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The Doctrine of the Christian Life

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Te following chapters are included in this excerpt of John Frame’s Te Doctrine of the Christian Life: ! 3. Ethics and Divine Lordship 4. Lordship and Non-Christian Ethics 11. Sufficiency of Scripture 12. Law in Biblical Ethics 13. Applying the Law 18. Goodness and Being 19. Motives and Virtues 20. Te New Life as a Source of Ethical Knowledge 22. Introduction to the Decalogue 30. Te Fourth Commandment: Te Sabbath in the New Covenant 46. Christ and Culture ! To purchase the entire work, please visit the Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing website here. A THEOLOGY OF LORDSHIP A SERIES BY JOHN M. FRAME Also available in the series: The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God The Doctrine of God FFRAME,RAME, DDoctrine-Chroctrine-Chr LLife.inddife.indd iiii 44/11/08/11/08 33:19:53:19:53 PMPM THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE JOHN M. FRAME R FFRAME,RAME, DDoctrine-Chroctrine-Chr LLife.inddife.indd iiiiii 44/11/08/11/08 33:19:54:19:54 PMPM © 2008 by John M. Frame All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—except for brief quotations for the purpose of review or comment, without the prior permission of the publisher, P&R Publishing Company, P.O. Box 817, Phillipsburg, New Jersey 08865-0817. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Italics in Scripture quotations indicate emphasis added. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frame, John M., 1939– The doctrine of the Christian life / John M. Frame. p. cm. — (A theology of lordship) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 978-0-87552-796-3 (cloth) 1. Ethics in the Bible. 2. Christian ethics—Biblical teaching. 3. Christian ethics. I. Title. BS680.E84F73 2008 241—dc22 2008005337 FFRAME,RAME, DDoctrine-Chroctrine-Chr LLife.inddife.indd iviv 44/11/08/11/08 33:19:54:19:54 PMPM To Johnny FFRAME,RAME, DDoctrine-Chroctrine-Chr LLife.inddife.indd v 44/11/08/11/08 33:19:54:19:54 PMPM And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt. 22:37–40) Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” (Mark 10:29–31) For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:8–10) So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Cor. 10:31) FFRAME,RAME, DDoctrine-Chroctrine-Chr LLife.inddife.indd vivi 44/11/08/11/08 33:19:55:19:55 PMPM CHAPTER 3 Ethics and Divine Lordship I don’t intend for this book to replace previous works on ethics written from a Reformed Christian viewpoint. John Murray’s Principles of Conduct1 and Divorce2 still serve as benchmarks for exegetical depth in the field. John Jefferson Davis’s Evangelical Ethics3 continues to be an invaluable resource correlating biblical principles with historical and contemporary discussions of ethical problems. Readers will see that in this volume I have drawn freely from these books, as well as from Jochem Douma’s The Ten Commandments4 and Responsible Conduct.5 Furthermore, my philosophical position is only an elaboration of Cornelius Van Til’s Christian Theistic Ethics.6 The contribution I hope to make in this volume is to show the rela- tionship of the Christian life, including ethics, to God’s lordship. I have expounded the nature of lordship at length in The Doctrine of God, espe- cially in chapters 1–7. In the present chapter, I will review that discussion and apply it to ethics in a general way, laying the foundation for what is to follow. The name Lord (representing the Hebrew terms yahweh and ’adon and the Greek kyrios) is found over seven thousand times in most English Bibles, usually referring to God or specifically to Jesus Christ. God’s revelation of 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957. 2. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961. 3. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1985, 1993, 2004. 4. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1996. 5. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003. 6. [Ripon, CA:] den Dulk Christian Foundation, 1971. 19 FFRAME,RAME, DDoctrine-Chroctrine-Chr LLife.inddife.indd Sec7:19Sec7:19 44/11/08/11/08 33:20:10:20:10 PMPM 20 INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS the name Yahweh to Moses in Exodus 3:14–15 is foundational to the biblical doctrine of God, for Yahweh is the name by which he wants especially to be remembered. The name Lord is found in the main confessions of faith of both testaments (see Deut. 6:4–5; Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; Phil. 2:11). God performs all his mighty works so that people will “know that I am the Lord” (Ex. 6:7; 7:5, 17; 8:22; 10:2; 14:4, and many other texts). As Lord, God is, first of all, personal, for Lord is a proper name. Thus the Bible proclaims that the ultimate reality, the supreme being, is not an impersonal force like gravity or electromagnetism, or even a set of super- strings, but a person: one who thinks, speaks, feels, loves, and acts with purpose. As a person, he uses the impersonal realities of the universe for his own purposes and to his own glory. Modern secular thought is profoundly impersonalistic, holding that persons are ultimately reducible to things and forces, to matter, motion, time, and chance. Scripture denies this impersonalism, insisting that all reality, including all value, comes from a supreme personal being. Second, the Lord is a supremely holy person. His personality shows his kinship with us, but his holiness shows his transcendence, his separation from us. God is above us, beyond us—not in the sense that he is far away, for he is intimately close; not in the sense that he is unknown or unknowable, for he clearly reveals himself to us; not in the sense that human language cannot describe him, for he describes himself to us in the human language of Scripture.7 God is beyond us, rather, as the supreme person, the univer- sal King, the Lord of all, before whom we cannot help but bow in awe and wonder. And, since our fall into sin, God is also separate from us, because ethical purity must be separate from ethical depravity (Isa. 6:5; Luke 5:8). Third, God as Lord is head of a covenant relationship. In a covenant, God takes a people to be his, redeems them from death, demands certain behavior on their part, and declares his blessings and curses: blessings if they obey, but curses if they disobey. Parallels to this biblical concept of covenant can be found in ancient Near Eastern literature outside the Bible. A great king (the suzerain) would impose a treaty (or covenant) upon a lesser king (or vassal) and would author a document setting forth its terms. The document, typically, followed a standard literary form: 1. The name of the suzerain 2. Historical prologue: what the suzerain has done to benefit the vassal 7. This book, like all books in this series, assumes that Scripture is the Word of God and therefore infallible and inerrant in its original form. I plan to argue the point in The Doctrine of the Word of God. FFRAME,RAME, DDoctrine-Chroctrine-Chr LLife.inddife.indd Sec7:20Sec7:20 44/11/08/11/08 33:20:10:20:10 PMPM Ethics and Divine Lordship 21 3. Stipulations: commands specifying how the vassal king and his people must behave a. In general, the requirement of exclusive allegiance to the suzer- ain (sometimes called love) b. Specifically, laws indicating how the suzerain wants the vassal to behave 4. Sanctions a. Blessings: rewards for obeying the stipulations b. Curses: punishments for disobedience 5. Administration: dynastic succession, use of the treaty document, etc. Except for section 5, this is the literary form of the Decalogue.8 God comes to Israel and gives his name (“I am the Lord your God,” Ex. 20:2a), identifying himself as the author of the covenant and of the covenant document. Then he tells Israel what he has done for them (“who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,” v. 2b). Then come the commandments, with sanctions embedded in some of them (as in vv. 5–6, 7, 12). The first commandment demands exclusive covenant loyalty, and the others show what forms that loyalty is to take.
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