Mark's thoughts: Hung Up on the Law?

Last week Higher Things posted a piece by Pastor Mark Buetow in the Catechesis section of their website entitled, Hung Up on the Law.  The theology presented is not new.  Buetow has used these ideas at Higher Things plenary sessions in the past.  I first heard it from him in 2008.  Here he has set them down in writing and this provides the opportunity to discuss the specifics of why they are erroneous and harmful.

Buetow seeks to avoid the notion of doing or human effort in the Christian life.  In the standard Lutheran account, the Law is what we must do, and the Gospel is what God has done in Jesus Christ to give us forgiveness and salvation.  However in order to avoid doing and effort, Buetow argues instead that the Law is really about Jesus.  He attempts to turn Law into Gospel by running the Law through Jesus Christ.  He begins by saying:

Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” – St. Matthew 22:37-40 (NKJV)

When we speak of “the Proper Distinction Between the Law and the Gospel,” we usually mean by “Law” the Ten Commandments or, if we use Jesus’ summarizing them, the Two Tables: Love God and Love your neighbor. The Gospel, we say, is about what Jesus does. The Law, we say, is about what we do, or at least what we are supposed to do. Thus, the Gospel is about Jesus and the Law is about us.

It comes out sounding something like this in our theology: We are sinful, so we break the commandments. Our sinfulness means we can’t keep the commandments. If we don’t keep the commandments, we’ll go to hell. Therefore, God sent His Son, Jesus, to keep the commandments in our place and to give His life as a sacrifice that forgives our sins of breaking the commandments. Then, with the Holy Spirit as our Helper, we go and try to keep the commandments. The problem with this approach is that it makes the Law about us when it’s really about Jesus.

While the last paragraph is a caricature, it certainly does capture the broad outlines of the Lutheran view.  The Law shows us our sin.  By daily contrition and repentance we return to Baptism so that the Old Adam in us is drowned and dies with all sins and evil desires, and a new man arises to live before God in righteousness and purity.  By the leading and power of the Holy Spirit the Christian seeks to live according to God’s will.

However, Buetow objects to this, presumably for two reasons.  First, to focus on the Law as commandments is to see them as something we are to do. That is, in his view,  to be “hung up on the Law.”  Second, to describe the Holy Spirit as our Helper, by whom we “go and try to keep the commandments” is to frame the new obedience in the Christian life as one of cooperation – one in which effort by the Christian has a role.

Buetow seeks to avoid this by running the Law through Jesus Christ.  He writes:

Look closely at Jesus’ words above. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” The “Law” means the “Torah” which is what the first five books of the Bible are called. “Torah” means more than just “Law.” It could be translated as “teaching” or “Law and Gospel.” And the “Prophets” refers to rest of the writings of the Old Testament through which the Lord promised the sending of our Savior. So when Jesus says “the Law and the Prophets” He means Himself! That’s because He is the fulfillment of everything written in the Law and the Prophets (Luke 24:27, 44). So, everything in the Law and the Prophets-that is, Jesus!-hangs on these two commandments: Love God; love your neighbor. And the word there really is “hang,” as in “hang on the cross.” Now, consider that Jesus is both true God and true man in one person and all the pieces click together.

The law says we must love God and love our neighbor. In Christ, God and man are together in one person. And that Person, Jesus, loves God the Father above all things. He loves the Father in such a way that He even obeys the Father in dying for sinners! That’s the First Table of the Law. But He also loves His neighbor as Himself, even more than Himself, because He undergoes suffering and death for you! You can’t love others more than Jesus did-dying for their sins when He didn’t deserve to! So there it is. The Law. Love God. Love neighbor. And Jesus hangs on that Law on Calvary. There, He does what you don’t do. And He pays for what you did and haven’t done according to the Law.

So, the Law is not first and foremost about us. It’s about Jesus! Jesus, who perfectly loves God the Father and who perfectly loves and serves His neighbor. The Law pointed to Jesus and it is kept and fulfilled by Jesus. Everything the Law does-command obedience and punish sin-lands on Jesus on Calvary. He truly does hang on the commandments of the Law. So what does that mean for you? Do you have to worry about the Law? Do you have to bother doing and not-doing what it says to do and not do? The Law will always do its job to our Old Adam: crucifying the sinful flesh with its passions and desires. But the Spirit, by whom we have Christ’s forgiveness, dwells in us to bring forth the fruits of faith, namely, obedience and keeping the Law. Or, as St. Paul puts it, it’s not you living but Christ living in you. Or, even better, we learn to see the Law-the commandments-for what it really is: a gift!

Buetow is, of course, entirely correct as he points to Jesus Christ as the One who fulfilled the Law of God perfectly and received the punishment against our sin.  Because of Jesus we are now forgiven and holy in God’s eyes.  Yet Buetow errs when he draws from this the conclusion (or thinks he has proven) that the Law is really about Jesus.  He compounds the error when he goes on to say that Law is not about telling us what we are to do, but instead that the Law is a gift – that “the Law is a list of all the gifts God gives us, beginning with Himself.”

The Law is most certainly about doing.  The Formula of Concord teaches that the Law “is a certain rule and guiding principle for directing the godly life and behavior according to the eternal and unchanging will of God" (SD VI.3). The Law states what we are to do because it is God’s will.  To say anything else makes the explanation of the Ten Commandments in the Small and Large Catechisms nonsensical.  Jesus Christ has indeed done the things Buetow describes.  But he did them in order address the problem of our sin as we break the Law in thought, word and deed.  His keeping of the Law does not mean the Law is about Jesus.  It means that God acted in Christ so that we are not condemned for breaking the Law, which is God’s eternal will. 

In turn, through the work of the his Spirit, Christ creates the new man who experiences the Law in a new way (though since the Christian is also still old Adam it unfortunately is not only in this way).Formula of Concord article VI (SD VI.4) quotes the language of Ps 1:2 which speaks of those “whose delight is in the law of the Lord” and references Ps 119 where on several occasions the psalmist expresses delight in God’s law (Ps 119:19, 47, 70, 97).  In SD VI.5 it then alludes to Rom 7:22 as it says that the reborn “delight in the law of the Lord according to their inward persons.” For the new man the third use of the Law is the effect of delighting in God’s Law. This is also seen in the fact that he obeys and carries out the Law “with a willing spirit” (FC Ep VI.7) and “from a free and merry spirit” (FC SD VI.17).

Through his Spirit, Jesus Christ enables us to begin to see the Law as man did before the Fall.  Formula of Concord Article VI says that Adam and Eve had the law before the Fall because as those created in the image of God the law was written on their heart (FC Ep VI.2) (the Law is, as we have seen, the eternal will of God). So also the proclamation of the Law will not be needed after the resurrection when the redeemed will perform the will of God spontaneously and joyfully (FC SD VI.24-25). David Scaer has emphasized the importance this has for understanding the third use of the law: “Now the third use of the law, almost in the way Adam knew it, becomes the norm for sanctification. In Christ we see God differently than when we were sinners, but since we still sin, we have a double vision. We still see the law as accusation, but in Christ we see the law as Adam once saw it and begin to see God as he really is” (David P. Scaer, “Sanctification,” Concordia Journal 41 [2015], 241).

Buetow’s thought next leads to a bizarre assertion about sin as writes:

You see, rather than just arbitrary rules God throws out there to trip us up and give Him a reason to condemn us, the Law is a list of all the gifts God gives us, beginning with Himself. The real nature of our sin isn’t that we “broke a rule” but that we have rejected a gift. “You shall have no other gods.” But we don’t want the true God. We want other gods. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But we don’t like the people God has given into our lives and so we treat them badly and strive to please ourselves with other people. But Christ lives as if there is nothing better than loving God and receiving every good thing from His Father’s hand. And that life of Christ’s is now yours through your baptism into Him.

This flies in the face of very basic biblical teaching.  Paul says in Romans, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin" (3:20).  How does Law give us knowledge of sin?  It does so by telling what we are and are not to do.  Paul adds later in Romans 7, “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’” (7:7).

Finally, Buetow asserts:

Sure, the Law is for you and about you, but only in and through Jesus. He is the great filter by which your sins against the commandments are forgiven and in whom your obedience and works are counted as perfect and pleasing to your Father in heaven. What we need to watch out for is getting hung up on the Law as if we could keep it ourselves or as if we could ever please God. Rather, because Jesus hung upon the Law as He hung on the cross, He has kept it for you and made you perfect in God’s sight. Touch the Law apart from Jesus, and it will bring down the damning curse. But in Christ, the Law is for you a gift that is delivered through Christ’s hanging on it and keeping it for you. So no more getting hung up on the Law since Jesus already was…for you!

Once again, Buetow is entirely correct that “your sins against the commandments are forgiven and in whom your obedience and works are counted as perfect and pleasing to your Father in heaven.”  Yet when we consider what Buetow’s presentation means for the Christian life, the results are immediately disturbing.

Buetow has argued that: 1) The Law is about Jesus and not about our doing; 2) The Law is not a list of rules, but instead a list of the gifts God gives; 3). Sin is not breaking the Law (see #2), but instead rejecting God’s gift. When framed this way, what does one say about how a Christian is to live as a result of the Gospel?  What does one say to a Christian about what he or she is to do?  The answer is that you don’t say anything.

Buetow’s theology has been constructed to avoid language about doing or human effort on the part of a Christian.  This becomes clear when we consider how he explains what his view means for the Christian’s life.  Buetow states:

So what does that mean for you? Do you have to worry about the Law? Do you have to bother doing and not-doing what it says to do and not do? The Law will always do its job to our Old Adam: crucifying the sinful flesh with its passions and desires. But the Spirit, by whom we have Christ’s forgiveness, dwells in us to bring forth the fruits of faith, namely, obedience and keeping the Law. Or, as St. Paul puts it, it’s not you living but Christ living in you. Or, even better, we learn to see the Law-the commandments-for what it really is: a gift!

The Christian is not to worry about doing or not doing, because two things happen automatically.  First, the Law crucifies the sinful flesh. Second, the Spirit brings forth the fruits of faith (which are obedience and keeping the Law).  Notice how in the second point there is no language about a Christian doing anything. Instead “the Spirit … dwells in us to bring forth the fruits of faith.” This is certainly biblical language, but Buetow has specifically chosen to use a rare form (Galatians 5:22-23; cf. Romans 8:5-9) that makes no explicit reference to human activity.

The same thing occurs when he further explains the point with an allusion to Galatians 2:20 where Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”  This is a favorite verse of those who wish to avoid language about the Christian doing things in the life of faith.  However, texts that speak in this way by explicitly stating that God does it are very rare (see: Philippians 2:12-13; Heb 13:20-21).  Instead, the overwhelming majority of New Testament texts which speak about living as Christians use the first person plural indicative, second personal plural indicative, hortatory subjunctive or imperative for the simple reason that it is the Christian who does it.  Paul's words in Colossians 3:1-10 are entirely typical:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.  

In discussing the Christian life we must recognize that God alone through the Spirit provides the ability by which all good works are done, yet the Christian also cooperates in them:

For when the Holy Spirit has effected and accomplished new birth and conversion and has altered and renewed the human will solely through his divine power and activity, then the new human will is an instrument and tool of God the Holy Spirit, in that the will not only accepts grace but also cooperates with the Holy Spirit in the works that proceed from it. (FC Ep II.18; emphasis added).

Buetow’s piece is a clear example of soft antinomian theology.  It generates not merely an inability, but in fact a refusal to exhort and admonish Christians about how they are to live because of what Christ has done for us.  Consider again these words:

So what does that mean for you? Do you have to worry about the Law? Do you have to bother doing and not-doing what it says to do and not do? The Law will always do its job to our Old Adam: crucifying the sinful flesh with its passions and desires. But the Spirit, by whom we have Christ’s forgiveness, dwells in us to bring forth the fruits of faith, namely, obedience and keeping the Law. Or, as St. Paul puts it, it’s not you living but Christ living in you. Or, even better, we learn to see the Law-the commandments-for what it really is: a gift!

This is merely another version of the “good tree bears good fruit” fallacy in which it is believed the Spirit simply produces good works in the believer and so there is no reason to exhort the individual.  To do so would be, in Buetow’s words, to “get hung up on the Law.”  This is not the teaching of Scripture or the Lutheran Confessions.