The Danger of not Reading the Minutes of the Meeting

There's a movement which is gaining ground in some circles and it brings with it the strange name of “theonomy.”  Theonomy is defined by its adherents as bringing the governments of the world to impose the Law of Moses upon every nation as the supreme law of the land, every land.  The Ten Commandments, the Mosaic Law, would be the law of the land, every land, everywhere.

At first glance, the believer may want to stand and cheer, but before he rises, clapping his hands off, he needs to take a second and more biblical look at the movement.  When the theonomist calls for the subjugation of every land to the Mosaic Law, he means that this would entail the handing out of the Law’s penalties for its breakage.  The theonomist calls for the same penalties as the Law prescribed for those who broke it in Israel.

This would call for legislation making homosexuality, idolatry, drunkenness, and rebellion against one’s parents offenses carrying the death penalty.   Children who rebel against their parents are to be executed.  Not only that, but breaking the Sabbath would also carry the dire penalty of the Law.

The theonomist calls for an aggressive world takeover in which the governments and schools would come under the control of the Old Testament Law.  According to theonomy, every believer should be preparing himself for the takeover.  Every state would become a Christocracy, as families, individuals, businesses, the arts, economics, law, science, education, the arts, agriculture, philosophy, and psychology are all brought under the lordship of Christ.

According to the theonomist, this is not to be accomplished by persuasion, but by force, if necessary.

One would think that a study of history would show the folly of enforcing such a system on people and entire nations by legislation.  Such enforcement leads to atrocities, as historian Will Durant documents in Geneva in the 16^th century, where Calvin tried to establish what he called “The New Jerusalem,” from which he hoped the salvation of the world would radiate.

In Geneva, the punishments included floggings, imprisonments, torture, banishments, and in some cases, burning at the stake.  Durant reports that “Fornication was to be punished with exile or drowning; adultery, blasphemy, or idolatry with death . .. a child was beheaded for striking its parents.*

Theonomists today intend a return to the Mosaic Law.  One of their number is to the point: “Our goal is world dominion under Christ’s Lordship, a ‘world takeover’ if you will; but our strategy begins with reformation, reconstruction of the church.  From that will flow social and political reconstruction, indeed a flowering of Christian civilization.”**

Have they not read and understood the minutes of the meeting recorded in Acts 15, the meeting held in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago?  Did they not read the God-led decision of that first church council where Peter called the Mosaic Law a “yoke on the neck which neither we nor our fathers could bear?”  Did they not read that they shouldn’t “trouble” the gentile believers by putting them under the Law?  Didn’t they read that to put people under the Mosaic Law would be “disobedience to the truth?”

What about the other places in the New Testament which tell us that the Mosaic Law, i.e. the 10 Commandments and the other 603 laws as a rule of life have been abolished?  Didn’t they understand that the Law was temporary and served as a tutor until Christ came (Gal. 3:17-25).  Can’t they see that the 10 Commandments have passed away as a rule of life in the grace age (II Cor. 3:6-13)?  [If one wishes to put believers today under the 10 Commandments, he must also put believers under their penalties because a law without a penalty isn’t a law. If a person believes the Law is for the believer today, he must, of necessity, believe the penalties of the Law are for today as well.   The Law is a unit; with the laws come their penalties.  Therefore, if one is under the Law and breaks the Sabbath—God’s rules for Saturday-- death should result.]  In II Cor. 3, Paul calls the Law, especially the 10 Commandments a “ministration of death, written and engraven on stones,” a ministration which was “fading away.”  As of the Cross, it is gone—Rom. 10:4, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

Have they not come into contact with Hebrews 7:11-12 which points out that the priesthood of the Old Testament is gone and since the priesthood, the Temple, and the sacrificial system is gone, the Law has to be gone because the Law revolved around those three long since abolished Israelite institutions.

From these Scriptures, we see that the Mosaic Law was only for Israel (Ex. 19:3b, 5) at a certain place, and only for a certain and temporary time.

As Paul says in Galatians, the Christian is liberated from the Law and bears no relation to it as a rule of life.  [He is not lawless, but is now under a higher law, the Law of Christ.]

The issue of the Mosaic Law is not for the study of ivory tower academics.  If the theonomists have their legislative way, look out!

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor

*Will Durant, Civilization, III, pg. 474.

**David Chilton, Paradise Restored: An Eschatology of Dominion, pg. 214.