In chapter 2 we emphasized that one of our major differences with Covenant Theology is an understanding of the clear prediction that Christ would replace Moses as the new lawgiver. We insist that the Sermon on the Mount is not, as claimed by Covenant Theology, Christ correcting the Pharisees’ distortion of Moses. It is Christ contrasting his teaching with the law of Moses. That is exactly what Moses prophesied in Deuteronomy 18:15-19 would happen when Christ the New Covenant Prophet came. Covenant Theology insists that Christ never contrasts his teaching with that of Moses since the law God gave Moses, the Ten Commandments written on stone tablets, is the “eternal unchanging law of God.” Many theologians believe that changing the Decalogue in any way is tantamount to changing God. The Decalogue must be the rule of life for all people in all ages. 

It is vital that we use the word contrast and not the word contradict. We totally agree that Christ never in any way says or implies that Moses was wrong in any of the laws he gave. If anyone says Christ claims Moses was in any sense wrong, they are indeed destroying the unity of the Scripture. However, it is clear that the holy, righteous and good law (Rom. 7:12) was never intended by God to be the rule of life for his new covenant church. The Law had a distinct purpose and when that purpose was fulfilled, the holy, just and good law was replaced with a higher more spiritual law, the law of Christ. That biblical fact is clearly set forth prophetically in Deuteronomy 18:15-19. Look again at that important prophecy.

I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of him (Deut. 18:18-19 NKJV).

The new covenant Scriptures leave no room for doubt as to what God meant when he made this promise to Moses. Look at how John understood Moses’ prophecy in John 12.

Then Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me. And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me. I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness. And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him– the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that His command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak” (John 12:44-50 NKJV).

It is exegetically irresponsible to make either Deuteronomy 18 or John 12 mean that Jesus does not give any new laws, but merely interprets what Moses has said. Let me paraphrase Covenant Theology’s understanding of Deuteronomy 18. Bold italics indicate where I have inserted Covenant Theology’s understanding into the text:

I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words the true interpretation of the words I gave you at Sinai in His mouth, and He shall speak interpret the true meaning of all that I commanded you Him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear His interpretation of My words to you, which He speaks in My name will repeat and correctly interpret I will require it of him (Deut. 18:18-19, revised).

We can do the same thing with John 12: 49, 50:

For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. And that commandment was to repeat and give the true interpretation of the unchanging law that My Father gave to Moses. And I know that His command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak is always the same thing as Moses spoke. I am the true and final interpreter of Moses, the greatest lawgiver, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak and interpret the true meaning of Moses’ law.

Some may accuse me of caricature, but I think any honest person will see that I have articulated what Bahnsen, Pink, Chantry and Barcellos have clearly expressed, but perhaps not as bluntly, in their writing.

The Object Lesson – the New Covenant Prophet

Mark 9:2-8 records the great object lesson that shows Christ is the new Lawgiver or Prophet who replaces Moses. It is worth noting that Moses did not make it into the land of Canaan during his lifetime because of his outburst of anger, but Mark 9:2-8 proves that he finally made it into Immanuel’s land. 

After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.) Then a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. 

As we unpack this text, we begin first with the significance of Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the Law and Elijah represents the Prophets. The phrase “the Law and the Prophets” is a common designation referring to the Old Testament, and Moses and Elijah symbolically portray the Hebrew Scriptures.

Second, verse seven is a direct and deliberate rebuke from God in response to Peter’s statement in verse five. Peter makes Moses and Elijah equal to Christ as spokesmen for God and revealers of God’s truth and will for his people. God the Father announces that his Son alone is the single and final authority. Moses and Elijah have had their day and are now replaced by Christ. God’s Son has replaced the Law and the Prophets as revealer of truth.

Third, a comparison of Mark 9:7, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” with Deuteronomy 18:15, “the LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him” shows a clear and specific promise/fulfillment. The message in the prophecy is clear. You must listen to the new prophet whom I will raise up—you must listen to my Son who is the new and final Prophet. The Mount of Transfiguration is the official announcement from God’s own lips that the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18 is fulfilled in Christ. God is announcing the shift of authority from the Law and the Prophets to Christ the New Covenant Prophet. Just as Luther wrote the word sola, meaning “alone,” beside Romans 3:28, so also we could write the word sola beside Mark 9:7. Jesus alone is the final authority in the New Covenant age for everything, including ethics and morality. We have either to be spiritually deaf or have theological filters on our ears to miss God’s message. Other New Testament passages repeat that message: Luke 16:16, “The law and the prophets were until John …” and John 1:17, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” are examples.

Fourth, when anyone insists that Christ never adds to or in any way changes the law of God given to Moses, they must gut the New Testament Scripture passages where Christ speaks of “My words” as being the new authority. 

Fifth, the hear him statement by God indicates, (1) “hear him alone,” and, (2) “hear him in contrast to hearing Moses and Elijah.” To deny these implications of hear him is to reduce Jesus to the same status as a scribe or rabbi and deny his office as Lawgiver. It is to treat the Sermon on the Mount as the Talmud of Jesus instead of new laws of the new kingdom of grace given by the new King and Lawgiver. It is to reduce Christ to a great, even the greatest, rabbi but nonetheless, still a rabbi with only the authority of an interpreter. Matthew, in his gospel, points out the difference between Jesus and the rabbis in terms of authority. “When Jesus had finished saying these things [the Sermon on the Mount], the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law” (Matt. 7:28). The crowds are amazed, not just because Jesus is the best interpreter they had ever heard, but because he is a different kind of teacher altogether. If we insist that Jesus Christ is not doing something new and inherently different from the other rabbis, then we deny that our Lord is a Lawgiver in his own right who replaces Moses in exactly the same way he replaced Aaron. 

Paul, in Ephesians 2:19 and 20, presents additional implications of the object lesson on the Mount of Transfiguration:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

An important point to establish in this text is to determine to whom Paul refers when he uses the word prophets. Almost every commentary on Ephesians written over a hundred years ago will say that the words “apostles and prophets” in this text refer to both the Old Testament and New Testament. It is a reference to the whole Bible. Thirty to fifty years ago, some commentators, like Martyn Lloyd-Jones, said, “The word prophets may be referring to either the Old Testament or the New Testament prophets.” Most commentaries today will say that prophets in Ephesians 2:19 and 20 must refer to New Testament prophets and cannot mean Old Testament prophets. William Hendriksen is an example. He proves this point beyond question. Here are his comments on Ephesians 2:19 and 20.

The position that the term prophets as here used refers to the Old Testament bearers of that appellative, such as Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc., (thus Lenski, op. cit., pp. 450-453), is open to serious objections such as the following: (1) Apostles are mentioned first, then prophets; (2) the designation of ‘foundation’ of the house, a dwelling shared equally by Jew and Gentile, suits the New Testament prophets better than those of the older dispensation; (3) according to 4:8-11, the prophets there mentioned immediately after the apostles, just as here in 2:20, are ‘gifts’ bestowed on the church by the ascended Christ; hence, prophets of the New Testament era; and (4) 3:5, where the same expression ‘apostles and prophets’ occurs in a context from which the reference to the prophets of the old dispensation is definitely excluded, would seem to clinch the argument in favor of New Testament prophets.^[1] 

You may, as I do, find it hard to believe that an avowed Covenant Theologian would make such statements. How Hendriksen can reconcile those comments to his own theological system is beyond me. I admire him for being honest with the words and truth of the text. He argues competently and compellingly that Paul is writing about New Testament prophets and not Old Testament prophets.

John Stott goes one step further and shows the biblical and theological implications of Hendrickson’s excellent exegesis. What is significant about the definition of the word prophet as New Testament prophet? It is another declaration of the shift of authority from the old covenant to the new covenant. It is another example of discontinuity. 

The reference must again be to a small group of inspired teachers, associated with the apostles, who together bore witness to Christ and whose teaching was derived from revelation (3:5) and was foundational. In practical terms, this means that the church is built on the New Testament Scriptures. They are the church’s foundation documents … The church stands or falls by its loyal dependence on the foundation truths which God revealed to his apostles and prophets, and which are now preserved in the New Testament Scriptures.^[2]

Ephesians 2:20 means, as Stott says, that there is a historical shift of authority. The life and worship of the nation of Israel was built on the old covenant Scriptures, but the life and worship of the body of Christ is built on the new covenant Scriptures. The authority for all truth and morality for the nation of Israel was the Law and the Prophets, but now the authority is Jesus Christ, the New Covenant Prophet. Whenever Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:20 are minimized or ignored and Moses carries equal (which actually is greater) authority over the conscience of either the church or the individual Christian, there is a clear denial of the unique and final authority of the lordship of Christ in the area of ethics and morality.^[3]

What are the practical implications of what I am saying for the church as a whole and the individual Christian in particular? Is this just much ado about nothing? The practical result in the life of the church and the Christian is a two-tiered system of ethics. As I said earlier, the problem is the lowered standard of biblical holiness in the church. Think carefully about these questions:

If the Sermon on the Mount and the New Covenant Epistles do indeed present a higher and more spiritual standard of holy living than the Law of Moses, what happens if we send a Christian back to Moses to learn ethics and morality? Do we not effectively, in the very name of holiness, lower the actual standard of holiness under which a Christian is to live?

All parties in this debate agree that the major goal of preaching and teaching is to produce holy living among the hearers. The key point of difference among theologians concerns the content of what we preach to the saints to help them live holy lives. One theology says, “Press the law to their conscience” and the other theology says, “Free the conscience from the threat of law and marry it to Christ alone.” One theologian will insist that Moses still belongs on the Mount of Transfiguration and the other theologian will insist that Moses has faithfully finished the job God gave him and has replaced him with a greater Prophet. 

The bottom line in this discussion is always the authority of the lordship of Christ in relationship to the authority of Moses. Who rules the Christian’s conscience, Moses or Christ? Is Moses the final and full lawgiver and Christ merely the true interpreter and enforcer of Moses? Or is Christ the new Lawgiver who supersedes and replaces Moses with higher laws in exactly the same way he replaces Aaron as High Priest? Are Moses and Christ equal authorities over the church’s morality and the Christian’s conscience? Was Peter correct after all in his desire to build a tabernacle each for Moses, Elijah, and Christ?

Classical Covenant Theology, even if unintentionally, produces a two-tiered system of morality and holiness. Unhappily, Moses occupies the top tier. I do not believe this is their intention, but it is still the result. Let me explain what I mean. 

Suppose a married couple comes into a pastor’s study for counseling. Their marriage is in trouble. There is no hint that they have broken God’s law by committing adultery, but they are none the less contemplating divorce. Do you get the picture? Do you realize what I have just done? I have set you up. I have framed the biblical demands of marriage in terms of a two-tiered ethic. I have defined “God’s law” concerning marriage in terms only of sexual immorality and of breaking the seventh commandment. By doing so, I have also implied that whatever other biblical rules of marriage the couple may have violated, those rules are not in the same category as “God’s unchanging moral law” written on stone. 

It is obvious that one, or both, of these two people have been very unfaithful and disobedient to some things that the Word of God teaches about marriage. However, with a two-tiered system of ethics, you have real Commandments, or laws, ten of them in fact, and you also have excellent spiritual advice found in the Epistles of the New Testament Scriptures. True, these rules of spiritual advice are biblical, but they are on a lower tier than “God’s unchanging moral Law” written on tablets of stone. 

We would posit that the couple did indeed break the holy law of God simply because the new covenant Epistles are a vital part of the holy law of God for a Christian. The book of Ephesians is just as much a part of the holy law of God as the Law written in stone in Exodus 20. Every imperative, or commandment, in the New Testament Scriptures is just as much the holy, unchanging, moral law of God for a new covenant believer as the words written on stone at Sinai. However, a two-tiered system of morality cannot treat the “spiritual advice” in Paul’s epistles with the same authority as the Tablets of Stone, or the “moral law of God.” 

What will the Covenant Theology pastor say to this couple? He cannot take them back to “the unchanging moral law of God” written on the Tablets of Stone simply because none of those “unchanging moral laws” were broken. None of the ten directly applies to the present problem since neither party was unfaithful to the Law of God recorded on the stone tables. So, the pastor will go to the Epistles of Paul (the lower tier), and start with the truth of the cross. He will earnestly plead, on the grounds of redemption, not unchanging law, that the couple must begin to apply the spiritual principles that Paul delineates. He will assure them that this is the only way to have a happy marriage. In essence, the pastor is saying, “I urge you to apply these biblical principles for the sake of harmony and happiness in your marriage, but whatever you do, do not break God’s holy law and commit adultery.” The Ten Commandments, called the “moral Law,” are the biggies on the top tier and disobedience to them leads to church discipline. Paul’s epistles are excellent spiritual advice and disobedience to them leads to more counseling sessions. 

If even the moral teaching of Jesus must be interpreted through the grid of Moses, then certainly the teaching of morality by Paul must also be checked with Moses. Is it not a fact, beyond dispute that such a theology cannot allow the words of Paul to carry the same authority over the conscience of a Christian as God’s “holy moral law” written on tablets of stone? Must we not also admit unless our conscience is married to a creed, that the cause of this tragic reality is self-evident? If Jesus is not allowed to give any higher laws than Moses gave, then the writing apostles who carry the work of Jesus forward cannot change Moses either. The entire New Testament teaching on morality merely becomes a commentary on Exodus 20:1-17. Mount Sinai is the mountain peak where the full and final word on morality has been given. 

What am I saying? Am I suggesting that the laws (good spiritual advice) in the Epistles of Paul are of equal authority with the Ten Commandments (holy, unchanging, moral law) over the conscience of Christians? No, I am not saying that at all. I am saying that Paul’s epistles should have a greater authority than Moses. It is impossible, in an experiential sense, for us to make the new covenant teachings of Christ, given by his Spirit, through his apostles, carry the weight of absolute law in either the life of the church or the conscience of an individual believer as long as our theology insists that the highest standard for holiness ever given is the Tablets of Stone. 

It is a hollow victory that magnifies Mount Sinai by minimizing the Sermon on the Mount and the Epistles of Paul. You cannot posit a two-tiered ethic, with Moses on the top tier, in your theology without practicing the same thing in everyday life. Moses cannot be lord in your theology of morality and Christ be Lord in your practice of holiness in your daily life!

The issue under discussion deeply affects the doctrine of sanctification. Remember the Bahnsen quotation. “He [Christ] confirmed [the Law] in full measure, thereby condemning scribal legalism and showing us the pattern of our Christian sanctification.” Covenant Theology sincerely believes that the only way to produce true holy living is by laying the law on the conscience. The New Testament Scriptures teach that the Christian conscience must be free from the law before the desire for true holiness can even exist. The heart of the question is whether sanctification is by grace or by the law. I would urge anyone struggling with this particular point to read Jerry Bridges’ book, Transforming Grace. 

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