, we when you go to the washroom, you wash with water, but the mirror shows you your condition.
00:46:02.020
And the law of God is not that which washes us.
00:46:09.160
But the mirror, the law functions as that mirror for us, even as believers, to guide our sanctification.
00:46:15.820
And we're obligated to teach it and instruct not just our children, not just our churches, but the culture, all the nations in the gift of God's law.
00:46:25.740
And look what's happened, Joel, in a culture now in the West where we have neglected that, as goes the church, so goes the world.
00:46:34.420
And I think just landing the plane with what you said earlier, the law being synonymous with love.
00:46:41.940
You know, we say, well, don't impose the law on unbelievers.
00:46:48.240
But if we see the law as loving, then it simply raises the question, what am I called to do with my unbelieving neighbor?
00:46:55.740
right? That there would be no qualms, no pushback if we said, but we're called to love our
00:47:01.740
brothers. The scripture talks about that. First John talks about if anyone hates his brother,
00:47:05.880
fellow Christians must love fellow Christians. That's one of the signs that we've truly been
00:47:09.100
born again and that the love of Christ abides in us. But are we called to love unbelievers?
0.99
00:47:14.800
And every gospel-centered Tim Keller loving guy would come out of the woodworks and say,
00:47:19.680
yes we're called to love not just christians but love the culture um is pointing the culture
00:47:26.860
and society and even unbelievers back to the law of god loving but we don't see that and i think
00:47:33.160
that reveals that shows our hand we don't see the law of god as something that is loving that brings
00:47:37.480
about flourishing and life and prosperity but rather binding and oppressive and that's why we
0.78
00:47:43.340
don't want to share it with the unbeliever because we do we want to love the unbeliever and not hurt
00:47:47.900
him. And we see the law of God is harmful. That's really what I think it comes down to. And it's
00:47:53.180
destroyed churches and it's destroyed society and culture. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the
00:47:58.700
show. Dr. Boot, God bless you. Please continue with your ministry. We're praying for you.
00:48:05.380
Thanks so much for listening. But real quick, before you go, do us a small favor,
00:48:09.860
take a moment and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show. This is undoubtedly
00:48:14.940
the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content