Here’s the passage:
“If a man is righteous and does what is just and right— if he does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman in her time of menstrual impurity, does not oppress anyone, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment, does not lend at interest or take any profit, withholds his hand from injustice, executes true justice between man and man, walks in my statutes, and keeps my rules by acting faithfully—he is righteous; he shall surely live, declares the Lord God.
“If he fathers a son who is violent, a shedder of blood, who does any of these things (though he himself did none of these things), who even eats upon the mountains, defiles his neighbor’s wife, oppresses the poor and needy, commits robbery, does not restore the pledge, lifts up his eyes to the idols, commits abomination, lends at interest, and takes profit; shall he then live? He shall not live. He has done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon himself.
“Now suppose this man fathers a son who sees all the sins that his father has done; he sees, and does not do likewise: he does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife, does not oppress anyone, exacts no pledge, commits no robbery, but gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment, withholds his hand from iniquity, takes no interest or profit, obeys my rules, and walks in my statutes; he shall not die for his father’s iniquity; he shall surely live. As for his father, because he practiced extortion, robbed his brother, and did what is not good among his people, behold, he shall die for his iniquity.
“Yet you say, ‘Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?’ When the son has done what is just and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
“But if a wicked person turns away from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness that he has done he shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? But when a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice and does the same abominations that the wicked person does, shall he live? None of the righteous deeds that he has done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed, for them he shall die.
“Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just? When a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it; for the injustice that he has done he shall die. Again, when a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he shall save his life. Because he considered and turned away from all the transgressions that he had committed, he shall surely live; he shall not die (Ezekiel 18.5-28).
So, is this the free offer of the Gospel or is it a presentation of legalism?
According to Humble Answers, Steve Schlissel is beyond the pale for saying, “Obedience and faith are the same things Biblically speaking.” What exactly is the problem here. I don’t ever remember reading or hearing this in any kind of context, so I have no idea what to think. Schlissel is not in the PCA nor is he me so I have no real need to investigate. (By the way, if you can get the recordings from the 2002 Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference, Steve was just amazing.)
But I have to ask, are we holding Steve guilty of using Ezekiel 18 in his understanding of the call to faith? What about Romans 6.16-18?
Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness (emphasis added).
There it is in black and white: repentence and faith is called becoming “obedient.” Biblicaly speaking, Schlissel is right.
And this is exactly how the Westminster Confession describes faith, distinguishing general acts of faith from “principal acts” of saving faith:
By this faith, a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God himself speaking therein; and acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life, and that which is to come. But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace (emphasis added).
So claiming the slogan is “provocative” doesn’t change the fact that it sounds quite Biblical and confessional. Could it possibly be used in a way that promotes serious error? Sure. But you have to make a case, that it was indeed being used in that way. Is someone going to seriously tell me that Steve Schlissel is obscuring the importance of resting on Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life? Steve Schlissel who preached to us in 2002,
What does He need to do, O man, to prove that He loves you? How many sons does He have to send and kill in our behalf? How many sons does He have to raise from the dead and bring to His right hand and give all power in heaven and on earth? Isn’t one enough? Your Savior has made Himself known to you. It is an affront of the first and capital sort to doubt this God and develop into this mindless nonsense about assurances of various sorts. God has spoken. Let the world be silent and tremble before Him. He has told us who we are, and we say Amen. He has told us what our portion is, and we say Amen. He has told us what our future is, and we say Amen. O God, we don’t deserve it, but, O God, we thank You that it is true.
We have … rights as the people of the atonement, the people who have forgiveness and reconciliation. We have access to God, to His law and wisdom, to fellowship with Him and one another. We have a history like no other, and a future like no other.
Steve’s whole point is that we can really trust God through the death and resurrection of his Son. He has not been remotely ambiguous on this point.
And, by the way, I’ve never really liked Steve’s public face very much (until I heard his transfixing sermons in 2002). I’m not a fan. The patriarchy and the courtship emphasis all strike me as a huge diverstion from stuff that matters. His stuff on parents baptizing is, in my opinion serious error. I could probably say even more, but why should I? The only reason I’m now kicking him in public is that people are going to impute motives and mindsets to me that are not remotely true. That is what discourse in the Reformed ghetto has come to. If you don’t “distance” yourself from the wrong people then you are guilty by association.
The fact is, if I had boycotted Schlissel’s 2002 sermons, as had been my original plan when I went to the conference, i would have committed an act of self-harm. He was amazing. And it was stupid and immature for me to think that I couldn’t learn from a Christian minister in another denomination simply because I happened to think he taught a serious error (I was going to link his “making room for daddy” essay, but I can’t find it). His teaching was simply excellent in Biblical content, in passionate delivery, and in presenting before us things that the church needed to hear at this point in history. It is amazing to me that he has not garnered more attention from the Reformed “pomos” and “emergent” because he was singing their song and carrying the tune perfectly.
In my opinion, the problem is not Schlissel but the fact that God has not written the Bible in a way that is satisfactory to the brethren at Humble Answers. I would hope and pray they will re-think what they are doing. Is Ezekiel 18 the call of the Gospel or not. If they say it is an “unclear” passage that must be interpreted by the clear, that is exactly my point. It must be permissable to say that the call to obedience is the same thing as the call to faith.
I recently noted that Kline takes the passage about the re-investiture of Joshuah the high priest, a text I’ve herd a dozen sermons on how its a picture of the gospel and imputed righteousness, and says, yes, but now Joshuah is told that he needs to obey, and there is a rewards, so *bam* we have a covenant of works.
Statements like this one by Schlissel are my main concern with the FV. Of course obedience and faith can be distinguished. Faith looks outward to the merits of Christ; obedience is the means by which faith is shown. They can be distinguished, but never divided. If I had to chose a slogan to combat antinomianism, I would choose Bonhoeffer’s: “Only those who believe are obedient; only the obedient believe.” There we see that one’s vital union with Christ by faith and its outward manifestation in obedience are inseparable, yet conceptually distinct. Faith is always prior to obedience; otherwise the conscience never has warrant to trust in Christ, and we are stuck in the trap of Luther pre-conversion.
I am sympathetic with Evan’s concern here, though it is biblically difficult to sharply distinguish faith and obedience: “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us” (1 Jn 3:23). Obedience to a command, faith, and love seem all mixed up here.
Faith is, of course, our primary obedience to the Gospel, but I think the Pauline nuance would be that faith does not justify insofar as it is obedience, but insofar as it looks to an Other, insofar as it receives and rests upon Christ alone for salvation, relying upon the promises of God.
At any rate, a Luther quotation from his Preface to Romans: “O when it comes to faith, what a living, creative, active, powerful thing it is! It cannot do other than good at all times.”
“Faith is, of course, our primary obedience to the Gospel, but I think the Pauline nuance would be that faith does not justify insofar as it is obedience, but insofar as it looks to an Other, insofar as it receives and rests upon Christ alone for salvation, relying upon the promises of God.”
I totally agree. I just don’t see any evidence that anyone has violated the point. I think Schlissel is frutrated that people don’t seem to be really relying upon the promises of God. They seem, to him, to be constantly question God’s faithfulness to deliver on his promises.
Once again, Dr. Garver, you manage to say what I meant to say. That’s what we mean by faith being the instrument of justification not the ground of it.
I don’t know whether Schlissel has violated this or not. I like the way Douglas Wilson distinguishes between how Biblical texts can be applied as Law or Gospel, rather than distinguishing between the texts themselves. As long as Schlissel agrees with that, I don’t have a problem with him. Really this can be a matter of emphasis though, and if you push obedience too hard, without equally stressing the motives for obedience (gratitude for Christ’s finished work, as the Heidelberg Catechism says; but also an increasing delight in the Law which reflects God’s character) you run the risk of causing people to think it depends on their works.