At this point, it might be well to remind ourselves that God did not give his Word just to philosophers who know all of the rules of human logic. He sent it to common peo­ple: to homemakers, truck drivers, and others, so that they all might know who he is and how he will show his glory in their real-life situations. What the Bible actually says and what it philosophically implies may be two different things that only the philosophic elite seem capable of discerning. The Bible was written so that it could be understood by both the educated and the uneducated.

Covenant Theologians use standard rules of logic to ex­tract additional truth from specific commandments. Tho­mas Watson, from whom we quoted earlier, is a classic example of a traditional Reformed writer who relies on logic. In his book on the Ten Commandments, he gives eight rules to apply when studying a commandment. Ernest Reisinger has fleshed these out in The Law and the Gospel, pages 71-77. Here is a sample of Watson’s rules:

RULE 2. In the commandment … more is intended than is spoken.

(1) Where any duty is commanded, the contrary sin is forbidden. When we are commanded to keep the Sabbath-day holy, we are forbidden to break the Sabbath …

(2) Where any sin is forbidden, the contrary duty is commanded. When we are forbidden to take God’s name in vain, the contrary duty, that we should rev­erence his name is enjoined …

RULE 3. Where any sin is forbidden in the command­ment, the occasion of it is also forbidden. Where murder is forbidden, envy and rash anger are for­bidden, which may occasion it …

RULE 5. Where greater sins are forbidden, lesser sins are also forbidden. Though no sin in its own nature is little, yet one may be comparatively less than the other. Where idolatry is forbidden, superstition is forbidden, or bringing innovation into God’s wor­ship, which he has not appointed.

RULE 7. God’s law forbids not only the acting of sin in our own persons, but being accessory to, or having any hands in, the sins of others.

How and in what sense may we be said to partake of, and have a hand in the sins of others?… We become accessory of the sins of others by not hindering them when it is in our power. Qui non prohibit cum potest, jubet [The failure to prevent something, when it lies within your power, amounts to ordering it]. If a master of a family sees his servant break the Sabbath, or hear him swear, and does not use the power he has to suppress him, he becomes accessory to his sin …^[1]

By applying rules 3 and 5, we logically can make the Seventh Commandment teach that it is a sin to lust in our hearts. We agree that these two, and all of Watson’s rules, are logically and philosophically valid. However, that is not the point. Thomas Watson was not making rules for the Christian life, he was writing laws that would be used by both the church and the civil magistrates in a Christian nation. The laws governing the conscience were one with the laws implemented with the power of the sword. Is it possible for a magistrate and a covenant of law to punish the internal impli­cations of an external commandment? Of course not. That which is logically and philosophically true cannot always be turned into a law to be used by govern­ment. This was the heart of the issue between Roger Wil­liams and John Cotton in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This same struggle ensues whenever men try to enforce the first table of the law with the sword.^[2]

Only God himself can judge the thoughts and intents of the heart. Imagine a human judge putting a man in jail for daydreaming in his armchair at home about either adultery or revenge on an enemy. The hermeneutical question this book addresses is not what is philosophically and logically viable, but how the law of Moses applied the command­ment versus how Jesus applied it. This issue manifests itself in the use of the Old Covenant in the church and in society today. We may apply all of the logic that we choose to an external law, but we cannot punish what the command­ment only internally implies. Humans can only measure and punish what they can actually observe.

All of Watson’s rules may be applicable for an individual seeking to understand how God looks at his or her heart and life. However, to use those rules to build a system of ethics with which to govern and punish people in society would be disastrous. Rule 5 (the greater includes the lesser) certainly applies to me as an individual in the sight of God. God can and does deal with me based on what is in my heart.

Under a system of pure law, another human being can only deal with my overt acts, simply because he or she cannot see my heart (Jer. 17:9). The law of Moses certainly exhorted heart compliance. However, that is not the issue under discussion here. We are talking about the laws that govern a theocratic society. The law of God convicting an individual’s conscience of sin and a magistrate punishing sins of the heart are two different things. The magistrate could not deal with hearts or motives simply because that was beyond the ability of the law he administered.

We must not turn logical deductions derived from ex­ternal laws into a system by which to govern and punish people. Historically, this approach often has created diffi­culty and brought reproach to the church of Christ. This has come about when sincere men, like Thomas Watson, had the civil authority to make the “clear truth of God,” which they had set forth in their creeds and confessions of faith, the law of the land. The Puritan’s theocratic under­standing of Scripture became the civil law under which they lived. In reality, by treating their logical deductions as texts of Scripture, they were adding the commandments of men to the Word of God. In the Puritans’ minds, their in­terpretation of Scripture was the true and only interpreta­tion of Scripture. For the Puritans, God spoke their deductions of his Word just as clearly as he spoke the words recorded in Scripture. The church creed carried the authority both of God and of the magistrate’s sword.

Philosophically, Rule 7 is true. It is indeed our duty to do all in our power to keep other people from sinning and not to be a “partaker of their wicked deeds.” However, that does not allow me to become my brother’s conscience in matters of either faith or practice. In order to apply this particular rule in reference to the Sabbath (which Watson uses as an example), a master or magistrate must force everyone under his jurisdiction to attend worship services. For a master, a mistress, or a magistrate to allow a person to sleep late on Sunday and not attend the worship service would clearly break Watson’s rule. The person in authority would be guilty of sinning in the sight of God for not using his or her “God-given responsibility” to keep others from breaking God’s clear Sabbath commandment. According to Watson’s rules of interpreting God’s commandments, the “Word of God” (i.e., the church’s logical application of God’s Word as set forth in their confession of faith) clearly shows that it is a God-ordained duty to force servants to go to church.

This is not caricature. History books contain accounts of instances where the New England Puritans, and others, did those very things. If Watson is correct, then the Puritans not only were justified, they actually were duty bound by God’s holy law to send the sheriff to roust lie-a-beds and haul them off to the church service. God save us from men and women who use their version of God’s unchang­ing moral law in this manner!^[3]

Persons using this method of interpretation can (most sincerely) “add the commandments of men to the Word of God” and then (again, most sincerely) commit nearly any form of persecution and tyranny to enforce them, because they think that they are doing God a service. Not only do the persecutors think that they are doing this from love for God, but also out of love for their fellow human beings, because they sincerely “love their souls.” The more sincere and devoted such people are to that method of interpreting the Bible, the more dangerous and vicious they can be—all in the name of honoring God’s holy law. It would be im­possible for any sincere person holding this theology to avoid a system of legalistic despotism that would destroy Christian liberty and freedom of conscience. Under such a method of understanding and sincerely applying this kind of “biblical truth,” people could be, and have been, put to death in the cruelest manner, while those who killed them could sincerely believe that they did it out of love to God and his truth. John 16:1-3 (“whoever kills you will think he offers service to God”) still takes place in essence today.

Covenant Theology uses logic as a tool of interpretation in a second, equally damaging way. One of the weaknesses of Covenant Theology is that it treats the New Testament Scriptures as if they were nothing more than the correct logical interpretation and application of the Old Testament Scriptures. In turn, the Old Testament Scriptures, after Genesis 3, are nothing more than the correct logical inter­pretation and application of Creation Ordinances, deliv­ered before the fall. This system precludes the possibility of any truly new laws after Genesis 3. Even Christ himself cannot give new laws under that system of theology.

However, the New Testament Scriptures clearly show that Christ is more than just a master of logic who correctly interprets and applies the law of Moses. Christ is the giver of new and higher law. Christ is the new lawgiver and he replaces Moses exactly as he replaces Aaron. We simply must see Christ as “That Prophet” who was to replace Moses as God’s lawgiver. To view Christ as merely the true interpreter of Moses is to destroy Christ’s unique authority and reduce him to an equal with Moses. Worse yet, this actually positions him lower than Moses; he is only the greatest student and interpreter that Moses ever had. The New Testament Scriptures will not allow us to exalt Moses and minimize the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ in such a manner. We dare not make Moses the ultimate and final authority over either Christ or his disciples in any sense and in any area.

How does Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, relate to the commandments of the law of Moses? Is he making new and higher demands based entirely on grace, or is he merely giving a lesson in logic by exposing the Pharisees’ misunder­standing of the law of Moses? It seems clear from the texts that Christ was giving new and higher truth. In essence, Christ was saying, “Moses was quite correct, un­der a covenant of law. However, my ekklesia is not going to be under the law covenant, but under a covenant of grace. In the kingdom of grace, the law will be written on the heart. The Holy Spirit will indwell every believer as the new and personal paraclete sent to take my place. He will point every believer to the cross and not to a sword, and this will move their new hearts to love and obey my new (objective) laws found in the New Testament Scriptures.”

This is the heart of the issue: the difference between the Old Covenant of law that governed the nation of Israel, and the New Covenant of grace under which the church lives. Both covenants have objective laws or commandments, but the laws of the New Covenant make higher demands be­cause they appeal to the cross. The laws of the Old Cove­nant applied indiscriminately to believers and unbelievers alike; the laws of the New Covenant are for believers only. Believers have a motive and the power to obey that unbe­lievers do not.

In order for Covenant Theology to be true, Moses and Christ must teach identical truths in the area of morality and holy living. In the eyes of a Covenant Theologian, to contrast the law of Christ with the law of Moses is nothing less than to commit a heresy that attacks both the “unity of the covenants” and the “perpetuity of the moral law.” Those who hold to Covenant Theology cannot or will not make any kind of a contrast between law and grace, simply because that undermines one of their basic foundation stones. The Apostle Paul boldly contrasted law and grace (Rom. 6:14) and our Lord did the same thing (John 1:17).

As we consider law and grace, we must avoid two mis­takes. We must not push the Sermon on the Mount forward into the “Kingdom Age” under the misguided idea that it opposes grace. Likewise, we must not try to pull Christ’s new law back into the Old Testament by using the logical deductions of a theological system that in practice takes priority over the contextual meaning of Bible texts. Let the Lord Jesus Christ have the right and ability to give his New Covenant people new and higher laws than Moses ever gave to Israel.

We have seen how Covenant Theology uses logic to de­duce more than what is written in a commandment and how their idea of the New Testament as the logical expla­nation and application of the Old Testament clouds their understanding of Christ’s unique authority as a new law­giver. Covenant Theology misuses logic in yet another, third manner. The logical consequences deduced from their theological system drive their exegesis of texts. Logic may demand a different reading of the text than the author of that text intended.

Both Paul and Jesus contrast law and grace. A consistent Covenant Theologian will contrast law and gospel instead of law and grace, in spite of the fact that Scripture often contrasts the latter, but never the former. Logically, law and gospel may be two different administrations of one covenant of grace, but law and grace cannot; they are con­stitutionally antithetical. Some may argue that the opposite natures of law and grace prevent them from both accom­plishing God’s one goal of the spiritual redemption of the elect, and thus they result in two purposes of God: one for Israel and a different one for the church. This simply is bad reasoning. God often uses means that are antithetical in nature to accomplish his plan. We see this demonstrated in the life of Joseph: righteousness and sin are inherently contrary to each other; Joseph’s brothers acted unrighteously, Joseph acted righteously, and God used both to accomplish the preservation of Jacob’s family (Gen. 37-50).

We simply dare not treat the words used by the Holy Spirit in Scripture the way some preachers and writers do when those words will not fit their theological mold. When the writer of Hebrews states that a New Covenant has re­placed an Old Covenant, we deny every rule of true exege­sis if we say, “The writer did not mean that a covenant actually new in substance has replaced an old and different covenant. He really means there is a ‘new administration of the one covenant of grace and it has replaced the old administra­tion of the same covenant under which Moses lived.’” If this is true, then we can charge the Holy Spirit with the following: (1) He said what he actually did not mean, and (2) he did not say what he actually did mean. We do not isolate or twist words out of their context when we insist that the writer of Hebrews taught that a truly new and radically different covenant has replaced an old covenant.

The entire letter to the Hebrews abounds with contrasts:

• the nature of angels versus the nature of Christ;
• the position of Moses versus the position of Christ;
• the weekly Sabbath rest versus an eternal Sabbath rest;
• the former high priesthood versus the priesthood of Christ;
• the Old Covenant versus the New Covenant;
• the former worship regulations versus the new wor­ship regulations;
• the former sacrifice versus the sacrifice of Christ.

No one suggests that the correct exegesis of the portions that contrast the priesthoods really teaches that Christ’s priesthood is of the same nature that Aaron’s was, or that the contrasts between Christ and angels teaches that they really have the same nature. The same holds true for all the contrasts in Hebrews. Why then would anyone exegete the portions that deal with covenants by a different rule? When he comes to the covenants, the writer of the letter gives no indication that he is approaching a contrast that is different in nature from the other contrasts; he treats it just the same as he does the rest of his contrasts. We must do the same.

It is impossible to hold Covenant Theology’s view of the covenants and let the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, Paul’s emphatic statements concerning law and grace, or the author of Hebrews mean anything close to what they actually say. When both Christ and Paul contrast law and grace in a strictly covenantal sense, how dare we say, “They do not mean a covenant actually new in nature and substance”? When Jesus clearly contrasts his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount with the law of Moses, we dare not say, “But actually they both are teaching the same thing.”

One’s personal theology and the “facts” logically derived from it can too easily get in the way of biblical exegesis. This is especially true in a passage such as Matthew 5:38-42. The following quotation by Greg Bahnsen is the consistent Covenant Theology view of the “true” meaning of the but I say contrasts in the Sermon on the Mount.

Christ’s primary concern at this point [Matthew 5:17-48] was the validity and meaning of the older testamental law. From the antitheses listed in verses 21-48, we see that Christ was concerned to show how the meaning of the law was be­ing distorted (and thus its fine points overlooked).

These radical commands (5:21-48) do NOT supercede the older testamental law; they illustrate and explain it … In six antitheses between His teaching and the Scribal interpreta­tion, Christ demonstrates His confirmation of the Older Testamental law …

So we see in Matthew 5:21-48 examples of how Christ con­firms the Older Testamental law and reproves the Pharisa­ical use of it; the antitheses are case law applications of the principles enunciated in Matthew 5:17-20. Christ did not come to abrogate the law; far from it! He confirmed it in full measure, thereby condemning Scribal legalism and showing us the pattern of our Christian sanctification.^[4]

Bahnsen rarely uses the phrase Old Testament or Old Testament law. He nearly always, as in the above quotation, says, “Older Testamental law.” Bahnsen does this to dem­onstrate as forcefully as possible that there is no such thing as a real, new, and different covenant. There are only older and newer versions of one covenant. We wonder why the writers of both the Old Testament Scriptures and the New Testament Scriptures never once used the word older or the phrase Older Testamental law when they wrote about the Old Covenant. Why does Bahnsen (1) rarely use the words the Holy Spirit used, and (2) insist on using words the Holy Spirit never used even once? Does or does not the Word of God, in both the Old Testament Scriptures (Jer. 31) and the New Testament Scriptures (Heb. 8), clearly state in plain words that (1) there is indeed both a New and an Old Covenant, and further, that (2) the New Covenant has replaced and totally done away with the Old Covenant (Heb. 8:6-13)? Furthermore, we ask where the Word of God, even one time, ever presents two administrations of one covenant, or two different versions (an older and newer) of one unchanging testamental law?

Bahnsen assumes that Christ’s primary purpose in the Sermon on the Mount was to give the true interpretation of the law of Moses and refute the pharisaical misinterpreta­tion of that law. Christ was not in any sense acting as a new lawgiver, he was merely enforcing, by giving its true inter­pretation, the law of Moses already given at Sinai. Christ’s primary purpose was to firmly establish the permanent “validity and [true] meaning” of the “older testamental law” in the conscience of the Christian. Christ never would give any new or higher laws than Moses had already given in the “older testamental law.”

Covenant Theology insists that Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, is sending the New Covenant believer back to Moses for both the foundation and the content of all his or her moral instruction. In reality, Christ is merely ratify­ing the law of Moses, and then firmly planting those laws in the Christian’s conscience as the God-ordained supervi­sor of the Christian’s sanctification. In Bahnsen’s words, Christ was sending the New Covenant believer back to Moses for “the pattern of our Christian sanctification.”

In other words, good logic applied to Moses can give us all the moral teaching and application that we need in our sanctification. Once we are truly converted, our lifelong pursuit should be to study the fine points of the moral law (the Decalogue). The New Testament Scriptures and the advent of the Holy Spirit to indwell believers merely help us to understand and confirm what Moses really meant. Covenant Theology is telling us that there is nothing we need to know for truly holy living that we cannot find in a correct understanding of Moses. Every moral duty for a Christian must be a direct outgrowth and application of one of the Ten Commandments.

The texts in the Sermon on the Mount teach something entirely different. Our Lord was doing more than just en­dorsing Moses and planting Moses’ authority in the Chris­tian’s conscience as God’s ordained pedagogue. One arrives at Covenant Theology’s interpretation (Moses as the pattern for Christian sanctification) only by applying logic, derived from an already accepted system of theology, to the text. A previously held system of theology dictates this approach as the “good and necessary consequence” de­duced by logic, rather than using a direct exegesis of spe­cific texts of Scripture.

In Matthew 5:38-42, Christ is contrasting a legal rule by pure law (which is holy, just, and good under a covenant based on law) with a gracious rule (which is higher and better, but only possible under a gracious covenant.) We do not believe that Pink, Bahnsen, or any other writers who follow their approach can do justice to the actual words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. They cannot do so and be consistent with the “one covenant and two administra­tions” idea.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ is asserting his au­thority as the new lawgiver with the right to lay down the laws for his kingdom of grace under which his church would live. Without question, he is adding new revelation concerning law and duty to the laws and revelation that God had given to his Old Covenant people. In no sense whatever do our Lord’s new laws contradict Moses as if he had been wrong. Christ is establishing some laws that would have been impossible for Moses to initiate or apply as long as the Old Covenant of law was in force. Grace can and does demand attitudes and actions of believers living under a gracious covenant that would have been, in some cases, contrary to the law of Moses. If Moses had de­manded of Israel what Christ demands of his disciples in Matthew 5:38-42, then Moses would have contradicted Moses. Likewise, there are some things that must be de­manded and maintained under a system based on law that governs unregenerate sinners that are inconsistent with laws based on grace that govern regenerate and Spirit-indwelt believers. It is impossible for Covenant Theology even to entertain the possibility of this fact as long as they see no real and vital difference between the Old and New Cove­nants. Logic does not serve their approach to Scripture; it controls both their interpretation and application of God’s Word.

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