I have found a few responses on Facebook over the last week
or so, mainly from The Gospel Coalition, to a recent sermon sample posted by
Steven Furtick. It is taken from a message he preached mid last year called ‘It
Works Both Ways’, and in this portion of his sermon he makes the claim: ‘God
broke the law for love’. So I thought I would check it out for myself, and
after watching the clip, I was a bit surprised and concerned. Because at face
value, if true, this teaching has a number of significant implications that I
will cover later. I have a lot of respect for Steven. I enjoy listening to
his messages, I love his passion for the Gospel and mission, and I know he
honours the Word. So after watching this, I thought I would check it out
because I really don’t like judging someone because of a sound-bite. It is
really easy to misunderstand what someone is trying to say if you don’t have
the context in which they are saying it. Maybe he meant something slightly different,
but he just didn't explain it very well. And so I went and watched the whole message (here) to get a better idea of what he was trying to say. After doing so, I could see what he was getting at, but it was still problematic. What I
want to do is provide a summary of that context and evaluate the statement ‘God
broke the law for love.’
Steven’s message was based on 1Jn 4:7-12:
Beloved, let us
love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God
and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son
into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we
have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for
our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No
one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is
perfected in us.
Steven's message was about the importance of reciprocation in
relationships, and how this is true of love in our relationship with God.
Although, as John points out here, it is quite asymmetrical with God as He gives much more love than we do or could. Steven went on to talk about the importance of love in that relationship saying that while some might emphasise the instructions to ‘be
holy, be better, be pure’, he suggests that John is putting the primary emphasis
on the command ‘be loved’ (a play on the word beloved), because you cannot give
what you have not got. In other words, unless we believe God loves us; we
cannot love others. This is what Steven considered to be God’s leverage to move us to
follow Him. He explained that God had all the leverage in the Law that ‘we
couldn't keep’, but He walked away from that leverage when He sent Jesus into
the world and instead used the leverage of love. Therefore, by giving grace
instead of law, ‘God broke the law for love’. And because God loved us, we need
to make that complete by loving others.
What I really appreciated about this message is how
Steven explained that God seeks to primarily influence and motivate and move
His people by His love rather than bullying them into obedience. But what he
had to say beyond that reveals a misunderstanding about the nature of the Law
and the Old Covenant, and the grace and love of God. You see, he seems to
separate the former from the latter. He sees the Law and Old Covenant as being
divorced from the grace and love of God.
Grace existed in the Old Covenant as it was according to
His love, grace, and mercy that he redeemed the people out of Egypt. And it was
this act of redemption that was to be the motivation of the people’s obedience
to the Law, as we see in the prologue to the Ten Commandments. So, while the love of God demonstrated in the redeeming work of Jesus on the cross was unique in its degree, significance, and effect, what John wrote is not a radically new concept. Moreover, to
give the Law is a demonstration of grace and love as it allowed a Holy God to
dwell among His people. Moreover, if God is loving and gracious, and all that he does is an
expression of that, and if the Law is a reflection of God's character, then how can we say the Law is contrary to love and grace? In fact,
the whole Law hangs, as Jesus tells us, on the two commandments to love God,
and love your neighbour (Matt 22:36-40). Every single commandment is an expression of either
one of those. As John elsewhere writes, to obey God’s commandments is how we
love Him (1Jn 5:2-3).
And so, it is this belief that the law is
opposed to grace that shaped Steven’s sermon, and I belief inherited to many protestant Christians. In his thinking, since the law is contrary to grace, then
obviously God had to get rid of the law to give grace. But as we saw, the law is not
contradictory to grace, nor was the Law the primary basis of covenant with His people in the Old Covenant either.
It was a consequence and demonstration of that covenant. Also note that Jesus
said he didn't come to do away with the Law, rather He came to make it fully
known and anyone who teaches otherwise will be considered least in the Kingdom
(Matt 5:17,19). If Jesus, and God, did away with the law and broke it in order
to bring about grace, as Steven seems to imply, then we have a problem.
Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32, it says that no one is to add or subtract from the
Law. If Jesus did this, then effectively He sinned and disqualified himself as
our perfect sacrifice, and we are still dead in our sins. But we know that
Jesus was without sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God (2Cor 5:21).
Paul tells us in Romans that rather than God turning a
blind eye to sin and ignoring the law, which would be a corrupt injustice, He punished our disobedience to the Law
in Jesus. It was at the cross that God “showed his righteousness… so that he
might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26).
This is possible because the righteous requirement for dealing with our sin
would be satisfied in Christ as the debt for our transgressions (Col 2:14) was
paid in full by Jesus. So rather than God breaking the law for love, “He has
broken antinomianism [lawlessness] for love” (Wilson). If God could simply take away or overlook the law, then not only is there no longer any sin to give grace for, but also Christ would have died for nothing.
I think that Steven’s sermon was an encouraging and
empowering one as his listeners were told to embrace the love God has for them,
and reflect it to others. And while getting caught up on six words from this
message might sound like a distraction from a great message and petty, they were a pretty significant six words. I hope that we have misunderstood Steven. I hope
that he made a poor choice of words. Because to misrepresent what God has called perfect and holy is a pretty big deal. To effectively accuse Him of being a sinner is a pretty big deal. But I don't think Steven intentionally did that. Having listened to him preach a number of Sermons, I know he wouldn't believe that. I think that his low view of the Law has simply lead him to make a mistake. Nonetheless, this serves as a reminder to us who are recipients of the ministry of the Word to not simply swallow everything proclaimed from
the pulpit on Sunday. Rather, as good Berean Baptists, we must test everything we hear,
no matter how ‘cool’ they seem or how inspirational they sound.
https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/gospeldrivenchurch/2016/04/06/god-broke-antinonianism-for-love/
Image from:
http://dc95wa4w5yhv.cloudfront.net/image-cache/law-and-grace_1_724_480_80.jpg
