“Faith obeys Jesus. The parallelism in John 3:36
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
is most interesting, for disobeying (apeitheo) is contrasted with ‘believing.’ in Him, indicating that disobedience is an expression of unbelief. John cannot conceive of those who believe in Jesus but fail to obey Him. Those who trust in Jesus keep (tereo) His word and commandments (8:51-52; 14:15, 23-24; 15:10), for those who refuse to keep Jesus commands do not truly love Him. Jesus defines His disciples as ‘those who keep His Word’ (17:6). Similarly, Jesus’ disciples ‘follow’ (akoloutheo) him (1:37-38, 40, 43; 8:12; 12:26; 21:19, 22), just as sheep follow only their shepherd (10:4-5, 27). Those who refuse to follow Jesus do not truly believe in Him and are not truly His disciples. We see the same theme in I John. Those who truly know Jesus keep His commands (2:3-6; cf. 3:22; 5:3). There are not sinless (1:7-2:2) but they do not persist in a life of sin (3:4-10; 5:18) Sin does not dominate their lives, and they do not give themselves over to evil.
“Thomas Schreiner
The King in His Beauty – p. 532
So, if all the above is true and if we were to add only that Jesus was and is the incarnation of God’s Character, noting that God’s character is His Law-Word then we have to ask why does the contemporary Church so hate theonomists who above all Christians are teaching people that to believe and follow Jesus means that they have a responsibility of obeying God’s Law Word?
But the modern Church has gone all Marcion on this score insisting that the individual Christian has no responsibility to God’s law outside a nod to God’s ten words and then maybe even some of those are truncated. The contemporary Church, outside of the theonomists want nothing to do with God’s case law insisting that God’s case law has all been abolished completely ignoring the whole idea of general equity.
For theonomists this looks all the world like God is schizophrenic. God has one Law-Word for the Old covenant but a different Law-Word for the new Covenant. This is not insignificant because if God’s Law-Word has changed then God’s character has changed since God’s Law-Word is the very definition of God’s character.
To be sure theonomists believe that those aspects of the Law that were related to the proclamation of Jesus Christ in the ceremonies have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ but Law being fulfilled, and so no longer required of us, is not the same thing as Law being abolished apart from fulfillment.
Those who say that the case law is completely abolished should be consistent and advocate, from the pulpit, the elimination of all laws forbidding incest and bestiality. After all, though we do have “Thou Shalt not commit Adultery,” we do not have the case laws of consanguinity or the case laws forbidding human and animal sex in the New Testament. If the case laws are all abolished then they are all abolished and this squeamishness about R2K chaps marrying their sisters or bedding their favorite farm animal has to go. (I mention R2K because they are the most famous for declaring that all the case laws are abolished and that general equity does not obtain.)
Shreiner, rightly notes that the New Testament teaches that believing in Jesus means obeying Jesus but from where I sit, looking upon the modern Reformed world, Jesus has been created as a new God unrelated to the God of the Old Covenant and so obeying Jesus has precious little to do with obeying the God who gave all those nasty case laws. For Dispensationalism and R2K (how much difference is there between the two) as with Marcionism the Jesus of the New Testament presents us with a different God, with a different law that allows us to engage in behavior in the New Testament era which would have had us tossed out of the community of faith in the Old Testament era. For these antinomians Jesus saves us from sin while allowing believers to jettison the case law so that the law and so consequently sin is dumbed down.
Indeed, so dumbed down has the law become in this antinomian world that one R2K minister has insisted that he has no interest in the State passing anti-bestiality laws. Why? Because that belongs to the case laws and the case laws are abolished.
