A Critique of John Colquhoun's The Law and The Gospel (Pt.7)

Section 2: The Law as given to Adam under the Form of the Covenant of Works?

Again, we come to this question of the Ten Commandments being the extension of the law of creation written on the heart of every man and how it is presumed to be given as a covenant of works that "every man" must fulfill to possess eternal life. The proponents of Covenant Theology propose that the Ten Commandments are the moral law and are given as a form of a covenant of works that can earn eternal life. We know this by what Colquhoun writes, "The law, then, as a covenant of works, does, in the most authoritative manner, demand from every descendant of Adam who is under it perfect holiness of nature, perfect righteousness of life, and complete satisfaction for sin" (pg.20). So we have by their own confession that "since Adam" every man is under the moral law by extension of the Ten Commandments as a covenant of works. However, this statement is simply not true to the witness of the Scriptures on several accounts (Rom.2:14-16; Gal.3:15-17). These Covenanters also error together on the presumptive idea that Christ is the second Adam.

Christ is never presented as a second Adam when He is known as the Lord from heaven to fulfill his earthly and human role as the "last" Adam. You can't be both the last Adam by representation and the second Adam by the same representation (Heb.9:16). This means that the race of Adam is no more and that a new man, the heavenly man, was created from the two, not as a new Adam who has his representation in death fulfilled (1Jn.3:8; Rom.8:3-4; Heb.2:14), but as the second Anthropos (man), who is a heavenly man of the race of the Lord from heaven (1Cor.15:36, 45-49; Eph.2:11-18). Therefore, since Christ is the second "man," the representation of Adam has ceased, and the representation of the Lord from heaven begins in those who have their life in Him (Rom.6:3-4).

So, this repetition of correction is necessary when they continue to repeat this error by trying to make their arguments for a covenant of works and the continuation of the moral law written upon the heart of the natural man in obligation to earn eternal life (1Cor.2:14). Lord willing, I will address this fallacy with the only text they can use to make this presumption. But first, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the law (what they are calling the Ten Commandments as a covenant of works) never intended to provide eternal life since the promise was in the Seed, who is Christ (Gal.3:15-18). The inheritance was never "of" the law as a form of a covenant of works. So Christ did not have to "earn" eternal life (through the law) to be the "promise" sent from God (Jn.1:1-2, 14; 3:10-15, 31-36).

Christ did, however, have to fulfill the law in the judicial sense to be the substitute (Rom.8:3-4), and Christ did have to demonstrate the goodness of God to be the satisfactory substitute (Lk.6:9; Acts 10:38), but goodness never came through the law as a covenant of works (Heb.7:18-19). Let that be clear! Now, the second error of their fallacy is built on the presumption "that the promise of life was made to the first Adam and to all his natural descendants (in him) on the condition of his perfect obedience during the time of his probation is evident, for the Lord Jesus said, "If you will enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matt.19:17) (pg.20-21). So then, what do we make of Christ's words synoptically to the confused, rich young ruler that the advocates of Covenant Theology use as the only possible and apparent credible Scriptural source for this doctrine (Matt.19:16-26; Mk.10:17-27; Lk.18:18-27)?

First, let's address "the promise" that cannot exist outside of the economy of the garden of God since the condition of that quality of life was built around the boundaries of "both" trees (Gen.3:22-24). Again, I trust that we have already conceded in the previous arguments against this presupposition of a covenant of works that the image of God was lost totally and completely (in Adam), which was an image of life based on the likeness of eternal life according to the conditions of that economic garden made to represent the likeness of God as it was said and written "according to Our likeness" (Gen.1:26-27). Therefore, since the image was lost, so is "the promise" of life under those conditions. That judgment should be crystal clear (Gen.3:22-24)!! Therefore, there is no going back to "that" promise, which is why the Hebrew emphasizes emphatically the direct object of "that way" to the tree of that life, though it is hidden in translation.

Therefore, literally, "that way" was lost to obtain "that life," which is why a new promise was made concerning the new way "exclusively" through the life of Christ (Jn.14:6; Gen.3:15). So then, they are absolutely wrong to even consider "that" promise was the "seal" of Adam's life, for those conditions were never "sealed" because of the tree called the knowledge of good and evil was a part of those conditions. Therefore, it is an utter contradiction to suggest this ignorant statement, "Besides, the tree of life, which was one of the seals of that covenant, serves to evince the same thing. It sealed the promise of life to Adam as long as he continued to perform perfect obedience" (pg.20). But what is the definition of a seal? A seal is something that is secured as a guarantee of assurance (Jn.6:26-27; 2Cor.1:22; Eph.1:13; 4:30; 2Tim.2:19). Therefore, if eternal life could be lost under that covenant, what seal did Adam ever have under that covenant?

There was no seal because there was no covenant in Adam according to works to start with. Now, consider further that if Adam's children were under this same proposed covenant, Adam would have had to guard "the way" to the tree of life once he had children. This would have meant that he could have never left the tree of the knowledge of good and evil alone as the sole protector of its knowledge from his children. How many children do you think it would have taken before they all came against him to test his authority over the tree? How long before they, too, would have said to themselves, "What is the old man hiding from us?" See Revelation 20 under similar economic conditions without the temptation of the serpent of old. This is why sin was in the world but could not be imputed apart from knowledge of the law, which produces the knowledge of sin apart from the knowledge of God's perfect nature abiding in the creature (Jn.5:19; 15:5).

But let's move on to the rich young ruler's presupposition of eternal life (Matt.19:16-26; Mk.10:17-27; Lk.18:18-23). Is Jesus promoting the idea that the law was a covenant of works that could provide eternal life, or was Jesus playing with the young man's presuppositional delusion to cause him to think about it more deeply than his superficial assessment of it (2Thess.2:9-12)? The first hurdle we have to consider is how this man's inquiry approaches Jesus. Jesus is testing the faith of the man's words to let him know what exactly he believes about Jesus. Does this rich young ruler believe that Jesus is the Messiah and that the Messiah is also Immanuel, God in the flesh? "Why do you call Me good," Jesus asked. And then Jesus rightly and truly establishes the moral standard for eternal life by stating, "No one is good but One, that is, God." That's the unchangeable standard. But the question isn't about whether God is good but about whether Jesus is God. Yet the young man is still asking how to obtain eternal life through something that he must do instead of looking to the promise written in the law, which was pointing to Jesus Christ. 

It's clear this man didn't understand the law at all since he is looking "to do" something to obtain eternal life. That's why Jesus responded to him the way that He did. "If you (singular) want to find life in doing something good, keep doing the commandments," Jesus said. However, the word for "commandments" in Matt.19:17 is not the word that would be used for the Ten Commandments; rather, it is the word for the precepts of the law in the context of the law as a whole that would lead to the knowledge of the Holy One as a pattern of life (Ps.119:35; Pr..9:10). But the Ten Commandments do not reveal the knowledge of the Holy One but only the knowledge of sin (Rom.3:20), which is why Jesus reminded him after the young man asked, "which ones," he reminded him of the ones that would expose his immediate and bosom sins. Now, the major one is his idolatry because he claimed to have kept all those commands from his infancy, but Jesus catches him off guard in his external attempts at keeping them by telling the man to sell all that he has, give it to the poor, and come and follow Him for the life he is seeking.

Think about that for a moment. Jesus is telling the young man that He is God by promising eternal life to him if he would leave all that was his and follow Him. But the young man shows his unbelief that Jesus is God and can provide him eternal life by walking away from Jesus sorrowful, having put all his trust in his own rotten and depraved works, which Jesus just put his finger on with the original question: "Why do you call Me good when there is only One that is good who is God?" (Ex.20:2-3; Dt.13:1-18; 18:15-22). Jesus also clarifies this to His own disciples, stating, "With men, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible," meaning eternal life was never possible through the external standards of the law as the rich young ruler believed and walked away with clinging to his works that have their end in the dust (Ps.119:25; Isa.64:6-8). The young man did not even search the law for the promises that were pointing to Christ (Jn.5:39). Now, we should also consider that it was not the law that justified Israel as God's elect nation, but in summary of the law, it was God's promise to love them that justified them as a nation of "one" Spirit with God.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 (NKJV)

4 "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

John 8:24 (NKJV)

24 Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins."

John 8:29 (NKJV)

29 And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him."

John 8:36–39 (NKJV)

36 Therefore, if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. 37 "I know that you are Abraham's descendants, but you seek to kill Me because My word has no place in you. 38 I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father." 39 They answered and said to Him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham.

John 8:42–47 (NKJV)

42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 43 Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. 46 Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? 47 He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God."

Isaiah 31:3 (NKJV)

3 Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; And their horses are flesh, and not spirit. When the Lord stretches out His hand, Both he who helps will fall, And he who is helped will fall down; They all will perish together.

Now, I have put these verses mathematically together to make a point that when Israel began as a nation under one spiritual covenant, it was not according to the external standard of law-keeping but according to the ministry of the unity of their love for knowing God's salvation. They were united by one Spirit of love for the glory of God, which made them one nation of the people of God. But the nation grew away from the unity of this love that bound them together with God. This is what Jesus is trying to put his finger upon in the young man's understanding of the law. The Spirit they were united under was the pursuit of seeking the promise because they understood that life did not come through "keeping" the laws that were the ministry of their death in their pursuit of the things of this world (Matt.6:31-34). It was the Spirit that unified them as One for life, not the letter of the law, for the letter killed them and made them weak as a nation of men who were in need of grace (Matt.12:7).

Psalm 82:title–8 (NKJV)

A Psalm of Asaph. 1 God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods. 2 How long will you judge unjustly, And show partiality to the wicked? Selah 3 Defend the poor and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and needy. 4 Deliver the poor and needy; Free them from the hand of the wicked. 5 They do not know, nor do they understand; They walk about in darkness; All the foundations of the earth are unstable. 6 I said, "You are gods, And all of you are children of the Most High. 7 But you shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes." 8 Arise, O God, judge the earth; For You shall inherit all nations.

John 10:33–38 (NKJV)

33 The Jews answered Him, saying, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God." 34 Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, "You are gods"'? 35 If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), 36 do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'? 37 If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; 38 but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him."

2 Corinthians 3:2–11 (NKJV)

2 You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3 clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. 4 And we have such trust through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? 9 For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. 10 For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels. 11 For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious.

So again, the law, in the form of the Ten Commandments, was not the ministry of life that made Israel one nation with Yahweh as their king. It was never intended to bring life, as the young man grew up assuming (Rom.7:10). They left the ministry of the Spirit that searches for the deep things of God in the promise of the Holy One (1Cor.2:9-10), which gives life (Rom.8:2-4, 10-11), to find life in the external standards of the written law (Rom.3:21-26; 10:3-5). This is what Jesus is aiming to address in the presupposition of this young man's justification of himself by keeping the external form of the laws that protected them from sinning against each other and from turning away from the forgiveness that God promised to provide through His love according to the sacrificial system that foreshadowed Christ (Rom.10:6-18; Gal.3:12).

John 8:42 (NKJV)

42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.

Therefore, under that system, God provided them with the means to remember both God's love for them and their responsibility to love each other by imitating God's love according to the unity of the likeness of God's Spirit that made them one nation (in God) looking forward to the fulfillment of the promise. So, do we sell all that we have and give it to the Covenant Theologians so that we may find life in their understanding and interpretation of the law? Or do we follow every word from the mouth of God with the willingness to lose all to cling to life in Jesus Christ, who is clearly the only way and substitute for the witness of law that bears witness against our sin, demanding our immediate and personal death, when we sinned against both our God and our neighbor in thought, in word, and in deed? No one has ever kept the law in such a way that it could ever give "eternal life." 

Now, to be reasonable and fair, I do want to remind us that the law did promise a measure of the preservation of the life that we now possess by mercy (Lev.18:5; Neh.9:29; Ezk.20:11, 13, 21). But it never promised the eternal life that we can possess through the Seed of promise by the grace of life (1Pet.3:4, 7), which is that life that does not fade away and is incorruptible (1Pet.1:4, 22-25), as we discovered in our previous looks in our study about this question. The "love" by which they were to obey this covenant was to be the love that they were to pursue through God's love for them (Ezk.18:31), which is the love that kept them together as a nation of this One Spirit abiding in them by the One God, for the law and prophets said, "You will find Me when you search for Me with your whole heart" (Jer.29:10-13). They needed a new heart to search for the life that was promised to come through the Seed of Promise (Jn.3:9-10). Therefore, they did not listen to the law that told them to get a new heart (Isa.1:18-19). The young man had never sought to obey out of a pure heart but continued to delude himself into believing that he could gain eternal by law-keeping, but the life that they gained was life in the land in correlation to the covenant. That's why this is a major error and heresy, and the advocates of Covenant Theology must be sharply rebuked because of it, for they labor to prop up themselves on this doctrine as the crutch they choose to limp upon in the attempt to heal the wounds of sin ever so slightly with this deluding trick of Satan (1Kgs.18:21).

The promise of eternal life is exclusively in Jesus, or it is in nothing. This is the mark of the same lie that deluded Adam when God played on his belief that he could make the lie his refuge by which he exchanged the glory of the incorruptible image for himself and his own covenant of works as the means of access to the tree of life (Rom.1:22-25; Isa.28:15). To make Adam's heart incorruptible, God had to divide soul and spirit as the discipline for Adam to pursue life through the promised Seed rather than his own spirit of law-keeping (Heb.4:12-13), while on the inside, he was full of dead man's bones (Matt.23:25-28; Ps.51:5-12). But David understood that he needed a new nature to obey the law in the pattern of looking to the promise and understood how the sacrificial system functioned as a substitute moving forward to the promise. Therefore, may the Lord give us understanding, also.

We have our present life by mercy; that is what is meant by "if you do them, you will live by them," and it is made good through the reconciliation of Christ's atonement imputed to us through faith and sanctified to us through the Spirit's sovereign application (Rom.2:11-16; 1Tim.4:1-6). Therefore, our present life is kept through obedience, but we have our eternal life according to the nature of the new man, who abides with us in the inner man. We are made "one" spirit with the Lord to possess the surety of our hope in His resurrection life (1Cor.6:12-20). So then, may God bless us with the knowledge of this grace for our present assurance and inexpressible joy. And may you find life not in your performance of daily living and dying but in the knowledge of the presence of His immutable love rejoicing over you in every grace (1Cor.15:29-34; 2Cor.4:7-18).