How Jesus Transforms The Ten Commandments (Paperback)

~ (Author), Rebecca Clowney Jones (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 161 pages
• Publisher: P & R Publishing; annotated edition edition (March 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596380365
• ISBN-13: 978-1596380363
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #243,387 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars How The Ten Became Two, April 1, 2009

By	Jacques Schoeman (SA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

'Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.' Matthew 5:17

Edmund Clowney, by way of introduction, discusses the confusion that the New Scofield Bible brought in the 1900s in its misapprehension of this divine disclosure - and it was great. 'We tend to think of the Law as rules to obey, but Jesus sees the Law as something to fulfill. Jesus came to fulfill the Law and the prophets.' pg 7

When Biblical Theology maintains that Christ is the end of the Law, it does so because, in truth, is does not mean that He came to put an end to the Law, but that He is the goal (Gk: telos), or the end of the Law. When Jesus spoke the following words we see He was, by definition, summarizing the Ten Commandments - and re-affirming their import into the New Testament in Matthew 22:

37 Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second like it is: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'

'The first and great commandment' Christ appoints in verse 37 is, in fact, a summary of the first four of the Ten Commandments that deal exclusively with our worship of Creator God and the sanctity of God's Person and holy Name. 'The second like it' is the integration of the last six commandments that Moses delivered to the Israelites, whereby community life would be ordered, and here it is that Christ re-interprets the legalism of Judaism into love for our neighbor, without abrogating the moral law in the least.

Of surpassing measure to Reformed theology is the understanding that it is not primarily the covenant of promise that is important to Biblical Theology, but the one covenant of grace. The legalism of Judaism and its opposite number, the antinomian license of the flesh, are both guilty of diminishing the import of grace found in this covenant of grace, for it was through grace that God promised Adam and Eve a future redemption. It was by grace that the prophets brought word from God of a Servant whom would fulfill the demands of the Law and perfectly satisfy the righteous demands of a holy God. 'In Jesus we see how the law of love is transformed, for the perfect love of God is the love in which He gave His one and only Son to die for sinners. It is further defined as the love of the Son for the Father.' pg 8 Of this Geerhardus Vos had to say, 'God could send no higher revealer.' Redemptive History & Biblical Interpretation, ed. Richard Gaffin Jr pg 194

Clowney is adept at sketching analogies between the Old and New Testament, e.g., between Moses, who delivered the Law to a sinning Israel after having come down from Mount Sinai, and Christ's transfiguration on the Mount, in the presence of Moses and Elijah, whom represent the Law and the prophets. God declares the supremacy of Christ over the Law and the prophets, and that the disciples 'must listen to Him'. The same God had announced in Exodus 3:8, 'I have come down to deliver My people.' This divine condescension is ultimately manifested in Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, God the Redeemer. 'God delivers - and the people worship Him for that salvation.' pg 13

Clowney stops to absorb each of the Ten Commandments individually to encounter Christ not only fulfilled in each one, but how Christ transforms them as He reveals to us an indisposable component of the covenant of grace - and insists on continuity (continuation and unity) between the Old and New Testament.

'And so we see that this first commandment, 'You shall have no other gods before Me', is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus, whom God identifies as His beloved Son. In 'hearing Him', we honor the first commandment, for in worshipping Him we worship the one and only true God.' pg 21