Shall Christians Keep Kingdom Ethics?

 It is necessary at this point to give attention to the Dispensationalism which made its appearance among the Plymouth Brethren in England soon after the year 1830, and its wide acceptance in modern Christendom as a result of the Bible edited by Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, 1843-1921. Scofield does not accept the essential unity of the Bible which is held by the present author, but divides human history into seven dispensations in each of which God deals with man on different terms. The church, says Scofield, far from being the culmination of God's redemptive work in the world, is not even found in Old Testament prophecy; it is a mere parenthesis between the rejection of the kingdom by the Jews (an attitude which came to its culmination in Matthew 11:20) and the future kingdom when the Jews shall again become the center of God's interest and work in the earth. The Sermon on the Mount and all the teaching of teaching of Jesus up to Matthew 11:20 are not intended for the church, says Scofield. The church is not bound to keep "kingdom-ethics." In the future Jewish kingdom, Scofield teaches, Jews will again lead the nations, keep the Jewish feasts, and offer the Jewish sacrifices; the Jewish temple worship and the Jewish Sabbath will all be reinstituted.

One of the central emphases of Scofield is the postponement theory; namely, that Jesus first offered a material teaching to the Jews, gave such teaching for that kingdom as the Sermon on the Mount, and then withdrew this teaching after the Jews rejected His kingdom. According to this view "the Lord's prayer is dispensationally, upon legal, not church ground . . . . " (Scofield, passim, especially pp. 714, 723, 725, 743, 747, 762, 890, 922, 956, 963, 976-978, 982, 990, 998, 1000, 1011, 1012, 1015, 1022, 1028, 1089, 1090, 1100, 1132, 1150, 1226, 1227, 1252, 1337, 1343). One would think that this view would collapse under its own weight, for it is a system of interpretation imposed upon the Scripture rather than derived from the Word of God; however, the widespread acceptance of Scofield's theories by the Christian world requires brief attention be given to an examination of his main thesis.

If there is any one truth upon which the New Testament is clear it is this: Only one means of salvation has existed all through human history, namely, that of faith in God. Romans 1 to 4 is a good illustration of the New Testament emphasis the one plan of salvation through history, namely, by faith. Abraham, who preceded the Mosaic covenant, was saved by faith, just as were the Israelites under the Mosaic Covenant, and just as are Christians today. There have been but two major covenants, the Old and the New, separated by the death of Jesus. Even the ethics of the Bible are basically uniform, although more clearly and fully revealed in the New Testament than in the Old. The supreme proof of this fact is that the New Testament writers based their teachings, all their doctrines, on the Old Testament; they used Old Testament passages in support of the Christian doctrine of nonresistance (cf. Rom. 12:19-21; Ps. 94:1; Prov. 25:21-22.) The cross of Jesus was divinely predetermined (Acts 2:23; 3:18; 17:3; 26:23; Luke 24:26, 46), prophesied in the Old Testament (Ps. 22; Isa. 53), and predicted by Jesus Himself (Mark 2:19, 20; Matt. 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22), the divinely provided and eternal sacrifice for human sin (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45; I Tim. 2:6; Rom. 4:25; 5:6-11). It was not a calamity due merely to Jewish unbelief. If we may believe the testimony of the New Testament apostles, especially that of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the church is the final goal of God's redemptive work in the world (Eph. 3:21; Heb. 11:39, 40). There never has been and never will be any salvation apart from the word of the cross as proclaimed by the church in this age. "Now is the day of salvation" (II Cor. 6:2; I Pet. 1:10). Judaism as a religious system was preparatory in character and will never displace its fulfillment, Christianity (Gal. 4:21-31; Matt. 9:14-17; Acts 15:1-31; Heb. 8:1-12; 9:1-15; 10:1). Furthermore the apostles after the Day of Pentecost betray no interest in a Jewish and earthly kingdom and in so-called unfulfilled prophecy apart from the return of Jesus to raise the dead and judge the world.

Whatever else may be said of it, Scofield's system does not agree with the eschatological presuppositions of the New Testament writers. Nowhere in the New Testament is there any hint whatsoever that the crucifixion of Jesus was in violation of Old Testament prophecy, or that the church of Christ was an unforeseen institution; rather, it is assumed throughout the New Testament that the death of Jesus was His predetermined end, as Peter says, "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, even as ye yourselves know; him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay: whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it" (Acts 2:22-24). And to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus who told the Lord about "Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him," and about His reported resurrection, Jesus replied: "O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Behooved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:19-27). The fact that the apostles after the Day of Pentecost were no longer concerned about the political restoration of Israel but thought and labored only in terms of winning individual Israelites into the spiritual kingdom of Christ, is evident from both the Acts and Epistles.

According to II Corinthians 3 the trouble with Israel was their unbelief. They were not able to understand the reading of the Old Covenant (II Cor. 3:14, 15). Paul's hope for Israel was not a political restoration but that many Israelites should turn to the Lord, an event to which Paul looks forward joyfully in Romans 9--11. He has this confidence not because of the natural responsiveness of Israel to the message of the Gospel but because of the faithfulness of God to His promises made to the fathers. "For the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of" (Rom. 11:29). It should be noted, however, that this is a matter of large numbers of Israelites accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ and entering His church rather than the reconstitution of Old Testament Judaism in a future age, an act which would violate every principle of the fulfillment of prophecy as interpreted in the New Testament (see especially Heb. 8:1-10:1 and Gal 2:3-5, 16; 3:2-29; 4:21-31; 5:1-4).