Church Dogmatics, Vol. 2.2, Sections 36-39: The Doctrine of God, Study Edition 12 [1 ed.] 0567013405 / 978-0567013408

Table of contents :
§ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God / 1. The Command of God and the Ethical Problem / 2. The Way of Theological Ethics / § 37. The Command as the Claim of God / 1. The Basis of the Divine Claim / 2. The Content of the Divine Claim / 3. The Form of the Divine Claim / § 38. The Command as the Decision of God / 1. The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision / 2. The Definiteness of the Divine Decision / 3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision / § 39. The Command as the Judgment of God / 1. The Presupposition of the Divine Judgment / 2. The Execution of the Divine Judgment / 3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment

Citation preview

KARL BARTH CHURCH

DOGMATICS

VOLUME

II

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

THE COMMAND

EDITED

OF GOD

BY

G. W. BROMILEY T. F. TORRANCE

.~

t&t clark

Translated by G. W. Bromiley,]. C. Campbell, lain Wilson,]. W. B.Johnston, Harold Knight,]. L. M. Haire, R. A. Stewart

Strathearn

McNab, T. H. L. Parker,

Published by T&T Clark A Continuum Imprint The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE 1 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright

@

T&T Clark, 2009

Authorised translation of Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik II Copyright @ Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 1940-1942 All revisions to the original English translation and all translations @ Princeton Theological Seminary, 2009

of Greek, Latin and French

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Interactive Sciences Ltd, Gloucester Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by MPG Books Group

ISBN 10: 0567199991 ISBN 13: 9780567199997

CONTENTS

S 36.

S 37.

S 38.

S 39.

ETHICSASA TASKOF THE DOCTRINEOF GOD of God and the Ethical Problem 1. The Command 2. The Way of Theological Ethics

33

THE COMMANDASTHE CLAIMOF GOD 1. The Basis of the Divine Claim 2. The Content of the Divine Claim 3. The Form of the Divine Claim

42 55 72

THE COMMANDASTHE DECISIONOF GOD of the Divine Decision 1. The Sovereignty 2. The Definiteness of the Divine Decision 3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision

119 149 195

THE COMMANDASTHEJUDGMENTOF GOD of the Divine Judgment. 1. The Presupposition 2. The Execution of the Divine Judgment 3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment

219 227 247

v

[509] ETHICS AS A TASK OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD As the doctrine of God's command, ethics interprets the Law as the form of the Gospel, Le., as the sanctification which comes to man through the electing God. Because Jesus Christ is the holy God and sanctified man in One, it has its basis in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Because the God who claims man for Himself makes Himself originally responsible for him, it forms part of the doctrine of God. Its f':llction is to bear primary witness to the grace of God in so far as this is the saving engagement and commitment of man.

1.

THE COMMAND OF GOD AND THE ETHICAL PROBLEM

In the true Christian concept of the covenant of God with man the doctrine of the divine election of grace is the first element, and the doctrine of the divine command is the second. It is only in this concept of the covenant that the concept of God can itself find completion. For God is not known and is not knowable except in Jesus Christ. He does not exist in His divine being and perfections withoutJesus Christ, in whom He is both very God and very man. He does not exist, therefore, without the covenant with man which was made and executed in this name. God is not known completely-and therefore not at all-if He is not known as the Maker and Lord of this covenant between Himself and man. The Christian doctrine of God cannot have "only" God for its content, but since its object is this God it must also have man, to the extent that in Jesus Christ man is made a partner in the covenant decreed and founded by God. We dare not encroach on the freedom of God by asserting that this relationship of His with man is essential, indispensable, and inalienable. But we cannot avoid the free decision of His love in which God has actually put Himself into this relationship, turning towards man in all the compassion of His being, actually associating Himselfwith man in all the faithfulness of His being. We cannot try to go behind that. Of course man in himself and as such has no place in the doctrine of God. But Jesus Christ has a place. God's compassion and faithfulness towards man have a place. A God without Jesus Christ, without this compassion and faithfulness towards man, would be another God, a strange God. By the Christian standard He would not be God at all. The God of Christian knowledge, the only true and real God, is as surely the Lord of the covenant between Himself and man as He is "the God and Father of our LordJesus Christ."

[510]

S 36. Ethics

[511J

as a Task of the Doctrine of God

The first element in the concept of this covenant is the doctrine of the election of grace, of predestination. God elects Himself to be gracious toward man, to be his Lord and Helper, and in so doing He elects man to be the witness to His glory. This election, decreed from all eternity in jesus Christ and executed in Him in time, is the mystery of the will of God. Preceding all other resolutions and actions of God, it is His basic mystery, which He reveals in His Word, and which may be known and grasped in faith in His Word. To say divine election, to say predestination, is to name in one word the whole content of the Gospel, its sum. For that reason the doctrine of election belongs to the doctrine of God. For how can we really speak about God, without speaking directly, if only summarily, about the Gospel? But the concept of the covenant is not exhausted by the doctrine of election. The partner in this covenant is man. What does it mean-looked at from God's side-for man t? be a partner in the covenant, to be placed in this relationship to God? Already, at the conclusion of the doctrine of election, it was necessary for us to ask: What is the purpose of the electing God for the man whom He has elected? And the answer we found was that in all circumstances God wills to rule over man. He wills to take him into His service, to commission him for a share in His own work. He wills to make him a witness of jesus Christ and therefore a witness of His own glory. But obviously we must now go on to ask what it is that God wants from man. What does He expect, what does He demand of him? The divine election is, in the last resort, the determination of man-his determination to this service, this commis~ion, this offic~ of witness. It is man who is determined in this way. Therefore-whatever else he may be-he is certainly not a mere thing, a neuter, but a person. And as a person he is a partner in the covenant which God has made and established between Himself and him. If this is the case, then obviously another problem opens up from the doctrine of election. To be sure, it can only be legitimately put in the light of this doctrine. But it has an independent content as compared with the doctrine of election, and therefore it must have a special answer. As election is ultimately the determination of man, the question arises as to the human self-determination which corresponds to this determination. The question? For the moment we cannot say more than this, and in saying it, we do not make it into an answer-least of all an answer which would limit or perhaps even destroy the truth that the election and determination of man are by God's grace alone. The good news that in Jesus Christ God has decided in favour of man, and given him this determination in His omnipotent wisdom, must not be reversed even by a single iota. It is obvious, however, that this determination confronts man with the question as to his attitude to it. How is he going to exist under this determination? As the one who is determined in this way,what sort of a man will he be and what will he do? It would not be his determination if he were not asked these questions, if to the divine decision there did not correspond a human one in which the partner in the covenant has to give his answer to what is said to him by the fact that God has concluded 2

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

it. That God wills to rule over him clearly means that He wants his obedience, and the question of obedience is therefore put to him. That God has determined him for service clearly means that He claims him for Himself, and he is therefore asked whether he will satisfy this claim. When God becomes his Partner, as the Lord of the covenant who determines its meaning, content and fulfilment, He necessarily becomes the Judge of man, the Law of his existence. Man is judged as he is measured against God. And as he measures himself against God he necessarily judges himself. Unless he accepts this questionhowever it is to be answered-he obviously cannot be elect. He cannot be in this covenant with God. God cannot draw him to Himself without involving him in responsibility. It may be noted that when we come to this second question we do not leave the circle of our consideration of the being and essence and activity of God. It is within this circle, within the ~octrine of God, that the question arises. It is in and with man's determination by God as this takes place in predestination that the question arises of man's self-determination, his responsibility and decision, his obedience and action. To answer this question cannot, then, impose any limitation upon the knowledge of the absolute authority of God's grace. There can be no question, therefore, of having to speak of anything other than the Gospel. What we have to establish is that the being and essence and activity of God as the Lord of the covenant between Himself and man include a relationship to the being and essence and activity of man. It is as He makes Himself responsible for man that God makes man, too, responsible. Ruling grace is commanding grace. The Gospel itself has the form and fashion of the Law. The one Word of God is both Gospel and Law. It is not Law by itself and independent of the Gospel. But it is also not Gospel without Law. In its content, it is Gospel; in its form and fashion, it is Law. It is first Gospel and then Law. It is the Gospel which contains and encloses the Law as the ark of the covenant the tables of Sinai. But it is both Gospel and Law. The one Word of God which is the revelation and work of His grace is also Law. That is, it is a prior decision concerning man's self-determination. It is the claiming of his freedom. It regulates and judges the use that is made of this freedom. As the one Word of God, which is the revelation and work of His grace, disposes of man, it is also the impulse directing him to a future that is in keeping with this "disposing." As the one Word of God which is the revelation and work of His grace reaches us, its aim is that our being and action should be conformed to His. "Be ye (literally, ye shall be) therefore perfect (literally, directed to your objective), even as (i.e., corresponding to it in creaturelyhuman fashion as) your Father which is in heaven is perfect (directed to His objective)" (Mt. 548). The truth of the evangelical indicative means that the full stop with which it concludes becomes an exclamation mark. It becomes itself an imperative. The concept of the covenant between God and man concluded inJesus Christ is not exhausted in the doctrine of the divine election of grace. The election itself and as such demands that it be understood as God's command directed to man; as the sanctification or claiming which comes to

3

[512]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God elected man from the electing God in the fact that when God turns to Him and gives Himself to him He becomes his Commander. Election injesus Christ means separation for the purpose of subjection to the lordship of Him who gave Himself for us "that we which live should not henceforth live unto ourselves, but unto him which died for us, and rose again" (2 Cor. 515). It is made sure (j3€(3ata), confirmed and proved by the fact that this subjection takes place, that the elect accept this subjection. Its aim is this confirmation and proof-"salvation through sanctification of the Spirit" (2 Thess. 213). We may refer (although not without reservation) to Thomas Aquinas: Deus adjuvatur per nos, inquantum exequimur suam ordinationem, secundum illudEN1 (1 Cor. 39): Dei enim adjutores sumus.

Neque hoc est propter defectum divinae

virtutis:

sed quia utitur

causis

mediis,

ut ordinis pulchritudo servetur in rebus, et ut etiam creaturis dignitatem causalitatis communicetEN2 (S. theol. 1, quo 23, art. 8, ad. 2). If this can be understood in accordance with

Mt. 548, we may rightly put it in this way.The summons of the divine predecision, the sanctification which comes on man from all eternity and therefore once and for all in the election ofjesus Christ, is that in all its human questionableness and frailty the life of the elect should become its image and repetition and attestation and acknowledgment. In this sense Calvin again and again urged: Electionis scopus est vitae sanctimoniaEN3 (Instit. III, 23, 12). Quae in electis futura erat sanctitas, ab electione habuit exordium EN4 (ib., 22, 3). Election is the sun, sanctification its shining-who is to separate the two? (Congreg. sur l'elect et., 1551, C.R. 8, 107). Ce sont choses conjointes et inseparables,

que Dieu nous ait eleu et que maintenant

il nous appelle Ii la

sainctete ... il ne faut point separer ce qu'il a conjoint et uni ... il faut, que l 'election soil comme une racine, qui Jette de bons fruitsEN5. (Sermon on Eph. 14-6, C.R. 51, 270 f.).

[513J

This makes it plain that ethics belongs not only to dogmatics in general but to the doctrine of God. This is something which ought to have been apparent for some time. For who can possibly see what is meant by the knowledge of God, His divine being, His divine perfections, the election of His grace, without an awareness at every point of the demand which is put to man by the fact that this God is his God, the God of man? How can God be understood as the Lord if that does not involve the problem of human obedience? But what is implicit must now be made explicit. What is self-evident must now be brought out specifically. The doctrine of God must be expressly defined and developed and interpreted as that which it also is at every point, that is to say, ethics. Otherwise, human carelessness and forgetfulness may only too easily skim over the fact that it actually is this, and that all that we have so far said as the doctrine of God has also this further sense-the sense of basically ethical reflection and explanation. ENI

EN2

EN3 EN4 EN5

God is aided through us, inasmuch as we carry out his will according to the verse (1 Cor 3.9) 'For we are God's fellow workers'. This is not because of some lack of power in God, but because he uses causal means in order that the beauty of his order be kept in things, and in order that he might share the dignity of causation even with his creatures The goal of election is virtuousness of life That which is future holiness among the elect had its beginning in election These are things which are conjoined and inseparable: that God has elected us and that he now calls us to holiness ... What he has joined together and united, let them not be put asunder ... It must rather be the case that election is as a root, which grows good fruit

4

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

If we adopt here the term ethics to describe the special task of dogmatics which the Law as the form of the Gospel has imposed on us, we do it in the freedom-which is so very necessary and is always enjoyed in dogmatics-to take such terms as are to hand, not allowing ourselves to be bound and fettered by the meaning which they may have acquired from their use elsewhere, but using them in the sense which, when they are applied to the object with which we are concerned, they must derive from this object itself. No term has as such an absolutely universal and therefore binding sense. This is equally true of "ethics." At any rate the dogmatics of the Christian Church cannot make use of any terms (not even those of mathematics!) without examination, without reserving the right to give them a sense of its own, and to apply them in its own way. And this is also true of the term "ethics." But-granted this reservation-there is no reason not to make use of the term in dogmatics. A relatively general conception of ethics which we might take as our point of departure YViLVaa'TLKWsEN6 is as follows. The ethical question is the question as to the basis and possibility of the fact that in the multitude and multiplicity of human actions there are certain modes of action, i.e., certain constants, certain laws, rules, usages or continuities. It is the question as to the rightness of these constants, the fitness of these laws. It is the question as to the value which gives any action the claim to be the true expression of a mode of action, the fulfilment of a law-the right to be repeated and in virtue of its normative character to serve as an example for the actions of others. What is the true and genuine continuity in all the so-called continuities of human action? What is it that really gives force to all these recognised laws?What is the good in and over every so-called good of human action? This is-roughly-the ethical question, and-roughly again-the answering of it is what is generally called "ethics." "Ethics" comes from 1j(}os (orig. dwelling, stable), is synonymous with "morals" (from ~(}LKOV TTJS ef>LAocroef>tas EN7 (Diogenes Laertius) is the part of philosophy which deals with the principles of the moral. To correspond to the true meaning a general definition would have to be as follows. Ethics is the science or knowledge or doctrine of the modes of human behaviour, of the constants or laws of human behaviour. But obviously this definition which derives from the meaning is not enough. There are all sorts of questions about modes of human behaviour, about the law and rule and continuity of human action, which do not so far, or any longer, have anything to do with the ethical question in itself. "Will-psychology" investigates the constants of human behaviour within the sphere of natural law.The science of moral statistics, the study of customs and in a wider compass the morphology of cultures all ask about the constants of human behaviour which have freely arisen and which perist in history. The science of positive law investigates the continuity of human behaviour which is guaranteed and sanctioned by national communities. The philosophy of history investigates the constant of human behaviour in the common temporal change and development of human aims and achievements. But where the task of ethics has been undertaken, it has alwaysbeen understood as a differen t one from the task of these sciences. mos), and means the doctrine of custom or habit.

ENfi EN7

for discussion The Ethic of Philosophy

5

To

[514]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[515]

Morality in the sense of the ethical question is something other than the congruence of an action with a demonstrable natural law of human volition and action. Even if the moral action is subject to such a law of nature, this dependence and agreement does not make it moral action. Surprisingly enough, even the naive identification of the moral law with natural law,as variously represented byJ.J. Rousseau, L. Feuerbach, M. Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche and E. Haeckel, was not carried out in the form of mere descriptions, but alwaysin the form of definite imperative claims upon human volition and action. With Rousseau and Nietzsche it actually has something of the character of a passionate proclamation. If the moral law is no more than natural law, all it needs is to be stated as that-the more objectively the better. There is no need to preach it. When natural law is preached, the alleged identification of moral law and natural law is revealed as a mere predication, and the fundamental difference between the two is disclosed. Therefore, whatever be the position with regard to the possible congruence of the moral action with a natural event, we cannot evade the question of a specific moral law as distinguished from natural law. Again, morality in the sense of the ethical problem is not merely the conformity of human behaviour with a more or less widespread and prevalent usage, custom, culture or civilisation. Here, too, a congruence may well occur, and moral philosophers like H. Hreffding and Friedrich Paulsen have been able to approximate very closely to an "identification" of the ethical with these concepts. But so far no one has seriously attempted to merge moral philosophy completely in the science of custom. Indeed, it could never be seriously contested that immoral customs on the one side and moral breaches of custom on the other side are possibilities with which ethics has inevitably to reckon. But this means that even for the law of human behaviour as this is ascertained by the historico-morphological method, the question of a specific ethical law remains. And morality in the sense of the ethical question is not at all the same as the congruence of human behaviour with the existing laws of the state. It is far more than legality. State law with its obvious generality may of course, asJeremy Bentham maintained, be understood as the most pregnant expression of the constant of human behaviour which ethics has to investigate. And, conversely, morality may be understood, as in the teaching of H. Cohen, as the immanent power of all legality. There can be little doubt that in one form or another many positivist and idealistic moral philosophers have had dreams or visions of a mutual approximation of morality and law and their meeting in infinity. But it has never yet occurred to anyone seriously to assert a simple equation of ethics and politics, of ethics and jurisprudence. The ethical question is still a specific one even alongside that of the law of the just state. It is only after the former that the latter question, and that of the connexion between the two, can be put. Finally, in the sense of the ethical question a particular human action is not moral just because it agrees with what is perhaps a demonstrable law of general development or of a specific historical development. There may well be a philosophy of history, and therefore a law of historical development, e.g., that which was proclaimed by Karl Marx in application of Hegelian theory, or that which was more recently proclaimed in words and acts by NeoGerman Nationalism. But obviously the establishment of these laws is one thing, and the active affirmation which is so stormily demanded another. History may stand under this or that law; but if this is the case, why are we assured by those who maintain these laws that history must be made by men with much toil and sacrifice, with many conflicts and tribulations. Why is this claim raised? A different law of human volition and action obviously intervenes, and it is only if this other law is sure and valid that the same can be said of the so-called law of history, and the demand that this law should be obeyed can have authority and force. The question of the validity of this other law, the ethical question, is still open-

6

I.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

and the more so, the more violently people try to ignore it, the more wildly they anticipate the answer to it. Ifwe try to equate the ethical question unequivocally and consistently with the psychological, or historico-morphological, or politicojuridical, or philosophico-historical question-to which the actuality of human behaviour may also be subject-this means that we have not yet put to ourselves the ethical question, or have ceased to put it. And the strange thing is that while there is apparently a desire to make this equation, no one is able to do it. The strange thing is that in all these identifications the fact is only too apparent that they are actually only predications. The ethical question can no doubt be translated into all sorts of other questions. But this does not stop it from being put in its original language. To declare that any one of these laws is valid in the sense of daring to demand subjection to this law is consciously or unconsciously to work with a presupposed ethic. The only thing is that it has obviously been decided to avoid the scrutiny of ethics by not putting the question of its law, the question of the moral law, and therefore the question of the authority and force of the demands made in its name. What cannot be avoided, however, is that the ethical question remains open in face of every arbitrary ethic and its demands and the corresponding human actions, and that one day it will claim to be posed and answered again specifically and for itself. For to put the ethical question, the question of the moral law, is to put it specifically and for itself, irrespective of the question of those other laws. The ethical question transcends those other questions. For it asks concerning the genuineness and rightness and value of the constants which are at issue in those other questions, and to which genuineness and rightness and value are all too uncritically attributed. The ethical question asks concerning the validity of the lawsof human behaviour ascertained on the basis of these other questions. It asks concerning the law of the good, and the connexion between this law and those other laws and the human behaviour which is in conformity with them. It raises, then, the fundamental question. Only an answer to this question makes it possible to regard the conformity of human behaviour with those other laws as good, and nonconformity as evil. But, conversely, the answer to it may make it necessary to rega~d the same conformity as evil, and the same nonconformity as good. Therefore in relation to those other questions the ethical question is the supremely critical question. It is supremely critical because it questions not only individual human actions from the standpoint of general modes of action, but also general human modes of action from the standpoint of the good.

Our contention is, however, that the dogmatics of the Christian Church, and basically the Christian doctrine of God, is ethics. This doctrine is, therefore, the answer to the ethical question, the supremely critical question concerning the good in and over every so-called good in human actions and modes of action. It is the answer-this must be our starting-point. But we must be more exact and say that it is the attestation, the "tradition," the repetition of the answer. For the answer is not theology, or the doctrine of God, but their object-the revelation and work of the electing grace of God. But this, the grace of God, is the answer to the ethical problem. For it sanctifies man. It claims him for God. It puts him under God's command. It gives predetermination to his selfdetermination so that he obeys God's command. It makes God's command for him the judgment on what he has done and the order for his future action. The ethical task of the Christian doctrine of God is to attest this answer to the ethical problem. The ethical problem as such, In the sense of that general

7

[516]

S 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[517]

definition or conception of ethics, is something with which we are not here concerned. We are not, of course, surprised at the existence of that general conception. We are not surprised that in every age and place-for all the many and varied attempts which have been made-men have never been able to acquiesce in an equation of the good with all the other different continuities in human behaviour. We are not surprised that the question of the good had and has still to crop up as a specific question which transcends the question of these other conformities. And therefore we are not surprised at the different attempts made by man to give himself a human answer to this specific question-with varying degrees of insight into its special nature and in greater or less correspondence to its actual openness compared with all other questions. We are not surprised because by revelation and the work of God's grace this question is actually put as the inescapable question of human existence which is quite incomparable with other questions in weight and urgency and which the answers to others are quite unable to silence. For it is as he acts that man exists as a person. Therefore the question of the goodness and value and lightness, of the genuine continuity of his activity, the ethical question, is no more and no less than the question about the goodness, value, rightness and genuine continuity of his existence, of himself. It is his life-question, the question by whose answer he stands or falls. "To be, or not to be, that is the question." Why? Because with its answer there is put into effect the decision of the power which disposes absolutely of his existence or non-existence, the power of God. For it is the electing grace of God which has placed man under His command from all eternity. The command of God is therefore the truth from whichwhether he knows and wants to know it or not-man derives, and which he will not evade. By the decree of the divine covenant with man, the ethical question as the question of human existence is put from all eternity as the question to which, on the basis of revelation and the work of grace, man will himself in some way be the answer. That is why it is such a necessary, a burning question. And that is also why all possible attempts to answer it, all forms of ethics, are so pressing. Man derives from the grace of God, and therefore he is exposed from the very outset to this question. Before he was, before the world was, God drew him to Himself when he destined him to obedience to His command. But, strangely enough, it isjust because of this that the impossible-sin-presses so insistently. For man is not content simply to be the answer to this question by the grace of God. He wants to be like God. He wants to know of himself (as God does) what is good and evil. He therefore wants to give this answer himself and of himself. So, then, as a result and in prolongation of the fall, we have "ethics," or, rather, the multifarious ethical systems, the attempted human answers to the ethical question. But this question can be solved only as it was originally put-by the grace of God, by the fact that this allows man actually to be the answer. Revelation and the work of God's grace are just as opposed to 8

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

these attempts as they are to sin. From all eternity it is not the will of God to acquiesce in man's presumption and therefore to let man fall into the perdition which is the necessary consequence of his presumption. The grace of God protests against all man-made ethics as such. But it protests positively. It does not only say No to man. It also says Yes. But it does so by completing its own answer to the ethical problem in active refutation, conquest and destruction of all human answers to it. It does this by revealing in Jesus Christ the human image with which Adam was created to correspond and could no longer do so when he sinned, when he became ethical man. This human image is at the same time God's own image. The man Jesus, who fulfils the commandment of God, does not give the answer, but by God's grace He is the answer to the ethical question put by God's grace. The sanctification of man, the fact that he is claimed by God, the fulfilment of his predetermination in his self-determination to obedience, the judgment of God on man and His command to him in its actual concrete fulfilment-they all take place here in Jesus Christ. The good is done here-really the good as understood critically-beyond all that merely pretends to be called good. But it is not done because, like Hercules at the cross-roads, this man chooses between good and evil and is good on the basis of His choice of the good. The Son, who is obedient to the Father, could not possibly want to ask and decide what is good and evil. He could not possibly regard as the good that which He had chosen for Himself as such. No, it is as He is elected by the grace of God that the good is done. As this Elect, quite apart from any choice of His own between good and evil. He is concerned only with obedience. He does not crave to be good of and for Himself. And so in all His acts He is subject only to the will and command of the God who alone is good. This is how the good is done here. This is how the ethical question is answered here-in Jesus Christ. What has taken place in this way-in antithesis and contrast to all human ethics-is divine ethics. To go behind this divine ethics, behind its attestation, is quite impossible. We cannot understand the ethical question as the question of human existence as if it were posed in a vacuum, as if there were an ethical question in itself and for itself, as if it were not first posed by the grace of God-and not only posed but already answered by the grace of God. We cannot act as if the command of God, issued by God's grace to the elect man Jesus Christ, and again by God's grace already fulfilled by this man, were not already known to us as the sum total of the good. We cannot act as if we had to ask and decide of ourselves what the good is and how we can achieve it; as if we were free to make this or that answer as the one that appears to us to be right. Certainly the existence of that general conception of ethics as an answer to the question of the good is an exceedingly instructive fact. It confirms the truth of the grace of God which as it is addressed to man puts the question of the good with such priority over all others that man cannot evade it and no other question can completely hide or replace it. But in so far as this general conception of ethics 9

[518]

S 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[519]

seems to speak of an answer to the question which is to be worked out by man himself, it confirms also that man tries to escape the grace of God by which the question of the good is put, but by which it is also answered in advance. Strange as it may seem, that general conception of ethics coincides exactly with the conception of sin. So we have every reason to treat it with circumspection. We do take up again the question of the good and we try to answer it. But there can be no more trying to escape the grace of God. On the contrary, we have to try to prevent this escape. When we speak of ethics, the term cannot include anything more than this confirmation of the truth of the grace of God as it is addressed to man. If dogmatics, if the doctrine of God, is ethics, this means necessarily and decisively that it is the attestation of that divine ethics, the attestation of the good of the command issued to Jesus Christ and fulfilled by Him. There can be no question of any other good in addition to this. Other apparent goods are good only in dependence on this good. And the acknowledgment of this good must have absolute precedence of its investigation. In the strict sense, all investigation of the good can be only an investigation of its explanation (self-explanation) and confirmation (self-confirmation). The ethical problem which we have to answer can be an open problem only in the sense and to the extent that our human life and will and action are put in question by the command of God and the revelation of the good which takes place in it, that is, as they are questioned as to their correctness, but also corrected; as they are tested as to their value and genuineness, but also invested with genuineness and value. We have to realise how far-reaching is this change in the conception of ethics. From the point of view of the general history of ethics, it means an annexation of the kind that took place on the entry of the children of Israel into Palestine. Other peoples had for a long time maintained that they had a very old, if not the oldest, right of domicile in this country. But, according to Josh. 927, they could now at best exist only as hewers of wood and drawers of water. On no account had the Israelites to adopt or take part in their cultus and culture. Their liveliest resistance, therefore, could be expected, and their existence would necessarily be for the Israelites an almost invincible temptation. Ethics in the sense of that general conception is something entirely different from what alone the Christian doctrine of God can be as a doctrine of God's command. Whatever form the relationship between the two may take, there can be no question either of a positive recognition of Christian ethics by that conception or of an attachment of Christian ethics to it. Christian ethics cannot possibly be its continuation, development and enrichment. It is not one disputant in debate with others. It is the final word of the original chairman-only discussed, of course, in Christian ethics-which puts an end to the discussion and involves necessarily a choice and separation. When the ethical thinker who starts out from that general conception encounters the attestation of the command of God in the Christian doctrine of God, he finds himself precipitated into a strange world because he is COD10

I.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

fronted by an enigmatic knowledge of the Whence? and Whither? of all ethical enquiry and reply. This violates at its nerve centre what usually passes for ethical reflection and explanation. As we cannot disguise this in relation to the doctrine of God, it is something which we can only have or not have. It presupposes a fundamental decision which, described in the categories of revelation and faith, undoubtedly means an unprecedented demand, if not worse. The problem of ethics generally-the law or good or value which it seeks as a standard by which human action and modes of action are to be measured, and according to which they are to be performed, the problem of the truth and knowledge or'the good-is no problem at all in the ethics immanent in the Christian conception of God, in the doctrine of the command of God. For in virtue of the fact that the command of God is the form ofRis electing grace, it is the starting-point of every ethical question and answer. It is the startingpoint which is already given and to that extent presupposed and certain in itself, so that it can never be surpassed or compromised from any quarter. And, conversely, that which is no problem at all to ethical thought generally, or only a problem which can be lightly pushed aside and left open-the actual situation of man in face of the question by which he is confronted when he answers the ethical question, his actual commitment to the good, his actual distance from it and the actual overcoming of this distance (not by himself, but by the actuality of the good itself)-this is the burning problem in Christian ethics, the very aim and content of the whole ethical enquiry and reply. When a doctrine, or science, is dominated by the knowledge of this Whence? and Whither?, what can it possibly have to do with what is usually understood as ethics within the framework of that general conception? Certainly when we proceed from this knowledge we cannot fail to see that here, too, it seems in some way to be a matter of the investigation of the goodness of human action. But this "in some way" is obviously of such a kind that it appears almost impossible to avoid the judgment that the undertaking of ethics, as it is undertaken here, really means the negation of this undertaking. For, when the startingpoint is the conception of God as the given and presupposed sum of the good, when it is the truth-conceived as actuality-of a command, directed to man and absolutely supreme and decisive; or conversely, when man is the sinner who by the grace of God is as absolutely condemned as he is absolutely raised up and righted-the ethical answer is made impossible. This is the opposition which we must expect and face when we subject the conception of ethics to this change. We must stand firm against this opposition. It may easily be forgotten on our side that the Word of God, and in its faithful proclamation the preaching of the Church, and with preaching dogmatics, and at the head of dogmatics the Christian doctrine of God, are always the aggressor in relation to everything else, to general human thinking and language. When they enter the field of ethical reflection and interpretation they must not be surprised at the contradiction of the so-called (but only so-called) original inhabitants of this land. They cannot regard them as an authority before which they have to II

[520]

S 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God exculpate themselves, and to whose arrangements they must in some way conform. The temptation to behave as if they were required or even permitted to do this is one which must be recognised for what it is and avoided. This temptation might perhaps consist in the invitation or challenge to embark upon an apologetic debate with the protest which can and actually will be made by a general conception of ethics. Apologetics in this case would be the attempt to establish and justify the theologico-ethical inquiry within the framework and on the foundation of the presuppositions and methods of nontheological, of wholly human thinking and language.

[521]

It is apologetics when Schleiermacher (Chr. Sitte, 29 and 75) maintains that, not the specifically Christian self-consciousness, but the general religious self-consciousness which is supposed to underlie it, with its moral content or its moral orientation, is a necessary element even in a general philosophico-ethical enquiry, and when in so doing he tries to justify Christian ethics at least indirectly before the forum of philosophical ethics. Similarly, when De Wette (Lehrb. d. chr. Sittenlehre, 1833,2) thinks he can glorify the revelation from which Christian ethics derives by characterising it as "the reason which has appeared and been realised ... or the completed task of the pious life." Similarly, when K. R. Hagenbach (Enzyklapiidif!2, 1889,436) directs philosophical ethics to the Christian goal at which alone it finds its fulfilment, since faith in God, even regarded from this general standpoint, presents itself as "the highest stage of the moral life." Similarly, when W. Herrmann (Ethik4, 1909,3) declares that every ethics which tries to deal, not only with the conception of the good, but also with the realisation of the good by men, must see to it that the Christian religion is understood as a morally emancipating force, and must therefore itself become Christian ethics at its supreme point. Similarly, when G. Wunsch (Theal. Ethik, 1925, 59 f.) tries to understand Christian ethics as a possibility of "value-attitude" which is foreseen in general philosophical ethics, i.e., as the affirmation of a definite "value-position"-that the "holy as really known in the form of personality" is the supreme value "anchored in the transcendent"; and when he recommends it at the same time on the basis of the fact that its formal criteria are identical with those of philosophical ethics.

Our comment is that the super- and subordination of viewpoints with which it is hoped to establish and justify the theologico-ethical enquiry, cannot actually accomplish what.it meant to accomplish. The only possible meaning of this apologetic is a sincere conviction that theological ethics must be measured against a general ethics. For the latter is recognised as itsjudge, as the authority by which even for it the question of truth is raised and decided. It is presupposed that the proper con ten t of theological enquiry and reply (or at any rate a kind of empty place for it) is comprehended in general ethical enquiry and reply, that this is where it has its original and proper place, and that this place has only to be indicated to give the desired legal basis for the existence of a theological ethics. But what can be legitimated in this way, what can be indicated as included in the content of a general ethical enquiry and reply, is certainly not the distinctively theological enquiry and reply in which we have to do with the grace of God in the issuing and fulfilling of His command. The ethical bent of the religious self-consciousness, a "value-attitude" and the like, may be justified in this way, but not the attestation of the commandment of 12

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

God as the form of His grace. This theme is automatically lost when the apology succeeds. For the man who-as a philosopher perhaps, or even as a politician-thinks that he knows a general principle which is actually superior to the origin and aim of theologico-ethical enquiry and reply, and who in the matter of the doctrine of God thinks that he can actually step forward asjudge in the question of truth, a theological ethic with its Whence? and Whither? will necessarily be an objectionable undertaking, which he will regard either as insignificant or even perhaps as dangerous. And theological ethics on its part will cease to be what it is, if it dares to free itself from this offensiveness, if it dares to submit to a general principle, to let itself be measured by it and adjusted to it. Here, as elsewhere, we cannot concede to any other authority the competence to decide in a way which is binding even for theology what mayor may not be a principle in matters of human knowledge and science. We cannot interpret the distinctive principle of theology in such a way as to win for it the recognition that, judged from some other principle of this sort, it is possible or perhaps even necessary. We cannot translate the truth and reality of the divine command into a necessary element of man's spiritual life, or the realisation of human reason, or the realisation of the good as achieved by man himself, or a value-position anchored in the transcendent. We can only do that if we are no longer concerned with the command of God and therefore if we have not really been treating of theological ethics even from the outset. For the man who obediently hears the command of God is not in any position to consider why he must obey it. He is not in any position, therefore, from the vantagepoint of a higher principle to try to show either himself or others how this law of human volition and action is reached. He knows that the command of God is not founded on any other command, and cannot therefore be derived from any other, or measured by any other, or have its validity tested by any other. He knows that man cannot say this command to himself, but can only have it said to him. He has not invented this principle of theological ethics, and he cannot evade or even so much as conceal it. He has not given it its offensive character, and he cannot try to take it away. If he himself is at first surprised at having to come to terms with this Whence? and Whither? of ethical inquiry and reply, he cannot spare others the surprise of seeing him actually engaged in this process. Much can be demanded of him, but what is demanded in the opinion of the adherents of an apologetico-theological ethics is not actually demanded. On the contrary, this is the very thing which is forbidden him, for to fulfil this demand is to abandon the ethical task of the doctrine of God before it is even begun. The concern of the apologetic school of theological ethics in its recourse to a general moral enquiry and reply can, of course, be recognised as justifiable upon one condition: that is, if in its annexation of the realm of general ethical problems theological ethics behaves as the Israelites did or should have done on their entry into Canaan. They had to invade Canaan, not as a foreign country which did not belong to them, but as the land of their fathers. Had it not

[522]

S 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[523]

for a long time belonged to Yahweh? Had He not for many years spoken to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in this very land? Was it not, therefore, the land which was promised and actually belonged to them as the people of Yahweh? This means that theological ethics has to accept the fact that it must not believe in the possibility and reality of a general moral enquiry and reply which are originally and ultimately independent of the grace and command of God, which are not touched or affected by them and to that extent stand inflexible and inviolate in themselves. It has to accept the fact that it must believe in the work and revelation of the grace of God alone and therefore in the actual overlordship of God's command over the whole realm of ethical problems. It has not to reckon with man's possession of a kind of moral nature, with a knowledge of good and evil which is peculiar to him, and of which he is capable apart from the fact that he is 'under the overlordship of the divine command. It has, therefore, to be on its guard against a retrospective reinterpretation of the fall, as though the presumption of man in wishing to know of himself what is good and evil were only a natural inclination to do the will of God. It has to be on its guard against conferring on man the dignity of a judge over God's command. Conversely, it will regard the revelation of the grace of God as so true-:-so very much the revelation of the actual involvement of man-and the work of grace as so powerful-so very much the decision which God has actually made about man-that, whatever attitude man may take up or however he may act in relation to God's command, it necessarily understands him as actually determined by God's command, as altogether orientated by it objectively. It will not accredit or adjudge to him a moral enquiry and reply which are actually independent of God's command-in spite of and in the presumption which makes him think that out of his own resources, he knows what is good and evil. Itself proclaiming and explaining the command of God, it can and should, on this condition and presupposition, appeal to what F. C. Oetinger called the sensus communisEN8, the rule of truth imposed on all men as such by the divine wisdom active and revealed in Jesus Christand not, therefore, to a knowledge which belongs to man, which man controls, but to a knowledge addressed to him and controlling him. It will not, then, make the disastrous, traitorous use of "natural" theology, which is the only use that can be made of it. On the contrary, it will assert the theology which derives from God's revelation in that pre-eminence in face of all "natural" theology which belongs to it if revelation is revelation and is believed as such. Therefore, when it turns to this general moral enquiry and reply, it will do so with the understanding that it has its origin and meaning from the divine command which objectively applies to man, whatever attitude man may take to it. It will understand that the ethical question is so urgent because there is no escape from divine grace and its command, not even for those who would like to evade it; and that it is put so stringently because in the first instance the comENS

'common sense'

I.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

mand of grace is so stringent, because the grace of God itself is so inward and penetrating. When it is understood in this way, why should not the general ethical enquiry and reply be for theological ethics a witness to the ethical knowledge which has itself to present, and which is to be acquired from, the divine command of God? To that extent, why should it not have a legitimate place in the discussion? Why should it not give ear at the point where-as it knows and maintains against all protest-the one Word of God is also objectively spoken and prevails even in the midst of human perversity? Why should it not be ready to receive instruction and correction from the source where the Word of God, although it is so fully concealed, is also in force, knowing so well, as it does, that of itself it can only attest and explain this Word with a human voice and therefore fallibly? Without detriment to its loyalty to its own task, indeed, in its very loyalty to it in this aspect too, theological ethics can and must establish a continuous relationship of its thinking and speaking with the human ethical problem as a whole. It does this when it believes that finally and properly its own Whence? and Whither? are not alien to any philosophic moralist, when it does not take seriously his possible opposition to this Whence? and Whither? (because this opposition cannot be maintained, because it cannot be serious), but regards and addresses him unswervingly on the basis that grace, and therefore the command of God, affects him too. But this relationship must not in any circumstances take the form of apologetics. It rests on the assumption and consists in the substantiation that this annexation is right. The counter-position attacked by theological ethics is obviously in a state of disintegration and the opposition offered from it cannot be sustained. The one thing which will not happen in this relationship is that theological ethics will try to eliminate from its own task the alie-n element which from that point of view necessarily characterises it. Annexation remains annexation, however legal it may be, and there must be no armistice with the peoples of Canaan and their culture and their cultus. Therefore theological ethics must not and will not disarm its distinctive Whence? and Whither? in order to assure itself a place in the sun of general ethical discussion. What it must and should disarm is the opposition which confronts it in the discussion-which was disarmed long ago by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But it must not disarm itself, because it cannot do this without destroying itself. It will be absolutely open to all that it can learn from general human ethical enquiry and reply. It can be absolutely open because it has absolutely nothing to fear from this quarter. But it must alwaysbe absolutely resolved to stick to its colours and not to allow itself to be hindered in the fulfilment of its own task. The attempt to set up general ethics as ajudge, and to prove andjustify theological ethics before it, can only disturb and destroy theological ethics. The attempt must, therefore, be broken off. The apologetic orientation of theological ethics is false. The apologetic attitude must be completely abandoned. But the temptation which comes from the opposition to theological ethics might take a very different form, or one that is apparently very different. The

[524]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[525J

desired adjustment to general ethical thinking and language can be undertaken in the form of a proper isolation of theological ethics from the former, of a suitable allocation of roles to the two. The attempt can be made to show that, whatever may be the interconnexion between them, there is a twofold ethical inquiry, let us say, a "theological" and a "philosophical," which touch and limit but do not abolish each other. By an ultimately friendly demarcation of the difference between the two, the special task of theological ethics can be defined and preserved, and an attempt made to assure its formal compatibility with that of ethics generally. In spite of all apologetics, theology has never so completely forgotten the peculiar nature of its task and activity as not to recover its self-consciousness at some point. The proof of the basis and justification of its task and activityhas alwaysbeen fulfilled in some wayin the proof of its independence, its distinctness, its particular character in contrast to the task and activity of the non-theological moralist. The reckoning which is considered necessary in relation to philosophy succeeds only too well if its result is that theological ethics itself is simply philosophical ethics, a special form of general ethics. That is obviously what must not happen, although it has nearly done so on occasion, e.g., with W. Herrmann. On the contrary, once theology has legitimated itself apologetically, it then has to show, either well or badly, that it is not superfluous, not a mere double of philosophy. Some separate or additional knowledge must now be claimed in face of the general knowledge of good and evil, and the attempt must be made to define this more closely.What is usually said along this line can be comprehended under four heads. (1) A special source of theological ethics is affirmed. Sometimes, as in E. W. Mayer (Ethik, 1922, 191) it is termed the so-called Christian religious consciousness and then the task of theological ethics is defined with Schleiermacher (op. cit., p. 33) as "the description of the way of acting which arises from the domination of the Christianly determined selfconsciousness." Instead of speaking of this consciousness, De Wette (op. cit., p. 2), O. Kirn (Grundriss der theologischen Ethik, 1906, 2) and Wunsch (op. cit., p. 64) can speak of "revelation," but they mean the same thing. In contrast to this, De Wette and E. W. Mayer describe reason as the source of philosophical ethics, Kirn experience, and Wunsch reason and experience together. In all cases it is obviously a self-consciousness which is not Christianly determined. (2) A special subject of theological ethics is affirmed. As Schleiermacher especially (op. cit., p. 33 f.) emphasises so strongly, its locus is the Church, understood as a community of those who share the Christian outlook. According to Wunsch, the subject of theological ethics is "the man who is born again through conversion and to whom the knowledge of God has been imparted through illumination." For this reason, as Schleiermacher expressly states (p. 29), theological ethics lacks "a universal-historical relevance." "What is ordered by Christian morals binds only Christians. Philosophical ethics makes a more general claim, for it would bind everyone who can rise to an insight into the philosophical principles from which it is derived" (op. cit., p. 2). According to Wunsch, it is "the man of reason" who is the subject of philosophical ethics. (3) A special presupposition of theological ethics is affirmed. According to K. R. I-Iagenbach (p. 436), it consists in the "Spirit of God or of Christ as the power operating in believers," or, according to Kirn (p. 3), in the "living energy of the personality filled with God's Spirit," although as against this the same writer finds the presupposition of philosophical ethics in man's moral or rational self-determination. According to Wunsch, the question

16

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

of philosophical ethics is: "What must I do because the categorical imperative orders?", whereas that of theological ethics is: "What must I do because God is?" And (4) a special content of theological ethics is affirmed. According to Hagenbach, this consists in "historically determined moral views," and, above all, in the "personal divinehuman view of life of the Redeemer"; or, according to De Wette, in "positive laws"; or, according to Kirn, in the "idea of the kingdom of God;" while Hagenbach attributes to philosophical ethics "the idea of moral personality which is valid for all who would be rational beings."

But the diastasis attempted in this way is no less suspect than the synthesis of the two spheres which we have already mentioned and discussed. For what really happens? If this procedure is carried out seriously, we have a theological ethics which is concerned only with the human behaviour which originates under the dominion of the Christian self-consciousness as determined by special revelation or religion, and in the sphere of the corresponding historical outlook. The statements of this ethics are binding only for Church members, for believers, although they are, of course, to be fulfilled by them, because the Spirit of God is active in them. And in contrast to this, there is a philosophical ethics which can be traced back just as abstractly to reason or experience or both. This, for its part, is just as content with the "idea" of the moral, and its last word is the self-determination of man, a word which it does, of course, have to speak with the claim to universal validity. What we have to ask in relation to this view is whether theology can seriously contemplate two things. First, can it really be restricted in this way to a sphere which is no doubt remarkably distinguished by the concepts of religion, revelation, Church, grace, Spirit, etc., but which is characterised as a very narrow and rather obscure sphere by its isolation from the sphere of reason, experience and human self-determination? And secondly, can it really ascribe to reason, experience, human self-determination, etc., an independent content of truth, an autonomous dignity and authority, which in its own preoccupation with revelation and the outpourings of Christian self-consciousness it can safely leave on one side? To put the question differently: Is God's revelation revelation of the truth, or is it only the source of certain religious ideas and obligations, alongside which there are very different ones in other spheres? Outside and alongside the kingdom of Jesus Christ are there other respectable kingdoms? Can and should theology of all things be content to speak, not with universal validity, but only esoterically? Is it, or is it not, serious in its alleged knowledge of a Whence? and Whither? of all ethical enquiry and reply which are superior to all reason, experience and self-determination? If it is serious about this, how can it, even if only for a moment, take seriously and accept the validity of an ethics which necessarily lacks or even disavows this knowledge? How can it liberate this ethics, as it were, by entering into an armistice with it? How can it imagine that it can secure its own right to exist in this way? Does it really believe in its own theme if it concedes that the other ethics has its source and subject in reason, experience and self-determination?-as if all this did

[526]

S 36. Ethics

[527]

as a Task of the Doctrine of God

not lie from the very outset in its own sphere, the sphere of theological ethics; as if it could be right to accept all these quantities as self-evident, to concede autonomy to man's knowledge of good and evil; as ifJesus Christ had not died and risen again; as if we could salute the grace of God, as it were, and then go our own way; as if it were the task of theology positively to encourage and invite people to do this by the establishment of this diastasis. If theological ethics has really to do with God's command, this differentiation obviously belongs to the things which cannot be expected of it. This, too, is forbidden. And this, too, is forbidden, because it would mean that the ethical task of the doctrine of God is abandoned before it is even begun. The differentiation of theological ethics from other ethics can have meaning only if it is understood either as its purely provisional detachment (to be carried out 'only YV!LvaaT('KW~ ENg) from an ethics whose theological basis has not been made explicit, or as its definitive detachment from an ethics which lacks or even denies this theological basis and is therefore wrong and false and perverted. Its starting-point is that all ethical truth is enclosed in the command of the grace of God-no matter whether this is understood as rational or historical, secular or religious, ecclesiastical or universal ethico-social truth. Just because it recognises its task to be the proclamation and exposition of this command, and therefore thinks and speaks on the basis of God's revelation, it has a place which is not less but all the fuller (because, as it were, from the source) for the voice of reason and experience (or whatever else we may call the supposedly contradictory "philosophical" principles). To speak with universally binding force is an obligation from which it cannot possibly seek exemption. It has to take up the legitimate problems and concerns and motives and assertions of every other ethics as such, and therefore after testing them in the light of its own superior principle. It has to listen to all other ethics in so far as it has to receive from them at every point the material for its own deliberations. To that extent its attitude to every other ethics is not negative but comprehensive. But just because it is comprehensive, it is fundamentally critical and decidedly not one of compromise. It is in agreement with every other ethics adduced to the extent that the latter is obviously aware-explicitly or implicitly-of its origin and basis in God's command; to the extent that it does not seek authorisation before any other court; to the extent that it actually attests the existence and validity of this principle. But it cannot and will not take it seriously to the extent that it tries to deny or obscure its derivation from God's command, to set up independent principles in face of autonomies and heteronomieswhich compromise the theonomy of human existence and action, to confront divine ethics with a human view of the world and of life which is supposed to have its own (if anything) superior value, and to undertake the replacement of the command of the grace of God by a sovereign humanism or even barbarism. In the former respect it will meet the other ENg

as an exercise

18

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

ethics comprehensively. But in the latter it can only meet it exclusively. The exclusion means that in this latter respect it can only address and deal with it as wrong and false and perverted, and therefore not really as ethics at all. On the one side, therefore, it absorbs it into itself, and on the other it opposes it. But either way, it renounces openly the motive which lurks secretly behind that division of roles. It is obviously no longer content to assign separate tasks to itself and other ethics. Either way, it necessarily accepts full responsibility for handling the whole problem of ethics-and not merely of an esoteric ethics which appeals to special sources and proceeds according to a special method, but of ethics generally and as such. In so doing, it also dismisses the last relic of apologetics which underlies this differentiation of tasks. But in view of its principle, and presupposing that it takes this seriously and does not itself abandon it, it obviously has no alternative. But we have still to take into account a third possible way of defining the relationship between theological ethics and other ethics. This is the Roman Catholic view of the matter, and both historically and materially it merits the closest atten tion. There is this at least to be said in its favour, that it perceives the doubtful elements in both apologetics and differentiation, and, allowing for the questionableness of the basic Roman Catholic view as such, is not altogether unsuccessful in avoiding or at any rate concealing them. We certainly cannot accuse it directly of either surrender of theology to the authority and judgment of principles alien to it, or escaping into the narrow confines of a special theological task. Universal human morality, the natural morality represented by a wholesome philosophy, is decisively claimed by it (anima humana naturaliter Christiana ENID), not as theological, but certainly as Christian morality. And it is recognised and treated as an equal partner for theological morality, whose voice the lattep must consistently hear, although never granting it real precedence. Two ethical sciences which are to be distinguished but never separated-moral philosophy and moral theology-are mutually coordinated, and mutually presuppose and complete each other, in the teaching of Roman Catholic moralists. They are always interconnected in a personal union. Yet the relationship is not one of equilibrium, but of disequilibrium. From the very outset moral theology is the pivot of the eccentric wheel, and it can never lose this position. Moral philosophy has its own natural centre, but it is also caught up in this movement. Two different, and in themselves equally worthy, problem-complexes are ranged in a necessarily fixed gradation. Moral philosophy is, as it were, the lower, and moral theology the upper storey of one and the same structure. Moral philosophy recognises the principles of moral behaviour as it is taught by experience and history, using the light of the natural reason which is proper to all men as such and which is in a limited way capable of performing this function. It apprehends moral principles as rational principles in the same sense as it apprehends the laws of logic. It knows them as the imperative which has its roots in man's

EN)()

the naturally Christian human mind

[528]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[529]

very being, although it is, of course, liable to go very far astray if in its assertions it does not also follow the light of revelation which comes streaming towards it. It sees, then, that the destiny of man is to glorify God the Creator by his existence as creature and in this way to prepare himself for eternal bliss. It sees that the moral good, as it is to be practised in the four philosophical virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, is that which corresponds to the rational nature of man. But it knows it as the good which is only relative good: relative, that is, to the absolute good, the highest good, the divine being, which is the idea of the good. Communion with this is at once the source and the sum of the human bliss which constitutes the ultimate aim of human action. As opposed to this, moral theology draws its knowledge directly from the springs of revelation, from Holy Scripture, from tradition and from the assertions of the teaching office of the Church. Its presupposition is the healing and exaltation of fallen man within the order of grace. Its task is to exhibit the supernatural morality by which alone man is in fact led to that goal, to develop the positive Christian moral law, and the universal and particular duties which follow from it, and supremely the three theological virtues of faith, love and hope. But if grace is indeed a higher element of life, completely different from the natural constitution of man, the effect of its administration and impartation is "at once a healing and renewing of nature from the disorder of sin and a raising of nature to mysterious godlikeness and divine sonship" (J. Mausbach, "Chr. Kath. Ethik" in Kultur der Gegenwart, I, 4, p. 540). The law of the new covenant regulating this renewal forms "a striking parallel to natural law" (p. 523). On the one hand, "the unfolding of the purposes and laws immanent in creatures includes for the rational being the development of their personal endowments to beatifying God-possession" (p. 534), and, on the other hand, "the universally maintained axiom: Gratia non destruit, sed supponit et perfieit naturam ENII recognises the persistence of man even after original sin, activates his moral-religious endowment with the attainment of justification, and maintains within the life of grace the moral necessity of natural thinking and willing" (p. 540). This is the construction of the relationship with which we are concerned. There were indications of it in the early Church; it was given its characteristic features by Thomas Aquinas; and in the course of the centuries it went through a process of continual elaboration and extending application by Roman theology. Taken as a whole, it is a bold "combination of Aristotle and Augustine" (p. 527) with all the possibilities of free individual movements to right and left which this involves.

We hardly need compare this construction with the uncertainty and confusion of the corresponding Neo-Protestant proposals to be forced to acknowledge that what we have here is on any count a very imposing, indeed in its way a classical, attempt at a solution. Does it not maintain that the knowledge of God must necessarily be one and the same ultimate and proper presupposition not only of theological but also of all ethics? Is it not shown that theological ethics-deriving like every other ethics from this ultimate knowledge, but drawing incomparably much more illumination from it-cannot possibly allow this other ethics to put and answer the question of truth, as though it were an exercise set and corrected by it? Could it not give us the necessary irenic and polemic-the claiming and acknowledging of other ethics in respect of the remnants of that presupposition still to be found in them, and the rejection of all other ethics in so far as they do not know or indeed deny ENll

Grace does not destroy,but subjects and perfects nature 20

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

this presupposition ? At a first glance we may even be tempted to regard this solution as ideal. And if we were compelled to choose between the NeoProtestant and the Roman Catholic solutions, in this as in so many other questions we should have no option but to prefer the latter. Yet in spite of all this we cannot really be satisfied with it. Within this framework the command of the grace of God as the content of theological ethics definitely cannot have the status which properly belongs to it. For this Roman Catholic co-ordination of moral philosophy and moral theology is based on the basic view of the harmony which is achieved in the concept of being between nature and super-nature, reason and revelation, man and God. And it is quite impossible to see how in this basic view grace can really emerge as grace and the command as command. According to this view, the fall does not alter the fact that man's imitative knowledge is capable and to that extent partakes of true being even without grace, and therefore-analogia communion with the supreme essential being, with God, and entisEN12-of therefore with the supreme good, although on account of the fall a special illumination by the grace of revelation is needed actually to prevent it from falling into error. Indeed, the knowledge of God and therefore of the good offered to man has been made so difficult by the fall that as a rule, or at any rate in its whole depth, it does not become real without grace, gratia sanans et elevans naturamEN13• Yet the fall has not made this knowledge absolutely impossible. A remnant is left of the adjustment of man to God in creation. In virtue of this, even without grace he can know that God is, and that He is one and spiritual and personal. And to some extent at least he can also know the good which God requires of him. Similarly, his volition in regard to that which he ought to will is no doubt enfeebled, but it is not enslaved to the obedience of sin. And on this basis, on this unimpaired liberum arbitriumEN14, Roman doctrine claims that the anima humanaEN15 is christiana naturaliterEN16 and not gratuitoEN17; and on the strength of this, that the light of natural reason is the principle of knowledge in its moral philosophy. The same ordination of man to God, of nature to super-nature, which is not conferred and constituted in spite of the fall, but maintained and continued in spite of the fall, and which is natural, as deriving from creation, is the connecting point by which the moral theology which is ostensibly based on grace alone, and derives from Scripture and dogma, has actually to be orientated. Whatever its superiority may be to moral philosophy, it cannot exist except as super-structure upon that substructure. If it is this which legitimates the latter, it is the latter which carries it. And whatever it will have to say of special theological virtues and duties, it will EN I ~ EN 1:~ EN 14 EN1:) EN 1fi EN 17

analogy of being grace healing and raising nature free will human mind naturally Christian by grace

21

[530]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God .

[531J

not say it in respect of a subject newly created by the grace of God, but in respect of the subject who is fully capable of knowing and doing the good, and therefore even without the grace of God the subject of the Christian behaviour which is under consideration. This presupposition of the Roman Catholic construction is in every respect unacceptable. Strong opposition must be made to the idea that the metaphysics of being, the starting-point of this line of thought, is the place from which we can do the work of Christian theology, from which we can see and describe grace and nature, revelation and reason, God and man, both as they are in themselves and in their mutual relationship. The harmony in which they are co-ordinated within this system is surreptitious. For what has that metaphysics of being to do with the God who is the basis and Lord of the Church? If this God is He who in Jesus Christ became man, revealing Himself and reconciling the world with Himself, it follows that the relationship between Him and man consists in the event in which God accepted man out of pure, free compassion, in which He drew him to Himself out of pure kindness, but first and last in the eternal decree of the covenant of grace, in God's eternal predestination. It is not with the theory of the relationship between creaturely and creative being, but with the theory of this divine praxis, with the consideration and conception of this divine act, of its eternal decree and its temporal execution, that theology, and therefore theological ethics, must deal. But since it has to deal with this theory, preoccupation with the relationship between creaturely and creative being, the doctrine of the "analogy" subsisting between the two, has necessarily to be condemned as a perilous distraction. From this standpoint we can only issue a warning against the harmony between heaven and earth which is achieved on the basis of this very different theory, and against the falsification of all theological conceptions which is inevitable on the basis of this very different theory. Grace which has from the start to share its power with a force of nature is no longer grace, i.e., it cannot be recognised as what the grace of God is in the consideration and conception of that divine act, as what it is inJesus Christ. And therefore revelation which has from the very outset a partner in the reason of the creature, and which cannot be revelation without its co-operation, is no longer revelation. At any rate, it is not the revelation which takes place in the act in which God opens Himself to man in pure goodness; in which He does not find an existing partner in man, but creates a partner; in which even the fact that God is known and knowable is the work of His freedom. And therefore, when from the very outset man is co-ordinated with God on the basis of this analogy-not in the humanity of Jesus Christ and therefore on the basis of God's own free decree, but simply in his metaphysical being as a rational creature-God is no longer God, At any rate, He is not the God who from all eternity has made all fellowship between Himself and men the content of the will of His love. The concepts of grace and revelation and God as they derive from the knowledge of the will and act of God in Jesus Christ are not adapted to be applied as they are in the Roman Catholic system. 22

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

They burst through this system. And if this is true, the same is also to be said of the concept of sin. In discussion with Roman Catholic theology it is better not to start from this negative concept, for what we have to say about it can be seen only in the light of these positive concepts. It is because the grace of God, as it is defined in relation to Jesus Christ and therefore to that divine act, is His free gift to man, because revelation includes the creation of the God-knowing subject, because the love of God and that love alone accomplishes and is the co-ordination of man with God, that we have to deny to man the aptitude to co-operate with grace, revelation and God. It is for these reasons that the co-ordination which God effects cannot be interpreted as a disposition which is proper to man. And it is for the same reasons that we cannot accept that merely relative and quantitative scope and significance of the fall, that doctrine of the nature of man which regards it as merely sick, deranged and impotent, that talk of a remnant of the original divine image and likeness which remains in spite of the fall. This explains why we have to object against Roman doctrine that with its doctrine of the surviving liberum arbitriumEN18 it misunderstands and distorts in the most dangerous way the seriousness of sin and therefore the seriousness of the human situation in relation to God. Accusing it of a misplaced optimism, we have not to oppose to it a corresponding pessimism, but the twofold question: whether Roman doctrine does not see that it is precisely the knowledge of the kindness of God which makes its optimistic judgment of man impossible; and why it shuts itself off from a knowledge of the kindness of God by finally turning its eyes away from Jesus Christ in the question of grace, revelation and God, and looking to the height or depth of a metaphysics of being in which it thinks it has found that original union between heaven and earth, that far too beautiful harmony, and, as a note in that harmony, the irreducible creaturely disposition of man to God. Only when the mind is distracted is it possible to speak of man in this way. Thus the central task of the Protestant irenic and polemic in relation to Roman Catholic theology is to recall it from this distraction to its proper business, the Christian theme. For in this distraction it is particularly incapable of establishing the concept of the divine command, and therefore introducing serious theological ethics. The order of obligation built on the order of being cannot as such be a real order of obligation, or at any rate of a divinely imperative obligation, as introduced in Jesus Christ, in the divine act of the world's reconciliation with God as the act of His pure goodness. If obligation is grounded in being, this undoubtedly means that it is not grounded in itself, but ontically subordinated to another, and noetically to be derived from this other. It is imperative only in virtue of that which is over it; and it becomes imperative for us only in virtue of its derivation from it. But if what is over it is the being in which man participates in his way as God does in His, how can it be and become imperative except with the assistance and co-operation of man, EN

I H

free will

[532]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[533]

except on the presupposition of his agreement? But on this presupposition it is quite impossible that it should confront him, his being and his existence with an absolute challenge; that it should dominate him and claim him with absolute sovereignty; that it should have for him the character of majesty; that it should be able to meet him and concern him as a command of God. From the very outset man is assured of a right of consultation and control in God's command. Whatever else it may be and mean for him, it can never become for him a command that affects him personally and binds him unconditionally. It ca~ certainly never become a command of God, in so far as by God is meant the Lord who in Jesus Christ controls man absolutely and beyond all question by the decree of His mercy. But it is not really this God that Roman theology means when it uses the term. This God is replaced by the divine image of being, the god-concept of ancient philosophy. Now admittedly this divine image can do many things, as is the case with such demon-figures. But it cannot in the true sense of the word command. It can never become an inexorable and indisputable necessity for human action. It cannot place man before the question of his existence or non-existence. Indeed, this is the very question which is expressly excluded. For man exists, and even exists in analogy to God Himself, whether he keeps the command or not. It is no doubt good for him to keep it. It may go ill with him if he does not keep it. But it cannot possibly be . for him a matter of life or death. For the command does not have behind it the eternal power and severity of predestination, of the free goodness of God. The binding force of the reconciliation which has taken place between the world and God is something which it cannot have. But all this applies as much to the moral theology of Romanism as to its moral philosophy, to its Aristotelian teaching on virtue as to its Pauline. For the decisive misunderstanding of God and man is not confined to the substructure but affects the whole edifice of this moral doctrine. It is no help to the moral philosophy that it tries to pay attention not only to the natural light of reason, but also to the light of revelation, and therefore from the very outset to give the desired theological shape and finish to the determination of man. Nor, again, is it any help to the moral theology that it tries to focus attention on the light of revelation and only inciden tally attends also to the naturalligh t of reason. For in both cases, first in the foreground and then in the background, everything is compromised by the fact that revelation is not really accepted as revelation, but is constantly set against the light of reason with its independent, iflimited, illumination. Neither in the one case nor the other can there be any attestation or explanation of the divine command (or, if there is, it can only be the result of a happy inconsistency in relation to the whole system). The enterprise of theological ethics is not one with which to trifle. It must be taken up properly-and this can mean only on the assumption that the command of the grace of God is its sole content-or it is better left alone. The complaint which we have to make against the Roman construction of the rela-

24

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

tionship between theological ethics and general human ethics is that it is dominated by this great distraction, and therefore it only plays at theological ethics. It thinks it can combine and co-ordinate the Christian and the human far too easily. To achieve this combination and co-ordination it has emptied out what is Christian. Therefore in spite of its inherent advantages we cannot accept it. The remarkable t~ing is that here as elsewhere these inherent advantageswe have mentioned them-cannot be denied to the Roman doctrine. The gross blunders of apologetics and isolationism which are so evident in the theological ethics of Neo-Protestantism have been avoided, or at least they remain invisible. In fact, however, they are avoided or invisible only because they are in some sense committed in principle, and therefore do not need to be committed in particular. Roman theological ethics is the wisest of all mediating systems because it is apologetic from the very outset in its understanding of grace and revelation and God, i.e., because it is an establishment and justification of the Christian position before the forum of general human thought, and accomplishes the fatal assimilation of the Christian to the human. But it is also the wisest because, without any inner conflict, it works with that division of roles, and in this way safeguards its task as theological ethics, although obviously rendering it innocuous. It does not need to expose itself on both sides as in the apologetic and differentiating movements of the theological ethics of Neo-Protestantism, because from the very first, and officially, it finds itself on the very tracks which in Neo-Protestantism are so pitifully revealed to be emergency exits. But this being the case, there is no real reason to prefer it to the theological ethics of Neo-Protestantism. From

the Roman

with such sovereign epigonous.

standpoint superiority

It displays

dilettantism. intention

it is possible because

the skill of the master

It knows what it is about

whatever

Reformation

to look down on the Neo-Protestant

of being catholic,

in a particularly

olicism to Neo-Protestantism cases that in this matter

where

where

but thinks

consistent

in the latter we have only a palpable

the latter

does not-where

that it is administering

way. This is the abiding

as it emerges

in this matter

of malicious

calumny

tian and natural

Morality." has the origin

ator, there is no opposition by naturalistic

determined themselves

of Roman

Cathin both

and human

criteria,

natural,

in conclusion

122 f.) on the theme,

of its being in God and no creature

in kind between

i.e., this-worldly,

and, on the other

hand,

"Chris-

can disown the Creimmanent

morality

as

Christian

morality

as

by the being of God. Only the pure being of the world and man, as these are in apart from sin, must in its pure essentiality

pure being, which lies at the base of all empirical the obligating revelation

of the

superiority

on both sides, let us quote

has to say at the end of his Theol. Ethik. (1925,

directed

has no

too. But it is characteristic

what G. Wunsch

As everything

the latter the heritage

they do exactly the same thing.

To avoid the appearance

"1.

position

it does, in fact, do classically what in the latter is only

being

in the sense of the pure

which is accessible

to every man.

determine

existence

the laws of the moral. This

and can be disengaged

law of nature;

it is the means

from it, is

of the primal

[534]

S 36. Ethics

as a Task of the Doctrine of God

But Christian morality is directed to the God of the revelatio specialisEN19 which has taken place in Jesus Christ. It includes natural morality, which, with the help of an overbracketing of values, will alwaysbe an idealistic morality, and in content it shoots out beyond it. Its particularity is to give divine sanction to natural morality, to recognise its commands as expressions of God's will effected by creation, and to demand reverence not only for the essence of the world, but also for the being of God. It demands an attitude on the part of man to God which corresponds to the distinctive relationship to Him; the relationship of creature to Creator, or rather, of pardoned sinner to gracious God, a relationship of absolute reverence, love and gratitude." In Marburg, where this waswritten, it was not appreciated that that very same thing could be written in Munster, Paderborn or Freiburg-only better. "2.

[535]

Now that we have made these delimitations, we can give the following outline of the ethical enquiry of a Church dogmatics and its relationship to other ethical enquiries. When God is understood as the Lord of man, by this very fact the problem of human obedience is also posited. But the problem of obedience is the problem of human behaviour. To that extent dogmatics coincides with the ethical problem. But the latter is not merely a concern of dogmatics. It is not merely a Church problem. It is a general human problem; a problem of philosophy, politics and pedagogy. It may be put and answered consciously or unconsciously, superficially or profoundly, but it is the problem of every man, the problem of human existence. To exist as a man means to act. And action means choosing, deciding. What is the right choice? What ought I to do? What ought we to do? This is the question before which every man is objectively placed. And whatever may be the results of his examination of the question as a question, it is the question to which he never ceases even for a moment objectively to give an answer. When we take up this problem from our startingpoint in a knowledge of the God who elects man, it is inevitable that right at the outset it should undergo a change of form by which it is immediately differentiated from what is usually regarded elsewhere as the ethical problem, and in such a way as to exclude in practice any return to the ethical questions and answers that arise from other starting-points. As compared with all ethical enquiry and reply which is differently orientated, that which has its source in God's predestination must always be and become something distinctive both as a whole and in detail. Certainly, the question taken up is still that of human action, of human existence as such. But for us this question is at once the question of human obedience. Starting out from the knowledge of the divine election of man, we can know of no human action which does not stand under God's command, of no human existence which does not respond in one way or another to God's command, which has not the character of obedience or disobedience to God's command. We do not know any human action which is free, i.e., exempted from decision in relation to God's command, or neutral in regard to it. And for just the same reason we do not know any free investigation EN19

special revelaion

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

of good and evil. We cannot take up the ethical question in this sense. All that we can say of a theological ethics which tries to take up the ethical question in this sense-as a free question of good and evil-is that at the very first step it has dropped its own theme, its own problem. There is no ethical problem in this sense. Or there is so only per nefasEN20, only in virtue of the misunderstanding of unbelief, which does not know or does not want to know about the lordship of God over men. Theological ethics must not fall back into this misunderstanding. This is the frontier at which it must halt. For the question of good and evil has been decided and settled once and for all in the decree of God, by the cross and the resurrection of jesus Christ. Now that this decision has been made, theological ethics cannot go back on it. It can only accept it as a decision that has been made actually and effectively. It can only attest and confirm and copy it. Like theology in general, it is not concerned to penetrate to the foundation of things. It can only bear witness to the foundation which all things actually have, and which has actually been revealed as such. It can only be as receptive and open as possible to this revealed foundation of all things, as true and complete as possible in its attestation of it. But it cannot act as if it had first to be discovered and disclosed. It cannot put itself on the same footing as an ethics which first tries to investigate this foundation, to make it the content of its own answers. It cannot adopt the questions and answers of this ethics: not even if the latter later returns to its own line; not even if it later asks and answers in almost or altogether the same words as itself; not even if it later acts as an ostensibly Christian ethics. We can only move along this line when we have started on it. Theological ethics has to move along this line from the very outset. But this means, first, that the reality of the good as such, the reality of the command of God as the sum of the good, cannot be treated as a mere possibility.We cannot first make a problem of the reality of the good in the command of God, or of the reality of the command of God as the sum of the good, and then come back to the affirmation of them in the form of a solution of the problem. We cannot even incidentally reckon with the possibility that there is no good, or that it consists in something other than the command of God. We cannot even incidentally make it the object of our choice. For if we do, it is no longer this good, not even if we do finally approve it. This good is chosen only in obedience, i.e., in the choice in whose making we have no choice, because we are chosen ourselves and can only make this one choice. Its possibility demands our recognition and apprehension as it is included in its reality as the reality of God, which either includes all possibility or excludes it as an impossible possibility. Even when it takes up the ethical problem, theological thinking is always bound to this reality. It apprehends only one possibility-that which is affirmed and determined in this reality. It cannot, therefore, wander around in the field of other possibilities. And since this possibility is a reality, it EN20

by sin (or by wrong)

[536]

S 36. Ethics [537]

[538]

as a Task of the Doctrine of God

cannot treat it as a mere possibility. It cannot-even incidentally-abstract from it. It cannot bracket it under something higher. There is nothing higher from which it can'survey, test, estimate, and as a result affirm and adopt it. It cannot act as if there were no God, or as if God were not what He has revealed Himself to be in Jesus Christ, or as if it had first to investigate whether He has really done this and what He has really achieved by it. When it takes up the ethical problem, and so for a moment falls into line with 'all man's ethical thinking, and with it poses and answers the question of right conduct, it presupposes that even this general question has its basis in the fact that man (objectively each man as such) is confronted with the command of God, that the command of God is objectively valid for him, and that only for this reason (but for this reason necessarily) he is in a position to ask about right conduct. But if from the very first-before the discussion even begins-it understands man and the ethical problem from this standpoint, and regulates its own enquiry and reply in accordance with it, it immediately leaves the general series. In all its solidarity with this series, it confronts it as question and summons. In an irenico-polemical contrast to it, it represents the insight that "what is good" has been "said" to man (Mic. 68), so that man has been forbidden to try to say it to himself, and bidden simply and faithfully to repeat what has been said to him. This is what theological thinking calls ethical reflection and discussion. It is to be noted that it has not sought this out for itself. It has not capriciously chosen and assigned to itself this-special task. It only intervenes with its distinctive method because, long before it arose, the subject proclaimed itself. And, among other things, the subject demands that its nature should be scientifically noted, and that therefore a scientific procedure should be employed which is adapted to its special nature and to that extent distinctive. Theological thinking cannot possibly evade this subject. It cannot cease from being a positive science of this subject, and therefore from being bound to its nature. But the nature of this subject demands, above all, that the reality of the good as such, and the reality of the command of God as the sum of the good, should not be for it a problem. It demands a recognition of the ethical problem as put by this reality. This orientation of theological ethics means, secondly, that while it, too, enquires concerning the right conduct of man, it cannot cease to attest and interpret the reality of God, and therefore His Word and work. It cannot change either its direction or its theme. When it asks about right conduct, it cannot stealthily become an indicative or imperative representation of the Christian; an empirical or ideal depiction of Christian existence. It cannot turn its back on the Word of God in order, for a change, to see what has become of the man who hears the Word of God, or what will perhaps become of him. Even as ethics, theology is wholly and utterly the knowledge and representation of the Word and work of God. What is the true Christian way of speaking about right conduct? In this respect, too, we cannot go roaming around. We cannot cling to a man, perhaps someone whom we regard as an

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

exemplary Christian, or to a human type, perhaps a representation of Christian living that we find particularly instructive in a historical or contemporary group or school. If obedience to God's command is right conduct, what incontrovertible reason have we to pass off any individual or general human model as obedience? What authority have we to make it a norm? And what are we to think if in the portrayal of this obedience the spokesman is something in the nature of a Christian self-consciousness, even if this is ever so sure of its case and objectively ever so purified? Again, it is difficult to see in what sense and with what right we can undertake to sketch an ideal picture of the Christian life which can then be proclaimed as the realisation of the good, as the norm of Christian obedience. Where are we to derive this ideal picture? And what authority have we for maintaining that this is the form of living that corresponds to divine election? In this way a more or less imposing law can no doubt be found or excogitated. Often enough, Christian ethics-in analogy with all sorts of other ethics-has been surprised at law-making of this kind. But in this case it is definitely not speaking about God's command. In this case the task of ethics has definitely not been understood as a task of the doctrine of God. What emerges as law can have just as much or as little authority as those who have found or excogitated the ideal pictures, or as the ideal pictures themselves. They cannot possibly have any more. Therefore they cannot possibly have any theological authority, any ultimately binding and obligating authority, even if in themselves they are ever so beautiful and impressive. We cannot deal with the command of God, and therefore with the realisation of the good, with right conduct, in a way which is unattached and vagabond. We can speak only as we ourselves are bound by the command of God. But ethics is always in bondage to God's command when it directs its cognition to the Word and work of God and when it persists in doing so, when it begins as a cognition of the grace of God and never ceases to be this. If it accepts the prohibition to develop an arbitrary knowledge of good and evil, how can it try to cling to any pictures which it may find or excogitate of Christian obedience, as if this were not again that arbitrary knowledge in a new and ostensibly Christian form? Ifit starts off from the fact that what is good is said to man, what else can or will it do but cling to what is said? But what is said to man is the Word and work of divine election which has taken place and been revealed in Jesus Christ. This Word and work of God as such is also the sanctification of man, the establishment and revelation of the divine law. What right conduct is for man is determined absolutely in the right conduct of God. It is determined inJesus Christ. He is the electing God and elected man in One. But He is also the sanctifying God and sanctified man in One. In His person God has acted rightly towards us. And in the same person man has also acted rightly for us. In His person God has judged man and restored him to His image. And in His person again man has reconstituted himself in the divine likeness. We do not need any other image but this: neither another image of God nor another image of man and his right conduct; neither another Gospel nor another Law. In the one image

29

[539]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[540]

of jesus Christ we have 'both the Gospel which reconciles us with God and .illumines us and consoles us, and the Law which in contradistinction to all the laws which we ourselves find or fabricate really binds and obligates us. This is the Law to which theological ethics clings. It is ethics of grace or it is not theological ethics. For it is in grace-the grace of God in jesus Christ-that even the command of God is established and fulfilled and revealed as such. Therefore "to become obedient," "to act rightly," "to realise the good," never means anything other than to become obedient to the revelation of the grace of God; to live as a man to whom grace has come in jesus Christ. But this is the very reason why there can be no change of standpoint or theme when dogmatics becomes ethics, or, rather, when it reveals its ethical content. It cannot live less, but must live wholly and utterly, by the knowledge of the Word and work of God, by the knowledge of jesus Christ. It cannot, then, proceed to divide its attention betweenjesus Christ and the man who is received and accepted into favour injesus Christ. It cannot enquire first about jesus Christ, and then specifically about this man. The light of jesus Christ is itself and as such the light "which lighteth every man" Gn. 19), the light which falls on man, irradiating and illuminating him. The grace ofjesus Christ itself and alone is the reality in which from the very start man himself has his reality. The man to whom the Word of God is directed and for whom the work of God was done-it is all one whether we are thinking of the Christian who has grasped it in faith and related it to himself, or the man in the cosmos who has not yet done so-this man, in virtue of this Word and work, does not exist by himself. He is not an independent subject, to be considered independently. In virtue of the death and resurrection of jesus Christ-whether he knows and believes it or not-it is simply not true that he belongs to himself and is left to himself, that he is thrown back on himself. He belongs to the Head, jesus Christ, of whose body he is or is to become a member, the Lord of the Church who is also the Lord of the cosmos, and therefore the Lord of those who so far do not believe in Him, or do so no longer. He exists because jesus Christ exists. He exists as a predicate of this Subject, i.e., that which has been decided and is real for man in this Subject is true for him. Therefore the divine command as it is directed to him, as it applies to him, consists in his relationship to t~is Subject. Therefore the action of this Subject for him is the right action or conduct which we have to investigate. In relation to the individual what we have to investigate is his participation in the righteousness of this Subject and not his own abstract immanent righteousness. We have to investigate the sanctification that God effects in this Subject,jesus Christ, and the self-sanctification of man which is accomplished by this Subject,jesus Christ, not a sanctity of our own which we have to practise and demonstrate to others. When we say:What ought we to do? we are , asking about Him, for it is in Him that this question of ours is answered. In Him the obedience demanded of us men has already been rendered. In Him the realisation of the good corresponding to divine election has already taken place-and so completely that we, for our part, have actually nothing to add,

1.

The Command of God and the Ethical Problem

but have only to endorse this event by our action. The ethical problem of Church dogmatics can consist only in the question whether and to what extent human action is a glorification of the grace of Jesus Christ. Theological ethics cannot consider a view of man that is severed from this life-centre, from the decision made in Jesus Christ. It cannot consider a question of good and evil that is abstracted from the question of this glorification. It asks to what extent the sanctification of man in Jesus Christ has taken place. It asks, therefore, concerning the glorification which necessarily corresponds to this occurrence. Otherwise it is not theological ethics. It asks about the action of the man who is actually placed in the light of grace. Obviously, when it has and maintains this orientation, it takes a distinctive way in comparison with all other ethics. It must not be ashamed of this distinctiveness. It must not be diverted from going this way from the beginning to the end. The nature of its object requires this way. It does its work well or less well as it is true or less true to this way. At this point the question arises whether and to what extent another ethics, a nontheological ethics, can be recognised as legitimate and possible alongside the theological. If this question is to be understood strictly, it must read: Is there, as the supreme and final imperative, a YVW8L O€aVTOvEN21 which man can and should address to himself, as was presumably the intention of this catchword of late antiquity? Is there a self-reflection, a selfunderstanding and a self-responsibility, in which man has to tell himself what is good? Is, therefore, the doing of the good something which in itself is quite different from obedience to God's command, or concretely, from the glorifying of the grace ofJesus Christ? Can it be said, perhaps, that obedience to God's command is good only because and in so far as it is possibly included in the concept of that doing of the good about whose meaning and necessity man himself can and should pronounce? When it is understood in this way the question is obviously to be answered in the negative. Theological ethics can only oppose the most resolute disbelief to faith in the right and power of this self-reflection, self-understanding and self-responsibility, to faith in a doing of the good in itself which is not obedience to God's command, although at best it includes this obedience. It has to disarm it right awayby not treating it seriously. In other words, it can accept it only on the presupposition which it ignores or denies, that voluntarily or involuntarily it, too, derives from the validity of the command of God and has necessarily to attest it. The right and power with which it tries to assert itself have been borrowed from the very place where theological ethics itself has found the righ t and power to answer the ethical problem, and will never cease to seek it. In so far as a non-theological ethics has for its content a humanity which is grounded in itself and discovers and proclaims itself, theological ethics will have to deny the character of this humanity as humanity and consequently the character of this ethics as ethics. It will still have to do this even when the latter includes a more or less friendly and appreciative regard for religious and ostensibly even for Christian interests and positions. There is no humanity outside the humanity of Jesus Christ or the voluntary or involuntary glorifying of the grace of God which has manifested itself in this humanity. There is no realisation of the good which is not identical with the grace of Jesus Christ and its voluntary or involuntary confirmation. For there is no good which is not obedience to God's command. And there is no obedience to EN21

'know thyself

[541]

S 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[542]

God's command which is not the obedience ofjesus Christ or His positive or negative glorification. But in its true and strict historical sense YVW8L aEavTovEN22 does not lead to the obedience ofjesus Christ and His glorification. In its true and strict historical sense it can be understood only as a summons to rebellion against the grace of God. This rebellion does not become less heinous if later, perhaps, it proceeds to make the grace of God an object of human self-reflection, self-understanding and self-responsibility, to make it 'aspecial content of human self-consciousness, and therefore to give to this self-consciousness, among other things, a religious or even a supposedly Christian content, as in the classical attempt of Schleiermacher, the Christian apologist among the Idealists. What begins with the human self cannot end with the knowledge of God 'and of His command. Nor can it end with the knowledge of the real man in his real situation. In its true and strict historical sense, the YVW8L aEavTovEN23, and an ethics conceived and developed in the practice of this imperative, is shown-post Christum natumEN24-to be illegitimate and impossible by the death and resurrection of jesus Christ. In so far as an ethics derives from this source, in so far as it carries out in the background an apotheosis of the self or the self-given answer or the selfundertaken enquiry, in so far as it tries at best (ifit does not prefer to be atheistic) to understand God decisivelyfrom man instead of man decisivelyfrom God, it cannot be regarded by theological ethics as legitimate or possible. Only that well-meaning interpretation in meliorem partemEN25 can be expected of the latter. It must be content to be understood by it differently (we say better) than it understands itself. The case would naturally be rather different with an ethics whose self-reflection, selfunderstanding and self-responsibility were from the outset overshadowed, determined and guided by a prior, even if more orless inexplicit, knowledge of the Word of God. An ethics of this kind would renounce all claim to try to speak a final word in solution of the problem of right conduct. Now an ethics is certainly conceivable which, although not theological ethics in the direct sense, would open up the whole problem of the uncertain and questionable nature of human life and conduct, without being guilty of that apotheosis in the background, without asserting that there is an ultimate reality either from or within the human self as such, without seeking or exhibiting in man the principle and the reality of the good. It would be an ethics that knew the limits of humanity, and would not therefore treat humanity as an absolute, but would for that very reason do justice to it and serve it. Indirectly, it too would find the goodness of human action in the fact that it is obedience. Indirectly, it too would call man awayfrom himself; from the attempt to become master of the claim which is made upon him; from the attempt to translate it into a claim which he makes-the final and highest triumph of all heathen ethics. Indirectly, it too would be a summons to the responsibility in which man must acknowledge and confess that a demand is made on him because a gift has been conferred upon him, and that he alwaysowes what is demanded, that he therefore stands in constant need of forgiveness, that even as he is sanctified he cannot dream or boast that he is a saint. Indirectly, it too could easily be a proclamation and glorification of the grace of jesus Christ, and could therefore give the glory to God alone. And therefore already it would itself have tacitly interpreted and practised the YVW8L aEavTovEN26 in a Christian sense. In the face of an ethics of this kind the question would obviously have to be answered in the affirmative. It is a "Christian" ethics in a loose sense, and it has, in fact, a place alongside theological ethics. It has its starting-point, basis and aim in common with the EN22 EN23 EN24 EN25 EN26

'know thyself 'know thyself after the birth of Christ understood in a charitable sense 'know thyself

2.

The Way of Theological Ethics

latter. The difference is that these do not emerge directly-or do so only occasionally. It does not attempt to draw up expressly and specifically any basic principles. It is content to show by its actual handling of the problems of human life that the Christian knowledge of God is its presupposition and that it does, in fact, derive from this. It stands in a sense half-waybetween theology and the Christian life itself. For it has heard the Word of God attested in Scripture and in the preaching of the Christian Church, or it shows actual traces of the dominion of that Word over all men. It is, therefore, occupied with it. But its own concern is to put this understanding into effect in a definite interpretation and representation of human life. It cannot be expected, therefore, that this type of ethics will be encountered in an academic form. To be academic, it would have to be based on principle. It would have to expose and expound its presupposition. And if it did, it would become theological ethics. It is no part of our present task to mention a particular instance of an ethics which is "Christian" although not theological. With the necessary qualifications we might think of phenomena like the lifework ofH. Pestalozzi. It might be contended that this type of ethics has been presented mOore or less clearly and consistently, although in very different ways, in the novels of Jeremias Gotthelf, H. de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Dostoievski, Tolstoi, Theodor Fontane or John Galsworthy. Traces of it might be found-and not only within historical Christianity-in certain old and new political and social conceptions, and also, it goes without saYing,in the studies of the philosophical moralists. But the touchstone of non-theological ethics of this kind will alwaysbe whether and to what extent it can stand an examination of its fundamental principles; whether and to what extent its implicit presuppositions, if they were made explicit, would prove to be identical with those of theological ethics. In practice, however, it is impossible to apply this touchstone to any great extent, for explicit theological principle is not everybody's concern. We can and must accept the fact, therefore, that this is not actually necessary. Thanks to the wisdom and patience of God, and the inconsequence of men, it is quite possible in practice that Christian insights and deductions may actually exist where their Christian presuppositions are wholly concealed, or where a closer investigation would reveal all kinds of presuppositions that are only to a small extent Christian. There are many people who live by Christian presuppositions, who even represent and proclaim them, and yet if they were questioned, could only tell us something very far from satisfactory or quite unsatisfactory, something which we might have to dismiss as heathenism or Jewish doctrine. The wise course, then, is to keep to what they actually know and not to what they unfortunately seem not to know or even in their folly to deny. The business of the reader or hearer of this type of ethics is tacitly to supplement and correct its more doubtful-implicit or explicit-presuppositions (as Paul did in Ac. 1728), and for the rest to learn from it what it actually has to teach. But this does not in the least alter, but rather confirms, the fact that in thesi, in principle-and this is what concerns us here-correct ethics can only be Christian ethics, and Christian ethics, if it speaks scientifically, cannot be differentiated from theological ethics. In the last analysis, therefore, the only strict answer to our question is to say that in a scientific form there is only one ethics, theological ethics.

2.

THE WAYOF THEOLOGICAL

ETHICS

It is the Christian doctrine of God, or, more exactly, the knowledge of the electing grace of God in Jesus Christ, which decides the nature and aim of theological ethics, of ethics as an element of Church dogmatics. It has its basis, therefore, in the doctrine of God Himself. For the God who claims man makes

33

[543]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God Himself originally responsible for man. The fact that He gives man His command, that He subjects man to His command, means that He makes Himself responsible not only for its authority but also for its fulfilment. Therefore we do not speak completely about God Himself if we do not go on at once to speak also about His command. But it is the Christian doctrine of God, or, more exactly, the knowledge of the electing grace of God inJesus Christ, which also decides the special way of theological ethics, the special form of its enquiry and reply, the attain~ent of its fundamental principles. Here, as everywhere, the rightness of these is decided by the matter to which they must be related-the matter which is to be presented by them. Now the matter of theological ethics is the responsibility which God has assumed for us in the fact that He has made us accountable through His command. Its matter is the Word and work of God in Jesus Christ, in which the right action of man has already been performed and therefore waits only to be confirmed by our action. In view of this matter, we must first refuse to follow all those attempts at theological ethics which start from the assumption that it is to be built on, or to proceed from, a general human ethics, a "philosophical" ethics. In the relationship between the command of God and the ethical problem, as we have defined it in its main features, there is not a universal moral element autonomously confronting the Christian. It is, therefore, quite out of the question methodically to subordinate the latter to the former, to build it on, or to derive it from, it. Just as we cannot take the road followed by Roman Catholic ethics, we cannot tread that of Schleiermacher and De Wette, and more recently W. Herrmann [( 1) Natural-moral life and moral thinking, (2) The Christian-moral life]; T. Haering [(1) Christian moral teaching and its opponents, (2) Christian moral teaching in its inner context]; 0 Kirn [( 1) Doctrine of ethical principles, (2) Systematic presentation of the Christian moral life]; E. W. Mayer [(1) Moral philosophy, (2) Moral doctrine]; G. Wunsch [( 1) The essence of the moral, (2) The essence of the Christian-moral] and others. Thinking which does not reflect about the matter, but from the matter, cannot possibly allow itself to be crowded on to this path.

[544J

But again, in view of the matter in mind, we shall have to cut ourselves free from all those deductions and classifications which start from the presupposition that while dogmatics has to do with God and faith in Him, the concern of ethics is with man and his life. This distinction usually avenges itself at once, for the distinctive Whence? and Whither? of theological ethics are smothered by the various questions man as such has to put and would like to see answered in relation to the shaping of his life. These questions of human life replace the command of God as the proper theme, the framework of all thinking on the subject. But this being the case, how can the command of God be really stated with its primary and comprehensive questioning of man and his questions? How can justice be done to this element when in the change of scene between dogmatics and ethics it is suddenly deprived of its natural position as the subject of all statements, and is understood only as the predicate of the man who 34

2.

The Way of Theological Ethics

believes in God? And ifjustice is not done to it, how canjustice be done to the task of theological ethics? Because there is no satisfactory answer to this question, we cannot take the customary path of theological ethics, quite apart from its doubtful relationship to ethics in general. According to Schleiermacher's ingenious conception, theological ethics has to speak of the "purifying" activity of ecclesiastical and domestic as well as legal and political discipline; of the "disseminating" activityof marriage and again extensively of the Church; and finally of the "exhibiting" activity of worship, social fellowship, art and sport. According to J. C. v. Hofmann (Theol. Ethik, 1878), its concern is with the Christian disposition as expressed in moral action towards God in the different spheres of the Church, the family, the state and society. According to W. Hermann, it has to do with the question of the origin and development of the Christian life. According to O. Kirn, it deals with the origin and development of Christian personality on the one hand, and, on the other, with the practice of morality in society. According to T. Haering, its theme is the new life of the Christian as a personality and what it means to be a Christian in the sphere of human fellowship. According to E. W. Mayer, it has to do with the moral disposition of the will, the nature of moral action in the different forms of activity and communities, its ordering and structure, and finally its result, the kingdom of God. According to G. Wunsch, whose arrangement is not very clear, its concern is (I) with the being of God, (2) with the consequences for morality of the experience of God, (3) with the Christian character, and (4) with "some residual problems," which include amongst other things the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. The way of A. Schlatter (Chr. Ethik, 1914) is, without doubt, original and powerful. As he sees it, the schema of investigation and presentation is provided by the four Platonic virtues of justice, truth, happiness and power as they are related to the community of will, cognition, emotion and life. The objection to all these classifications is that they do not derive from the matter of theological ethics, but have been foisted on it from outside, and not to its advantage. It is certainly a very fine observation of Schleiermacher's that there are to be distinguished in human activity the three moments of criticism, edification and play. But to what extent is Christian activityas such really grasped and described by this distinction? In its own place it is certainly right and important that the fact of the Christian life confronts us (as in Herrmann and Kirn) with the problem of its origin and development, or (as in v. Hofmann) with the contrast of reflection and activity.But do these distinctions in anyway characterise the Christian life? Could they not just as well be made in relation to any form of life we choose? The favourite distinction into individual and social ethics, which we find to a greater or lesser degree in v. Hofmann, Martensen, Haering, Kirn, E. W. Mayer, may be accepted as one which is both possible and meaningful in itself (although Schlatter, op. cit., p. 53 f. has some arguments against it which merit our attention), but in any case it has to be pointed out that it assumes as self-evident that Christian activity is only a particular instance of human activity in general, and that if the correlation of individual and community is constitutive for the latter, it must also be so for Christian conduct. Schlatter's derivation of the Christian doctrine of virtue from will, cognition, emotion and life has a decidedly refreshing effect alongside the rather drearily formal classifications of the Ritschlians. But we still have to ask with what higher right this determination of human action is taken from Plato and made a pattern for the portrayal of Christian conduct. These derivations and classifications are all suspect for the obvious reason that if we accept without question the correctness of the methods we have only to fill out the concepts in a different way and we can equally well derive and classifya Buddhist, or a communist, or an anthroposophical ethics as a Christian.

35

[545]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[546J

In the fundamental concepts acquired and presented in this way there is no specific adaptability to the special matter with which theological ethics is concerned. They presuppose that the form of a theological ethics is left to the mercy or genius of the respective moralist. And so they do not of themselves make any contribution to the Christian understanding of the goodness of human conduct. They do so only when they are filled out. But to explain what is Christian, do we not have to say things which cannot be said in the framework of a concept of human action generally, however deep? To reach the Christian understanding of the goodness of human conduct, is it not indispensable that there should be a distinctively Christian way of understanding, and therefore a characteristic form of theological ethics as such? Is it not inevitable that the Christian understanding of this matter will be severely curtailed if, through taking things for granted (as was surprisingly the case from Schleiermacher to Schlatter) , ways are entered and trodden which in themselves can plainly lead to very different destinations? The distinction in principle between dogmatics and ethics obviously does not bear good fruit at this point. It normally involves a change of direction and theme which, if it is maintained, necessarily means that the problem of human conduct is the measure of all things, and forms the framework of every investigation and presentation. The situation is then necessarily as it is assumed to be in those derivations and classifications, in the arbitrary self-assurance with which those different waysare taken. Man himself has to ask certain questions: How he can become and be a Christian man? What does it mean to be this, not only in disposition, but in conduct? What is meant by Christian volition, cognition, emotion and living? Assuming that his conduct is Christian, what will be the result of his vitality and cultural striving, his economy, the state and the Church, marriage and the family, art and science, his work and his recreation? And theological ethics has to answer these questions which are not posed in decision before the revealed command of God, in the act of responsibility. It has to say something to man in answer to his questions. But in reality it is man himself who is questioned. The one thing which can really be said is to be said by man himself with the act of his decision in face of the revealed command of God. Theological ethics can consist only in a sharpening of the recollection that man has alwaysto give answer with his conduct, and that his answer is to the revealed command of God. This is where the fault lies. To be sure, even in the framework of an ethics which gives man an answer to his own questions many profound and true and serious and fruitful things are said, things which we do well to ponder. This is particularly the case in the authors cited. But the fact remains that an ethics of this kind spreads a veil over its relationship, and man's relationship, to the revealed command of God, and that this veil has only to be seen to be recognised as intolerable. For, after all, why should theological ethics act as a kind of information bureau, inviting questions from outside, instead of putting its own questions in order that man may be called in question by the divine command? Is it not obvious that even the most profound and true and serious and fruitful things that it can sayin this character are from the very outset said in a corner, that is, with no relationship to real human conduct, and that they cannot, therefore, be heard as a call to decision, or can be so only in spite of their untheological beginning? If theology, and therefore theological ethics, is in principle the science of the Word of God as it is attested in revelation, in Holy Scripture and in the proclamation of the Church, it is man who must be the questioned in face of these statements, and not ethics itself which must answer the questions of man with its statements. Its subject is not the Word of God as it is claimed by man, but the Word of God as it claims man. It is not man as he is going to make something of the Word of God, but the Word of God as it is going to make something of man. Of man-yes, with all the problems of his behaviour and therefore in the whole range of his activities. But this does not mean that its theme is these activities, or what Christianity can contribute to their fulfilment. It is not from them that it can learn its prescribed task, or derive and classifywhat it has to say, or win its fundamental concepts. It cannot achieve in

2.

The Way of Theological Ethics

this way what it has to achieve in relation to the problem of human behaviour. It can do this only as it sees it from the very outset in the light in which it actually stands. It can do it, that is, only when it no longer adopts a new standpoint and method in the transition from dogmatics to ethics, when it makes and keeps as its central concept, as its starting-point and destination, not the action of man in itself and as such, but the claiming of man by the command of God, his sanctification as it is accomplished in Jesus Christ, and therefore the action of God for man and in man. It can do it, then, when it directs its course by the Word of God, and not the Word of God by its own self-chosen course.

If we ask first concerning the basis of ethics, the first task which obviously confronts us is to understand and present the Word of God as the subject which claims us. It is to understand and present the Word of God in its character as the command which sanctifies man. This basis will be our particular concern in this final chapter of the doctrine of God. The goodness of human action consists in the goodness with which God acts toward man. But God deals with man through His Word. His Word is the sum and plenitude of all good, because God Himself is good. Therefore man does good in so far as he hears the Word of God and acts as a hearer of this Word. In this action as a hearer he is obedient. Why is obedience g90d? Because it derives from hearing, because it is the action of a hearer, namely, of the hearer of the Word of God. It is good because the divine address is good, because God Himself is good. We can also put it in this way.Man does good in so far as he acts as one who is called by God to responsibility. To act in and from responsibility to God means to act in commitment. Our action is free in so far as it is our own answer, the answer which we ourselves give to what is said to us by God. But as an answer, it is bound. It is a good action when it takes place in this commitment. Therefore its good consists always in its responsibility. Responsible action is good because the divine address is good, because God Himself is good. We can also put it in this way. Man does good in so far as his action is Christian. A Christian is one who knows that God has accepted him inJesus Christ, that a decision has been made concerning him in Jesus Christ as the eternal Word of God, and that he has been called into covenant with Him by Jesus Christ as the Word of God spoken in time. When he knows this, when he is 'Judged" by God through confrontation and fellowship with Jesus Christ, his action, too, becomes a 'Judged" action. It is in the fact that it is 'Judged" that its goodness consists. Therefore its goodness derives from this confrontation and fellowship. His action is good because the divine address which is an eternal and temporal event in Jesus Christ is good, because God Himself is good. In its simplest and most basic expression this is the theological answer to the ethical question. This is the sum and substance of theological ethics. The characteristic feature of the theological answer to the ethical problem is thatalthough it also answers the question of the goodness of human action-it understands man from the very outset as addressed by God, so that in regard to the goodness of his action it can only point away from man to what God says,

37

[547]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[548J

to God Himself. "From the very outset" means from the eternal grace of God as it has eventuated in time, from the lordship of His grace as it is resolved and established by God and cannot now be overthrown by any contradiction or any denial. When we understand man from this point of view, we have a positive answer to give in regard to the goodness of his action, but we have to do it by pointing away from man to what God says, to God Himself. To put it concretely, we have to do it by pointing to God's commanding, to God as Commander. The good of human action consists in the fact that it is determined by the divine command. We shall have to consider more closely what is involved in this command and this determination. l?ut we can never seek the good except in this determination of human action and therefore in the divine command which creates this determination, in God the Commander Himself. We cannot in any sense seek it in human action in itself. "There is none good but one, that is God" (Mk. 1018). We must remember, of course, that this is a truth of the Gospel. It is not, then, the affirmation of an abstract transcend.ence of the good. To receive this truth is not to reject and abandon the question .of the goodness of human action. It is only with this truth that we take it up. This truth is its positive answer. For this God who alone is good is the God who is gracious to man. He is not a transcendent being, not even a transcendent being of the good. From all eternity He has determined to turn to man, to make Himself responsible for man. He has dealt with man on the basis of this self-determination, and He does so still. And it is in this self-determination and action-not excluding, but including man-that God alone is good. He is this in the eternal-temporal act of His compassion for man. He is this in Jesus Christ. It is not to any god that we point, but to this God, the God of the Gospel, when, in the question of the goodness of human action, we point to the divine command, to God Himself. There is no more positive answer to this question than that which is given when we refer to this God, just because it means that we refer away from man. The first thing that theological ethics has to show, and to develop as a basic and all-comprehensive truth, is the fact and extent that this command of God is an event. This is the specific ethico-dogmatic task as it now confronts us within the framework of the doctrine of God. We cannot emphasise too strongly the fact that by the ruling principle of theological ethics, by the sanctifying command of God-corresponding to the fact that we do not know God Himself otherwise than as acting God-we have to understand a divine action, and therefore an event-not a reality which is, but a reality which occurs. Not to see it in this way is not to see it at all. It is not seen when we try to see it from the safe shelter of a general theory. It is not seen when we think we see a being and then ask whether and to what extent we can derive from this being this or that obligation. The proposition: "There is a command of God," is quite inadequate as a description of what concerns us. For we should naturally have to weigh against it the denial: No, "there is" no command of God. What "there is" is not as such the command of God. But the core of the matter is that God gives

2.

The Way of Theological Ethics

His command, that he gives Himself to be our Commander. God's command, God Himself, gives Himself to be known. And as He does so, He is heard. Man is made responsible. He is brought into that confrontation and fellowship with Jesus Christ. And his action acquires that determination. The command of God is the decision about the goodness of human action. As the divine action it precedes human action. It is only on the basis of this reality, which is not in any sense static but active, not in any sense general but supremely particular, that theological ethics has to make answer to the ethical question. Its theory is sim ply the theory of this practice. It is because this practice occurs, because theological ethics cannot escape noticing this practice, in the contemplation of this practice, that theological ethics fashions its concepts. The same practice of the Word of God forms the basis of the Christian Church. It is in view of it that there is faith and obedience in the Church. It is in view of it that all theology has its legitimacy and its necessity. It is as God gives man His command, as He gives Himself to man to be his Commander, that God claims him for Himself, that He makes His decision concerning him and executes His judgment upon him. It is as He does this that He sanctifies him, and the good (which is God Himself) enters into the realm of human existence. To understand the command of God as this claim and decision and judgment will therefore be the first task to which we must address ourselves in the present context. Once this foundation has been laid, in later sections of the ChurchDog;matics we shall have to show in detail to what extent this divine command is actually directed to man. Even as His command, the Word of God is the Word of His truth and reality in the act of creation, in the act of reconciliation and in the act of redemption. Or we might put it in this way, that it reveals the kingdom of the LordJesus Christ as the kingdom of nature, the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of glory. Or we might say that it manifests the pre-temporal, co-temporal and post-temporal eternity of God. Or, alternatively, it speaks to us about our determination for God, our relationship to Him and the goal of our perfection in Him. As the command of God, too, His Word has this threefold meaning and content. The concept of the command of God includes the concepts: the command of God the Creator, the command of God the Reconciler and the command of God the Redeemer. The three concepts are identical with the fundamental concepts of dogmatics which it is the task of theological ethics to explain and recapitulate in their ethical content. They characterise in the shortest possible form the act of the God who in grace has elected man for the covenant with Himself, and in so doing they also characterise the command by which He has sanctified him for Himself. Of course, there can be no question of three parts or even stages of the one Christian truth and knowledge. The position is as in the doctrine of the Trinity. Three times in these three concepts we have to say the one whole, in which Jesus Christ is the presupposition and the epitome of creation and redemption from the dominating centre of reconciliation as it has taken place in Him. As there 39

[549]

~ 36. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God

[550]

is only one God, so also there is only one command of God. But as the one God is in Himself rich and multiple, so also His one command is in itself diverse, and yet there is only one way to achieve the knowledge of it. It is of this inner diversity of God's command and the way to achieve a knowledge of it that we are thinking when we stress these three concepts. We are asking who and what is man in the Word of God and according to the Word of God, that is, the man elected, received and accepted by God injesus Christ, and therefore, as such, the recipient of the divine command. We find this man in the person of jesus Christ Himself. He is the Son of David and of Adam who is determined and created to be the image of God. He is the One who is laden with human sin, and condemned because of it, but loved and preserved as the Son of God even in this judgment. And finally, in His resurrection, sitting at the right hand of God, He is the realisation and revelation of the divine image, received into God's eternal glory. In this threefold determination of the humanity of jesus Christ we recognise the roots of these three concepts. And if we understand man in general from the humanity of jesus Christ, it automatically follows that we have to understand him as God's creature, as the sinner pardoned by God, and as the heir-expectant of the coming kingdom of God. In these relations we recognise ourselves, not as in the mirror of an idea of man, but as in the mirror of the Word of God which is source of all truth. And it is obviously not in the framework of unguaranteed concepts borrowed from psychology or sociology, but in that of the concepts arising from these relations, that our sanctification, and the significance of the claim and decision and judgment of the divine command, can and must be understood. In these three relations we know that we are placed under the command of God. We are, therefore, taking as our basis, not a general, abstract concept of man, but the concrete Christian concept when we say that this is the sanctified man who is not the subject, but is certainly the predicate of the statements of theological ethics. Man is the creature of God. He is the sinner to whom grace has been shown. He is the heir of the kingdom of God. It is as all these things that he is addressed in God's command. In all these relations the divine command is the principle of the goodness of his actions. The one whole command of God has this threefold relation. As he lives in the Word of God and according to the Word of God, the one whole man stands in this threefold relation. In accordance with the context, the autonomy, but also the totality of the chief concepts of dogmatics, we shall not, in ethics, isolate anyone of these relations from the other two. We shall not be guilty either of preference on the one hand or prejudice on the other in our systematic treatment of the three. On the contrary, we shall have to understand each one separately, not only in its connexion with the others, but also in its autonomy and totality. The history of Christian ethics tells of numerous conflicts between the different schools of thought which derive from creation, reconciliation and redemption, or from nature, grace and eternal glory, with the one-sided orientation corresponding to this derivation. The movement which lies at the basis of these conflicts is necessary; but the conflicts, the actions

2.

The Way of Theological Ethics

and reactions in favour of one or the other of the different relations of sanctification are not necessary. Indeed, although they may often have been important historically, they are fundamen tally dangerous. We shall have to understand them as historically meaningful. We shall have to note and consider and estimate their aims and interests. But for our own part we must be careful not to become involved in them. We must avoid the rigidity and the enthusiasm with which one or the other of the equally necessary and possible points of view is constantly seized and more or less absolutised. In this way we must learn from history to do justice to history.

There can be no question even of a systematic combination of the three points of view. The reason for this is that we never at any point know the divine command in itself and as such, but only in its relations. The multiplicity of God Himself obviously resolves itself as little into His unity as His unity can be lost in His multiplicity. God is not dead in a rigid unity. He lives in the multiplicity of His triune essence, of His inner perfections and therefore of His Word and work. This being the case, we have to pursue the knowledge of His command in such a way that we try to understand and bring out its relations as stations on a road which we have to tread, and the unity of which we shall know only as we tread it. Therefore the later task of a specific theological ethics will not be to contemplate a system-either from this point of view or that, or even from a fourth position superior to it-but to traverse this road of knowledge which corresponds to the inner life of God Himself, to execute this movement of knowledge. In it we shall have to realise the fact and extent that the divine command is actually directed to man, and the divine decision concerning man is made in it. It will be an exact repetition of the same movement which dogmatics itself executes on the road indicated by its basic concepts. There is only one difference-and it is not one of matter or method, but merely of fact and practice. It is simply that in it special attention is given to the question of the character of the Word of God as the command of God, and therefore of the claiming of man. The best place to discuss it is, therefore, in a concluding chapter to each of the different parts of dogmatics. In the present instance, this means that "general" ethics forms the last chapter of the doctrine of God.

[551]

[552] THE COMMAND AS THE CLAIM OF GOD As God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ, His command is the claim which, when it is made, has power over us, demanding that in all we do we admit that what God does is right, and requiring that we give our free obedience to this demand.

1.

[553J

THE BASIS OF THE DIVINE CLAIM

Mihi Deo adhaerere bonum est. "For me the good is to cleave to God." Every ethics which is at least half serious, aims consciously or unconsciously to say this. The divisive question is why this constitutes the good-the question of the basis of the divine claim. Why has God a title to man, and therefore a claim on him? What is the source of His power over him? Why has man to obey Him? Why God, and not any other authority? That God has a claim, the claim, on man, that the command under which man's action stands is, in fact, the command of God, that first and last it orders us to cleave to God, is something which, if it is established as true in itself, is necessarily distinguished epistemologically from all other opposing assertions by the fact that this Why? is met by an overwhelming Therefore. What is it, then, that directs and binds man, not to any other authority, but to God? It might be said that God is the power which is over and in all things, the necessity which rules in all being and occurrence, the existence and activity of which we sense and experience, which we must also recognise as a necessity of tho:ught, to which even man is obviously subject, to submit to which is for him the best course because it is unavoidable, because he cannot evade this submission, because a reluctance to submit can only do harm without altering actual subjection. Now, in addition to all the other things He is, God is, in fact, this power. Obedience to Him does actually include this subjection to His predominance. But this does not give us an ultimate, compelling basis for His claim to our obedience. It is perfectly true that the circling planets, the falling stone, the animal in its living and dying, and within the totality of the cosmos and interwoven in its course the inner and outer destiny of man too, are all subject to God as the power over and in all things, and cannot escape this subjection. But of itself this does not provide us with the basis of the divine claim and the basis of human obedience to this claim. Man may indeed be ruled and determined by a power-even by a power which confronts him as absolute predom-

1.

The Basis of the Divine Claim

inance. But this does not mean that he has been reached and affected as man, that he has been compelled to a subjection which really signifies the recognition of a claim made upon him and obedience to it. Man as man is still free in face of power as power. He can sink under it; he can be annihilated by it. But he does not owe it obedience, and even the most preponderant power cannot as such compel him to obey. Power as power does not have any divine claim, no matter how imposing or effective it might be. To maintain himself against power as power, even to his own undoing, is not merely a possibility for man. It is not merely the assertion of his right and dignity. It is the duty which he has to fulfil with his existence as man. The very man who is claimed by God, for whom God has become too strong, who is overcome by God, is distinguished from the falling stone by the fact that it is in his own most proper freedom that he has been determined for God, in his own most proper freedom that he has decided for God. By deciding for God he has definitely decided not to be obedient to power as power. It is in this way and this way alone that he is subdued and subject to the power of Almighty God. The man who comes from this decision knows freedom. He will "maintain his right against all might." And it is in so doing that he fulfils his foreordination. Power as power cannot possibly be the basis of his obedience. For it is not the basis of the claim made upon him, in spite of the fact that this is the claim of God, the Almighty. It is because he misunderstands the nature of claim and obedience in this respect that the teaching of Schleiermacher is so profoundly unsatisfactory. As he sees it, all religion, including the Christian, is to be brought under the common denominator of the concept of the "feeling of absolute dependence." It may even be questioned whether all non-Christian religion can actually be brought under this denominator. But if so, it only explains why at this point religion is exposed, as it is, to a denial of its authority and relevance from the standpoint of human dignity and human rights. Indeed, it shows us why,in so far as it rests on this basis and is a modification of the feeling of absolute dependence, all religion is necessarily denied and opposed and rejected from this standpoint. To the extent that it rests on this basis, it is an outrage to the essence of man. It is intolerable, not only from the standpoint of humanism, but even according to Christian insight. It has necessarily to be repelled, for it opens the door to the establishment of every possible kind of caprice and tyranny and therefore to the profoundest disobedience to God. If the Christian faith, too, is only a special determination of the feeling of absolute dependence, this simply proves, not only that it is at the mercy of a deeply founded scepticism of man in relation to all religion, but that this scepticism is basicallyjustified even in relation to itself; that a protest has necessarily to be made against it, too, in the name of humanity. It is curious enough that the humanism of Schleiermacher ultimately culminates in this inhuman view of the relationship of man to God, it being necessary in the last resort to protest against his doctrine of religion in the name of humanity itself. But so it is. Prometheus isjustified against Zeus. The Stoa was right when it opposed to its own doctrine of heimarmeneEN1 the doctrine of the freely and defiantly maintained ataraxiaEN2 of the human mind and spirit: Sijractus illabatur orbis, impavidum jerient ruinaeEN3• ENI EN~ EN:\

fate impassivity If the world cracks, and slides away, its ruins will strike the fearless

43

[554]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God And Goethe was right when he opposed to all kinds of musty and in no sense Christian Christianity, anq. to all kinds of other secular imbecilities, the confession (which was a special favourite of A. v. Harnack): Come! For we will promise you Rescue from the deepest smartPillars, columns can be broken. Never a free heart: For it lives a life eternal, 'Tis itself the man complete, In it surge desire and striving Nothing can defeat. This is all true. How true it is, and why it has to be proclaimed more loudly to-day than ever, we do not realise, of course, until we find the real basis of the real, the divine, claim on man. But then we do realise it. It is not in spite of Christian faith, but because of it, that we have to say that this is all true, and must be maintained in opposition to all deisidaemony not with less but with far more definiteness than by these pagans. The basis of the divine claim does not consist in the fact that God can overcome and smash and annihilate man. By doing this God cannot and will not compel man to obedience; and He never has. He could certainly compel him-but only to something which falls far short of man's obedience. If He were to compel him in this way, His claim on him would still be without foundation. Even in the depths of hell it could still be flouted and despised.

[555]

Again, it might be said that God is the essence of the good, the eternal good itself. He therefore claims man for Himself to the extent that man as man participates in God from the very first. In some sense and degree he is ready of himself to will and do the good. He is, therefore, on the way to God, and he thus finds himself from the very outset directed to cleave to God. In point of fact, God is, of course, the eternally good, and when He claims man, He shows Himself as such, and confers on man a participation in Himself. But our present enquiry concerns the basis of the claim in which this takes place, the dignity and authority with which God places Himself in this relationship with man, and man in this relationship with Himself. The fact that He is the eternally good is not a compelling basis for this claim and for man's obedience in this relationship. For unless we understand by it what takes place only in this claim, the participation of man in God and therefore in the good is a mere assertion, and against it we have to set the fact that man does not find the divine good in himself, that he is not at all ready on his side to will and do this good within the limits of his creatureliness, that in no sense, therefore, is he from the very outset on the way to God, or driven and compelled for his own sake to cleave to God. What is proper to him from the very outset is the desire (the longing) to be equal to God. And with this desire he not only does not participate in the essentially good of God, but he fences himself off from it. How, then, can this be the basis of the divine claim on him? His willing and doing in this desire is a reaching out beyond the limits of his creatureliness. And so the wayan which he finds himself is the war-path on which he has entered in opposition to God. Between God, the eternally good, and man, the

44

1.

The Basis of the Divine Claim

relationship might easily be one of scorn on the part of God and envy on the part of man. But it cannot be one of claim on the part of God and obedience on the part of man. The question arises whether the Greek tragedians did not see deeper than Plato and all the Platonists. Their characters are all portrayed in an impotent desire for godlikeness and attempt to attain it. And they are coldly directed back to their own limits by the gods. But this opposition of man to the absolute superiority of the eternally good and his desire to master it on the one side, and the wrath of God against this undertaking on the other, are changed by Plato and his followers into a mutual methexis (or participation), in which the originally existent good is as clearly reflected and recognised in the finite as the finitely good in the infinite. That the harmony of this transformation has been attained fraudulently is betrayed by the fact that within the framework of this transformation it is quite impossible to show any basis for a real divine claim or real human obedience. These categories are alien, and always will be alien, to this transformation. We can only return from this position to the world of the tragedians if we are again to see clearly the real proportions, or rather disproportions, and therefore to see that a recognition of God as the eternally good cannot form a basis for the divine claim.

Finally, it might be said that God is simply the all-sufficient being "whom I have selected as my supreme good." Is it not true: "Thou sufficest solely, Pure within and wholly, Soul and heart and mind"? Is the enmity of man to God really a phenomenon of final, invincible magnitude? In spite of this enmity and in this enmity, is it not true that "our heart is restless till it find rest in Thee"? Does not the enmity itself, even the fall of Adam, attest this? Is it not possible, and even necessary, that in the last resort it will be transformed into a human "selection" of God "as my supreme good"? Since, objectively (and even at times subjectively), God alone can suffice man, is not the claim of God really based on man? Man must obey God because without Him, except in obedience to Him, he cannot live? Well, he certainly cannot. For God and God alone-above and in spite of all enmity to Him-is all-sufficient. When He claims us for Himself God does give us complete satisfaction by and in Himself. But it is necessary to guard against the idea that this is the basis of His claim on us. For if the relationship between God and man finally consists in the fact that God is the One who gives man satisfaction, that He can be revealed and known to him as such, and that man on his side is able (on the strength of desiring this satisfaction and finding it in God) to choose God, then in this relationship there can be a divine claim only in the setting and on the basis of the claim which man has first made on the God whom he has chosen. Every divine claim is ultimately only a confirmation, a condition, of the fulfilment of this human claim. It has the character only of an invitation. It is certainly not a claim which is grounded in itself. We hold to God because and to the extent that finally we want to uphold ourselves. The same man who to-day selects God as his supreme good may to-morrow wish to select a very different good. Where, then, is the claim of God? Of course, the command of God is also a promise. Its fulfilment produces fruit. It yields a reward. That is something which we must not, of course, overlook or deny. But we cannot and must not seek the basis of its claim

45

[556]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God in the fact that its fulfilment has this consequence, that along with blessedness, the fellowship of man with God, it brings with it the answer to the problem of human life-the only possible answer to it. The divine command, whose fulfilment has this promise, must be known and understood as grounded in itself, as having a divine basis, if there is to be any understanding of the justice and force of this claim.

[557J

It is the God in whom we may believe, and He alone, who calls us in such a way that we must not only hear but obey; who orders us in such a way that in all freedom we must recognise the force of His order; who claims us in such a way that the claim is valid and we necessarily find ourselves claimed. The power of the imperative about which we enquire is to be found in the fact that we may believe. Let there be no mistake: this imperative and therefore the justice and the real basis of the divine claim do not begin merely with our believing, nor are they conditioned or limited by it. There is obviously ,a circle-Luther often used to speak of it. God and faith, and faith and God, are two things which belong together. In this circle God becomes the One He is for man, and man the one he is for God. The deity of God enters for man into the light and power of the specific, direct and personal encounter and movement of actual faith in God, and the humanity of man enters for God into the same light and power. To this circle there belongs the fact that the claim of God is made on this or that man in particular and accepted by him. But our present enquiry concerns the basis and justice of this claim, the majesty with which the command of God is proclaimed and heard in this circle. This majesty as such is certainly operative in this circle, but it is not included in it-as though it were majesty, and the command of God had to wait to acquire this majesty, only by God's encounter with this or that man in particular, and His claiming of that man. The basis of the faith which shows itself strong in this circle lies as such outside this circle. And God Himself is already God, and God for us, before this becomes a particular event for any man, before it is actualised in a particular relationship between God and a man. The light and power of this specific, direct and personal encounter and movement fall into this circle from above. They are light and power in this circle because they are always light and power in themselves. That is why the light is so clear, and the power so irresistible. But they are not bound to what happens here or limited to it. It is exactly the same with the majesty of the divine command. It is majesty even when the awakening of faith has not yet taken place. If it is only recognised for what it is with this awakening, it is there and valid even when it is not recognised. Yet we describe it best if we define it as the majesty of the God in whom we may believe. This is what distinguishes it from the majesty which is no majesty. Godhead as power, godhead as the essentially good, the godhead in which we find our satisfaction-these are not the God in whom we may believe, and it is for this reason that they are not the God who really claims us. The being of the true God is determined and characterised generally by the fact that He is the God in whom we may believe. And the same is true of the superiority and authority,

1.

The Basis of the Divine Claim

the basis and justice of His claim. It is as we may believe in God that His claim confronts us in the loftiness and dignity of the obligation which derives automatically from the gift that He has made us, a gift as incomprehensible as it is unfathomable. God has given us Himself. He is not only mighty over us. He is not only the essentially good. He is not only our complete satisfaction. He has given Himself to us. He has graciously turned to us. He has made Himself ours. With His divine goodness He has taken our place and taken up our cause. He is for us in all His deity. Although He could be without us-He did not and does not will to be without us. Although He has every right to be against usHe did not and does not will to be against us. This is the God in whom we may believe. He is this God even if we do not yet or no longer believe in Him. It is as this God that we know Him when we may believe, when the opportunity presents itself, when we make use of it. But He is this God before and above this event, before and high above all the knowing imparted to us in this event. He is this God as the one true God beside whom there is no other, beside whom all gods are nothing. And it is from the fact that He is this God that there derives the superiority and authority, basis and justice of His claim, the validity of His command, the vanity of all other commands, the freedom in which we are bound to Him, to His command, the absolutely distinctive imperative of obedience to His will. All this is actual in Jesus Christ. The Law is completely enclosed in the Gospel. It is not a second thing alongside and beyond the Gospel. It is not a foreign element which precedes or only follows it. It is the claim which is addressed to us by the Gospel itself and as such, the Gospel in so far as it has the form of a claim addressed to us, the Gospel which we cannot really hear except as we obey it. For Jesus Christ is the basis on which we may believe in God, the Word in which dwell the light and force to move us to this event. He Himself is the Gospel. He Himself is the resolve and the execution of the essential will in which God willed to give Himself to us. The grace of God, of the God in whom we may believe, is this. In Jesus Christ the eternal Word became flesh. Without ceasing to be who He is in Himself, God became as one of us. He assumed our humanity into His deity. Although it was darkened and destroyed by our sins, and under sentence of death, He took it up into Himself in an indissoluble un confused unity. He did not do this because of its strength or dignity or any other qualification. He did it only because of His own goodpleasure, His incomprehensible compassion. Or again, the grace of this God is this. Our human existence is no longer alone. It is no longer left to itself. But in Jesus Christ it is received and adopted into the deity of God. In Him it has already been raised and cleansed and transfigured into the divine likeness. Or again, the grace of this God is this. The human existence of all of us is not really enacted at an undefined point in empty space, but in proximity, fellowship, even brotherhood with the human existence of Jesus Christ and therefore with God's own human existence. In Jesus Christ we can see our human existence wide open to heaven, irradiated, purified, held and sustained from

47

[558]

S 37.

[559]

The Command as the Claim of God

above, not rejected by God, but in a love that interpenetrates all things affirmed by Him in the way in which He affirms Himself. And this view is not a mere theory, or vision, or moral ideal, but the unlimited and unconditional truth of our human existence, irrespective of what we deserve or achieve in our behaviour or attitude to this love. The grace of this God is this. When He took our flesh in Jesus Christ, God Himself undertook in our place to subject Himself to the judgment and punishment that must be executed if we are to be raised up to Him. He Himself renounced and confessed our self-will and godlessness. He Himself maintained His cause against us. He Himself executed and suffered Himself the necessary slaying of our obstinacy. He Himself accomplished the great work of faith, so that it no longer requires to be accomplished for us, but we with our faith have only to look up to His, to approve and follow it, to endorse it with our own faith. Again, the grace of this God is this. The promise of the true repentance which He has performed for us is not something which has still to be fulfilled, something outstanding. It has already been fulfilled. It was not in vain that inJesus Christ God, adopted and assumed this flesh of ours which was under sentence of death. In so doing, He really accomplished both His own and our justification and glorification. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead as it has already been accomplished, we sinners are already revealed as the righteous who may live by their faith. Death could not hold Him, and therefore it cannot hold us. His life (and His life is our life) had necessarily to swallow up death, and it did swallow it up. In the midst of death we have in Him no future but that of resurrection and eternal life . The grace of this God decides and has already decided concerning our human existence. What does it mean to be a man now that this decision has been reached by the grace of God? It obviously means to be one who stands and walks and lives and dies within the fact that God is gracious to him, that He has made him His own. It obviously means to be one for whom God has intervened in this way, with whom He has dealt in this way. It obviously means to be one for whose human existence Jesus Christ Himself stands before God according to the will, in the name, and by the commission of God, in all the wisdom and the fulness of the might of God-so stands before God that he is completely covered by Him, completely destroyed both in his weakness and in his self-will, completely offered as a living sacrifice, but in this way made completely holy and completely glorious. "1 am crucified with Christ: nevertheless 1 live, yet not 1, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which 1now live in the flesh, 1live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal. 219f_). The fact that 1 live in the faith of the Son of God, in my faith in Him, has its basis in the fact that He Himself, the Son of God, first believed for me, and so believed that all that remains for me to do is to let my eyes rest on Him, which really means to let my eyes follow Him. This following is my faith. But the great work of faith has already been done by the One whom 1 follow in my faith', even before 1 believe, even if I no longer believe, in such a way that He is always, as Heb. 122 puts it, the originator and completer (apx'YJYos Kat TEAELWT~S) of our faith, in such a way, therefore, that every beginning and

1.

The Basis of the Divine Claim

fresh beginning of our faith has its only starting-point in Him, indeed, the only basis of its awakening. It is the only basis, but it is also the overwhelming and compelling basis. It is "he that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High," and abides "under the shadow of the Almigh ty,"who says to the Lord: "My refuge and my fortress: my God, in whom I will trust" (Ps. 9I1L). It is he who believes, he who may believe, and does so. It is he who, believing, stands in the communion of saints; who has received, receives and will receive the forgiveness of sins; who hastens towards the resurrection of the flesh and eternal life. His faith is the victory which has overcome the world. But that it is this victory does not rest with him, but solely with Him in whom he believes, in whose faith he believes. It rests upon the fact that the LordJesus Christ-born a man for us, dYingfor us, risen for us, reigning for us in the glory of God-is also his refuge, his fortress, his God: the secret place in which he dwells; the shadow under which he abides. Yetall the same he may believe, and it is this which makes his faith mighty, immovable and invincible.

And now we can answer the question of the basis and justice of the claim which is addressed to us and objectively to all men. It is the claim of the God in whom we may believe, of the God who is constituted our Lord and demands our obedience in and with the fact that He is gracious to us in jesus Christ. That is the majesty of His command, from which we in our self-will, our pride, our anxiety, our foolishness and wickedness, can certainly flee, but which we cannot evade. We must seek the command of God only where it has itself torn off the veil of all human opinions and theories about the will of God and manifested itself unequivocally. We must seek it only where He has revealed Himself as grace and therefore in His truth. We must seek it only in what happened in Bethelehem, at Capernaum and Tiberias, in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, and in the garden of joseph of Arimathea. In this event God uttered His command. Ifwe hear it here, it stands before us, well founded and legitimate. It is from what God has done for us that we must learn to read what God wants with us and of us. And then there is revealed to us the majesty of His will-the majesty with which His command stands for us, and not for us only but also for those who do not seek it here, for those who apparently do not seek it at all, for all the poor souls who mistakenly think that they have found it elsewhere. God calls us and orders us and claims us by being gracious to us injesus Christ. It is because of this that all other claims but His founder, or, if they are to stand, can only be forms of His claim. For the grace of God in jesus Christ is the proclamation and establishment of His authority over man. Where and how does it find him? It finds him in the position of Adam. This means, on the one hand, that he is the creature whom amid the rest of creation He has determined to be His image, i.e., the mirror and therefore the reflection of His own being. And, on the other hand, it means that he is the sinner who perverted this determination of man by trying to determine himself for equality with God. The grace of God in jesus Christ is the restoration of the first status and the negation of the second. In it God maintains Himself as the Creator of man aiming at his completion, i.e., the fulfilment of that determination. But He maintains Himself by reconciling

49

[560]

S 37.

[561]

The Command as the Claim of God

him with Himself, in this way leading him, in spite of everything, to that completion, which now acquires necessarily the character of redemption. It is the infinite divine favour to man, as decided from all eternity, which is actualised in this way-incomprehensibly, but certainly not contrary to plan. At the same time however-,-and it is to this that our attention must now be directed-what God maintains in this way in relation to man is His own glory, His authority and majesty. God could not demonstrate and proclaim more clearly than with His grace injesus Christ that He is not mocked, that He will not give His glory to another, that "all that He proposes to do and wills to have will finally achieve its goal and end." The fact that God is gracious to us does not mean that He becomes soft, but that He remains absolutely hard, that there is no escaping His sovereignty and therefore His purpose for man. To know His grace is to know this sovereignty. And obviously to accept His grace can only be to acknowledge this sovereignty, and therefore the duty of obedience to Him, or, briefly, to become obedient to Him. No conception of His power, no thought of Him as the idea of the good or the all-sufficient being, can lead us to this. But the knowledge of His grace does so. It obviously does so because here we have to do with His original self-declaration. God cannot at this point be confounded with something else which we have excogitated about Him, and which we can just as easily evade. As against all our ideas about Him, all our arbitrariness and self-will in face of Him, He actually comes as the Almighty, as goodness in person, as the One without whom there is no satisfaction, binding us so strongly that any evasion or flight is rendered impossible, and we are really brought to a reckoning and responsibility. That this is the case we see at once and above all in the person ofjesus Christ Himself, in which the grace of God' has eventuated in a way which is primary and original and exemplary for all other men. There is nothing which more strongly characterises the human person of jesus than its tie with God. It has about it nothing of the magical tie of man to a numen EN4, to a higher being in whose service he either becomes a slave of the cosmos, or, on the other hand (and often indeed at the same time) , sets himself up as a thaumaturgic lord of the cosmos. It is an entirely free tie, but even so complete. What establishes it is that this man has known and possesses in God the One who is "our Father in heaven." It is in this way that God is "perfect" for Him. And it is precisely this God who has authority for jesus. It is His claim which He does not evade, but to which He is wholly subject. It is to Him that He is obedient. It is not a matter of any kind of subjection to a power of fate, nor of any ki~d of subordination to a seif-imposed rule. It is a matter of the obedience of the One who is received and accepted by God in free grace, and who for that very reason is terrified to the depths at the majesty of God and placed completely at His disposal. It is a matter of the obedience of the free man to the free God. And for that very reason it is a matter of real obedience. At this point the basis and justice of the EN4

spirit

50

1.

The Basis of the Divine Claim

divine claim emerge quite clearly, and so, too, do man's situation in relation to it, the validity of the claim, and the necessity of meeting it. Everything, therefore, that we read in the New Testament about the relationship of jesus to the will of God is to be understood from the point of view that it is the grace of God which has acquired human form in this person, and that in this relationship jesus only, as it were, responds to the fact that God is so kind. It is in this sense that "Thy will be done" stands in the Lord's Prayer, and is heard again in the prayer at Gethsemane in the moment before the actualisation of the "given for you." It is because God is gracious, and His grace is His sovereignty, that jesus knows that He has "come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me" Un. 638, cf. 530), and it is really His meat to do the will of him that sent Him Un. 434). This is "the will of him that sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day" Un. 639). The will of God which He fulfils is to be read, from what He does, as the will "to deliver us from this present evil world" (Gal. 14). It consists in our "adoption to sonship to himself ... to the praise of the glory of his grace" (Eph. 15f_). It consists in our "sanctification" (1 Thess. 43, cf. Heb. 1010). It consists in our being thankful in everything (1 Thess. 518). But it is the same will of God which is also reflected in the "obedience unto death" (Phil. 28) accomplished by jesus. Through His obedience, the obedience of the one, "many shall be made righteous" (Rom. 519). As "a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec," He has "in the days of his flesh, offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared," and "though he were the Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him, called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec" (Heb. 56f.).

What we find in the case of the man Jesus is a valid model for the general relationship of man to the will of God. When God wills something from and for man, when man's will is claimed by God, there can be no question of an arbitrary and purposeless control which God can exercise just because He is God and therefore superior to man. On the contrary, what God wills from and for man stands or falls with, and is revealed and revealed only in, what the same God will do and has already done for us and in us. Jesus is obedient to God as the Father in heaven, as the One who wills our salvation and in and with our salvation His own glory. And as the Father in heaven, as the One who wills our salvation, God is the Lord of all of us in His Son Jesus Christ, and He wills that we should be obedient to Him. The grace of God had to be resolved upon in heaven, and actualised and declared on earth, in order that we should be summoned from the irreverence and rebelliousness of Adam to respect towards God, attention to His Word, and fulfilment of His will. When grace is actualised and revealed, it always means that the Law is established. This is the basis even of the Old Testament legislation, especially as we have it in Deuteronomy. "Take heed, and hearken, 0 Israel; this day thou art become the people of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt therefore obey the voice of the Lord thy God, and do his commandments and his statutes, which I command thee this day" (Deut. 279). "Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God, and to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour. But the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his

[562]

S 37.

[563]

The Command as the Claim of God

peculiar people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldst keep all his commandments, and walk in his ways, and keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his jt;t.dgments, and hearken unto his voice, and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God, as he hath spoken" (Deut. 2617f.). "When thy son asketh thee in time to come, saYing,What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you? Then thou shalt sayunto thy son. We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand: and the Lord shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his house, before our eyes; and he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always,that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day. And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as he hath commanded us" (Deut. 620f.). It can be said confidently that this is the basis of biblical ethics, the answer of the Bible to the question of the legitimacy of the divine claim. Openly or secretly (but, as a rule, openly), its imperatives stand on its indicative: "that I am not my own, but belong to my faithful SaviourJesus Christ." When this indicative holds, when there is this background of the covenant made between God and man, when God saves and helps and emancipates and redeems, when He magnifies His glory (by conferring salvation on man), by the weight of the demand which this involves man is alwayscalled and summoned to be obedient to God, and the Law is proclaimed. This is no less true of the Old Testament Torah than of the directions of the apostolic letters. It is no less true of the Ten Commandments of Moses than the exposition of them in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The divine claim never stands alone. It is never uttered in abstractoEN5, either as that which in some way precedes the occurrence and proclamation of the grace of God, and is therefore primary, or as that which can only follow it, and is therefore secondary. On the contrary, it is alwaysthe form, or shape, or garment of grace. As may be seen from these passages in Deuteronomy, it is alwaysa concealed repetition of the reality of grace and the promise of grace. Conversely, the grace of God never stands alone. It is never unveiled. At once and as such it is the summons which draws man's attention to the fact that when God is gracious to him, he himself is meant, and therefore what he is and does. The gracious God wills to be respected and loved and feared as the Lord of man. Not only in the mouth of the forerunner John (Mk. 14), but also in the mouth of Jesus Himself (Mk. 115), to believe in the Gospel means to repent. And therefore even the apostolic message (Rom. 15) asks not only about the faith of the Gentiles, but about their obedience to the faith; and rejection of this message (Rom. 1021, 1130, 1531) is definitely described as disobedience. "And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" (Lk. 646). In the disturbing parable of the house built on the rock and that built on the sand (Mt. 724f.), the decision as to a man's election or rejection depends on whether Jesus' word is done or not done. It is not possible rightly to understand the mystery of Christmas, or the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, if from the very outset they are not also understood as command. "And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (1 In. 23f-). Jesus Christ Himself as the Gospel, revealed, proclaimed, offered to man and affecting him, is alwaysclothed in the Law,hidden in the manger and the swaddling clothes of the commandments, His divine commanding. We cannot believe or have Him except in this form. It is in this form, and only in this form, that He is powerful and true. That is why Paul can sayin all seriousness that "the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just and good" (Rom. 712). That is why he protests that it is not opposed to the promises (Gal. 321). EN5

in the abstract

1.

The Basis of the Divine Claim

That is why he says that it was given to us unto life (Rom. 710). That is why (in harmony with the familiar words of the Sermon on the Mount, Mt. 517f.) he declares that to proclaim faith does not lead to the abolition of the Law,but rather subserves its establishment (Rom. 331). That is why he describes himself-obviously in his capacity as an apostle to the Gentiles-as EVVOfJ-O~ XpLa'TOV EN6 (1 Cor. 921). That is why he can sayin plain words and not in any sense hypothetically that only the doers of the Law shall be justified (Rom. 213). What is so characteristic of the message of Christ in the Old Testament-the praise of God's Law, the seriousness with which it is enjoined-does not come to a sudden end in the New. Why should it? The Lawwhich really binds is the Lawwhich was fulfilled once and for all injesus Christ. It is obvious, therefore, that the Church is not the Church ofjesus Christ if it does not make the Law of God, His commands and questions and admonitions and accusations, visible and palpable in its own existence and life and conduct. And, of course, it has to do this, not only in its own place and sphere, but also outside it, for the world, for the state and society, which are also claimed objectively by the Law of God. According to the three articles of the Creed, the message of the grace of the triune God, whose proclamation is the sole task of the Church, is as such the prophetic witness to the will of God which requires to be done by men, the witness against all presumption and disorder, against all irreverence and lawlessness of man. If it is not this, it is certainly not this message, and the Church itself is certainly not the Church. But, of course, the Church cannot possibly proclaim the Law of God except as the form and fashion of this message. Except as the proclamation of the Gospel pointed and applied, even the most serious talk about the will and command of God can only be idle chatter, for which a Church is not needed, which can be much better done outside the Church.

It is where the grace of God is proclaimed as the resolve and act of God, in which at one and the same time He has come with mercy to help our distress, maintained His own glory, and in both these things shown and proved Himself to be the Lord who has the power to order us and to whom we owe obedience, that the Law is validly established, and that this is done with authority and emphasis, and therefore impressively and effectively. It is not at all the case that the establishment of the Law and the call to obedience are adversely affected when this side of the revelation and proclamation of the Word of God is not allowed to become an independent theme. On the contrary, it is only when it is not allowed, as in the Bible, that it has the importance and authority proper to it. When the claim or Law of God is considered and treated as an independent divine reality and truth, this side of the Word of God can be spoken only in a way which is hollow and weak and cannot command our credence. There then has to be substituted for the seriousness which belongs to God's Law as such an arbitrarily introduced seriousness of man. But this definitely means that the way is opened up even in content for all kinds of misleading self-will or self-opinion in its proclamation and interpretation. What is discussed is certainly not the free God who claims the obedience of the free man. At every point there is the great lack that the alleged claim of God has no divine basis, no divine right in relation to man, and is not therefore the EN6

under the law of Christ

53

[564]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[565]

real claim of God at all. A divine basis and divine right for this claim exist only in Jesus Christ, only in the grace in which God is the Lord of man. There are many answers to the question of the good, the question what man should do. If an answer to this question is to be effective, if it is really to call and win and convince, if it is not merely to instruct and interest man but.to move him actually to do the good, this does not depend on the earnestness or weight or decisiveness with which it is given. On the contrary, it is only when it has a solid basis that it can be given with earnestness, weight and decisiveness. It is only when it is grounded in such a way that man cannot take up an attitude of reserve towards it-either by appealing to his freedom, or by appealing to his weakness, or above all by finally understanding himself as this answer, in which case the question of the good is certainly solved but no less certainly extinguished. That is why at some point and in some sense every ethics which is at least half-serious usually points to God as the basis of the ethical claim, representing and describing as a divine claim the ethical demand which it formulates. But the general reference to God and even the special reference to a definite conception of God are not enough. The God who is the basis of the ethical claim-the basis that summons man, that wins and convinces him, that moves to the doing of the good-must have authority over man, and therefore the power to deprive him of recourse to his own freedom or weakness, to his own alleged identity with the good. He must have the power really to claim him for Himself, and therefore for the doing of the good. He must have the power to claim him in such a way that he does the good demanded of him really as something demanded, and does it really gladly. But a general or special conception of God does not establish this authority. This takes place only when we understand the God who is the basis of the ethical claim as the God in whom we may believe, the God who is gracious to us inJesus Christ. He is the God who, without ceasing to be God, has made Himself man's own and has made man His own. He is the God who Himself has done good to man, and therefore has brought the good into man's sphere. He is the God who has summoned man by Himself becoming man and as such not only demanding obedience but rendering it. He has spoken of the good by doing it; He has spoken of Himself by delivering Himself up for us. It is in this that He is God. This is His majesty. This is how He maintains and proves His authority over man. The Law is valid because God Himself is the doer of the Law, because God orders and only orders on the basis of the fact that He Himself has given and realised and fulfilled what He orders. The Law is valid because in Jesus Christ God encompasses us on all sides and holds His hand over us. It is valid because, in becoming man in Jesus Christ, God has claimed for Himself our human freedom. It is valid because, once God has Himself become man for us in Jesus Christ, there is no longer any excuse for our human weakness. It is valid because we can no longer confuse the divine good manifested in Jesus Christ with the good which we fancy we ourselves are and have. That is why the God to whom we may refer has authority in contrast to all other gods. That is

54

2.

The Content of the Divine Claim

why He is the real basis of the ethical claim made by Him. That is why He has the right to claim man for Himself. The peculiarity of theological ethics does not consist in the fact that it is "theonomous" ethics, that it understands the command of the good as God's command. The same thing is done elsewhere with seriousness and emphasis. But its peculiarity and advantage consist in the name of Jesus Christ with which it can state the basis and right of the divine claim. It cannot guard this advantage too zealously. If it ever forfeits this advantage, it can never make good what is lost, even if it speaks for the command of God with all the earnestness, the weigh t, the decisiveness in the world. We had to begin by putting and clarifying the question of the basis and righ t of the divine claim because this is the touchstone of all that follows. We cannot possibly proceed to think or say anything more except with the basis and right of the gracious God, the basis and right of the name ofJesus Christ. Every deviation from this path is per seEN7 a step into the unfounded. We cannot take such steps. We submit in advance to the criterion that, whatever else may have to be said about God's command in general and in particular, what must alwaysbe and remain visible in all that is said is the Gospel as the power of the Law.

2.

THE CONTENT OF THE DIVINE CLAIM

"He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what the Lord doth require of thee, to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God" (Mic. 68). This is the truth which we have now to recognise and develop as such. We now ask what it is that God wills from and for us when He claims us? We cannot stop at the affirmation that God claims us for Himself. This is quite true. But as the basis and right of this truth had first to be clarified, it must now be explained what is meant by saying that God claims us, that we should live as those who are claimed by God. For what would it mean to "be claimed by God" if man could decide and con trol according to his own calculation and opinion where and in what he was to find the divine claim? According to what has been said above, it is the God in whom we may believe, the gracious God, God inJesus Christ, who controls the content of the claim addressed to us. From first to last the content of the divine claim follows from the fact that this God has every basis for His claim and every right to it. As His command has no other basis and no other right, so also it has no other content than that which is given with this basis and right. The content of the divine claim which derives from this source, and is already present there, is secure against our caprice. We have seen that the Law is the form of grace. As the grace of God is actualised and revealed, He claims men. His love commands. But the Law is not a casual form of grace. Grace could not equally well wear other garments. God's love could not equally well command something else. As the authority of the commanding God does not consist merely in the fact that He is God, that as such He stands formally over us, and is therefore formally justified in issuing EN7

of itself

55

[566]

S 37.

[567]

The Command as the Claim of God

orders to us, so the content of His command is not chosen arbitrarily or haphazardly. His commanding is not the empty positivity of commanding that this or that should be done. And that is why it cannot be left to our whim how we are to fill it out, in what special way we are to obey God. There is no divine claim in itself. There are only concrete divine claims. For it is the grace of God which expresses itself in these claims. It is always God inJesus Christ who, as He puts these claims, wills to have us for Himself, to call us to Himself. Therefore the grace of God-wherever it is actualised and revealed-has teleological power. It is not exhausted by the fact that God is good to us. As He is good to us, He is well-disposed towards us. And as such, He wills our good. The aim of the grace actualised and revealed in God's covenant with man, is the restoration of man to the divine likeness and therefore to fellowship with God in eternal life. It cannot possibly, then, be self-circumscribing and selfexhausting. This would mean that God had resolved from all eternity to send His Son into flesh, but that in time He had actually omitted to do so. Docetically understood in this way, Christ would eternally hover over the world, and He would therefore be unfruitful for the world in His divinehuman glory. In the same way, grace would eternally hover over man, and would never be the grace actually bestowed on him. It would never be his grace. But the Son of God has, in fact, entered into flesh, and in Him the grace of God has become the grace of the real man. This is what we mean when we say that it has been actualised and revealed, that the covenant between God and man has been established. But if it is established, this means that man is jolted and impelled by the aim and goal of a future determined for him. Grace is the movement and direction of man in accordance with his determination. It does not, therefore, find man in vain, but in order to act on him in its determined way. It is when a man is found in this way by the grace of God that he comes under the claim of God. And this claim of God can only be the judgment upon him that His grace will and must have its right in relation to him, its course in his life. It is this TEAoSEN8 which prevails. The TEAoSEN9 which man himself has set for himself as a child of Adam is invalid, and all other TEAYJ ENIO of his existence can only be subordinated to this. His behaviour must be a behaviour actuated and directed by this impulsion. Starting out from this basic divine decision about him, he is not his own master in any of his own decisions. Every single thing which he will do or omit to do is predetermined by this basic divine decision. In its very singularity it will always bear the character of a human confirmation of this basic divine decision. The well-known passage at the close of Mt. 5 shows us almost word for word what we have to say about the teleological character of grace. In it the EN 8 EN 9 ENIO

goal goal goals

2.

The Content of the Divine Claim

TEAELOT'YJS EN 11 of the heavenly Father (the TEAELOT'YJS ENI2 of grace) is revealed in the fact that He vouchsafes rain and sunshine to all men, and therefore loves even his enemies. This shows that the peculiarity of those who know and receive His grace, in contrast to what the publicans do, must and will consist (EOE08EENI3) in the fact that they, too, love their enemies, and are therefore TEAELOL EN 14 like their Father in heaven. The concrete form of this teleological power of grace is the person of jesus Christ Himself. We have seen how the .basis and right of the divine claim are revealed in the obedience of the man jesus Christ-the will of the heavenly Father who has turned to man in pure kindness. But as He is obedient to this will of God, jesus also shows what it is that God rightly wills of us. The basic divine decision concerning man is embodied in jesus. The determination in which man is directed to his promised future, and set in motion towards this future, is given in Him.jesus Himself is the impulsion of all men to eternal life. He Himself is the claim which God has made and continually makes upon all men. What is good, and what the Lord requires of him, is told to man because and as jesus Himself lives and reigns and conquers.

It is told to every man, and therefore to those who believe in Him, but also to those who do not yet or no longer believe in Him. For asJesus is both the grace of God itself and also its form, both the Gospel and also the Law, there is no divine claim that is not included in this claim which is embodied inJesus. Paul knew what he was saying when he wrote that it was his office "to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 105). First and last there is for every thought only this obedience. In the last resort this Law stands over all thinking, and Christians are distinguished from others only by the fact that they know this, that they recognise and observe this Law, and keep His, Jesus', commandments Un. I 5 I:) ~ I, I 5 10; I J n. 322).

We have to keep what is demanded of us by the fact that jesus lives and reigns and conquers. But everyone is bound to this first and last. Submission to all other demands, even if made in the name of God, can only be provisional and not binding, and it alwaysinvolves the risk of error. The criterion by which all other demands are to be measured is whether they, too, proclaim indirectly the life and rule and victory of jesus. If they fail to do this, if they do the very opposite, they are definitely wrong, and when we know this, it is only with a violated conscience that we can submit to them. What God wills of us is the same as He wills and has done for us. God willsjesus. This is how He directs His demand to us. This is how He claims us for Himself. It is as well to consider the matter in this simplest possible formulation. All explanations of what it means in detail can only return continually to this simplest formula. They need the light which streams from this simplest form of the truth. The name of jesus is itself the designation of the divine content of the divine claim, of the substance

EN 12

perfection perfection

ENI:~

you will be

EN 14

perfect

EN 1 1

57

[568]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God of God's Law. We cannot hurry past Him. We cannot treat Him as though He Himselfwere not this substance. We cannot think of Him as a mere container, or a husk which we have to open in order to reach this substance, but can then discard. Ifwe do, it means that we have definitely not heard what has been told to man as the good. Obedience to God always means that we become and are continually obedient to Jesus. The concentration and intensity with which this was continually said by Nicolas von Zinzendorfwas amply justified. He said it in opposition not only to a secularised orthodoxy, and not only to the Enlightenment, but also to the moral and mystical ambiguities of the Pietism of his time. In so doing, he reestablished not merely a Reformation but a New Testament insight. We may be astonished at baroque features in the way in which he said it. And we may argue that, entangled in certain Lutheran ideas, he did not say it universally enough. But we must give him credit that he was one of the few not only of his own time but of all times who have s~id it so definitely and loudly and impressively.

[569]

To become obedient to Jesus is actually to become obedient to God, not a conceived and imaginary God, but to God as He is in His inmost essence, the gracious God, the God in whom we may believe. Jesus Himself is the divine demand which confronts us as a genuinely compelling demand and which is also rigorous in the sense that it can be fulfilled only willingly or not at all; the demand upon us ourselves, which claims our heart, and therefore the fulfilment of which really brings us ourselves into harmony with the will of God. Nothing that we can do in fulfilment of the will of God is higher and deeper than to love Jesus and therefore to keep His commandments-just because they are His,just because we cannot love Him without keeping His commandments. We definitely fulfil the will of God when we do this. And whatever is done in line with and in the sense of this action even where Jesus is no longer or is not yet known; whatever bears in itself something in the nature of this action and is therefore an actual witness to the fact that Jesus lives and reigns and conquers, is definitely a fulfilment of the will of God. In all ages the will of God has been fulfilled outside the Church as well. Indeed, to the shame of the Church it has often been better fulfilled outside the Church than in it. This is not in virtue of a natural goodness of man. It is because Jesus, as the One who has risen from the dead and sits at the right hand of God, is in fact the Lord of the whole world, who has His servants even where His name is not yet or no longer known and praised. The Church can know and praise Him. The Church can live in the consciousness of what is said to us. The Church can call all men to the consciousness of what has force and truth for all men. How great, then, is its primary task and obligation to realise for itself that the only thing which has truth and force is'that it is in the fact that Jesus lives and reigns and conquers that man is claimed by God! The decisive New Testament term in this connexion is that of following. "Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example ({J7ToypafLfL6~), that ye should follow his steps" (1 Pet. 221). "If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be" (In. 1226). The term is filled out in certain passages. According to Mt. 1038, to follow Jesus is

2.

The Content of the Divine Claim

to "take up one's cross"; according to Mt. 1624, it is to "deny oneself'; according to Mt. 1927, "to leave all"; according to the account (in Lk. 957f.) of the three who wanted to followjesus, and evidently could not, and therefore did not genuinely want to do so, the radicalism of the necessary turning to Him and away from everything else; according to the context of 1 Pet. 2211"., to suffer persecution without returning evil for evil but rather requiting evil with good. Injn. 812 to followjesus has the promise that those who do so will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. But the decisive passages even for these more concrete formulations are those where the term is used absolutely, where the meaning of "following" is obviously only to be explained by the fact that it is the following ofjesus. The concretions all speak of demands which are made in this way only byjesus and which have little or nothing at all to do with the generalities they seem to suggest-escapism, asceticism, ethical rigorism and the like. A realisation of what is meant by taking up one's cross, denYing oneself, leaving all, loving one's enemies, etc., cannot lead us to the realisation of what is meant by following jesus. On the contrary, it is only as we realise what followingjesus means that we can go on to realise the meaning of these concretions as well. When the disciples ofjesus are constituted His disciples by the command: Follow Me, the simple but incommensurable meaning is that they are to be with Him, to abide with Him, to accompany Him on His ways wherever they may lead. Why?Well, obviously in the first instance only to be there, to hear what He saysand see what He does, and therefore to be His ear-witnesses and eye-witnesses. No other meaning is possible even where, as in Mt. 425 and many other places, it is applied even to those whose attachment to jesus is more occasional and transitory. In every case "following" means simply to be there, to be with jesus, in His proximity. This simple "being there" has for their existence all the consequences which are given in the more concrete explanations. There is assumed in it an obligation which loosens and limits and disturbs all the other relationships in which they might otherwise stand, all their ties with men, things and circumstances. By it they are tested and sifted. Not all who would like to be there really desire it. And those who do not really desire it, are not able to do it; their following ceases when it has appeared to begin or before it has even appeared to begin. According to Lk. 1428f., to want to be where jesus is, involves a resolution comparable to that of a man who desires to build a tower, or a king who desires to go to war. To want to be where jesus is, is to abandon oneself to this total claim: to take one's cross, to deny oneself, to leave all, to love one's enemies. Why all this? Only because jesus is there as the One by whom this claim is issued; only because He Himself is the Lord as the One who is subject to this claim, the obedient servant who in accordance with the will of His heavenly Father does all that these demands indicate. "And where I am, there will my servant be also." It is not possible to be with jesus without necessarily being called and drawn into the occurrence indicated by these demands. What jesus says cannot be heard, and what He does cannot be seen, without coming under the lordship which consists in the fact that He is subject to this servitude, to these demands in the obedience which He renders to the will of His Father. His servitude is His lordship because in it He lives and proclaims the grace of God by His obedience. That is why He has "authority" (€govata), why He does not speak as the scribes (Mt. 729), why His doctrine is not a way of life or programme of world-betterment, or His life a pattern for its execution, but wholly and utterly the event of God's dealing with man. We cannot, then, be with Him merely to learn and accept this or that and leave on one side what we find inconvenient. Being with Him means at once the separation of those who do not desire and are not able really to be with Him, and the acceptance of those who desire it and can do it because they belong to Him. But the claim which His existence implies-just because it is God's own claim-is still addressed to the former and valid for them. Perhaps to-morrow they will have the desire and the capacity that they do not have to-day.And perhaps those who have it to-day will no longer

59

[570]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[571J

have it to-morrow. The command: Follow Me, is issued and is there and valid quite independently of what is done or not done. In relation to it something will alwaysbe done and something not be done. But in face of this command there is no neutrality: no hopelessness for those who as yet have no desire or capacity; but also no security for those who have. The important thing is that it is issued and that it is there and valid-and that is something which cannot be altered. It is issued and is there and valid like the bronze tablet from which the will of God could be read, even though it had never been fulfilled by any man nor ever would be. In the fact that it is issued and is there and valid, Jesus lives and reigns and conquers, and whatever the relationship of man may be to it, he is told what is good. It is good to be with Jesus and not elsewhere. This is good because it is there that God Himself is good for us. We can certainly try to be elsewhere and to be good for God of ourselves. But how far astray we shall go on such independent ways!How ineluctably we shall fail, even when we imagine we are doing well, if we deviate from the sure waywhich God Himself trod for us and still treads! We do not possess the teleological power to adjust our action to that goal of our determination. As sinful men we have our ow:q perverted TEAos EN15 with which all the detailed TEAT} EN16 of our existence can only be perverted. The very thing which we try to do for God of ourselves will be the most perverted of all, as has happened again and again in the history of religions. ButJesus has this teleological power. There is a walk outside the darkness, in the light of life, and it is this walk which is meant when the New Testament speaks of the following of Jesus.

We are not saying anything different, but only the same thing over again, when we say that the form of the teleological power of grace is the existence of the people of God: of Israel, according to the Old Testament promise; of the Church, according to the New Testament proclamation. Thanks to the wisdom and omnipotence of divine grace,jesus never exists alone and for Himself, but always as the first-born among many brethren, as the prophesied King of Israel, as the revealed Head of His community. It is not of their own means and merit, but by Him and from Him, as His people, that those who belong to Him are bearers of the grace of God for all men and therefore of the divine claim on all men. They are this in so far as among them the name of jesus may be confessed, as He may be believed and proclaimed and magnified as the sum of the Law, as the fulness of the good, which God has done for us and wills to have done by us. The kingdom of Christ is greater than the sphere of Israel and the Church. But it is in this sphere, and in it alone, that it is believed and known that the kingdom of the world is His, and not the devil's. From this sphere all men may and must be told who it is to whom they and their activity are properly subject, whom alone they and their activity can serve. By giving His Son to rule and live and reign and conquer by His obedience, God has created this sphere too: the sphere where His name is the object of the promise and proclamation by which all its inhabitants live; the historical sphere which is created among all others by His coming and the fact that He has come, in order that the grace of God, and with it the claim of God on men, may have a continuing abode in space and time, in order that in it the omnipresent God may have EN15 EN16

goal goals

60

2.

The Content of the Divine Claim

also His specific, concrete presence. The sphere itself is nothing, and those who live in it are nothing and can do nothing, without Jesus, who constitutes its origin and its centre. But as Jesus is its origin and centre, this sphere exists in Him and this people lives with Him. And when we ask what is the good which is told to man, and what it is that the Lord requires of him, in a fitting subordination, but quite definitely, we shall answer that we have to keep to what is demanded from us by the fact that this people has been founded and may exist. The law of this people's life is the Law of God. In the fact that He wills and creates this people, God sayswhat He wants of it and what He wants of all other men. God's command is the command which He has given to Israel and which He has given to the Church. The man who, according to Mic. 68, has been told what is good, is not man as such and in general, but Israelite man, the people of Israel. That which is required of him-to do justly, and love nlercy, and walk humbly before his God-is not, therefore, the compendium of a natural duty incumbent on men generally, but, as in the case of the Ten Commandments, a condensation of the demand which is proclaimed and established and enforced by the fact that God has chosen this people of Israel to be His people, and Himself to be the God of this people. Compare with this Deut. 1012f.: "And now, 0 Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways,and to love hiln, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good? Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day. Circun1cise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no more stiffnecked. For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: he doth execute the judglnen t of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God; him shalt thou serve; to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name. He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen. Thy fathers went down into Egypt with three-score and ten persons; and now the Lord thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude." Yahweh has called Israel His son, His first-born (Ex. 422,jer. 319, Has. 111)-therefore "consider in thine heart that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee" (Deut. 85). Yahweh is holy in Israel, and the demand that Israel is to be holy unto Him has its basis, in the fact that when He created this people He created it to be His people and dealt with it accordingly. What He demands is not, therefore, a generality. It is all the special paternal ordering of its life in the relationship to which it owes its existence. There is, therefore, nothing accidental or arbitrary which a man might equally well demand of himself, or another god of another people. There is no abstract cult-regulation, no abstract legal norm, no abstract moral law. Everything that God wills is an exact expression of the fact that those of whom He wills it are His own-an exact counterpart of the "great and terrible things" which God had already done for these men. "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (Ex. 202, Deut. 56). The Ten Commandments and the various ceremonial, legal and moral enactments, are not independent and cannot be separated from this antecedent. They receive and have from it their specific content. They are merely part of the law of the life of the people led by God out of Egypt and into Palestine. It is because it is this people, because it would not exist without

61

[572]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[573J

these "great and terrible things" done by God, because it owes its existence to these acts of God, that it is bound and obliged to keep the commands of its God. And in content each of the commands reflects and confirms the fact that Israel is this people, the people created and maintained by these acts of God. Thou shalt! means, Israel shall! and everything that Israel shall is only an imperative transcription of what Israel is, repeating in some sense only what Israel has become by God, and what it must alwaysbe with God. But Israel is the people of promise, and therefore from the very outset it is the people of the promised Son, in whose name all generations shall be blessed. In view and for the sake of Him as its future and yet already present King, Israel is itself called the son of God, and chosen and created and ruled by God as this special people. For His sake it exists and with its existence it has received the Law of God, being claimed by God in this special way.For His sake this Law,which is given only to it, and the fulfilment of which is demanded only from it, has objective and universal significance in all its parts, to the extent that He, this coming Son and King, will keep and fulfil it, when everything that Israel did to keep and fulfil it has finally shown itself to be disobedience. That in relation to the God who claims him man is continually not only in arrears, but in the wrong-is what has to emerge unequivocally in the man, the people, which, like Is~ael, is told what is good. This is what makes it so clear that it is this man who lives by the promise made to him, by the promised One who alone will keep and fulfil the Law.And it is on this account that he is really claimed. The meaning of all those great acts of God towards Israel was to shadow forth the fact that it can have a share in what this promised One will be and do as divine Deliverer of man, that it can live in His sphere, in the sphere of "the great and terrible things" which the exodus from Egypt and the entry into Palestine only herald. The grace in which Israel may rejoice is this: that expecting and grasping the promise made to it in spite and in the midst of all its disobedience, it can have a part in the action of the divine faithfulness which will be revealed inJesus, and which now already has its sphere, its circle of light and power, in its whole history, although the centre is so far hidden. And in the light of this we can understand how it is that the divine claim in regard to Israel is so distinct and is maintained in and through all the disobedience that it encounters, with all the judgments threatened and executed, but also the continual renewals of the promise, and the actual demonstrations of help and blessing. As certainly as the divine promise will be fulfilled, so certainly the divine faithfulness persists in regard to this people. And as certainly as this faithfulness, as the Law of God persists, so certainly it must be there on tables and in books, and be solemnly read and heard, from generation to generation (Deut. 3110f., Josh. 834f., 2 K. 232f., Neh. 8lf.). But although blessing rests on human loyalty towards it, and a curse on human disloyalty,in the long run and as a whole, human disobedience preponderates and therefore the curse must be fulfilled. Yetthe faithful One is still the end and goal of the whole history of Israel. It is clear, therefore, that what Israel does and fails to do under God's claim is one thing, but the fact that it is alwaysthe people claimed by God, that God does not cease to declare His will to it, is another. And this other holds whatever has to be thought and said about this people's answer to what God says. Its disobedience may be exposed and it may be convicted of its unfaithfulness, but it still has the Law. The Law has been given. It is characterised and maintained by its unshakeable validity. It is reminded again and again of God's will. It is never released from the obligation which this imposes. It is allowed no escape from this obligation. It may set little or no store at all by the fact that it is characterised in this way.Yetit alwayshas the honour done it by the fact that it stands under this obligation. It bears it always, and therefore against all its deserts, in and in spite of its utter unworthiness, it also bears the grace which is the secret of this claim. In all its foolishness and perversity, there has always been a basis for the self-glorification of the Jewish people as the people of the Law.For "it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted

2.

The Content of the Divine Claim

above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say,Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of jacob; and he will teach us of his ways,and we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people" (Is. 22[.). What the Lord demands of Israel: to do justly, and love mercy and walk humbly before its God-this counterpart to the "great and terrible things" which God has done for this people-has secretly from the very first an objective and universal significance, the significance of the divine claim on all men which it acquires openly with Jesus' call to follow Him. That this cannot be disproved and cancelled by the sin of man emerges typically in the history of the people of Israel, which was always unfaithful and disobedient, but alwaysconfirmed and characterised as the bearer of the divine Law.Just as the promise and command of God are present and valid among the sinful people of Israel, so the claim of God (which is only the form of His grace) has its permanent place in space and time. In this place an unholy people, a people utterly in need of divine sanctification, will alwaysbe found confronting its holy and merciful God in the most radical unworthiness. In this place there can only be thanksgiving to God because He is friendly and eternally maintains His kindness. The divine claim will alwaysbe directed to a man, a people, which on account of its disloyalty and disobedience can only give thanks. It will be directed to this people to shame it, but also to characterise it; to expose its wrong before God, but also to instruct it in all its wrongness; to attest that it can live only by grace, but also to attest that it may really live by God's grace. And because the claim of God has this place, it will also be heard in the world around as the claim of God on all men. Those who bear and proclaim it can only be those who are sanctified by their presence at the great acts of God, instructed and punished, disciplined and confined, disquieted in their quiet and quieted in their disquiet, and thus continually brought into the right way by the promised One of Israel. By the existence of a people like this, God speaks to all men, telling all men what He will have of them. For this to happen, for this people really to be the light and the salt that it was intended to be, what is needed is that jesus should be among it. But Jesus is among this people. This is what has been brought to light in the New Testament Church, with the fulfilment of the promise of Israel, in contrast to the existence of Israel as such. The biblical portrayal of the Church as the spatio-temporallocus of the divine claim, as the Zion from which the Law goes forth, is distinguished from that of Israel by the fact that the divine accusation of man's disloyalty and disobedience, which had almost completely dominated the Old Testament, has now been reduced to silence, and is only a warning recollection. This is not because it has become objectless. It is because it has found its proper object in jesus Christ. The judgment which necessarily followed has found its fulfilment in Him. The command of God can be understood and proclaimed only as the command kept and fulfilled by Him. It is as such that it is now valid and authoritative. And its content is that we should take up the right attitude to Him, jesus Christ, with the faith and love and hope which all have in Him as their ground and content. The secret of the Old Testament, that it can only be a matter of thanksgiving, has now been publicly declared in the Church as the people of Jesus Christ. That those who give thanks are unfaithful and disobedient is a fact on which it is no longer necessary to lay particular emphasis. In view of Jesus' death on the cross, it is the obvious presupposition of their thanks. The new feature of the order of life in the New Testament is that these men who are unfaithful and disobedient, together with all the lost people of the old covenant, really do give thanks, that they for their part may really keep and fulfil the command of God-always in their relationship to jesus, always in following Him. But even this order of life, and this order in particular, can be understood only as the Law of the life of God's people. It cannot have a materially new

[574]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[575]

content in contrast to Mic. 68 or Deut. 1012f. or the Ten Commandments. It only clarifies and defines the relationship in which everything that the Old Testament Law demanded had always stood, but in which it has now been revealed with the appearance of Jesus, His death. and resurrection. "Beloved, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth" (1 J n. 2 7f.) . As the new Law it is "that ye love one another; as I have loved you (with the purpose) that ye also love one another" Un. 1334). The new thing isJesus Himself. ButJesus Himself is also the old. For He is the promised One for whose sake the Law was given to Israel. Alwayswhen He wills and creates a people for Him. God also explains what He wants of man. He establishes His law. Not, then, in spite of its weakness, but in the very midst of it, this people may ~nd must be the witness to the divine claim upon all men.

But what is meant and expressed by the divine claim made in and with the person ofJesus Christ, in and with the existence of His people? What is the aim of God's grace when it becomes a command for man? Ifwe look steadfastly at the place where the divine claim is revealed, that is, atJesus and His people, we can hardly avoid the following comprehensive answer. The concern in the divine claim is that man's action should become and be always that of those who accept God's action as right. It is the grace of God which is attested to us by the claim of God. The grace of God wills and creates the covenant between God and man. It therefore determines man to existence in this covenant. It determines him to be the partner of God. It therefore determines his action to correspondence, conformity, uniformity with God's action. How can God will and create this covenant, or man exist in this covenant, or God be gracious to man, without this determination of man? What is involved is that man and man's action should become the image of God: the reflection which represents, although in itself it is completely different from, God and His action; the reflection in which God recognises Himself and His action. It is in this determination of man that his peace with God consists, his righteousness before Him, his holiness. And this is the eternal life which he is promised. Eternal life is God's own life, and the life of the creature when it is uniform with God's own life. What God wills of man when He establishes the covenant between Himself and man, when He is gracious to him, is that his creaturely life and being and action, his thoughts and words and works, should acquire this uniformity. But He wills this only as He is gracious to us. He wills it only as He willsJesus and the people among whom Jesus is King. God's action is that He sentJesus, that He offered Him up for us, that, again for us, He exalted and glorified Him, and that in and with Him He also elected and created His people, that He elected and created Israel and the Church to be the place of faith in Jesus and a witness to Him. It is to this, therefore, that the required uniformity of our action with God's action must always be related. The determination of man is always to reflect this. The cov-

2.

The Content of the Divine Claim

enant of grace alone constitutes the real relationship between God and man. Man is determined only to be the partner of the gracious God. What other claim can be considered in relation to this partner, indeed what other claim can be known by man at all, except that he must be one to whom God is gracious, and think and speak and act as such? God's action is that He is gracious, and man in his action is committed to correspondence to this action. He is the image of God and His action when his own action reflects and to that extent copies the grace of God. Man is righteous and holy before God and on the way to eternal life to the degree that he lives by the grace of God and therefore for the grace of God, for its glorification in his creaturely existence. Sin, on the other hand, can obviously be only the surrender of this righteousness and holiness, a deviation from this way which is the open but also the only way to eternallife. But the grace of God is the existence of Jesus Christ and His people. What are we to do? We are to do what corresponds to this grace. We are to respond to the existence of Jesus Christ and His people. With our action we are to render an account to this grace. By it and by it alone we are challenged. To it and to it alone we are responsible. This is brought out very clearly by the context of the bold saying of Paul in Eph. 51: In other passages (I Cor. 416, Ill; oOv J-tLJ-tY}TUL TOU (}EOU WS TEKVU ayu7TY}TaENI7• 1 Thess. 1 6) Paul urged Christians to become "imitators" of himself, the apostle. In I Thess. 2 J.1 he spoke of the Church ofThessalonica "imitating" the wayof suffering of the Church of Jerusalem. He described himself in I Cor. I lias an "imitator" of Christ. The even stronger saying in Eph. 51 shows us plainly what is meant. He had (Eph. 431f.) summoned Christians to put awayall bitterness, all wrath, anger and clamour, all railing and malice; and to exercise rnutual kindness, tenderheartedness and forgiveness, corresponding to the forgiveness which had come to them from God through Jesus Christ. They were to be "imitators" of this God, and therefore to walk in love "as Christ also hath loved you, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." This "imitation "-and there can be no question of any other-is obviously related in the strictest possible wayto the gracious attitude of God to us men revealed and operative in Christ. This attitude is the Law which is given to us. It is to this attitude that we and all our activity are bound, and by it that we are measured, and must orientate ourselves. Ne devrions nous pas et soir et matin, et iour et y{vEa(}E

n uict penser

a la grace

esclairer? raut-il

qui nous est Jaite en nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ, qui est le soleil pour nous

que nous soyons abrutis et que nous ne cognoissions point qu 'il Jait luire sa clairte

.\pirituelle sur nous,

a fin

de nous conduire

a salut?

Et comment cela seJait-il, sinon par la mismcorde

de Dieu? Apres, quand nous voyons la grace que Dieu nous Jait de nous maintenir sommes-nous

dignes d 'estre nourris

Christ. Il Jaudroit

a ses despens?

en ceste vie presente,

Non: mais le tout nous vient par nostre Seigneur Jesus

donc et en nostre dormir et en nos veilles et en nos,tre boire et en nostre manger et en

nostre repos et en nostre labeur et en tout et par tout, que nous cognoissions tousiours la mismcorde

de

laquelle Die a use envers nous et qu 'elleJust reduite en memo ire et que ceJust notre exercice continuel. Et aussi en priant auronsnous

Dieu il Jaut tousiours

pour parler privement

que ceste grace nous vienne devant

a luy et pour

son giron et le nommer mesmes nostre pere, sinon d 'autant

ENI7

Therefore,

les yeux.

Car quel acces

descharner toutes nos sollicitudes et angoisses comme en que nous sommes convoyez par sa bonte

be imitators of God, as his dearly beloved children

[576]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God nos transgressions? Si nous ne pen(Calvin, Sermon on Eph. 43lf., C.R. 51, 664) . It is clear that even where Paul describes himself as an imitator of Christ or the Thessalonians as imitators of those of jerusalem, or where he summons to an imitation of himself, he is thinking only of this gracious attitude of God injesus Christ. The same is true of 1 Pet. 313 where, instead of rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, Christians under persecution are invited (38£.) to bless, as those who are called to inherit a blessing. ''Who is he that will harm you, if ye be ~YJAwTa{EN19 (or fLtfLYJTa{EN20) of the good" (probably masculine, therefore of Christ or God)? If only you sanctify the Kvptos XptaTOS EN21 in your heart, you need not fear anything or any man (314£0). "It is better, if the will of God be so;' that ye suffer, than that ye do evil. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" (317£0). The need to imitate Christ even in His passion, which plays such a decisive role in the First Epistle of Peter (cf. 221), is plainly rooted in the fact that the passion of Christ took place for us, that it is the great revelation and reality of the grace of God to us, and that as such it demands uniformity from us, since it is to us that this grace is shown. Gal. 61 is also relevant in this connexion: "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." So, too, is Rom. 152: "Let everyone of us please his neighbour for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself, but, as it is written. The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me." So, too, does Col. 313: "Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.",Finally and above all, we may refer to the whole passage Phil. 23£ .• The basis of this exhortation to unity, and to the lowliness which puts the things of others above one's own things, is an appeal to Christians to live in the mind "which is in Christ jesus," and which must as such be normative for them. This is the mind in which He did not maintain Himself in His Godhead, but emptied Himself of its glory and assumed the servant-form of a man, being obedient to God in this form even to the death of the cross. It is in this way,on the basis of this gracious condescension, that He has been genuinely exalted and glorified anew. And it is to this One who became a servant for us that every knee must bow, and every tongue confess that He is the Lord. What is required of us is that our action should be brought into conformity with His action. gratuite en nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ et qu'il nous a pardonnes sons it tout eela nous sommes par trop stupides et abrutisEN18

[577J

But what is meant by demanding conformity with divine grace, and to that extent conformity withJesus Christ and His people? In what does our responsiEN18

EN19 EN20 EN21

Should we not afternoon and 'morning, day and night, think of the grace which has been accomplished through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the sun to illumine us? Must we be so deluded that we not know that he makes his spiritual brightness shine upon us, to lead us to salvation? And how does he do that, if not by the mercy of God? Afterward, when we see the grace which God effects for us to maintain us in this present life, are we worthy to be nourished with his resources? No. Rather, everything comes to us by our Lord jesus Christ. Then we must, in our sleeping or in our waking and in our drinking and in our eating and in our rest and in our work and in everything and by everything that we always know the mercy by which God has acted towards us and that it should be committed to memory, and that this should be our continual exercise. In addition, in praying to God, this grace must always come before our eyes. For what access would we have to speak privately to him and to unburden all our concerns and anxieties, as if on his lap, and to call him our Father, unless we had been transported by his free goodness in our Lord Jesus Christ and that he had forgiven us our sins? Ifwe do not think on all this, then it is because we are indeed too stupid and deluded zealots imitators Lord Christ

66

2.

The Content of the Divine Claim

bility to God consist if God is its object and measure In this His concrete action? We must first be clear that there can be no question of a conformity which means equality, of anything in the nature of a deification of man, of making him a second Christ. The correspondence which alone can be considered in this connexion cannot and will not mean abolition of "the infinite qualitative difference" between God and man. It is a question of responsibility and therefore of a correspondence in which God and man are in clear and inflexible antithesis. It is a question of displaying the image of God, and not of the creation of a second God in human form, or of a mixing or changing of the human form into the one divine form. It is a question of the eternal life of the creature as such. Whatever the action demanded of us may be, it will be our action, a human action. It will have to attest and confirm the great acts of God; but it will not be able to continue or repeat them. The covenant, the partnership remains, but there is no development of an identity between God and man. In face of the action of man the great acts of God will always be what they and they alone are. Jesus Christ will reign and man will be subject to Him, and they will always be different in and in spite of the closest fellowship between Him and His imitators. There will be no more Christs. No second or third person will be able to come with the promise and claim: "I am he!" According to Mk. 135 and Mt. 245, only "deceivers" will be able to say this of themselves. Again, the people of God, as the exemplary form of the kingdom of grace, will always be a special people in relation to the rest of the world. No other chosen people will ever stand alongside Israel. No state or group or class will ever become the Church. The unique will always be unique and the distances will remain. It will always be the case that even for the best men the good is a matter of command and prohibition, of exhortation, warning, precept and direction. Even in the kingdom of perfection this relationship will be maintained. Then we shall "see face to face." What constitutes the contradiction and the pain of this opposition will be taken away. Tears and suffering and crying and death will be no more. But even then we shall not be gods, let alone God Himself. There can certainly be no question of our being or becoming this now. All the New Testament passages so far adduced speak of definite acts and attitudes in which this imitation of God and Christ must take shape. They are all in line with Mt. 548• Our aim must correspond to the distinctive aim of our Father in heaven, who meets both the good and the evil with the same beneficence. It must be a readiness to forgive one other, to be compassionate, to bear one another's burdens and to live and help one another. It must be persistent kindness even towards persecutors of the faith. It must be a humility in which we do not look at our own things, but at the things of others. It must be a love which is directed even-and especially-to our enemies. But the very definiteness of these demands shows their limitation. These demands obviously do not mean that man is invited to usurp the prerogative of God and to meddle in His affairs. The fulfilment of all these commands does not in any sense mean that he becomes a "gracious Lord" to his neighbours. Neither for himself nor for others can he or will he do what Jesus Christ did. For what Jesus did, the

[578]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[579J

satisfaction for our sins, was done EcP' aTTug EN22 This is emphasised not only by the Epistle to the Hebrews, but also by the First Epistle of Peter (318). And it is certainly not overlooked or obscured by Paul, the very one who proclaims the perfect community and imitation of Christ. Neither for ourselves nor for others can we do the good which God does for us. What we should and can do is correspond to this good. We can and should seek and find in it the pattern of what we have to do. But what we now do will alwaysbe something different. It will be our creaturely action, and here and now it will always be an action conditioned, and indeed perverted, by our sin. That is, in so far as it is done out of respect for that pattern, in so far as that pattern is given to it, it will be righteous and holy; but in so far as it is regarded alone, in so far as it is questioned and investigated according to its own inner content, it will be unrighteous and unholy. This action is a good action only in virtue of its correspondence with God's grace. In so far as it is good in this correspondence, it will not wish to be freed from this correspondence, or to claim for itself any immanent goodness. Just because Rom. 833 tells us that there is no accusation against the elect of God, and Rom. 81 that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, the latter will be particularly on their guard against losing the freedom and therefore the real goodness of their works by claiming it as a goodness of their own which they themselves have produced and accomplished, and by playing it off even to the slightest extent, even only for a moment, against the goodness of God. It is just for this reason that this goodness cannot acquire the character of a "merit." The content of the divine demand on man is that he should do in his circle, and therefore with an obedience which makes no claim, that which God does by Christ in His circle. The demand is serious, penetrating and inescapable, just because it is so simple, just because it requires and expects of man no more than he can do,just because it is alwaysthe demand of grace. It does not demand that man should himself become a creator, reconciler and redeemer, that he should possess, control and dispense grace. It demands only that he should attest it, but attest in definite deeds and attitudes which correspond to it. Its commands are "not grievous" (1 In. 53). They are rigorously directed to men. But they do not actually exceed the measure of human power. On the contrary, they stir human power to action-only human power, but really to action. "Myyoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Mt. 1130). It cannot be sufficiently pondered that the summons to take up this yoke is identical with the invitation: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you." The claim which fails to speak of this divine refreshment, or which summons man to create this divine refreshment for himself, is definitely not the divine claim.

But the required conformity with the grace of God is this. His action must be determined by the fact that he accepts the gracious action of God as right. This, or something just as simple and apparently sterile and non-committal, is the best possible expression to describe the content of the divine claim. We might perhaps substitute for "accept as right" some such phrase as "acquiesce in" or "respect" or "allow to stand" or "adhere to." The crux of the matter is that we should understand the Law as "spiritual" (Rom. 714), or as "the law of the Spirit of life" (Rom. 82), that is, as the form of grace and the Gospel, and therefore in the simplicity, indeed the "lightness," of its demand and fulfilment. We do the right when we accept as right what the gracious God does for us, and acquiesce in it. When man is summoned to do the right, primarily and decisively he is summoned only to adhere to the fact that the gracious God does the right. Whatever he himself does, it will be the right if only he is satisEN22

once for all

68

2.

The Content of the Divine Claim

fied that the gracious God does the right. And it will never be the right, even to the slightest degree, ifhe is not satisfied with that. All the sublimity but also the intimacy, all the harshness but also the sweetness, all the rigours but also the compelling gentleness of the divine Law are contained in what is, after all, its only requirement: that what we do, we should do as those who accept as right what God in His grace does for us. "To accept as right" means to lay aside all hostility to God's action-as if we were injured or humiliated by it, as if we had to guard and defend ourselves against it, as if there were some important interests which inclination or even duty compelled us to defend against it. "To accept as right" means again to lay aside all indifference to what God does, or non-participation in it-as if we knew nothing of it, as if it were no concern of ours, as if He did it for Himself, or for all kinds of others, as if He did not do it for us, for me, as if we, I, were not affected and determined by what He does. "To accept as right" means finally to lay aside all one's superiority and self-will in regard to God's actionas if alongside and apart from it we could acquiesce in and accept all kinds of other things as right, as if in our action we could choose again between orientation by this or that authority, as if acceptance of God's gracious action as right did not mean that we were bound to this authority, to this norm, and free only in obedience to it. "To accept God's action as right," and to live and act as those who have done and do and will do this in and above everything, is to confront God's action in a spirit of contentment, or better, with joyful participation, or better, with the burning and exclusive desire to be obedient to it. "To accept God's action as right" is to love God in this His action, to love Him with all our heart, and soul, and strength. That it demands so much makes no difference to the simplicity, indeed the lightness of God's command. On the contrary it is the lightness and simplicity of His command that, when it claims us in this way as God's command, it binds us to the God whom we may love, but who wills actually and wholly and utterly to be loved in what He does. It is unfortunate that the saying: "Myson, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways,"can be adduced only as a dictum of the translators and not as a correct rendering of Provo2326• But Paul saysmaterially the same thing in Col. 31£. when he exhorts those who are risen with Christ to seek what is above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God: "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." For there, above, hidden with Christ in God, is their true life. There God acts for them. There, consequently, is the norm and the principle of their own action, in the sense that what is done there is to be seen, discovered, considered, observed and valued by us, and then confirmed contentedly, joyfully and willingly in and by what we do. All other things which might try to claim us elsewheresuch as the S6yfLa-ra EN23 of the false teachers at Colossae-are an earthly authority which does not deserve to be considered and valued and confirmed by us and therefore cannot really become normative, because it can never be divinely normative, because God does not stand behind these claims. The claim behind which God stands, and which is therefore binding, is "above." But it is not a heavenly power or spiritual force which is "above." It is

EN2:~

teaching

69

[580]

~ 37. The Command as the.Claim o/God Christ as the outstretched and active right arm of God Himself, as God's gracious dealing and gracious work in person. "To seek" and "to set the affection on" what is "above" is, therefore, to seek and set the affection on Christ, and then to live as one who does this, who from his heart accepts as right the gracious dealing and gracious work of God which he has experienced and is experiencing, who takes pleasure in these waysof God.

[581J

What are we to do? We are to accept as right, and to live as those who accept as right the fact that they do not belong to themselves, that they therefore do not have their life in their own hands and at their own disposal, that they are made a divine possession in Jesus Christ. Against this alienation, against this objective assignment of our existence to the very different hand of the gracious God, there will always be raised the hostility of those who would rather belong to themselves, who have no desire to be dispossessed and deprived of their most primitive possession, namely, themselves, who think they see a robber and enemy in the One who does this to them. There is also raised the indifference of those who do not see the hand which holds them, who do not recognise the kindness which is done to them, who do not understand the importance which this must have for their own action. There is also raised the wilfulness of those who, alongside the sphere to which they are directed, always see other spheres open into which they may move and desire to do so. But in contrast to all this, we have to accept it as right that we are God's possession. Why and how? For this reason and in this way-that it is not possible for us to see God's gracious dealing and work in Jesus Christ without recognising that it is good for man, that it is the best thing possible for man, simply to be God's possession. However deep may be the ocean of that opposition within us, it is already drained to the depths in Jesus Christ. With Him our life, however we may regard Him or whatever we may wish to make of it, is already "hidden in God," hidden and secured against all the dangerous folly of our opposition. In Him that alienation and assignation of man has already taken place, and the glory of God with which man is invested is already a revealed reality. What we have to do is to accept and maintain what He regards as true of our life against our own opposition and to let our action be illumined and ruled by this acceptance. This is the required conformity of our action with that of the gracious God. What are we to do? We are to accept it as right that God never meets us except compassionately, except as the One who comes to the help of our misery, except apart from and against our deserts, except in such a way as to disclose that what we have deserved is death. Here again hostility is provoked in those who would prefer-if at all-to stand and treat with God on the same footing, who want to cooperate in His counsel and participate in His acts, who regard it as too belittling and even hurtful a thing to have to live by mercy alone. Again, there is aroused the indifference of those whose heart has not been penetrated by God's mercy, who do not yet or any longer consider what it costs God to be merciful to them, who do not yet or any longer estimate what it means to be really saved from death by God's mercy. And, again, there is

2.

The Content of the Divine Claim

stirred up the wilfulness which wants to divide its attention and purposes between God's mercy and the value and rights of its own or others' claims and interests. In contrast to all this, we have to accept it as right to dare to live by the unfathomable mercy of God which has its basis-but an unshakeable basis-only in Himself. Why and how? For this reason and in this way-that in Jesus Christ, as God's gracious dealing and work in person, we shall find and unveil only sinful and lost man-ourselves (for it was our sins and our lost estate which He took upon Himself and bore )-but this man, ourselves, awakened from the death which he had deserved, not by human power, but by God's power, not in the course of a natural development, but by the miraculous act of the free God. In face of these ways of God what is the significance of all the solid opposition which we might and actually do raise against them, of all our displeasure at having to live by mercy alone? Certainly let it be voiced! But let it be confronted with the opposition which God Himself has long since brought against it! The required conformity of our action with the gracious action of God is that we accept the fact that our opposition is already met, that a term has already been set to it, that it has already been liquidated by what God has done. It is required that we should accept what has been done, even in the noisy opposition which we always make to it. It is required that there should not be lacking in our action the sign of this acceptance. What are we to do? We are to accept it as right that God is our righteousness. Beyond our physical and spiritual delights and desires, beyond our bondage to earth and titanic strivings, beyond our faults and virtues, beyond our good and evil works, He is always our righteousness. Against this "He" and against this "beyond," there again arises the hostility which would like to say "I" instead of "He," the indifference which does not see that we are left groping in a fog until this inversion is made, the wilfulness which would continually like to reverse it, at any rate temporarily and partially. All the opposition which man carries in his heart to the fact that he is not his own possession, but God's, and that he has not to live by his own merit but by God's mercy, finds a definite focus in the point that he cannot and will not realise that in fact "Yahweh is our righteousness" Ger. 236, 3316), and that we have no righteousness of our own to set against this. There never has been and never will be a Christianity which is free from this opposition. The Phariseeism of a publican trying to boast that he is free from this opposition would be the worst of all the forms which this opposition can assume. But, in defiance of our opposition, we are summoned to accept as right what God does, and on this basis (and not for a moment apart from it) to do what we do, and therefore to do the right. No matter what may be our opposition to it, we are to accept it as right that God is our righteousness. Why and how? Again for this reason and in this way-that this is the very thing which has taken place in God's gracious dealing and work, in Jesus Christ. In Him God has executed His judgment by making Him a sinner for us, but also by exalting Him before us to His glory. In Him we are acquitted and justified. In Him "He," God, has stepped into our place, suffering punishment,

[582]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[583J

but also receiving a reward-my punishment and my reward. In Him God's righteousness has become my "beyond," actually mine. Of what avail will all our grumbling and murmuring be against this decision? Of what avail will all our devices be to make an "I" again of the "He," and a "here" of the "beyond"? What can we and shall we contrive against what has been done for us by God? We were not asked whether it suited us so, nor are we asked what we want to make of it. What was done with us in Jesus Christ was that God made Himself our righteousness: in defiance of our defiance, in opposition to our opposition. Our required conformity with the action of divine grace is that we accept it as right, as the upper part of the Yes and No in which we move; that our action be played out under and within the frame of this divine action. This is the content of the divine claim upon all men. We can sum it all up by saying that what God wants of us and all men is that we should believe inJesus Christ. Not that we should believe likeJesus Christthat aspect is better left on one side seeing that He is God and we are only men-but that we should believe inJesus Christ, in the gracious action of God actualised and revealed in Him. The essence of faith is simply to accept as right what God does, to do everything and all things on the presupposition that God's action is accepted as right. That is why it can and must be said of faith that in and by it we are righteous before God. In the last resort, the apostles had only one answer to the question: "What are men to do?" This was simply that they should believe, believe in Jesus Christ. All the answers of theological ethics to the same question can only paraphrase and confirm the imperative: "Seek those things which are above, where Christ is." 3. THE FORM OF THE DIVINE CLAIM By the form of the divine claim we understand the form and manner in which the command of God meets man, in which it imparts itself to him, in which it becomes-and it is this special concept which must now be elucidated and explained-a claim upon him Our present question is how man-corresponding to the basis and content of the command of God-becomes its addressee and recipient. We ask concerning the distinctive mode of its revelation or, in relation to man as its addressee and recipient, concerning the particular hearing which it demands and creates for itself in him as it claims his obedience. What is it that distinguishes the command of God in this respect from other commands? There are other commands as well as that of God which, in their own way, approach man with a demand for hearing and obedience.

[584J

It can be said of every object in the natural and historical world that it contains and expresses a command to the extent that in its existence and essence it demands our attention, observation, consideration, investigation and understanding-purely for its own sake, because in its special existence and mode of existence it is our object, i.e., it confronts us, and as such asks us a question-perhaps many questions-which await our answer, i.e., our

3. The Form of the Divine Claim cognition, recognition and acknowledgment of it in its special existence and essence. Even of the axioms of mathematics and logic as the presuppositions of all investigation and understanding of the objective world it can be said that they are commands. And from time to time, certain results of human knowledge can assume the character and role of intellectual commands of this kind: some of the pictures of nature and history, of the essence and structure and morphological change of creaturely existence, which we reach by way of intuitive conception or conceptual intuition; some of the concrete hypotheses and conventions in regard to the bases and interconnexions of creaturely things which stamp themselves so deeply on whole centuries or even millenia that those who belong to these periods are scarcely conscious of their relativity. Constructs of this type usually demand our acceptance with almost or exactly the same categorical seriousness as if they themselves belongedwhich they certainly do not-to the order of the objects or even to the order of the inner elements of human knowledge, as if we could not possibly escape them without showing ourselves to be perfect fools, as if respect for them were the criterion of intellectual honesty. But there are commands which are even more clearly related to the decisions of the human will than those mentioned. There are obviously the compelling necessities of life-from that of food and drink and warmth and sleep to that of seeing that our life always has such qualities as dignity and honour. There are commands of utility and comfort which seem to exist for us all and which can speak to us in the most urgent way, drowning all other commands. There are commands of circumspection, foresight and discretion which have been forced upon us by education or custom on the basis of tacit agreements in the greater or smaller circles within which we live, or which we have imposed on ourselves on the basis of our own insight. There is what is called the "command of the hour" which a man thinks he has discovered for himself and others, even for whole nations, or for all his contemporaries-a discovery which certainly requires a kind of inspiration, and in any case a very loud voice for its effective proclamation. There are commands to do this and not to do that which become commands simply because they are promulgated by someone who in his circle has the authority to do this, like the pregnant command which issued from Caesar Augustus. There are others which no one issues but which in a definite situation are just as solid and lasting as if they had been promulgated by Augustus Caesar. And there are others which are not lasting but which are so evident to you or me in a definite situation at a definite time that for the moment at least they seem to be eternal commands. Man, and the race, in every possible grouping and historical circumstance, stands under a plethora of commands. They may not all be equally pressing or urgent. They may not be received and experienced with the same clarity. But in their own way they are all peremptory. At a greater or lesser distance they all claim attention and conformity. In some form they all aim at the corresponding decisions of our will. And they are all obviously different in themselves from God's command, whose special manner of claiming man is the subject of our present enquiry.

Nothing seems easier than to regard one of these other commands as God's command and to pass it off as such, to see it invested with His authority and dignity, or pretend to others that it is invested in this way, and thus to give it additional weight both in our own eyes and those of others. It is indeed the case that-without prejudice to its particular form-the claim of God's command alwayswears the garment of another claim of this kind. An object with its question, the compulsion of a necessity of thought, one of those hypotheses or conventions, a higher necessity of life and particularly a more primitive, a necessity which in itself seems to be that of a very human wish or very human cleverness, a summons coming from this or that quarter, a call which a man

73

[585]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God directs to himself-all these can actually be the command of God veiled in this form, and therefore genuinely participate in the corresponding authority and dignity. But what is the proper form of the divine commands under and in all these garments? What is its mark and characteristic among the many other commands under which man and humanity continually stand, without being able to say off-hand that they stand under the command of God? If we follow the lines along which we were led in our investigation of the basis and content of the divine command, there can be only one answer. The form by which the command of God is distinguished from all other commands, the special form which is its secret even in the guise of another command, consists in the fact that it is permission-the granting of a very definite freedom. We know who it is that orders here, and what it is that makes this ordering peremptory. It is the God in whom we may believe as the Lord who is gracious to us-gracious in the sense that He gave Himself for us in order that we might live before Him and with Him in peace and joy. And we know what it is that is ordered. We have to live as those who accept as right what God does for us. We have not to do that which contradicts but that which corresponds to His grace as it is directed to us. We have to believe inJesus Christ, and in and with the fact that we live in this faith to do the right. The command of this Commander is a permission, and in this it is fundamentally and finally differentiated from all other commands. It cannot be said of any other commands in themselves and as such that they are permissions, releases, liberations; that they give us freedom. On the contrary, their commanding is in every respect a holding fast, a binding, a fettering. Each of them constitutes one of the many powers and dominions and authorities which restrict the freedom of man, which, under the pretext of their own divinity and in the supposed best interests of man, are not at all willing to allow him to go his own wayshappily and peacefully. They all mean that at some point man is interrupted and even jostled; that at some point-and worst of all when he begins to command himself-he is vexed and tormented. In one form or another they all express to man the suspicion that it might be dangerous to free him, that he would certainly misuse his liberty, that once liberated, he would only create trouble for himself and others. From the most varied angles they fill him with anxious fears: the intellectual fear of spiritual isolation; fear of the possibility of a world food shortage; a moral fear of his own possibilities; political fear in face of his own weakness. They use these fears to appeal to him, instilling them into him and holding him in their grip. In essence, their bidding is a forbidding; the refusal of all possible permissions. This is what distinguishes the sphere of these commands very sharply from that of the command of God. Commands which are only ostensibly and allegedly divine, and misunderstandings of the real command of God, alwaysbetray themselves by the fact that they create and restore and maintain this sphere of distrust and fear.

[586]

The command of God sets man free. The command of God permits. It is only in this way that it commands. It permits even though it always has in concretoEN24 the form of one of the other commands, even though it, too, says, "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not," even though it stands before man, warnEN24

concretely

74

3. The Form of the Divine Claim ing, disturbing, restraining, binding and committing. The command of God and other commands do the same thing, but it is not really the same. No matter in what guise the command of God meets us, in accordance with its basis and context, it will always set us free along a definite line. It will not compel man, but burst open the door of the compulsion under which he has been living. It will not meet him with mistrust but with trust. It will not appeal to his fear but to his courage. It will instil courage, and not fear into him. This is the case because the command, as we have seen, is itself the form of the grace of God, the intervention of the God who has taken the curse from us to draw us to Himself-the easy yoke and the light burden of Christ, which as such are not to be exchanged for any other yoke or burden, and the assumption of which is in every sense our quickening and refreshing. This is what God prepares for us when He gives us His command. The man who stands under the jurisdiction of all those other commands of God and is not refreshed is not the obedient man but the man who disobeys God, who, instead of living according to his determination to be the image of God, and therefore in conformity with the grace of God, has succumbed and succumbs to the temptation to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is forbidden him for his own good, and in this way to exalt himself to a spurious divine likeness. This act of godlessness, sin, is man's undoing. For it is this which leads him at once and directly in to the uncomfortable sphere of all those commands. He now knows how to distinguish between good and evil. He is the one who not only can do this, but must do it. In all his cosmos, wherever he goes or stays, the line is drawn between good and evil. He is confronted on all sides by sic et non EN25, motives and quietives, commands and prohibitions-all contradicting one another, but all in their time and place subjecting him to the highest possible degree of unsettlement, assaulting him, grasping at him, forcing him in different directions and detaining him at different points. His eyes are now open but only like those of a victim of insomnia. He now has to choose and decide and judge on all sides. He has to try to hew a track for himself through the unending primeval forest of claims. He has to establish his preference. With the help of a classification of values, he has to set up a little system of the commands which he thinks he can and should satisfyfirst. But he cannot ignore the fact that he cannot even satisfy those which he has selected with their constant and voracious demands for more. He cannot ignore or prevent the fact that even those which he has set aside and neglected continue to exist, and secretly and openly clutch at him and claim him. He will never satisfy all claims, and he will not really satisfy even one. This is the divine likeness of the godless-of Adam, the man who would not first satisfy God because he was not content with the grace of God. When man sins-sins against God (which is the only real sin, the sin in all sins)-he is delivered up, like a hunted beast to the hounds, to what the world and life and men want of him, to what, above all, he himself must continually want of himself. To play at being the Creator and Lord is something which he can do quite successfully. But actually to be the Creator and Lord is something which he cannot do, and therefore, when he is severed from the real Creator and Lord, his only alternative is to become the slave of the created world and above all his own slave. Compared with this assault of commands that harass the sinner, the command of God is indeed seen to be a different, a totally different command. It is not the sum and superlative of this infernal assault. It does not EN2:>

yes and no

75

[587]

S 37.

The Command as the Claim of God

mean that the intensity of this assault is infinitely multiplied. How, then, did man come to be exposed to this assault according to the story of the fall? It was not because he obeyed the command of God-which was designed to spare him this ordeal-but because he fell, fell from obedience to this command, and therefore-attaining divine likeness to his own destruction-fell into the sphere of the many commands which necessarily have authority and power over the man who for his part, in his relationship to God, refuses to live of and by His grace, but tries to invest himself with an authority and power of his own.

[588J

The command of the gracious God, however, will summon man out of this sphere of harassment. It is true, of course, that this command also says: Do this and do not do that. But in the mouth of God this means something different. Do this-not because an outer or inner voice now requires this of you, not because it must be so in virtue of any necessity rooted in the nature and structure of the cosmos or of man, but: Do this, because in so doing you may and will again live of and by My grace. Do this, because in so doing you may make it true that your rejection has been rejected in the death of Jesus on the cross, that for His sake your sin has been forgiven. Do this, because in Jesus Christ you have been born anew in the image of God. Do it in the freedom to which you'have been chosen and called, because in this freedom you may do this, and can do only this. For this, and not for any other reason, do it. You may do it. And: Do not do thisnot because you again hear an outer or inner voice which seeks to make it doubtful or dreadful for you, not because there is any power in heaven or on earth to prevent or spoil or for some reason forbid it. No, but: Do not do this, because it would be a continuation of the fall of Adam, because it would not correspond to the grace addressed to you but contradict it, because you would have to do it as the captive which you certainly are not, because you, the free man, are exempted from the necessity of doing it-really exempted by the fact that you have been made righteous and glorious in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that you have actually been cut off by Him from this very possibility. This is how the command of God speaks. It always speaks concretely. It did that already according to the story of the fall. As long as time lasts and with it this form of the divinely created world and our own existence, it will always speak concretely like other commands. But it is not for this reason to be confused with any of them. It is distinguished from all of them by the fact that it is permission, that it sets us free, that with it the Sabbath always dawns-our discharge from the usurped office of judging good and evil, in the exercise of which there can be revealed only the judgment of ourselves. The command of God wills only that we, for our part, accept that God inJesus Christ is so kind that He accepts usjust as we are. It wills only that we make use of the given permission by the grace of God to be what we are, and therefore that we do not leave again the shelter which the faithfulness of God has given us against the infernal tempest of all other outward and inward claims, that we do not do again what Adam did, that we do not play the lord and therefore become masterless and therefore helpless and defenceless.

3. The Form of the Divine Claim The command of God orders us to be free. How can it be otherwise? The command is only the form of the Gospel of God, in virtue of which-not in and by ourselves, but in and by Jesus Christ-we are free. This is what characterises the command of God, distinguishing it from all other commands, not just relatively but absolutely, with the distinction of heaven over earth. In Mt. 221-14 we are told about the great and urgent invitation to the kingdom of heaven which is so badly received by those who are invited, which is finally answered with the maltreatment and death of its bearers, and which after their punishment is passed on to those at the street-eorners, both bad and good (v. 10). It belongs not only to the parable but to the matter itself that it is an invitation, and indeed the invitation to a feast, to a marriage feast: "Myoxen and my fatlings are killed and all things are ready" (v.4). The epilogue (which is wrongly conjured away by many exegetes) tells us about the individual who certainly came, but came without a wedding-garment (v. 11 f.), and it shows that in the last resort it all boils down to the fact that the invitation is to a feast, and that he who does not obey and come accordingly, and therefore festively, declines and spurns the invitation no less than those who are unwilling to obey and appear at all. Reluctant obedience to God's command is not obedience, and decisively for this reason, that in itself and as such the command of God is a festive invitation. It is for this reason that the wedding guests-the disciples of Jesus in contrast to those of John and the Pharisees-cannot fast when the Bridegroom is with them (Mk. 219). It is for this reason that when John the Baptist subordinates himself to Jesus in J n. 329 he confesses that although he does not have the bride he is a friend of the Bridegroom and rejoices at his voice. It is for this reason that the XaLp€T€ EN26 of 2 Cor. 1311, and especially of the Epistle to the Philippians (218, 31, 44), seems to epitomise, as it were, all apostolic exhortation. How can any part of what Paul demands of Christians be rightly done ifin the first instance it is not done withjoy, as an "ought" whose seriousness lies at bottom in the fact that it is a "may,"something permitted? There is no New Testament writing which presents the Gospel to men so emphatically and unwaveringly, so consistently from the standpoint of the divine claim, as the Epistle ofJames. But it is here (1 22f.) that the controlling demand not to be a forgetful hearer of the Word, but a real hearer, and therefore a doer, the doer of the work which forms the content of this Word, is explained as follows. We are not to be like a man who sees "his natural face" in a mirror but then goes away and forgets how he looks. On the contrary, we are to "look into the perfect law of liberty," and to persist in looking, in order that we may become doers of the Word and therefore "blessed in our doing." The expression 1TapaKV1TT€LV EN27 is the same as that which is used in Lk. 2412 (?) andJn. 205 11 of those who, stooping, looked into the grave of Jesus and found it empty, and in 1 Pet. 112 of the angels who long to look into that which has been declared to the Church by the prophets and apostles. And if the "perfect law,"which is that of freedom, is contrasted to the mirror in which we behold our natural face, this obviously means that in the Word of God, which we have to hear and as right hearers to do, we find our other, proper face; we find ourselves as those who may and must do what they do in freedom; we find ourselves as those who are willing and ready, but also able, in the last resort to live our own lives. It is as the Word of God holds before us this picture-which is unforgettable for those who have once seen it-that it is the "perfect" law; the lawwhich we cannot hear and not immediately do it. And action in obedience to this law is the action ofa free man, and to that extent a blessed action. That is why we read inJas. 212 (immediately before the well-known saYingthat there can be no faith without works): "So EN2tl EN27

rejoice! to stoop

77

[589]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[590]

speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty," that have to give an accoun t to God, as the free men they are in virtue of the Word of God. The directions of the Epistle of James cannot be understood if it is not seen that they all stand upon this denominator. And for the same reason we can and must leap across from the Epistle of James to what seems to be the very different lines of though t of Galatians and Romans and the Gospel of John, although in reality these only bring out in a broader and more forcible waywhat is said inJames about the command of God as the "lawoffreedom." They are best regarded in their inner connexion. Here, too, the thesis is quite clear: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed, i.e., essentially (OVTws,Jn. 836). "For liberty Christ hath made us free" (Gal. 5\ cf. 24). "For, brethren, you have been called unto liberty" (Gal. 513). "The law of the Spirit of life in ChristJesus hath made you free" (Rom. 82). "Ifye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed (dAYJOWS); and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" an. 831£.). According to v. 33, this summons to the obedience which sets man in freedom, and which as obedience consists in the use of his freedom, is not understood by the Jews because they think that they are already free, and not in bondage, as the descendants of Abraham. Jesus replies in v. 34 with the statement that to commit sin alwaysmeans to be a slave and not free. That a sinner is a slave of sin is also maintained in Rom. 6172°. What we do as sinners is not done in freedom, but in the greatest unfreedom. We will it, certainly, but what we do is not what we mayor essentially will, but what we must do. "It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me" (Rom. 7172°). "I do not know it"; indeed, "I do not will it," says Paul again and again in Rom. 715f .• If I still do it, it is because my will is not basically free. This is the state of the man who is not obedient to the call ofJesus to continue in His Word, to be His disciple in truth, and therefore to know the truth. This is the state of insubordination to the divine command. "NowI say,that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all" (Gal. 41). The sinful man as such is, in fact, "in bondage under the elements of the world" (the aToLXELa TOV KoafLov, Gal. 43). And the reward which he receives as this slave is shame and death (Rom. 621£.). "He abideth not in the house for ever"-these words ofJn. 835 give us a comprehensive description of this condition. He is in it. He belongs to it. But he can never be more than an outsider, a stranger. He has no part whatever in the goods of the house. And Paul expressly describes this servile state and service of sinful man as a subjection to a law which confronts him with the claim to be the Law of God, which undoubtedly is this Law in its inmost concealed substance, but which is also "the law of sin and death" (Rom. 82) in its form and effect. Apart from the Gospel and faith, and therefore apart from the summons to obedience issued byJesus, there is for man only this Law, and therefore only this servile state and service with all its consequences. The heir who is a minor stands docilely under the "tutors and governors" (Gal. 42), under the divinely appointed "schoolmaster" (Gal. 324f.), although the latter does not educate him "unto Christ," as in the customary and much too pragmatic interpretation, but represents the reaction of the divin:ewrath-the shutting up, the arrest (Gal. 323, Rom. 1132) which man suffers "until Christ," i.e., until the heir is declared of age and therefore freed by the summons of Christ and in obedience to it. Apart from this, before it happens, or in abstraction from it, the Law, the command of God, which is holy and righteous and good (Rom. 712) in itself, is for man the harmful thing described in Rom 77f .• Of course, even apart from the Gospel and faith, and therefore under this Law, man has to do with God. But it is with the God who according to Gal. 67f. is not mocked, who inexorably causes a man to reap what he has sown. Sin is man's action in the misunderstanding and misuse of the Law. In face of the command of God, which, when it is encountered, requires only that we be satisfied with the gra.c.eof God, sin c.onsistsin our yielding to the prompting of the desire (€-TTlBvpJa) to be

3. The Form of the Divine Claim like God, to cleanse and justify and sanctify ourselves before God, to lord it against Him. When we listen to this desire and obey it, the sin which is dead in itself wakens to life-and man is already dead, as we are told with gruesome clarity in Rom. 79f .• He becomes a sinner. He becomes guilty before God. He has fallen under His judgment. What God has forbidden is forbidden because in its root and essence it is alwaysthis one forbidden thing. It is the act of our desire for self-glorification against God. It is the act of our hatred of the all-sufficiency of God's grace. All evil consists in the fact that we do what we do under the impulsion of this desire. And when it is misused in this way,the Law itself can only prepare death for us. It can only execute and confirm that shutting up, that arrest, that exclusion from the house of our Father and from all His goods. This misused Law certainly does not become ineffective in this misuse. It is fatally effective. And its message and revelation to us (Rom. 714f.) is that sin dwells in us, so that we continually do what we really do not want to do, and (Rom. 718f_) that the good does not dwell in us, so that we never do what we really want to do, and always do what we really do not want to do. The Law, then, can only tear us in two. This contradiction is death as the wages of sin (Rom. 623). This means dYingin a living body. This is what life is in the tempestuous assault of commands which we cannot escape, and which we can satisfy neither as a whole nor in detail. It is from God the Creator of all things, and therefore from our legitimate Commander, that they derive their authority and force. But the form which they now take-corresponding to our severance from the gracious divine command which is their source and truth-is the disintegrated, dismembered and individually distorted form of the aroLXELa rov KOafJ-ov EN28, against whose rule and operation, which in the last resort are so utterly harmful, Paul tried to warn the Galatians, exhorting them so urgently and sharply to abandon this fresh attempt to improve justification by faith in Jesus Christ by linking it with the selfjustification of an effort to fulfil the works of the Law. "0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me (pvEafJaL) from the body of this death?" (Rom. 724). There can be no doubt about one thing. By his own efforts man will never deliver himself from this body of death, from existence under the Law of sin and death. There is only one deliverance, and life only on the basis of what this really is. The crucial thing is that in view of this reality we should drop the question what we are and what is to become of us. The way leads forwards from the body of this death. It is not a waywhich we have trodden or ever will. It is the waywhich Jesus Christ has trodden once and for all. But because there is this way,we IllUStnot look back. This is the inner necessity of the great polemic of the Epistle to the Galatians. For this deliverance is the "freedom" for which Christ has made us free. It is freedom from sin, or more exactly, from the servile state and service of sin (Rom. 618 22). And from what we have said, this can only mean-and in Paul it does mean this as clearly as possible-liberation from the Law, the Law which for sinful man can only be the Law of sin (i.e., the Law which is misused by his sin, but at the same time unmasks him as a sinner), and the Law of death (i.e., the Law which punishes him as sinner). The negative meaning of freedom is undoubtedly liberation from this Law (Rom. 82). ''Ye are not under law, but under grace" (Rom. 614). The positive side has to be added at once if this freedom is to be properly described. It is the new freedom for the state and service from which man has alienated himself. Exactly into the place of that Law there steps grace. It is itself "the law of the Spirit of life" (Rom. 82). But it steps into the place of the Law and therefore it radically excludes it. In Jesus Christ both the negative and the positive have already taken place, and inJesus Christ we shall alwaysfind that they have taken place and are true. "When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons (vio()Ea{a)" (Gal. 44f_). EN~H

elenlents of the world

79

[591]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[592]

Paul developed the same idea in greater detail and with a different comparison in Rom. 71-6. (It is not always given sufficient weight that this is the controlling statement of the chapter and all the rest is only an illustrative counterpart.) The aim of these verses, and therefore of the whole chapter, is to show that we are snatched and lifted right out of the Law-this Law of sin and death-that it has been completely done away.There is an anticipation in Rom. 614• It is not the case that, in spite of the death and resurrection ofjesus Christ, in spite of our baptism in His name, in spite of our faith in Him, this Law can continually call sin to life and keep it alive, accusing us as sinners, i.e., branding and punishing us as its slaves, destroYing our sanctification and therefore our reconciliation with God, and finally giving the lie to God's decision and work as they have already taken place in our favour. As we are shown in Rom. 6, there is no going back on the road which God has trodden with us. For the Law-this is what has to be specifically shown in Rom. 7-this peculiar "power" of sin (1 Cor. 1556), has been deprived of its power by what God has done for us upon this way of His. The Law rules over man-attention should be paid to the depiction of its rule in v. 5: it arouses the motions (or passions) of sin (corresponding to vv. 7-13), and what it brings forth is fruit unto death (corresponding to vv. 14-23)-as long as the sinful man ("the old man" of 66) lives. In terms of the parable which begins in v. 2, I am bound to this sinful man and the Law that governs him as a wife is bound to her husband as long as he is alive. The wife is freed, however, by the death of her husband, and in the same way I am freed by the death of this sinful man-freed also from the Law that governs him. There is no freedom (v. 3) without the death of this sinful man. Every attempt to escape the sin and death, to which I am manacled by the life of this sinful man, can only bind me the more strongly to them, leading to the idolatry and self-righteousness which the Old Testament describes as the aggravated adultery of Israel against its God. But I can be made free legitimately, I can be removed altogether from the Law of sin and death, by the death of this sinful man. Another man can then step into his place, as a widow can legally become the wife of another. This, saysSt. Paul in v.4, is exactly how it is with those who are baptised into Christ. They are those whose "old man" has been killed (62f.); killed in and with the killing of jesus Christ on Golgotha. This killing took place in order that freedom should be won for them: not only negatively, but positively; the freedom to belong to the Other who died for them but also rose and lives for them. Released from that old connexion and placed in this new, they are no longer subject to the Law that ruled the old man. Life in the sphere of that rule has become a thing of the past with the death of jesus Christ (v. 5). The subject Adam, arrested and shut up and unable legitimately even to attempt to escape, is eliminated. The subject jesus Christ has replaced and excluded this subject. But this means also (v. 6) the replacement and exclusion of the misused and distorted Law which had become a temptation and destruction, to which Adam was subject and had to remain subject as long as he lived, to which we, too, can only remain subject in and with Adam and his life. And exactly into the place of that Law there came and is now executed "service" in newness of spirit "(v. 6)-in the existence which begins where the "oldness of the letter," i.e., the rule and the validity and operation of that Law, ceases. This is what is meant by deliverance from the "body of this death" (724), "being under grace" (614), the real emancipation of man realised in the Liberation effected by the Son of God (In. 836) as an emancipation from the Law.If those who are freed in this way still live "in the flesh," this can only mean (Rom. 85f.) that they are still confronted with the flesh and therefore with that old sinful man in his subjection to the Law. But it does not mean (Rom. 85 8 9) that they still are in the flesh, for in virtue of their liberation their being is no longer their being in Adam, but their being in jesus Christ their Liberator. In relation to Him the will of the flesh can only be the unauthoritative and ineffective will of a dead person. In relation to Him, the power of the Law which governs this dead person can have no more power.

80

3. The Form of the Divine Claim For the liberated person, therefore, the decisive consequence of this liberation consists in the fact that there is for him (Rom. 81) no KaTaKpLp.,a, no condemnation. He may live as one who is not condemned. And, according to Rom. 8, the fact that he may do this is the sum of what he ought to do, of what is required and demanded of him. It is the Son of God, sent "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. 83), who is condemned. And in and with Him there is also condemned the flesh of those who are His, the nature in which sin dwells, the religious, the moral flesh, which tries to bend and break the Law of God by repudiating the grace to which the Law orders it to adhere. It is Adam, the sinner himself, who perverts the Law to a rule of human self-purification, selfjustification and self-sanctification, that is condemned. But in virtue of that condemnation of jesus Christ, there is no condemnation but acquittal for the man who (Rom. 82), belonging to the risen jesus Christ, stands under the "lawof the Spirit of life," i.e., under the true Law of God, revealed again in its proper substance as Law of grace, and made effective again in spite of its perversion by sin. ''Yeshall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." When the Law of God frees itself from that misused, corrupt and pernicious form of the Law of sin and death, the man who is liberated in and with this event, who belongs to jesus Christ, is cut loose from the distress which this Law necessarily causes him and to which he himself cannot put an end. He has broken through to the life which according to Rom. 812£. will be a life in obedience, according to Rom. 817£., a life in hope, and according to Rom 828£., a life in innocence. The break-through to this life, which results from what took place at Golgotha, is described by Paul in Rom. 814 as the work, the aYE LV EN29 of the Spirit, who, according to Gal 46, is the Spirit of His own Son, and therefore, according to Rom. 815, the Spirit of the sonship-and therefore not the spirit of the bondage (SovAELa)-of those who belong to Him. That the Spirit cries-or that we ourselves cry in the spirit: Abba, Father! (Gal. 46, Rom. 815)-is the absolutely basic and primal form of the service for which, according to Rom. 76, we are freed. Obviously, therefore, it is the basic and primal form of the command of God. This is what God's command wants of us-the crying of the child, of the children, who have at last found their father again, have at last been found by him, have at last been freed from all the "tutors and governors," at last been freed from the "schoolmaster," at last been freed-self-evidently-from the real power of disobedience, at last been freed from the nerve or lever of sin. It should be noted that the conclusion of Rom. 8 (vv.28-29) refers back to the beginning of the chapter and therefore to the problem of Rom. 7 and therefore to that of Rom. 6. That God is for us, and therefore no one and nothing is against us (v. 31), is the reason why it is quite impossible for us to remain in sin (61), and so necessary for us to transfer from its service to the obedience of righteousness (612f.). And ifno one and nothing is against us in consequence of the fact that God is for us, this means simply that we are not condemned; that the Law of sin and death is repealed; that the lordship of the world-elements is broken. It is not a case of "must," but "may."Our "may" is our "must." Therefore, not only according to the whole tenor of the Epistle to the Galatians, but according to the clear and systematic context of Rom. 6-8, freedom from the Law is for Paul not merely an incidental qualification of the obedience claimed by God, much less the peculiar and rather dangerous qualification of a higher, more advanced stage of this obedience, which in itself necessarily begins elsewhere, in a legality, with a "must." On the contrary, as both Paul and also james formulated it, the Law itself is the "law of liberty" and its TEAO~ EN30, its intention, its general sum and substance, can be understood only when it is understood as the law of liberty. In the plain statement of james, those who hear it differently will never do it-not merely in part, but as a whole. If it does not confront us as the Law of liberty, so that we for our part are forced to stop in front of it as EN29 EN~l()

leading goal

81

[593]

S 37.

The Command as the Claim of God

such, if it is not our "may"which is claimed, if what is demanded is not the crYing of children to the father whom they have at last found again, if the appeal is not to our innocence, if we are not stirred to action as those who are righteous, as those whom God is for and therefore nobody and nothing can be against-then it is not the command of God, or, rather, it is only that Law of the divine wrath which corresponds to our sin, the corrupt and pernicious Law, and with all our attempts to be obedient, we can only make ourselves guilty of that adultery (Rom. 73), only entangle ourselves more and more deeply in disobedience. According to las. 122 a doer of the Law is only a free and happy doer. For the content of this Word, the meaning of the divine claim, consists in the fact that, promising us freedom and joy as the Gospel, it requires of us the same freedom and joy as the Law. All our knowledge of the character of the divine command as such, and therefore all our obedience to it, stands or falls with our knowledge of the connexion between the indicative and the imperative in Gal. 51: "For liberty Christ hath made us free: stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."

It is precisely and only this distinction of the command of God from all other commands, precisely and only its characterisation as permission, which reveals its seriousness and rigour. The command of God is imperative. When it orders us to be free, it orders with authority. And it enforces itself. It secures obedience by itself setting us free. As the divine permission given to us, it is not the confirmation of a permission that we have given ourselves, or obtained or secured elsewhere, although there are, of course, other permissions, just as there are other commands, and in the most intimate connexion with these commands.

[594]

We are continually "permitting" ourselves all possible things, decisions and attitudes, thoughts and words and works, in which we regard ourselves as free, which we apparently do gladly, in which we think that we are happy. There is none of those other commands which, when it imposes its yoke upon us, has not a wayof recommending itself to us. Its fulfilment is perhaps a particular confirmation of our freedom, or it is perhaps bound up for us with a particular desire, or the avoidance of a dislike, so that at bottom we want to do the thing which it would have us do. And so in the fulfilling of these other commands there is, in fact, no human action which is not in some measure bound up with the c'onsciousness, experience and and feeling of apparent freedom and joy. "And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired" (Gen 36). And so the man permits himself to make use to the permission of his wife, who on her part had accepted it from the serpent. The man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou has done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat" (Gen. 312f_). It is apparently pure permission that rules. The man permits himself to renounce the grace of God. He permits himself to be set up as one who knows good and evil and therefore as judge over both. He permits himself therefore to be established in the divine likeness. Man obviously thinks that he is particularly free and happy even in his fall.

The permission of the command of God cancels all this, not by opposing His prohibition to a real permission, freedom and joy, but by revealing the truth, by unmasking the supposed permission, freedom and joy as the deception of a strange lord and tyrant,'who under its semblance has made man a slave. The command of God is the renewed offer of the grace of God that man has

3. The Form a/the Divine Claim repelled. The command of God wants man to be genuinely free. It wants him to make use of the real permission at his disposal, to return to his true freedom, to rejoice not merely in appearance but in truth in what he does. The free will of man has nothing to do with permission, freedom and joy. It is in his free will that he is tricked and tricks himself out of all this, reducing himself to that servile state and service, however free and happy he thinks himself to be. He is then oppressed and tormented by the law of that foreign lord and tyrant, to whom he does not belong, who has not created him, with whom his destiny has nothing to do, who has nothing that he can command him to do and therefore nothing that he can permit him to do, in whose service he can never be free and happy (whatever his consciousness, experiences and feelings may be), in whose service he can only be deceived even in this consciousness. The command of God rends this veil, and it does it by being and expressing the real permission given to man. It is in this that it is serious and rigorous, binding and committing us with a seriousness and rigour beyond the power of all other commands. The command of God sets itself against human free will, not because it does not wish man to be really free and happy, but on the contrary, because God does want this, because he cannot really be free and happy in his self-will.The command of God protests against what man permits himself, or knows how to create or find elsewhere by way of permission. The reason for this protest is that these permissions are really only the disguises of the servitude to which he is subjected. The form which it takes is that, in opposition to the foreign dominion to which he has yielded, it gives him again the permission which is really proper and belongs to him. It is in this profound and radical way that it unsettles and terrifies and assaults and seizes him. It does not do this like an enemy, who can certainly attack him from outside, but from whom he can flee, from whom he can wring concessions, with whom he can make agreements, with whom he can ultimately come to a peaceful understanding, as happens in view of the fact that in the last resort he thinks that he can freely and gladly gratify its wishes. The unsettlement and terror, the assault and seizure, which the command of God means for man, are radical just because the command of God is the command of our true, best friend; because it comes up alongside us from behind as it were; because even in its majesty it addresses us absolutely from within in opposition to all that we allow ourselves, putting an end to our supposed freedom and joy; because it isjust permission, and it wills only that we do what we are permitted to do; because everything else is not permitted and can therefore be only the fulfilment of a compulsion. We are not under this compulsion. We are not bound and obliged to obey it. And obeying it in freedom andjoy is the most miserable of all self-deceptions. Just because it is real permission the command of God separates us from the domination of all other commands and therefore from our desires and lusts. It does so by taking our part, by engaging that we may begin to live at last in real freedom and joy, and therefore turn our backs on the foreign domination under which we have placed

[595]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[596]

ourselves. Expressing God's decision concerning us, that we belong to Him, that the claim which He has on us as the Creator cannot be broken, it demands of us that we finally act on our own decision-our very own, the one which corresponds to our determination. This is how it affects us. It sets us on our feet. It is against us only in so far as we are against ourselves. Under the domination of all other commands, and therefore under the domination of our own desires and lusts, in the self-will in which we subject ourselves to that foreign domination, in the permission which we believe we can and should give ourselves, we are really against ourselves. And it is certainly against this selfhostility and self-destruction that the command of God sets itself. This is what gives it its uniquely distinctive sharpness and necessity. This is what makes it impossible for us to withdraw in face of it to a place to which we can withdraw in face of all other commands-to ourselves. No other demand or order can be so serious and rigorous. No other command can engage man at such close quarters that he is cut off from retreat upon himself. No object and no axiom, none of the hypotheses or conventions that can become a command to us, no biological necessity or social law, not even a command of conscience, has the power to press us so closely that we cannot keep our distance from it, remaining within ourselves, or constantly returning to ourselves, behind and in all that we think and say and do in submission to its claim. It belongs to the nature of all other commands that in face of them we necessarily have to come back again and again to ourselves, to our function of judging between good and evil, either conceding obedience to them from this position, or perhaps in the future confronting them with partial or complete disobedience. In the servile state and service which are our only possibility outside the command of God, there is only the servile obedience which is distinguished from real obedience by the fact that it is qualified obedience, obedience with a sidelong glance at the opportunity which may be within reach or present itself, and is perhaps always conceivable, of acting and behaving quite independently of what is commanded. Where the course of human life and the system of human relations are not regulated by the command of God, they are based on this servile obedience and imbued with the qualification that we might also be disobedient. No command but God's command can prevent man from making this qualification, at least inwardly. No wonder that under these presuppositions the structure and trappings of individual and social life are never lasting, but necessarily suffer continual disintegration through their inner contradictions, which, on the basis of this qualification, can never lose actuality. But the command of God makes this qualification impossible. For it proceeds from the only possible source of this qualification-ourselves. In its core it always consists in the deposition of man as the judge of good and evil. In the teeth of all the spurious permissions ~hich he has given and might give himself, it permits him to live by the grace of God. In face of this permission, how can there be any further place for this qualification? When God has so radically espoused his cause-and this is the meaning of His command-how can man take up his

3. The Form of the Divine Claim own cause again? How can he give himself a permission when he actually receives and may enjoy and use the true and comprehensive and effective permission? How can he hanker after freedom and joy when he is promised real joy and freedom? There is no escaping the command of God because, when it confronts us, it immediately and at the same time places itself behind us. Pursuing the cause of God, it immediately and at the same time takes up also our most proper cause. Executing the decision of God, it immediately and at the same time claims also our own decision-in which alone there could be that flight. This is its seriousness and rigour, and in this respect no other commands, however solemn and inexorable, can approach it. Its seriousness and rigour are unconditional just because it imposes freedom on man,just because it sets man free with the obedience which it requires of him, just because it is the command of the grace of God. As the command of the grace of God, it circumvents the person who would save and purify and justify and sanctify himself. It circumvents all the submissions to other commands which he would make to this end. More than that, it circumvents all the permissions which he would give himself to this end. Above all and decisively, it circumvents his retreat in to himself, the further exercise of his office as the judge of good and evil. He is to know and accept the fact that God is for him. He is to live as one whom God is for. Whatever the concrete content of the command of God may be, this is what God will have of man. It isjust because He wills this of him that He calls him in question so absolutely-not merely this or that which he has done and does in fulfilling other commands or in using the various permissions which he has given and created for himself, but the man himself in his attempt to try to act without God's grace, to try to be himself the judge of good and evil and therefore to be like God. And willing this of him, He wills to have him absolutely-not merely this and that act of obedience, as imposed on him by other commands, not merely the renunciation of this or that arbitrarily granted permission, but the man himself as one who is obedient, and therefore his renunciation of free will itself and as such. It is the fact that God is for him which binds and commits man himself, and that unconditionally. It is this which completely excludes, therefore, everything which would in any way mean that he for his part wanted to be for himself. Since God is for him, he is relieved from the post of being for himself by the One who alone can be actually and effectively for him. He is relieved of all the care and all the fear of being for himself. The basis of the "must" which corresponds to the command of God is, then, the fact that what comes from the command of God can only be the deepest and most radical "may" of the man who sees that God is not against him, but for him. We can realise the absoluteness of the seriousness and rigour of the divine command, as rooted in its freedom, if we remember the commands which occupy so dominating a position in the New Testament-that we are not to be anxious and that we are not to fear. "Take no thought for your life" (Mt. 625). "Take therefore no thought for the morrow" (Mt. 634). "Take no thought how or what ye shall speak" (Mt. 1019). "Be careful for nothing, but in

[597]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[598]

every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God" (Phil. 46, cf. 1 Cor. 732). "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you" (1 Pet. 57). The other command meets us even more frequently and urgently: "Fear not." Zacharias (Lk. 113) , Joseph (Mt. 120), Mary (Lk. 130) and the shepherds in the field (Lk. 210) are not to be afraid when the birth of the Messiah is announced to them in such extraordinary circumstances. Simon Peter is not to be afraid when the Messiah is revealed to him in the miraculous draught of fishes (Lk. 510). The disciples are not to be afraid when He appears in the midst of the storm at sea (Mk. 650), or when He is transfigured on the mountain (Mt. 177). The women at the empty grave are not to be afraid at His resurrection (Mt. 285 10), or the seer John on Patmos when He appears in glory (Rev. 117). Again, the apostles are not to be afraid when He tells them of His departure (In. 14127). The little flock is not to be afraid because it is small (Lk. 1232). The Church is not to be afraid of persecutors who can kill only the body (Mt. 1026f.), or of the terrors of the end (Mk. 137). J airus is not to be afraid of triumphant death (Mk. 536), or Paul of his task in Corinth (Ac. 189) or the mortal danger of his voyage (Ac. 2724), or Christians of the representatives of temporal authority (Rom. 133). For "God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 Tim. 17). God "swore an oath to our father Abraham, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness" (Lk. 173). "Yehave not received a spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Rom. 815). "There is no fear in love; but perfect (TEAELa) love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not yet made perfect in love" (ov TETEAELWTat EVaya7TYJ), 1 In. 418). The anxiety and fear which are so strongly forbidden in this way obviously meet in the fact that when man is anxious and afraid, instead of going his way in confidence and hope, he lets himself be burdened and arrested (or burdens and arrests himself) by looking at a threat which confronts him, and by the considerations which he lets this threat obtrude on him-as if he knew that it might, or necessarily would, involve a catastrophe. The way in which the two conceptions are related is that anxiety is in a sense the term for a little fear, and fear the term for a great anxiety. Anxiety has to do expressly with penultimate things which we can more or less envisage. It has to do with questions of the future external form of life. The anxious man wants security in face of the uncertainty of his future before he goes further and decides to live for that for which he should properly live. The anxious man argues: primum vivere, deinde philosophariEN31. He, too, is really afraid. He has already withdrawn his hand from the plough. He has postponed that which really ought to happen. He is not genuinely and seriously moved and claimed by it. He is moved and claimed by the nonessentials of which he believes and maintains that they must first be thoroughly regulated before that which is properly essential can come into its own. But he will never admit that he is afraid. He will "only" postpone the real essential. He will say that philosophariEN32 is a good thing in itself, but is for the moment untimely, because vivereEN33 is more pressing. When he is anxious, he creates a small fear, and conceals from himself the fact that he is no less afraid because his fear takes this shape. In fear itself, the contrast is more serious. In the New Testament the object of fear is primarily Jesus Himself-Jesus in the glory of His miracles and His resurrection. Then, in a strange inner relationship to this, it is certain phenomena of, so to speak, a definitive character-the absolute predominance of the world in relation to the Church, and, conversely, the insignificance and weakness of the Church, the constant threat of the Law,and death. Fear is the shock caused by the supposed knowledge that I shall

EN31 EN32 EN33

first live, then philosophise to philosophise live

86

3. The Form of the Divine Claim not be able either to be or to do what I should be and do in face of that which gloriously and fearfully confronts me; I shall not endure, but perish. That which comes will simply be too great for me (positively or negatively). Fear is the anticipation of a supposedly certain defeat. And therefore to be afraid is to be anxious. It is to decide the future, and, appealing to the future, ourselves, in the sense of condemning ourselves not to be or to do what really ought to take place in our existence. It is again to postpone what ought to take place. But in fear the absolute capitulation which is what anxiety already means in secret is open and operative as such. Fear is a magnified, acute and definitive form of anxiety. Fear is the resignation from which there can obviously be no road forwards. To fear is to give up all thoughts of a victorious encounter with what impends. It is to know it so well, its predominance and our own impotence, that, if we are still capable of any purpose at all, our one thought is to avoid meeting that which impends. In what they have in common, anxiety and fear, both in their difference and in their inner connexion, are obviously the direct opposite of what the New Testament describes as freedom and of what we have described as the permission given to man by the command of God. When we see ourselves threatened by the possibility of a coming catastrophe in such a way that we either postpone the continuance of our course until better days in order first to deal with this possibility, or we think it necessary to abandon it altogether, we are not free, and permission is not the basis of our life. What we see in the future means for us that we are not free in the present-and in practice it is almost always in the present that we are and live. This is the case whether our eyes are concerned with to-morrow's bread when we look forward, or withJesus Christ Himself, or with any middle term of the series marked out by these extremes. It is the case whether we regard ourselves as only provisionally held up by what we see in the future or as definitively halted. Provisionally or definitively, we are not facing the true essential. We have not advanced to that real love. In our little fear or great anxiety we are actually doing what can be understood only as the result of an experienced compulsion and pressure, but never as the result of a given permission. Ifwe had permission, we would not be anxious or afraid. To be sure, the causes of our anxiety and fear would not be eliminated. When it forbids anxiety and fear, the New Testament does not think of denYing the existence of the object of human anxiety and fear-the actual insecurity of our future, the m~jesty ofJesus Christ on the one hand, and, as its counterpart, the complete abandonment of those who are His. But when man is not a prisoner, when he is not a slave, when he has permission, he does not in any sense confront what lies before him with anxiety and fear. On the contrary, he lets the actual conflict with it develop without regarding it as impossible, but also without wasting time in anticipating it, without trYing to assure his position in advance. If he takes up a different attitude, he is not free. Whether he admits it or not, his being and thought and speech and action are those of a slave. It is this slavery of anxiety and fear which the command of God in the New Testament opposes when it orders: Be not anxious! Be not afraid! In these two imperatives any separation between Gospel and Law is absolutely impossible. On the other hand, it is obvious that an order is issued. In contrast to what may seem natural and obvious to man, in contrast to what he again and again desires, and must necessarily desire in continuation of his attempt to be ajudge of good and evil, he is summoned away from a disposition and attitude which are forbidden by God and unworthy of himself. The two imperatives are gravely misunderstood if the seriousness and rigour in which God turns to man are not seen in their absoluteness, if they are regarded merely as a kind of advice or offer, in regard to which man can reserve his attitude. The axe is now laid at the root of the tree. It is obviously the very man who wilfully plans for his own future and himself-for that is what the anxious and the fearful do-who is put in question. A most radical

[599]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[600J

conversion is now demanded. In face of this: Be not anxious!-Be not afraid!-the only possibility is either utter obedience or utter disobedience. On the other hand, it isjust as obvious that in content what is commanded is simply the liberation of man. This is seen unambiguously in all the passages in which these imperatives are used. The place from which man is summoned is not really a beautiful and desirable one. The prohibitions are not of something sweet and pleasant. He cannot complain that what is required of him is worse instead of better, heavier instead of lighter, alien and strange instead of familiar. What can be worse or harder or stranger than a life in anxiety and fear, a present determined by these attitudes? And what is better and lighter and more familiar than a life without care and fear, a present characterised by liberation from these attitudes? Is not a present passed in anxiety the very philosophariEN34 in face of which a decided preference is to be given to the vivere?EN35 And if the preference is really given to this, is it not itself a philosophari in face of which a vivereEN36 in anxiety is properly a moriEN37? When we fear, do we not really fear fear itself more than the anticipated defeat, the present possibility of future evil more than the evil itself? And this being the case, is it not better not to fear? Whatever the threat of the future may be, is not freedom itself the first and most pressing concern, the one which alwaysdemands our attention? Do we not stand to lose all the evil, and win all the good, if, obedient to the command, we are not anxious and do not fear? The desire to be for ourselves is not salvation but perdition, and it is from this that the command frees us. It is, therefore, full of the Gospel, full of grace, full of God's friendship for man. It is unconditional, and there is no alternative to obedience or disobedience, but it is also a single invitation to do what, in contrast to the achievements of our anxious and fearful selfwill, we can and shall do gladly. This is the tree which is really pleasant to the eyes and to be desired. And it is from this source that the command of God derives its absoluteness. For in contrast to what we ourselves think and will, it orders us to do what we can and, in fact, will do gladly. And for that reason any pretexts or excuses we make can only be implausible and ineffectual. If we transgress it, if we persist in wanting to be anxious and afraid, we have obviously failed to see that it is permission, and as such command. We have obviously failed to see that God is for us, and that therefore no one and nothing can be against us, and that we should not be anxious, since our heavenly Father knows what we need, but should cast our care upon Him, because He cares for us. We have obviously failed to see thatJesus, the only One whom we have to fear as our Judge, is the very One who raises and restores us, and that there can be no temptation or catastrophe now or in the future which is excluded from the rule of Rom. 828, that to those who love God, all things necessarily work together for good. How can those who really do see the permission which this gives escape the command? From what place can they hold the command at a distance? How else but in obedience to the command can they find the consolation and shelter which they vainly seek when they are disobedient and in their disobedience to the command they necessarily reject? But conceited opposition and revolt against the command can only cease, of course, when the command comes to us like this, when it is revealed to us in its character as the Gospel, and therefore as permission, therefore as God's command: Be not anxious! Be not afraid! It may be instructive to bring out the same truth by means of another pair of expressly ethical concepts from the New Testament-a pair which in this case have a clearly positive content. If God's claim on man is to be comprehended in a word, on the one side (predomEN34 EN35 EN36 EN37

to philosophise live live die

88

3. The Form a/the Divine Claim inantly in the johannine writings) it is that we should abide, and on the other (predominantly in Paul) that we should stand. In the most concentrated expression ofjn. 656 and 154 we read of an abiding "in me," or, according to Ijn. 26, 3~N and 413, "in him," i.e., inJesus Christ, in whom we have to abide like the branches in a vine if we are to bear fruit. Similarly,we read of an "abiding in the light" (1 jn. 210), "in eternity" (1 In. 217), "in God Himself' (1 In. 415f.) This abiding is concretely fulfilled, however, as an abiding "in the grace of God" (Ac. 1343), "in his goodness" (Rom. 11~~), in the faith (Ac. 1422, Col. 123,1 Tim. 215), in the doctrine of Christ (2Jn. 9), in the 42 doctrine of the apostles (Ac. 2 ), in the special calling in which each is called (1 Cor. 720), and in brotherly love (Heb. 131). In the same way,we also read ofa standing-"in the Lord" (1 Thess. 3H), "in grace" (Rom. 52,1 Pet. 512), "in the Gospel" (1 Cor. 151), "in the faith" (1 Cor. 161 :{) or "through faith" (Rom. 1 120), in the unity of the Spirit (Phil. 127), in the apostolic tradition (2 Thess. 215), in the armour in which a Christian is able to encounter the assaults of the last time (Eph. 614). The essential unity of the two conceptions is clear. Christians who are summoned to an "abiding" and a "standing" have a possibility in what is given them in Jesus Christ and through life with Him and in His Church; and the sum of all that is demanded of them is to Inake use of this possibility, or rather to let it realise itself. The anxiety and fear forbidden to them are definitely excluded as this possible becomes actual. And the achievement of everything that is positively to be demanded of them is definitely guaranteed. At the place and on the ground on which they are set, it is already decided in advance what they will and will not do, and therefore what they will decide. In what they will do or not do, they will be obedient to the command of God, accepting His claim as right. The place of their abiding and the ground of their standing are identical. In both cases the reference is to the Lord, grace, faith, the apostolic proclamation. The concern, and the only concern, is that they should abide at this place and not leave it, that they stand on this ground and not stumble or stoop or fall or be brought down because they exchange it for another. The seriousness and rigour, the absoluteness and radicalism of the demand are unmistakeable in both forms of the summons. Both pictorially and conceptually, the "standing" (as, for example, in the passages 1 Cor. 1613f. and Eph. 614f.) undoubtedly demands an active and virile determination, perseverance and restraint. And although at a first glance the "abiding" seems to be merely passive in contrast to a vagabond and vacillating caprice, it, too, impresses the hearer in such a way that there can be no mistaking the fact that it demands obedience and is therefore a command. The possibility presented with this place and ground is a law for those who are set in it. It is presented to them. It is to be realised in their existence. Its glory will necessarily be revealed in what they do and do not do. The fact that it is presented in this way makes them responsible that this should happen. But if it leaves them no choice but obedience, it is the choice of their obedience, in which they themselves are to realise it, they themselves are to be the active witnesses of its realisation. Humility and love and selflessness and every other act of Christian virtue, the confession and the loyalty and perseverance of faith, the joyousness of hope-all these are for Christians a simple duty, a fulfilment of the injunction to let their light shine, not in any sense extraordinary, but the ordinary rule of life. Yetthey are an obligation which they have to meet, a debt which they are required to pay. To allow to happen what at this place and on this ground has to happen with unavoidable necessity is something which can take place only through the Yes and No of their own will and determined act. There is repeated in this "abide" and "stand" the assault and disturbance of the wholly alien majesty of the new being which with their calling and baptism has burst in once and for all on their old man, and by which the latter has been once and for all vanquished and superseded.

89

[601]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[602]

But again it is the case that the disturbance and assault of this demand, its character as divine Law,is grounded in the fact that in content it speaks no less than the warning against anxiety and fear of a liberation which man is to give himself and in which he is to acquiesce. Those who are to "abide" are told openly that they are already in the native sphere to which they belong, in which they can breathe freely, in which everything they need comes flowing in to them from all sides, so that they can quietly renounce all seeking and hunting after other possibilities. Experimenting with other possibilities is a necessity for those who have not yet found the reality of life. But those who are told to "abide" have found this reality. To be "in Christ" is not one of the many stages on the wayof life from which we may be ordered, and it may be good to look farther afield and to go on because they are only stages. It is not a standpoint which it is advisable to compare with other standpoints and then perhaps to exchange with them on account of the relativity of all standpoints (out of regard for that truth which, according to Lessing, is for God alone). Those who are "in Christ" are already, even in the time when there is nothing abiding, in that which does abide and in which it is self-evident to abide. Ifwe want to press on and look farther, we shall only come back to this place if the search is successful. The only alternatives are the madness of a seeking for seeking's sake, or the misery of a seeking which can never lead to a finding. The obligation to abide at the place where we may abide because that which is abiding is there spares us not only all superfluous flights and detours, but ?-lsothat madness and misery. This is obviously an invitation and permission even as a command; a liberation as a commitment. It obviously engages us by freeing us in the depths of our being. It puts us under an obligation by giving us the freedom which we can only jeopardise and lose at once by trYing to be disobedient; the freedom which can be won and kept only by obedience to this command. And those who are to "stand" are evidently told that they are on ground on which they can stand-not on marsh or on a trottoir roulantEN38, but on solid earth. Is it possible that we prefer to stumble and stoop and fall ~nd lie, or at best crawl? Ifwe cannot prefer this, and if we are given the presupposition that we may stand, how can we fail to rejoice when we are told that we are to realise this presupposition and therefore to stand? Falling and lying have a fatal similarity to sickness and death. For this reason we must beware of that favourite word of philosophers and humanists-die Lage (the lie of things). Strictly speaking, it ought to be applied to human relationships and conditions only sensu maloEN39, only when there is a desire expressly to characterise them as fatal, as a suspicious "lYingaround" of men and social groups and whole nations who ought properly to be standing on their feet. To be healthy and to live is to stand. And the honest man who would rather stand than lie must surely hail as particularly good news the imperative: Stand! Stand because you are able and are permitted to do so! There can be no doubt that the New Testament aT~KETEEN40 or aTY}TEEN41 (cf. Eph. 514) is directly connected with the sound of the trumpet (1 Cor. 1552) in the avaaTaalS VEKpWV EN42. It commands both the later standing which the Christian is allowed and commanded in and with the resurrection ofjesus Christ, and the preliminary standing which he is allowed and commanded in anticipation of his own resurrection. This is commanded because it is permitted. It is a liberation and loosing because it comes to him as an alien and imperious law. It is a genuine consolation because it is so diametrically opposed to the foolish wishes of the old man. These terms, then, do not give us any grounds for supposing that the Law can be dissevered f~om the Gospel, or that it can be explained and proclaimed with EN38 EN39 EN40 EN41 EN42

moving floor in a bad sense 'stand!' 'stand!' resurrection of the dead

go

3. The Form a/the Divine Claim pith and power unless it is interpreted on the basis of the Gospel. What makes the demand so majestic and unconditional when we are told to "abide" and "stand" is not in the first instance that God wills or does not will something of us, but primarily that God is for us and not against us.

Obligation-the obligation of the real command-means permission. That was the first point. But the second is that permission-the permission which is the proper inmost form of the divine command-also means obligation. The New Testament passages in which this emerges have all led us close to the point where we can see the decisive reason for this, and for having to state it in this way and not differently. We must now consider this point if our two propositions are to stand. What we have to describe as the form of the divine claim and to defend against a legalism which as such would rather amount to lawlessness is not an ethical principle which is distinguished from others by its attempt to identify authority with freedom. If equal justice is to be done on both sides, the propositions that the right obligation is the true permission, and the right permission the true obligation, cannot possibly be deduced from a general concept of command, even of God's command. If the two propositions are to be brought together and related, as it were, in a vacuum, and something intelligible is to result, then necessarily either the conception of obligation or that of permission will become so flabby that either the one or the other loses its proper seriousness, the result being either an obligation limited by the permission or inversely a permission limited by the obligation. To identify authority and freedom is impossible as such. The reality of the form of the divine command, in which it demands as permission and is the Law as Gospel, is something which is in principle incomprehensible. Definition and construction in principle lead inevitably either to legalism on the one hand or to lawlessness on the other. In the knowledge of the form of the divine claim it is no more possible than in that of its basis and content to abstract from the fact that grace-the sanctifying grace of the command of God-is grace. The fact that God gives us His command, that He puts us under His command, is grace; for in this way he testifies and proves that He wills to have us for Himself. A first result of this is the two propositions that the obligation of this command is at bottom a permission and that this permission is its proper obligation. A further result, however, is that the unity of authority and freedom which characterises the form of the divine command as opposed to all others, is revealed and present to us as a promise and only as such, and therefore only in faith. The propositions of Christian ethics are propositions of Christian dogmatics. This means that as with all the other propositions of dogmatics the truth in them is contained and lies in the Word of God, that it can be known only in the Word of God, and must again and again be sought and caught in the Word of God and therefore in faith. Their truth is spiritual truth, i.e., truth which is revealed and operative in the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. This is true of the knowledge of

[603]

S 37.

[604]

The Command as the Claim of God

the basis of the divine command in God's mercy. It is true of the knowledge of its content as the demand that we accept God's merciful action as right for us. It is also and particularly true of the knowledge of the command of God formulated by these two propositions. We cannot see and understand that the matter is as these two propositions express it, if we are not willing to listen to the Word of God or to see the basis and object of His promise, if we do not turn to Him with the trust and obedience, the humble love, which are those of faith. Apart from faith and therefore from the Word of God, in ourselves therefore-in our conscience, thought, volition or emotion, or in some kind of special experiences-we cannot expect to find a point or points where we are in such agreement with the command of God that what we ought to do according to this command is for us a direct permission and the great permission of this command a direct obligation. Apart from faith, i.e., apart from the Word of God Himself, we shall always find necessarily that we are either on the right hand in a condition of legalism (under an obligation which is not a permission), or on the left in some condition of lawlessness (in a permission which is not an obligation). The concrete truth of the unity of the two, by which we are preserved from the abyss on both sides, is the truth of the grace of God Himself, which wills always to be known and grasped as such in its promise and which is our sanctification as the promise made to us. Ifwe let go the p~omise, if in any sense we lean on ourselves instead of it, if we no longer seek and accept the sanctifying grace of the command of God as is appropriate to the grace of God, we can only fabricate illusions about our permission as well as our obligation, illusions which openly or secretly will be quickly enough revealed in their character as such and which can issue only in disillusionment or in worse and worse illusions. To live at all it is essential that we should never cease to hear the Word of God and see the ground and object of the promise, nor grow weary in faith, nor fail to recollect the spiritual nature of the command (Rom 714, 82). Who is the man who can take to himself the words ofPs. 408f.: "Then said I, Lo, I am come: in the roll of the book it is written what I must do. I delight to do thy will, 0 my God: yea, thy law is within my heart"? To be sure, this was said by a member of the later Jewish Church, but in what dimension was he thinking, in what hidden sense-pointing up and awayfrom himself-was he speaking, unless we are to take it that he was most strangely puffed up and selfdeceived? And the latter assumption is impossible in view of the later verses: "Withhold not thy tender mercies from me, 0 Lord; let thy loving kindness and thy truth continually preserve me .... Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me " (v. 1 1 f.), and the conclusion in v. 17: "I am poor and needy: thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrYing, 0 my God." The Psalmist was no doubt speaking of himself, but in so doing he obviously did not focus his gaze upon himself but upon the place to which he finally addressed that prayer. In these verses we have an almost verbal reminiscence of the wellknown promise ofJer. 313lff. concerning the new covenant of the last day. When and as God establishes this new covenant, it will come to pass that "I will put my law in their inward parts and in their heart will I write it." The subject is obviously whatJer. 3239 speaks of as "another

92

3. The Form of the Divine Claim heart," and Ezek. 1119,3626 as the promised "new spirit"-the future I that lives and works only by the grace of God and that is promised to the Israelite by the grace and Word of God. The one who speaks as a member of that people of the last time which will be a people of doers of the Law, in the words used by Paul in Rom. 213f. to describe this people as the fulfilment of all these promises. He speaks, therefore, in the person of one of the Gentiles (as EV Tip KPVTTTip 'Iov8aLo~ EN43, circumcised in the heart, in the spirit, Rom. 229, cf. Deut. 3°'\ Jer. 44) who are a law to themselves because and in so far as the work of the Law is written in their heart, and who for this reason-as those who have this other heart, this new spirit-fulfil it of themselves (1)vaEL EN44), and therefore rightly, so that they are justified in the sight of God as its doers. When the Psalmist looks in this direction, and comes to speak of himself, as it were, from this standpoint, he can speak only in this way.According to Ps. 1103 (if the translation is correct), a willing people is one of the predicates of the priestly King of the last day, and therefore some of the passages which stress the willingness with which the Israelites made their contributions-first for the ark and then for the temple: "Everyone whose heart stirred him up, and everyone whom his spirit made willing" (Ex. 3521), "with perfect heart they offered willingly to the Lord" (1 Chron. 2g5f')-are to be understood eschatologically in essence, although without prejudice to their concrete content. Of a piece with this is the fact that the free life of the children of God is expressly described in Rom. 815 and Gal. 41)as the work of the Spirit sent into their hearts, or in content as a crying Abba, Father. In this crYing they are not slaves but children, and they may live as such before and with their father. Those who cry in this way-it is not arbitrarily that we think of the conclusion of Ps. 4o-are obviously freed from all illusions as to what they find in themselves apart from the work of the Spirit. They obviously look away from themselves elsewhere. Their sanctification by the command obviously does not take place in the power of experiences and accomplishments which they are in the position to claim as their own.

The spiritual nature of the command, in which its obligation and permission are one, consists in its fulfilment as it has taken place injesus Christ. It is His Spirit which drives the children of God into the freedom which as such is real obedience. It is from His obedience that we have to discern what distinguishes the command of God from other commands. It is in and with His obedience that the decision is made as to what the command of God means for us in contrast to other commands. It is not only possible but necessary to describe His obedience in these two propositions. This and this alone is the effective ground for the rightness of these propositions. In what jesus does, everything is permission, freedom, spontaneity. The will of God is His own will. To do it is the meat by which He lives. For He is the Son of the Father. It is as we look at Him and only at Him, on the basis of the privilege gained and confirmed by Him and only by Him, that others-we ourselves-may be called and be children of the same Father. He is therefore genuinely free, the One who is subject to the Law by His own volition. And again, it is only as we look at Him, and under the protection of the right to freedom which He has established, that others-we ourselves-can also be called and be free. jesus is free as God Himself is free, because and as He executes the resolve and will of the free love of God. It is in freedom that God has turned and covenanted Himself EN4:l EN-tot

aJew in secret by nature

93

[605]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God to man, and it is in the same freedom that the act of the covenant has been completed by jesus. It is in this freedom that He lives the life of the first and basic and normative covenant-partner of God. As surely as God is serious in His pity to man, as surely as He wills to have man himself, the whole man and therefore his heart, to the salvation of man and His own glory, so surely is this One, in whom God's hand is laid on all others, the willing doer, the cheerfully and happily obedient doer of His command, the lowly "in heart" (Mt. 1129). All that jesus does is, therefore, suffused and irradiated by the way in which He does it. He does it in the Egova{a EN45 of Him who is permitted to do what He is commanded, and commanded only what He is permitted. And this obedience of jesus is the clear reflection of the unity of the Father and the Son by the bond of the Spirit in the being of the eternal God Himself, who is the fulness of all freedom.

[606]

If the subject of Ps. 408fo-however we may explain it historically and conceptually-does not speak in His name, we can only say that the verses have no conceivable subject at all. But in whatJesus does everything is genuine obedience, real subordination, even subjectionnot at all the self-exaltation of man to the throne of God, but very definitely the work of a servant, indeed a slave of God, which takes place in a relationship to God in which God gives the orders and man submits, a position which cannot therefore be reversed. The early Church knew what it was about when in the monothelite controversy it insisted on the distinction and confrontation of the divine and human will in the person ofJesus. It did this in the light of the temptation story and Gethsemane, where it emerges clearly enough that the freedom in which Jesus obeys is real obedience. He "learned obedience" (Heb. 58). Permission with Him was not caprice, but the permission of the One who is under discipline because He has disciplined Himself. His freedom did not correspond to the meaningless idea of a divine potentia inordinataEN46, but to the potentia ordinataEN47 which is the real freedom and omnipotence of God. Like God, He lived in the freedom of the One who is law to Himself. Indeed, He lived out the freedom in which God from all eternity has bound and tied Himself for His own sake and for our good. He lived in an Egova{a EN48which was legitimate and not tyrannical, and therefore beneficial and not destructive. And He did this as the One who executed the covenant made and established by God, His course being regulated by this first and in the true sense only sacred con tract. He revealed and confirmed the fact that God is not a God of confusion but the God of peace (1 Cor. 1433). He fulfilled the command-both permission and obligation "undivided and unconfounded." And it is as He fulfils the command that He is the ground and object of the promise of divine grace, the Word of God Himself, to which we must keep strictly when we investigate the form of this command, its differentiation from other commands and superiority to them.

That the nature of the command of God is spiritual means that it does not confront us as an ideal, whether that of an obligation, that of a permission, or that of a combination of the two, but as the reality fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. This person as such is not only the ground and content but also the form of the divine claim. And it is in this person and only in Him that the EN45 authority EN46 unordered power EN47 ordered power EN48 authority

94

3. The Form of the Divine Claim identity of authority and freedom is accomplished. Deriving from this person, in His relationship to us and in our relationship to Him, this identity becomes normative for what is demanded of us. What makes it so is that it is to us that God turns in this person. We are those whom He accepts. It is with us that He has concluded and sealed the eternal covenant. What makes it so is that it is in this person that the divine claim is made and proved and executed. Ifit did not meet us in this person, it would have no authority, because it would have no reality. It would be a construction that does not reach our actual life, and is of no use to it. But actually meeting us in this person, it does affects us. It is the form of the command of God as it is directed to us. For this person is not a private person representing only himself and standing over against us. His commission and work do not extend only to the sphere of His own existence, but to the existence of all men. This person is appointed and stands before God for the person of all other men. We all have to recognise in the commission and work of this person the accomplishment of the will of God in our own stead. Root and branch, we all belong to this person and not to ourselves. Our commission and work can consist only in the fact that in and with our own lives we acknowledge and approve what this person has accomplished, showing in this way that we belong to that person. The strong passage Tit. 211f. is relevant in this connexion. "The grace of God hath appeared "-the reference is to this person in whom God has concluded the eternal covenant with man; this text was rightly used by the early Church as the Epistle for Christmas day"bringing salvation (awT~pLo~) to all men) "-the universal character ascribed to this person is to be noted: there is salvation for every man in this person!-"instructing us (7TaLSEvovaa ~J-tas) "-it is therefore grace itself and as such (incorporated in this person), and not a factor which precedes or only follows grace (and therefore this person), that carries out our instruction, as the ethical principle which controls us and by which we must direct ourselves, as the command which sanctifies us-"that, denYing ungodliness and worldly lusts"-there need be no fear that this instruction will not be radical and incisive; such anxiety would be in place only if we were entirely dependent on ourselves, and had to do with an abstract principle instead of the principle which encounters us in this all-powerful person and controls us in virtue of His authority; here, in Him, we have a true and overmastering principiumEN49, and therefore the effect of His 7TaLSEvELV EN50 is a fundamental denial, renunciation and separation in face of the interposing false principiumEN51 of the fall in its original form as our estrangement from God's grace and in its development as our domination by our own selfwill; here in this principium EN 52 there can be peace between God and us by the death of Adam on the cross of Golgotha-''we should live soberly, righteously and godly, in this present world"-grace, or this person, instructs us to do this, not only by taking from us what is ours, all the falsehood in which Adam tried to be free and succeeded only in becoming a captive, but by giving us what belongs to God, all the wisdom and righteousness and holiness of the Son of God, everything, as He is for us and represents us, everything, as we belong to Him and He treats us as His own, His members-"looking for that blessed hope, and the EN49

EN!)O EN!)1

EN!)~

principle instruction principle principle

95

[607]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[608J

glorious appearing of our great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." It is surely clear that this conclusion does not speak of a further aim to which the grace that has appeared directs its instruction. Strictly, the passage speaks of only one such aim: iva ... ~~awfLEvEN53, that we should be what we may and therefore ought to be in its sphere and under its order and authority. This is what it willsfor us. This is what it accomplishes in us. In relation to this positive aim the preceding negative (apv'YJaafLEVOt EN54) can have only a preliminary and subordinate position. And the conclusion in w. 13-14 describes explicitly what makes up this sober, righteous and godly life in which we are instructed by grace against the background of the negation executed by it. It is life in expectation, in a strained looking forward and upward, with this person, Jesus Christ, as the object. And about Him (and therefore about the grace itself that instructs us) there is then the decisive thing which has to be kept in mind in all that precedes: He "gave Himself for us," i.e., with His commission and work, with His obedience, He stepped into our place. His obedience was that He suffered in our place the death of the godless who is surrendered to worldly desires, the death of Adam, and that in His resurrection, again in our place. He was clothed with the wisdom, righteousness and holiness which God intended for us. It was to mediate what God intended for us, and to take awaywhat He refused, that He gave Himself for us. According to God's eternal will and in virtue of its execution in time He is the public person to whose existence and life ours is adjusted and subordinated, whose justice displaces and replaces ours (the eviljustice of our injustice)-displaces it by His death and replaces it by His resurrection. By Him we are "redeemed from all iniquity," and, by Him again, we are positively "purified a peculiar people." As we wait for Him as "our great God and Saviour," as we let Him be "our blessed hope," we live that right life which is the aim of grace's instruction, a life in sanctification by the divine command. This life is a "waiting" and hoping because the glory of the unity of Jesus Christ with us, and of our unity with Him, is hidden and not manifest, present and certain to faith but withdrawn from sight, as long as we live here and now, as long as "this world" (v. 12) forms the sphere of our obedience. Our instruction for that life still proceeds and is not, therefore, completed. Grace has still to be continually given and received by us. Therefore this life has still to be continually learned and exercised of and with grace. There is no one who can yet dispense with sanctification on the score that he is holy otherwise than by the fact that the command is holy and as such sanctifies him. The epiphany of Jesus Christ-the appearing of what has been done for us through Him, the disclosure of our life with Him as eternal life, the appearing of what we are (1 In. 32)-has not yet taken place. In the words of 1 Cor. 13,we still see "through a mirror in a riddle." For that reason and to that extent our life under instructing grace is a waiting. But its reality is not diminished by the fact that we wait for the epiphany of Jesus Christ and of our life with Him. We wait for the disclosure of that which here and now is veiled. But even here and now, in the concealment in which we now live it, this life does not lack anything of reality, and therefore of significance and power, of truth and force. What has happened-happened for us-has really happened. What is demanded of us is really demanded, and what is given us is really given. We cannot be more strictly, more intimately, more completely subject to a demand than when we stand in this expectation. Nor, again, can we be more lavishly endowed than we are already in this expectation. This expectation, in which already Jesus Christ is for us everything which He is in Himself, is the form in which there is to be realised here and now, i.e., practically acknowledged in its reality, not only His being-for-us, but our being-for-Him, our existence as His "peculiar people." It is precisely in waiting for His EN53 EN54

so that ... we might live denying

96

3. The Form a/the Divine Claim appearing that we shall "be zealous unto good works." That the sober, righteous and godly life in this world is our life in faith is decided by the fact that it is a waiting for the epiphany of Jesus Christ. What is also thereby decided is that it is our life determined and ruled by Him and therefore really claimed by Him.

The problem of distinguishing the command of God from other commands narrows down accordingly to that of distinguishing jesus Christ from all other lords and ultimately and decisively from the lord that each of us would like to be over himself. His person is the fulness of the divine command. God wills that we should live in Him, and accept and use the grace which has appeared in Him for all men. God wills that we should be His possession. God wills that we should believe in Him. All distinction between the divine command and other commands has only provisional and in itself uncertain truth and power, if it does not finally issue in the distinguishing of this person, outside and alongside whom we have no other lord, whom especially we cannot confront as lords over ourselves, outside and alongside whom we cannot trust anyone or anything else. All permission is empty-indeed in the last resort it is only our own ultimately fatal lawlessness-and all obligation is really empty-again it is our own and ultimately no less fatal legalism-if it is not the permission and obligation of jesus Christ, the permission and obligation which are proper to Him and which may be learned and exercised in His school. And so if it is not His call that summons us to do this, we cannot abandon either anxiety or fear. We cannot either abide or stand, and therefore we cannot be free and obedient. In contrast to all other claims, the claim of God is that by which we are claimed as the possession of jesus Christ, by which we are claimed for faith in Him. Whether this takes place or not, whether we accept it or not, is what decides whether our permission is the permission of the divine command and our obligation its obligation, whether we have to do with the command of God or with some other. The obedience which the command of God demands of man is his decision for jesus Christ. In each individual decision it is a special form, a repetition and confirmation of this decision. The command of God is therefore distinguished from all other commands by the fact that it makes this very definite obligation which cannot be confounded with any other. It may bind us in other ways. It may seem to be in harmony with other commands. It may seem to be identical with them, or at least similar. It may seem open to confusion with them. But in all these obligations its aim and intention is always the same. It seeks to bind us to jesus Christ in order that in this bond our life may be liberated and free. Every bond which claims us is, therefore, to be recognised as a binding to the Word of God by the fact that, in and with the specific thing in which it binds us, simultaneously and primarily it binds us to jesus, obligating us to Him, and, as an obligation to Him, making us free. If it does this, we have to do with God's command. If it fails to do this, it fights against God's command. If it does this, we owe it our obedience. But if it fails to do it, we owe it our resolute disobedience.

97

[609]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[610]

The command of God is "personal" because it claims our obedience in relation to this definite person, Jesus Christ. There are other commands which have a personal character in so far as they direct us to be obedient in our relationship to definite persons. And even the command of God itself no doubt contains within itself demands for obedience in relation to other human persons. But it is distinguished from other commands by the fact that, whatever other persons it directs us to, properly and finally it refers always to obedience to this one person. Even as it claims our obedience to others, it demands our obedience "in the Lord." If we are not obedient to them "in the Lord," in all our obedience to them, we are not at all obedient to the command of God which demands this obedience. And if we cannot furnish the required obedience to other persons "in the Lord," and therefore in obedience to this person, we do not furnish it in obedience to God's command. There then necessarily comes into force the well-known rule of Ac. 529 that we "must obey God rather than man" in the form of a resolute disobedience to them. The personal character of the divine command is bound to the name of this one, single person. When it claims us, the command of God puts this name above not only our own but all other names, and its law above not only our own but all other law-not to destroy all other names and law, but to kill them and make them alive by this one name and its exclusive law, as is demanded by the seriousness of the divine judgment and the depth of the divine compassion. But in virtue of its personal character, understood in this way, the divine command demands a genuine decision. No other command can do this. All other commands claim us in definite relationships, for definite attitudes and actions. In other respects they leave us neutral. It is only with this limitation that even other persons can claim us for themselves. Of ~ourse, the command of God itself challenges me with a limitation of this kind. The command of God requires that I should do this and not do that. But within this limitation it is distinguished from other commands by the fact that in itself it is unlimited, that in and with all itsindividual demands it demands myself-myself for Jesus, my subordination to this name and its law. That I may live in subordination to this name and its law is the great permission which it gives me, the great liberation which it accomplishes. It binds me to this one name and its law.And this obligation reaches out over all attitudes and actions as such to myself. In its specific requirements and prohibitions, it demands everything, the totality of my life. It demands my active acknowledgment "that I am not my own, but the property of my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ." It demands my life as that of a limb of His body, of which He is the Head. With the specific question of obedience it places me before the question of my existence as He has already answered it. It reminds me that I am dead and risen withJesus Christ. It speaks to me about this death of His and this life of His as if about my own. Demanding my obedience to Jesus Christ, it assumes that I belong to Jesus. It does not, therefore, give me the choice between obedience and disobedience as if they 98

3. The Form of the Divine Claim were two possibilities. The disobedience to it which is open to me can only be utterly unnatural. It can only be the impossible which is excluded by my own experience (namely, by the answer to the question of my existence which has been given by Jesus Christ). Just as the obedience which God's command demands can only be wholehearted and essential obedience, the obedience which determines from within everything that I am and do, so, too, it is with disobedience to it. There is no neutrality in relation to God's command-least of all a neutral mind. On the contrary, the command of God requires decisively-to use the apostolic formulation-that we should be "minded" in a certain way. It excludes all other ways of thinking, characterising them as enmity and disobedience. There is no option: we can only affirm that name and its law or deny them. We can only will to be what we are inJesus Christ or will not to be. The decision which has been made concerning us in Him is much too radical and comprehensive for us to be able to evade it with our decision. In our decision we cannot say both Yesand No, or simply say nothing at all. Where can we possibly escape when that decision is the eternal predestination, when it is our election resolved at the beginning of all God's ways and works, and therefore our only real possibility, over against which there can, of course, be the real impossibility of disobedience, but not a third course. How can there be a third course between what God wills and what He does not will, between what He has elected as our being and existence in and with the election of Jesus Christ and what He has in so doing rejected from all eternity? No other command confronts us with this Either-Or. The command of God alone confronts us in this way, and it is distinguished by its genuine character as decision from all other commands. Even where it resembles these other commands or sounds like them, it bears this character as decision. When it meets us, it allows us only the blessedness of complete obedience or the disobedience which in its totality is as monstrous as obedience is blessed. This disobedience is not a second possibility, but the impossibility of the sin of Adam, who in Jesus Christ is already killed and made alive for the service of righteousness. But again in virtue of its personal character, the deci~ion demanded by God's command cannot be other than ajoyous one. No other command can be exclusive in this regard. In respect of all other commands, the question whether we obey them with or without joy is indifferent or at least secondary. If they do not preclude joyous obedience, they certainly cannot demand it. Now even God's command does demand many things apparently without touching this question. But let there be no mistake. Ultimately and decisively it touches just this question. In large matters as in small we obey it only when we obey it joyously, and every time we obey it without joy, we have not obeyed it at all. For reminding us, as it does, that we do not belong to ourselves or to anybody else butJesus Christ, and demanding, as it does, the witness of our deeds and life as a confirmation of this fact, it proclaims great joy to us, the best and brightest and most comforting thing that we can possibly hear. We do not decide for Jesus in the way that it demands if we do not hear it in this way and obey it

99

[611]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[612]

accordingly. The correspondence in our obedience may to all appearances be deeply hidden, as even in the command itself it is to all appearances deeply hidden. But just as it does not really lack in the command, it cannot and must not lack in our obedience. Anything that in itself is really dark and accursed cannot possibly be the cross that we are ordered to carry, and if in the last resort we really carry it sullenly and unwillingly, we are not carrying it at all. Here, too, the inexorable Either-Or, the genuineness of the decision demanded by God's command, enforces itself. And, again, this is inevitable from the point of view of the divine decision that precedes ours. The act of the eternal predestination and election of jesus Christ, to which God's command ultimately reaches back, this beginning of all the ways and works of God both generally and therefore in our life, is the act of His "good-pleasure" and therefore of His joy, and it is in keeping with this that its fulfilment in time was surrounded by the jubilation of the heavenly hosts. In and with the decision to which we are summoned by God's command there has simply to be an echo of this good-pleasure of God Himself, of this jubilation of the angels. If this is wanting, what is there in common between our decision and the divine decision to which it is related, to which it should be obedient? Where is the permission without which no obligation is a divine obligation? If no one can be compelled to give cheerfully what is demanded of him, God Himself cannot be compelled to love an uncheerful giver. The character of His command can only be such that it is done gladly or it is not done at all. Yet again in virtue of the personal character of the decision demanded by God's command, in all its distinctive genuineness and joyousness, it can and must be continually repeated and confirmed. To some extent, of course, the same is true of other commands. But the repetition and confirmation of all other commands is limited: partly because, so far as content is concerned, they aim only at individual temporally limited achievements; partly because they aim at attitudes and therefore at usages which once they are established need no new decision. But the necessity as well as the possibility of the repetition and confirmation of the command of God is without limit. Even if it aims at definite achievements and attitudes and actions and usages it always aims beyond them at our decision for jesus, and just in this its substance the decision demanded by God's command is of such a kind that it can and must be repeated and confirmed. just because the command is eternal-the proclamation of the will and resolve of God, in force before all time and beyond all time-there is no moment in time which can be empty of it, which it cannot fill, which we do not have to consider capable and in need of this fulfilment. Every moment that lacks this fulfilment is in the strictest sense a moment of lost time, given to us by the patience of God, but not used by us for the purpose for which that patience gave it. It is a piece of lost life because it is not a life in all that makes life worth living. The command of God is eternal because its demand binds us to jesus, and, doing that, it secretly fills every moment of our life. There is no end to the question as to our relation to this person. It is always 100

3. The Form a/the Divine Claim , being put to us afresh. When did we not live in the illusion that we belong to ourselves? When was it not necessary for us to be called out of this illusion and to be reminded that we belong to Jesus? As well for us that the demand of the command of God does actually have the force of this summons, and that it does not actually come to a full stop! If it did not continually re-emerge there would really be for us only lost time, lost life. For in face of it, when and where would we not find ourselves failing, retreating, deviating from the straight course of repeating and confirming the decision that it demands? But the command does not fail. It continually puts itself to us in this form. In this form it binds us to the eternal will of God and therefore to His saving grace. It has all the constancy of the divine faithfulness in contrast to our unfaithfulness. We never dare lose sight of this mark of the form which the divine command takes-that as our bond to the person of Jesus it spans the whole of the time granted to us in a continual present. It will serve to stress this final and decisive christological determination of the form of the divine command if we conclude with a consideration of the story of the rich young man in Mk. 101 7-:~ 1 and par. The narrative describes very fully the form of the divine claim. It shows that the demand of the living divine command made in the person of jesus aims at the genuine, joyous and sustained decision of man for this person and therefore at the fulfilment of the one entire will of God. It shows this negatively in the figure of the rich man who was unequal to this demand, and positively in the disciples of jesus who have become obedient to it. Both the rich man and the disciples, the disobedient and the obedient, are within the sphere of the judicial authority and power, the regnumjesu Christi, being subject to the living command of God embodied and established in Him. Even the rich man, the disobedient! That this is the case, he himself shows in a particularly ostentatious way."He ran up and fell on his knees before him" (Mk. 1017). We cannot say why or for what reason or with what mind and intention, but the fact remains that he does it. And in so doing he adjusts himself to the order which is still order even where we are disobedient to it. He ranges himself with the disciples. He bears testimony to what the command is which has force for him as well as them. He cannot and will not reverse or nullify this testimony by his later withdrawal (Mk. 1022). No one can withdraw from the kingdom of Christ. It embraces even the kingdoms of disobedience and all their inhabitants. "He went awaysorrowful." Byhis sorrow in disobedience, he again testifies what the command of God is which has force even for him; he again testifies that even he, even in his disobedience, is in the kingdom of Christ and not elsewhere. It is quite possible to leave or be expelled from a society,but never from the kingdom of Christ, from the community in which that order is established and obtains. This does not imply any mitigation of the sin and guilt of his disobedience. On the contrary, it makes it manifest. It clearly points again to the hope of which he is not deprived even in and with his disobedience. Even as one who is disobedient he is still at the place where another time he can obey, although he has failed to do so this time. "Good teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" This is the question which he had put to jesus as we have it in Mk. 1017• He was sure, therefore, that beyond the insecure possession and enjoyment of the present temporal and therefore fleeting life it is necessary for man to attain eternal life, the true life that persists in contrast to the problematical character of this present life as it is revealed in death. He was also sure that in this present fleeting life man has to be and do something definite in order to attain this eternal life. Who can secure the inheritance if he is not the 101

[613]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[614J

heir? What must I do to act and prove myself as such?-is what he asks, therefore. And, finally, he was sure that it was to Jesus that he had to come with this question. He could not answer it himself, and he did not expect anyone but Jesus to answer it. All this confirms at once the witness which he has already borne by his running to Jesus and kneeling before Him. With all this he confirms the validity of the order under which he, too, stands. It is in Jesus that man has this future, and therefore this present task. And it isJesus who has to tell him about this task. For it is in Jesus that there has been concluded between God and man the covenant which forms the beginning of all the waysand works of God, and therefore the objective law under which the existence of all living creatures runs its course. But what will be the relationship to Jesus into which he enters as one upon whom and for whom all this is necessarily valid and binding objectively? Will that which is objectively valid for him become true or not true in this relationship? Will it be realised as obedience or as disobedience? Will he conduct himself as one to whom eternal life is so necessary that, to obtain it, he will do what is necessary, i.e., exactly what Jesus commands him? This is the judicial question to which he exposed himselfwhen with his question he testified to his objective membership of the kingdom of Christ. That this question is now a burning one emerges in Jesus' first answer in Mk. 1018: "Why callest thou me good? None is good except the one God." Calvin's interpretation (Comm. ad loc., C.R. 45, 537) is probably right: Tu mefalso bonum vocas magistrum, nisi a Deo profectum agnoscis .... lam quidem aliquo obediendi affectu imbutus erat, sed eum vult Christus altius conscendere,ut Deum loquentem audiatEN55• The man who desires His, Jesus', judgment upon his life asks for nothing other or less than God'sjudgment. Is he conscious of this? Is he prepared to listen to this judgment? Has he come to Him for it? Is he willing and ready to listen not to the instruction of a good human teacher, but to that of the divine Teacher Himself? It is possible to listen to the instruction of a human teacher-even the best-and still find it possible and necessary to test whether the case is as he says, and only to make up our mind and act after this test, and therefore ultimately on the basis of our own judgmen t (even if it is stimulated and enriched by that of the teacher). But this cannot be done with Jesus. Jesus is not a "good teacher" of this kind. And although the man has certainly come to the right person, he has not come in the right wayto this right person ifhis question is meant only as it can be directed to a human teacher, perhaps the best imaginable. The Word that he will hear from Jesus will be the Word that closes all further questioning and excludes all scrutiny, and it is by his obedience or disobedience to it that he will stand or fall. This is the way in which Jesus Christ is Lord in His kingdom, i.e., in the whole sphere of the man with whom God has made His covenant in Him. When He calls, God calls, and when man encounters Him, he encounters God-the one God, outside and alongside whom there is no other. Therefore the question put to man in this. His kingdom, the decisive question which is secret, but from time to' time suddenly revealed, is whether he will or will not meet Him with the obedience which the one God demands and which he owes the one God. That this decisive question has been revealed for him is proved by the fact that this man honours the objective order under which he stands, and comes to Jesus with his question. How will it fare with him and how will he stand in the light into which he has stepped and in which he now actually stands? According to Mt. 1916, his question was somewhat different: "Teacher, what good thing must I do that I may inherit eternal life?" The presupposed objective certainty of the questioner in regard to the aim, the way and right information about this way,is clearly the same

EN55

You call me 'good master' falsely, unless you know that he comes from God ... He had indeed already been trained in some attitude of obedience, but Christ wills that he ascend higher - to hear God speaking to him

102

3. The Form of the Divine Claim as according to the Markan account. The only difference is that here the idea of good is not connected with the addressed "teacher" but with the action concerning the right form of which he would like the latter to instruct him. Jesus' answer is (Mt. 1917) correspondingly differen t: "Why do you ask me concerning that which is good? One there is who is good." But the point of the answer is the same: If you ask me about what is good, then you must know that you are asking about what is good in the sight of God-in the sight of the One who is the good. When you ask me about the good, you step before the seat of the Judge from whose verdict there is no appeal to a higher court. And when I give you an answer to this question, you are answered in such a way that there can be no further question either to yourself or to others about the good that you ought to do. Will you listen to this verdict? Are you prepared to listen to that which, once it is uttered and heard by you, means that you cannot possibly shelter behind any test or scrutiny or decision of your own? Do you know that with your question about the good you have demanded this Word, and therefore decided in advance your righteousness or unrighteousness before God? What follows next, the reference to the commandments and the rich man's answer that he had observed them all from his youth, is at once a preparation and postponement of the communication of the inexorable Word which-in the light into which he has now entered-he must now accept. It is a preparation in so far as the reference to the commandments does in fact make the communication, and the rich man's reaction to the reference is a proof that he is actually in a position of disobedience, and therefore through this reference is condemned byjesus and therefore by God. It is a postponement in so far as the communication of this Word occurs only in a concealed form in this reference, as does also the actual disobedience of the rich man in his reaction to it. jesus does not appear to have said anything new to him with this reference, and he for his part does not see any reason, on the basis of this reference, to confess his disobedience and go away,as he did later ..The divine judgment already made is still hidden under the form of a continuing conversation between the rich man and jesus-continuing apparently to his advantage. Now that he has stated that he has done, and does, everything that jesus with His reference to the commandments has described as the action in question, what is to prevent his being told: Youwill obtain eternal life; for you are on the right road to it; you are living as one must live who has the prospect, claim and hope of it? Why can he not be told this? Why is the apparently so promising conversation about the commandments nothing more than a preparation for the disclosing of the divinejudgment, to the proclamation of which the rich man has exposed himself, and which secretly already-and very much to his disadvantage-has been pronounced over him? According to Mk. 1019,Jesus strengthened the warning as to the judge before whom he stands with the statement: "Youknow the commandments"-therefore you know the Law by which thejudge to whom you have appealed willjudge you, according as your actions correspond or do not correspond to it. According to Mt. 1917, this part of the answer ofjesus runs: "If you would enter into life, keep the commandments." The point is the same, for the man who has to do with God, as we have seen, has only to be reminded of what God wills of himthe God of Israel, the God of grace and pity, the God in whose sphere he has shown himself to be with his question. He is to do what this God wills of him according to His commandments. When he does this, and does not do what they forbid, he is on the road to life, eternal life. The reference, therefore, establishes a twofold fact. First, the questioner is within hearing of the command of God. When he comes toJesus with his question, he has actually heard already what he asks. And, second, this range of the hearing of God's command is the sphere of the authority and power of the One whom he questions. The One who is questioned and the One God who is so well known to the questioner are not two but One. Therefore when He answers the questioner, in principle and substance He can only repeat what He has

1°3

[615]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[616]

already said to him. That isjust what He does when He refers him to the commands. He has already told him what he should do to inherit eternal life. Therefore the questioner knows very well what should be the form of life of one who has this prospect, claim and hope. It is not for nothing that he was in the kingdom of jesus Christ even before he came to Him. In Mt. 1918 the rich man interposes a question: "Which (commandments)?" This draws attention to the fact that the command of God is an ordered quantity. The Law has both an external and an internal side, a p.,opcP~ and a TEAOSEN56 (Rom. 104). In the different commandments, i.e., in the different proclamations of the one command of God, it may sometimes be the one and sometimes the other which is more or less visible, or even hidden. It is not the Decalogue in its entirety, nor is it even the comprehensive double command of love to God and one's neighbour (Mk. 1229f_), which is adduced byjesus when He refers the rich man to "the commandments." What Mk. 1019 enumerates are the commandments of the so-called "second table," somewhat rearranged, reduced and enlarged: Do not commit adultery; Do not kill; Do not steal; Do not bear false witness; Do not rob; Honour your father and mother. And Mt. 1919 adds from Lev. 1918: "Loveyour neighbour as yourself." The selection and combination is clear. The well-known command of God is set before the rich man in its external aspect-the aspect from which it can be seen that it involves a concrete doing or not doing. It is not as if there were not included in these forms the command to love and fear God above all things, the prohibition of making or worshipping images of God, the command to keep holy His name and His sabbath-just as the commandments of the "first table" do not exclude but include the concrete forms of the God of the "second." In the New Testament sense it is not possible either to love one's neighbour without first loving God, or to love God without then loving one's neighbour. We can and must say,indeed, that in this unity of the command of God there is reflected the mystery of the person of jesus Christthe unity of the eternal Word with our flesh, of the Son of God with the Son of David and the Son of Mary. At any rate the genuineness with which the command is heard and kept on the one side is alwaysa test whether it is also done on the other, and therefore as a whole. We have a test of this kind in the present passage. How this man is related to God, whether he loves and fears God above all things, is what decides-and has already decided-whether or not he is on the road to eternal life. And the concrete form of the test to which he has exposed himself is whether he will hear in the voice of the human teacher, jesus of Nazareth, the voice of the one God and obey it accordingly? That is what he must do to inherit eternal life. But it is for this very reason that he is presented with the commandments of the second table, the external side of the divine command, the side that relates to life with one's neighbour. "Youknow the commandments"-how they are given you in the sphere of the most concrete doing or not doing, in dealings with your fellow-man. It is in this sphere that you meet them again, now that you confront your neighbour in Me and in Myperson. Be and do now what you must be and do in accordance with them, and you will prove that you give God the glory and that you will therefore be an heir of eternal life. The answer of the rich man in v. 20, that he has observed all these things from his youth, naturally implies: I expect and am willing to observe them in the same wayin the future as well. IfJesus has no more to say than merely to repeat these commandments, the questioner's answer means that he is fortified and confirmed in the way which he has always gone and intends to continue. He will now tread it to the end in the certainty that this is the way to eternal life. According to the sequel, this is undoubtedly a misunderstanding of the answer which jesus gives. But again according to the sequel, the mistake which trips him is not to be sought in the fact that he has subjectively deceived himself and jesus with that assertion of v. 20, hypocritically or foolishly making himself out to be a saint when in fact he is a transgressor of EN56

a form and a goal

1°4

3. The Form of the Divine Claim all these commandments ... This may well have been the case. It will in fact turn out to be so. ButJesus Himself is not interested in it according to the text. That he has observed everything that he had to do according to these commandments, that he has not been guilty of adultery, murder, stealing, robbery, calumny or disrespect to his parents, and that he will not be guilty of them in the future, is at once accepted without question, as in the case of the . servant in Lk. 1710• He has had the commandments of God before him. To the best of his knowledge and conscience he has done what they command, and not done what they forbid. Regarded from his own point of view and with respect to the external form of the command, his relation to the command of God is in order. He meets his neighbour as required by the command of God. No accusation can fairly be brought against him either by himself or others. He has good cause indeed to ask (Mt. 1921): ''What lack I yet?" If it is a matter of keeping the commandments, what more can be required of me, what more can be done by me? Has he not put his confident answer to the final and supreme test by coming to Jesus Himself and throwing himself down on his knees before Him? Yetthis is all a ~isunderstanding and delusion. Indeed, it is a demonstration of the disobedience in which he stands, in which he has come to Jesus, and in which he will also leave Him. The commandments which he knows-he does not really know. Observing them, he has not really observed them. And coming to Jesus, he has really passed Him by. He lives in His kingdom. He knows its order and the respect he owes this order. He has no choice but to observe this respect. He has done this from his youth, and formally and at the decisive point face to face withJesus he has now done so again. So far nothing can be said against him. He can have the clearest conscience-but only the clearest conscience of the disobedient man who, although he stands objectively under God's order, and necessarily and willingly acknowledges this subjectively, is still a rebel, determined to go his own way even under this order, allowing the command of God to determine his action but not himself, not subjecting himself to it. For it is himself that all the commandments demand-even the external commandments of the second table with all their reference to his life with his neighbour. Binding him externally, they aim to do it internally. Directing him to his neighbour, they aim to send him to God. That he should be something-the covenant-partner of God-is what all the commandments demand when they claim both what he does and what he does not do. That he should love his neighbour is what God wills when He tests him with all these directions regarding his relationship with his neighbour. That he should belong to Jesus-as King of the kingdom in which he lives-is the necessary meaning and truth of the obedience which he is now so willing and ready to give to Jesus. That he is very far from this being, loving and belonging will emerge later. And since he is so far from it, it is clear that even his action in fulfilling the commandments, of which he can justifiably boast from his own point of view and in respect of the external form, is not what he takes it to be-the action which God demands of an heir of eternal life. His mistake is that he looks at the external form of the command. And he does this from his own point of view, so that judging himself along these lines he naturally acquits and justifies himself. He thinks that the external form of the command is the whole command, the command itself. He thinks that when he has heard the whole command, the command itself, he has a position from which he can judge and acquit and justify himself. According to the best of his knowledge and conscience, he clings to its external form, to what it tells him either to do or not do. But in so doing, he alienates himself from the imperious will of God in the commandments of the second table. He does not encounter this imperious will of God in Jesus' solemn repetition of the commandments. This is the mistake which is still hidden-but secretly unveiled-in the intervening conversation about the commandments in w. 19-20. And it is this mistake which will now emerge. What follows in v. 21 is certainly astonishing. For it does not bring the expected unmasking of the fallacy of which the questioner was guilty when he regarded himself as a doer of

1°5

[617]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[618]

the Law. On the contrary, there is the unexpected statement: 'jesus looked upon him and loved him." At this point, we cannot agree with Calvin (Comm. ad loc., l.c., 540 f.), who softens the important ~ya7TTJaEv aVTovEN57 to mean thatJesus loved him as God loved Aristides and Fabricius on account of their civil virtues and therefore on account of the commune bonum EN58 of the world: quia illi grata est humani generis conservatio, quae iustitia, aequitale, moderatione, prudentia, fide, temperantia constatEN59• Nor can we agree with the exposition of C. Starke (Syn. Bibl. Ex. in NT., Vol. I, 1733,912): "At least there was this in him to love and praise, that he had not defiled his youth with gross vices, but had led an honourable life, and displayed a zeal to learn how to attain blessedness." There is more to be said for the conjecture of the same author: "And it may be, too, thatJesus saw many things in him which would be revealed later, as we read of Nicodemus." But why should aya7Tav EN60 have a special meaning in this case? In relation to the disobedientman,Jesus does the very thing which, for all his so-called keeping of the commandments, this man does not do in relation to Jesus: He loves him, i.e., He reckons him as His; He does not will to be without him; He wills to be there just for him. For whom else isJesus there but for the disobedient? Whom else has God loved from eternity? Necessarily He will pronounce the divine judgment by which he is declared disobedient, and on the basis of which he must prove that this is the case by going away fromJesus. But He does not do this because He hates him. He does not do it because He is indifferent to him. He does it because He loves him. In this ~ya7TTJaEv aVTovEN6\ which is to be followed by a no less emphatic unmasking of the sinner, the Law is obviously the form of the Gospel; the judgmen t declared by the Law is the shape taken by the grace of God. When Jesus now goes on to tell him what he lacks, He loves him and wills him for Himself. But the very thing that the questioner lacks is that he will not see this. He will not lay hold of it. He respects and measures himself by a law, the reference and concern of which is only for what he does and does not do, and not for himself in what he does and does not do. This law is not the Law of God, the living Law established and confronting him in the person ofJesus, the reference and concern of which is for himself, because the Lawgiver, the one God Himself, with whom he has to do, does not will to be without him, because He has made His covenant with him, because He has made him His covenant-partner and therefore demands that he should live as such. It is required that he should let himself be loved. This is the demand to which he is not equal, to which he is disobedient, of which he will be unmasked as a transgressor. But even so, the demand does not cease to be the form of the good tidings addressed to him that hisJudge is his Friend and Helper. He can certainly reject whatJesus wills of him. He can certainly go away,as he later did. But he cannot overthrow or leave the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And, similarly, he cannot destroy the inalienable, decisive element in the light into which he has now entered-the fact that Jesus loved him, loved him the obdurate and evasive rebel, who would later return to the darkness without the Gospels having any reason to tell us how far Jesus did perhaps see "many things" in him. The fact that Jesus loved him is the one thing to which we can cling in his favour-quite apart from what he does or does not do. But who, strictly, can cling to anything better in his own or anyone else's favour? Yet the form of the love ofJesus is the command, the declaration of what he lacks, of what he has not done in and with all that he has done: "There is one thing you lack" (v. 21b) . What follows is the long-expected sentence upon the questioner. Having failed to do this EN57 EN58 EN59

EN60 EN61

'he loved him' common good because the preservation of the human race, which consists in justice, fairness, moderation, prudence, trustworthiness, and temperance, was agreeable to him to love 'he loved him'

106

3. The Form of the Divine Claim one thing, and not being willing to do it, he characterises himself as unrighteous before the judgment seat of God, as one who goes another way than that which leads to eternal life. For he has not penetrated to the 'TEAO~ of the Law as it is brought out in Mt. 1921• Yet this accusation, too, must in the first instance be understood positively.The Word of God which is now uttered condemns the man who resists it, but it is also the justification of the man who accepts it. It is the command, but at the same time it is also the divine offer, and it is still this even for the man who will not obey it. What the questioner lacks is the fulness of what Jesus has, and has for him, the fulness with which Jesus loves him and is therefore willing to be responsible for him. And if he is, as it were, invited to remedy this lack, the remedYing consists only in a readiness to let the fulness ofJesus, and therefore the fulness of God which is ready even for him, stream over him and benefit him. His sin is that he is not ready for that which is ready for him in Jesus. But more is to be gained from noting the opportunity offered than how badly he let it slip. What he lacks is now revealed (v.21c). He is not the covenant-partner of God. He does not love his neighbour. He does not belong to Jesus. This is what he lacks. But it is not described in an abstract and academic way. It is aimed concretely at his specific existence and condition. We see it as that which he personally lacks. It is only now that we learn-indirectlythat the man is rich. And this is not stated explicitly until v. 22b: "He had great possessions." "Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor-so you will have a treasure in heaven-and come, follow me." This is the sentence. This is what the man lacks for the life of an heir of eternal life. This is the substance and the aim of all the commandments which he has not recognised as such, and to which he has not done justice with all his so-called observance of the commandments. This is what he has not done even in his coming to Jesus and falling on his knees before Him. Woe to him, the transgressor of the Law! But we do not overlook the fact that the sentence has the form of an invitation and direction. Formulating what the man lacks, it opens for him the door to the fulness which is there even for him: Go! Sell! Give! Follow Me! This is all an opportunity and possibility. It is not only offered, but it will remain open even when it has been let slip. It will follow him even when he is disobedient to all these imperatives. He can never complain that the saving Word-even in the form of the command of God, interpreted, revealed in its substance and its aim, and therefore unmasking and annihilating him-is not near him, that it is (Rom. 108) not laid on his heart and lips. Grace has met him as he is placed under God's judgment. Above all, therefore, let us not forget that it is asJesus loved him that He uttered thisjudgment on him and gave him finally this saving direction on the way. He does not condemn him without seeking him, without willing to have him for Himself; and He does this by interposing Himself and making Himself responsible for him. And for the man who ought to be living but is not living as an heir of eternal life, the direction which He also gives is saving, and genuinely consoling, because as a direction it is alwaysthe indication according to which what God has already done for him belongs to him and will accrue to his benefit if he will only make use of it. The essential content of this Word of Jesus is obviously threefold: Sell what you have! Give to the poor! Follow Me! The three Evangelists all agree on these three elements. In Lk. 1822 the first is accentuated by the addition of 71'av'Ta EN62, but this only expresses the undoubted meaning contained in the wording of Mark and Matthew. None of the three elements must be overlooked, or allowed to slip into the background in favour of the other two. But each of them must be understood as a characterisation of that one thing, that whole, which Jesus has said to the man in answer to his question. That he should sell what he has, that he should therefore part with what belongs to him, indicates what he lacks as the freedom in which he could and should live as the covenantENti~

all things

1°7

[619]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[620]

partner of God. What the commandments of the second table, which he thinks that he knows and has kept, require of him from this first standpoint is, therefore, the total obligation to the gracious and compassionate God who has chosen and called him into covenant with Himself, an obligation which has to be implemented in the sphere of his relationship to his neighbour. What he lacks is, therefore, obedience in the special sense of the commandments of the first table. The commandments of the second table require that he should confront his neighbour as one who is utterly bound to this God and who lives by nothing but His grace and compassion-if he livesin this wayhe will not kill, or commit adultery, or steal. They require that he should be wholly and genuinely free in relation to his neighbour: freed by his absolute obligation to God; freed from all other divine or quasi-divine masters; and therefore freed for an action which will really do justice to his neighbour. If he does not stand in this freedom, he will strive in vain to keep these commandments. He knows them quite well, but he does not know them at all. He does what belongs to their fulfilment, but how can he fulfil them when he neglects what they really require of him, when he is captive and bound by a regard for other lords and powers besides God? The man who is a captive in this wayis a murderer even ifhe does not harm a fly,an adulterer even ifhe never looks on a woman, a thief even if he never appropriates a straw that does not belong to him. The man who is a captive in this way is impure even if he is never so pure. Demanding that he should sell what he has, Jesus wills that he should be bound to God and therefore freed from all other lords. He is not this. He is a captive of his "great possessions." What he has really has him-in the very wayin which God would have him, and alone should have him. He is ruled by the life proper to his great possessions with their immanent urge to preservation, exploitation and augmentation. The grip of mammon-of the life proper to what he has, to what really has him-makes him inaccessible and useless as far as the command of God is concerned. It does this in a very simple way.It, too, instils into him fear and love, and trust and hope. It, too, demands obedience, because it, too, is his lord. And if the commands of all other gods might tolerate man's subjection to the commands of mammon or similar lords as well as to themselves, the command of the gracious and compassionate God who has chosen and called man to covenant with Himself does not tolerate a division of this kind. For this God is not prepared to be a lord alongside other lords. The reason for this is that He is not a lord alongside other lords, but the Lord of all lords, the only Lord. We can live by His grace and compassion, in covenant with Him, only completely or not at all. His commands are kept only by the man who does not accept any command but His, because apart from Him he has, in fact, no lord whom he must honour and respect. The man who honours and respects another lord apart from Him transgresses all His commands, as a captive of this other lord, even if he does every thing that belongs to their fulfilment. The aim of Jesus' requirem~nt that the rich man should divest himself of his wealth is plain to see. In accordance with the truth, he may and must be free from his other lord, from mammon, from the life proper to his great possessions, in order that, freed in this way,he may fulfil God's commands. As long as he has great possessions, they have him, and as long as they have him, God cannot and will not have him. He can only transgress His commands. He can never be an heir of eternal life. He must die-as the rich man he is, he must really die and pass-he must become poor if he is to tread the way of life. Because he is not willing to do this, it is in vain that he asks about this way even when he comes with his question toJesus. Or is it in vain? He is certainly told what he wants to know. He now knows what is involved. He has only to act. Even if he is still a prisoner, he is no longer a helpless prisoner. The door of his prison is wide open. Jesus loved him when He put to him the absolute demand: Sell what you have. He would not have loved him if He had spared him this demand. He proclaimed great joy to him when He did not spare his hearing this demand, when He did not withhold from him the saving Word of God. 108

3. The Form of the Divine Claim The second elemen t is that the proceeds of the sale should be given to the poor. This tells us positively that what he lacks is that love to the neighbour which is the meaning of the commandments of the second table. What they require of him is that he should not only not do what they forbid, but do something definite. That is, as a covenant-partner of the gracious and compassionate God and therefore as a free man, he should meet his neighbour as God meets him. But God meets him as the infinitely rich-what are his own "great possessions" compared with the possessions in God's house?-and in His covenant with him this God has really given him what He has, placing it at the disposal of him, the poor man. This is how God acts in contrast to all the other so-called lords of man, in contrast particularly to mammon, whose dazzling gifts are distributed only to make man more and more subservient to himself. God is rich in the sense that He gives away what belongs to Him without return, without making man subservient, but free. And it is in this that man may and should become His imitator in relation to his neighbour. What has he to give his neighbour in proportion to what God has given him and still gives him? But let him give this little as a small acknowledgment of what he has himself received. Anything less than all this little will be totally inadequate. What is the love which man can show to his neighbour in comparison with the love with which he is himself loved? But let him give this little love to his neighbour and let him give it all. More is not possible, therefore more is not demanded-but all this little cannot be too much. It is when he gives what he has-not more, but also not less-that he fulfils God's commands. The aim of all of them is that, as the man who has been freed from strange lords, within the modest limits of his existence but within these limits unlimitedly, man should be free to be for his neighbour what God is for him-to be there for him, to be at his disposal, as God is there for him and stands at his disposal. "Give it to the poor." And in that way prove that you really have it, that it does not have you. In that way prove your freedom. Prove that God is your Liberator and that you are a witness to this Liberator. Note the addition: "So you will have a treasure in heaven." The dYingof the rich man is not, then, a futile and meaningless dying; his becoming poor does not mean his destitution, but his true and genuine enrichment. At bottom, therefore, it is not required of him that he should not have what he now has. On the contrary, he is shown that he may really have it, and how he may really have it. Giving it away,and so proving that freedom, he will change it into a possession which-in contrast to the false show with which mammon deceives-he may really have as his own. If with the little that is his he does what God does with the infinite wealth of His goodness, he enters into fellowship with this God. He receives the confirmation that his inheritance is sure, that eternal life already belongs to him even as he waits for it. He is not only the possessor, but the genuine owner of what he has. When he gives it to the poor-it cannot be taken from him. But to become its owner, he must subject it to this transformation. He must give it away.He must not hesitate to die as a rich man, to become poor. And it is because he is not ready to do this that he is disobedient and therefore off the way to eternal life, and it is in vain that he asks about it or even brings his question to Jesus. Not being willing to give what he has, he is not the child of God. But there is now displayed to him the invitation to give-to give not only something but all that he has to the poor. And in this invitation he sees the substance and the aim of all the commandments. If he has not known and not observed the commandments and therefore the saving Word of God, there can be no doubt that that Word now confronts him so plainly and has attacked him so sharply that his question is answered. He has been instructed. He has only to look at his life with his neighbour, and the goods which lie freely in his own hand, to know at once what he has to do to inherit eternal life. AndJesus loved him when He gave him this instruction. He did not want to take from him what belonged to him. On the contrary, what He wanted was to give to him what did not belong to him, and yet did belong to him as the child of God. He wanted him really to have this. He wanted him to have treasure in heaven. He wanted to help him to his rights against 109

[621]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[622J

all strange lords. It was to this end that He demanded so sternly that he should sell all he had and give to the poor. He would not have loved him if He had pressed him less sternly. He brought him good tidings even as He pressed him so sternly. The third demand ofjesus, or the third form of the one demand, is that he should come and follow Him. It is only in this third form that the two first, although they do not lose their own inherent force, are brought clearly into focus. What is required of this man if he is to inherit eternal life? It is required that he should belong to jesus. He has run to Him and fallen on his knees before Him. But he has obviously not come near enough. He has not really come close. He must come to Him-this is what the third form of the demand says-in order that he may staywith Him, not going awayany more but directing his future course in accordance with that ofjesus. In place of his self-movement he may and must enter this new movement: Follow Me. This is again, and decisively, the interpretation of the commandments of the second table as they are supposed to be known to the questioner and fulfilled by him. The freedom for God which they demand from man is freedom for jesus. And the freedom for one's neighbour which they demand is again freedom for jesus. They aim at the true God and true man when they aim at God and man. And here in the person ofjesus the true God and true man stand face to face with the addressee and hearer of the commandments of God. With God, and as the Son of God.jesus waits for our acknowledgment that He alone is the Lord, and as the Brother of the poor who are our neighbours He waits for our attestation that this Lord is so kind. The two obligations-that this man should sell what he has and therefore become free for God, and that he should give it to the poor and therefore become free for his neighbour-both derive their meaning and force from this final demand, that he should come and followjesus. To followjesus is the practice of this twofold freedom to the extent that life in the following ofjesus is the life of that covenant-partner of God who as such is so completely bound to his neighbour. To followjesus is to acknowledge the justice of the command of God in both these aspects. And to acknowledge the justice of the command of God in both these aspects is necessarily to followjesus. It is precisely at this point that the man comes short. Captivated by the claims of his great possessions, occupied with the maintenance, exploitation and augmentation which they demand of him, and kept back by these claims from the attestation of freedom with which he would have to meet his neighbour, he wants to continue in his own way.He does not see or realise that in this selfmovement he is not free on either side. He does not want even jesus to disturb him in the unfreedom which he regards as freedom. When the Word of jesus discloses this state of affairs, it shows him that he is excluded from eternal life. It is a Word ofjudgment. But it is a Word ofjudgmen t which-decisively in this third form-reveals the direction in which eterhal life is present and is to be sought and found by him. In this third form especially it is a command which is also an offer. Whenjesus summons the man to follow Him, He offers him nothing less than Himself. He offers him nothing less than that he should belong to those at whose head and in whose place He has set Himself. He offers him nothing less than that He Himself assumes responsibility for his temporal and eternal future. He offers him nothing less, therefore, than participation in His own freedom. But in v. 22 we are told that the rich man was horrified by this saying, this explanation of the commandments, and went away sorrowful. This definitely confirms the fact that what was said to him was the communication of his condemnation from the throne of God. He was not equal to the command of God in the form in which it was now completely and unequivocally revealed and authentically interpreted. He did not even dare to contemplate doing what was required. Much less did he proceed to do it. And so he stood confronting it, unworthy, impotent and lost. What was required was incommensurably too much, too great for him. He could not sell what he had-he could not free himself from the lordship and the commands of mammon. He could not give his possessions to the poor-he could not make 110

3. The Form a/the Divine Claim himself a witness to the goodness of the eternally rich God. He could not followjesus-he could not stop the self-movement of his life, turning it into the movement of thankfulness. He was not the man for this. He could not do it. He was disobedient. How could he obey or even want to obey? He was not free for the freedom commanded and proffered. And so the opportunity with which he was presented to become an heir of eternal life could, in fact, only be the opportunity by which it was revealed that this was something which he could not become, since he lacked the being which was the presupposition of this becoming. He could only be horrified at this. He could only go awayby the same road as he had come-a different road from that which leads to eternal life. And he could only go awaysorrowful: sorrowful at the unattainable remoteness and strangeness of the glory of God which he had encountered, and sorrowful at his own incompetence and insufficiency in relation to it; sorrowful in face of the contrast between God's will and his own. And all the sadness which he might feel and express could only be a shadow of the real and infinite sadness of this contrast. What opened up at his feet was the abyss of the absolute impossibility of the relationship between God and the man who has committed sin and who as sinner sets himself in opposition to God. But although that is the last that we are told about the man, it would again be a mistake to see and understand the incident only negatively. We recall what was stated at the very outset: that it is within the sphere of the kingdom of jesus Christ that the incident is enacted. The sovereignty and majesty ofjesus are no less attested by the fact that the rich man sorrowfully goes away than by the fact that he came with his question. It is with Him that he has still to deal even in the state of disobedience out of which he came and to which we now see him returning. It was on Him and therefore on the command of God that he was shattered. It was His fulness that he lacked, and to the lack of which he had now to confess. jesus is the man who is free from all other forces and lords because He is completely bound to God. jesus is the man who stands at the disposal of the poor with all that He is and has, as a witness to the goodness of the rich God. It is only in and through jesus Himself that another man can and will become and be a follower ofjesus . It is in relation tojesus that he is the poor rich m;;lnthe man who is determined and ruled from elsewhere, the man who has great possessions. He has all possessions except the one-the fulness ofjesus. And this is what condemns him. This is what excludes him from eternal life. This is the abyss of the inner impossibility at his feet. This is what makes him disobedient to God's command, and therefore sorrowful. God's command is: "Rejoice." It is the one that has the fulness ofjesus who fulfils God's command, who may and must rejoice. But how can this be done by one who does not have the fulness of Jesus even if he has ever so great possessions? What else can they mean for him but the confirmation of what he lacks and therefore the confirmation of his disobedience and therefore an intensification of his sorrow? But just because he has this lack, the fact that he is now unmasked as disobedient, and can only go awaysorrowful, cannot in any sense mean that he is abandoned. We do not know what happened to him later. But we do know that what he lacked, the fulness ofjesus, was still there even for him, even for poor rich like himself-and for them especially. We remember that jesus loved him as He proclaimed that sentence. What else does this mean but that even as He condemned him He willed alwaysto be totally there for him, the condemned, that even as his judge. He willed alwaysto be his Friend and Helper? His kingdom-the kingdom of this One who loves-embraces the evil contrast between the will of God and human will, between God and sinners, between God's glory and the unworthiness, impotence and lostness in which man confronts Him. His kingdom embraces the abyss of the inner impossibility of human existence, in which His fulness-the fulness of the love with which God loved the world before it was-is misunderstood, derided and resisted. Where else but in the depths of this abyss has He established His kingdom? Sinking into this abyss man will continually encounter Him and in Him will continually find III

[623]

~ 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[624J

and have One wh.odoes not desire his loss in this abyss and who, in spite of all the power of his impotence, will not tolerate or accept it. The unmasking of human disobedience in the story of the rich man, the sorrow with which he went away, show that, in virtue of the totality in which it confronts man in the person of Jesus, the command of God kills. But the continuation in v. 23 f., in which Jesus confronts His disciples as the Commander of those who are obedient to His commands, shows that, in virtue of the same totality, even as it kills, it does not cease to make alive. The saYingof Peter in v. 28 is not contradicted. They have indeed left all and followed Him. They have therefore done what the rich man was incapable of doing. They have satisfied the total demand by whose proclamation he was unmasked and condemned as disobedient. They are, therefore, on the way to eternal life, as they are assured in v. 30. Twice (in v. 23 and v. 27) it is stated emphatically thatJesus "looked on" them. He is looking at His own. It is the look of the One who knows that they are His own, and also how and why they are. But for this very reason it is not an exclusive look. He' does not turn awayhis eyes from the one who has gone away sorrowful. On the contrary, according to all that follows, He looks right past and through them after or towards the one who has gone away.If the one Word of God has made a separation between the obedient and the disobedient, it is not that the Word of God itself has disintegrated into two parts. It remains a Word ofjudgment even to the obedient, and a Word of promise even to the disobedient. And it is in this indivisible totality that it is now imparted and presented byJesus to His own. WhatJesus has to say to His disciples after what has taken place between Himself and the rich man is certainly not that a man like this with his great possessions is as such excluded from the kingdom of God-that he cannot possibly enter this kingdom. But what they are twice emphatically given to consider in Mk. 1023-25 is that it is "hard" for men like this to do so-harder than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. A veritable hill of difficulty stands in the wayof what they have admittedly done-the keeping of the commands. It is on this hill that the rich man has been broken before them. According to his own decision and according to the confirmatory word ofJesus, he was not the man to conquer or remove it. Were they then, the disciples, the men to do it? It is remarkable that this obvious conclusion is drawn neither byJesus nor by the disciples themselves, and that the statement of Jesus does not create for them the joy and satisfaction of having left this hill behind by doing what the man did not do. Why is it that they, too, are "amazed" (v. 24) and "more astounded than ever" (v. 26)? Where is that peace of a good conscience which they can surely enjoy if in the words of v. 26 they even have to ask: "Who then can be saved?"They surely know that everyone can be saved, and how. They have surely done what is necessary, and therefore can do it. To be sure, it is a hard and thankless matter. To be sure, it needs a very radical resolve and a very free will to do what was required of the rich man and what they themselves in their way have done. But where is the so terribly difficult thing, the downright impossibility, which seems to loom before their eyes, and in face of which, although they are in fact obedient, they are so astounded, so full of questions, and even compelled to accept solidarity with the disobedient in a concern for salvation? There can be no doubt that even according to the view of the Evangelist their astonishment and question are strictly appropriate. It is quite right that, even though they have fulfilled the commands of God, they should be surprised by the demand addressed to the rich man, his refusal and the statement of Jesus about the great difficulty of this fulfilment-just as if they had heard all this for the first time, just as if all that they had left to follow Jesus still towered before them in all its value and necessity, and could still hold and hinder them from being obedient to Him. As the Evangelist saw it, what took place betweenJesus and the rich man had obviously shown them-the obedient-in a completely new and surprising way what obedience is, how great a step obedience involves, and that even when this step has been taken once, it has to be taken again and again in all its difficulty. Standing as the 112

3. The Form of the Divine Claim obedient alongside the disobedient, they are made to realise plainly that even the obedient are alwaysstanding on the edge of the abyss of disobedience, and that this abyss yawns even at their feet. And this is the significance of the story according to w. 23-31. The disciples themselves have been made to realise it. In face of the command of God they have had to confess their solidarity with the disobedient. That is why they ask: ''Who then can be saved?" That they have done what this man did not do cannot prevent the revelation of this fact and must not prevent them confessing it. In relation tojesus, in relation to the command of God, they are in exactly the same position as this man. Even their own entry into the kingdom of God seems to be harder to theln than the passage of a camel through the eye of a needle. According to the saying of jesus in v. 27, even that they-the obedient-should be saved is impossible with men. And their only hope is the same as that of the disobedient-the fact that with God all things are possible, and therefore even their salvation, and, as the way to their salvation, their obedience. This saying in v. 27 is obviously the hinge on which the whole narrative turns. The saving of anyone is something which is not in the power of man, but only of God. No one can be saved-in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be savedin virtue of what God can do. The divine claim takes the form that it puts both the obedient and the disobedient together and compels them to realise this, to recognise their common status in face of the commanding God. What it requires, and what it invariably achieves when it is proclaimed, is that we come to stand on the spot where-whether we are obedient or disobedient-we cannot be helped at all by ourselves, but only by the power of God, the power of His pity. The claim is as radical as that, and it grips and binds us as radically as that. According to the text we are studying, it demands of the rich man something that is quite impossible on the strength of what he can do. We have seen that what he lacks in the matter of the fulfilment of the substance of the commands is life in the fulness ofjesus, His freedom for God and for His neighbour. It is only in this freedom that he can be obedient. But it is just this freedom which he lacks. He is not jesus. He is only the man with great possessions and as such not capable of this freedom. He can only be disobedient to the commands of God. He cannot even enter the way to eternal life, much less travel it. To do this he would have to be another man than he is. As the man he is, he is excluded from it. And who can make himself to be another than he is? With men, in virtue of human capacity, it is impossible. Human capacity does not include within it this ability. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a man to do what is necessary for entry into the kingdom of God-to make himself another man than he actually is. But this is also true of the disciples ofjesus who inconceivably confront this rich man as those who have done what he has not done, what he could not do, and who are to be blessed as those who are on the way to eternal life. From the point of view of their own ability, they, too, lack everything that he lacked. They, too, do not possess the fulness of jesus, His freedom for God and for His neighbour. They, too, have no organ, no aptitude, no power to apprehend this. They, too, are not jesus. They, too, being what they are, can only be disobedient to the command of God, and miss the way to eternal life. They, too, are unable to make themselves into other men than they are. The hill of difficulty which confronts him also confronts them. This is the discovery with which they are faced according to our text. Who can be saved? Nobody can. Even they cannot. Thejudgment upon the rich man, the affirmation of the one thing which he lacks, has a direct reference to them too. Without the omnipotence of the pity of God they, too, could only give themselves up for lost. But we do not fully describe what God's command requires of man if we characterise it as what is impossible with man. On the strength of what God, not man, can do, what is impossible with men is possible with God. In this way,therefore, it is really possible with man too, not in virtue of his own, but in virtue of divine power. And what distinguishes the disciples of jesus from the rich man, and gives them the advantage over him, what differentiates the obedient from the disobedient, is the 113

[625]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God

[626]

fact that they may be witnesses to this divine possibility. They have actually left all and followed Jesus. How did this happen? It happened as they made use of that which they possessed as little as he, but which was at their disposal as the gift and present of God. It happened as they recognised, claimed and appropriated that which they lacked no less than he, but which was available for them in Jesus. It happened as-without regard to their own inability to apprehend, which was no less than that of the rich man-they accepted the fulness of Jesus as their own. It happened as they let His freedom-which was not theirscount as theirs. It happened as they put it into effect. It happened as at the Word of Jesus they held to Jesus without beingJesus. It happened, therefore, as they acceptedJesus' different existence as determinate for themselves and therefore lived as other men without actually being other men. In this humility or boldness-or, rather, in virtue of the grace which allowed and commanded this humility or boldness-the impossible became possible to them. To them? No, it was never possible to them. It was still possible only to God. But in the knowledge that what is possible only to God has become possible for them, in this confidence, in this humility or boldness-we can now say simply in faith-they became obedient. They accepted it as true thatJesus was obedient for them. They became obedient with Him, as those who on the strength of their own ability can be only the disobedient-obedient in following His obedience. They believed, i.e., they were pleased to have His ability attributed to them, to have their own inability covered over by His ability.They undertook to live in the shade and shelter of His ability. This life in the shade and shelter of His ability was their obedience-their willingness and readiness to leave all and follow Him. It is just because they are in this way obedient and on the way to eternal life that the judgment upon the disobedient must obviously fall upon them too. In this humility or boldness they have grasped at the freedom of Jesus attributed to them. They have placed themselves in the shade and shelter of His ability. But this being the case, how can they help being frightened when-in the light of the disobedience of another-they again see how they themselves would be situated without this freedom, without this shade and shelter. How impossible it would then be even for them to be obedient! How disobedient they themselves would be outside this shade and shelter! How could they possibly imagine that they had turned themselves into other men, that of themselves and by their own efforts they were other men than their true selves, and therefore, on the strength of their ability and accomplishment, secure in face of the judgment that falls on him? If they do not lack the one thing that is needful for the fulfilment of the divine command, it is certainly not because they themselves possess it and achieve it. It is only because it is there for them in Jesus. It is only because they are pleased to accept it by faith in Him. And it isjust because they are in this way-and only in this way-obedient and on the way to eternal life that they must obviously not apply only to themselves the acquittal which they have received in contrast to the rich man, the disobedient, and the hope and confidence in which they are permitted to live in contrast to him; not keeping these things to themselves in face of him. If they stand with him under the judgmen t which is passed upon all that is possible with men, he on his side is united with them under the promise of that which is possible with God. To what is possible with God there obviously belong both their present obedience and also the future obedience of the rich man, both their own prospect of eternal life and his also. If they really live by the fact that the fulness of Jesus is there for them, the disobedient, they can only view and address this other disobedient on the basis of the fact that the same fulness is there for him too. If their own fulfilment of the command consists simply in the fact that they live as those who make use of the freedom ofJesus attributed to them, and therefore of the ability of God which is greater than their ability, how else can they judge this or any other transgressor of this command except as one for whom also this freedom is there, but who has not yet made of it the use which he may? If there was and is grace for them-the grace of the divine ability that covers their own 114

3. The Form of the Divine Claim inability-how can there fail to be grace for this man or for any others who like themselves lack the ability? No disobedient man can evade the all-prevailing authority and validity of the divine command which demands that man should be committed to the compassion of God. And no obedient man can conceal this fact from others, or use it for his own advantage to the disadvantage of others. On the contrary, those who know it must attest and tell it to those who do not yet know it. It is for this end and only for this end that they are better off than they, and distinguished from them. As it emerges in the incident of which they were witnesses, the significance of what marks off the disciples, the significance of their differentiation from the rich man, is simply that these disciples, who are what they are and are permitted to do what they do by the grace of God, become apostles, i.e., men who proclaim what is impossible with men, but possible with God. (There is unmistakeably reflected and repeated in the relationship between the disciples and the rich man of this story the relationship between the Church and Israel, and not only this, but the relationship between the whole community of God and the surrounding world.) Made obedient and set on the way to eternal life, in relation to all other men they are witnesses to the fact that what they are permitted to be and do is the will of God for them too, and that the possibility by which they themselves live is given to them too, and may be used by them. Saved by faith alone, they may and must say to all who are not yet distinguished in this way, that this distinction is their determination too, and that even in the deepest depth of their disobedience they cannot cease to be determined for it. To that extent, when Jesus looks on the disciples as His own, as the obedient, He also looks after and towards the rich man, the disobedient, and all those like him, as those who are within the range of the divine command and cannot possibly be removed from it. The interchange between Jesus and Peter in Mk. 1028-31, which brings the whole story to a conclusion, ends in v. 31 with the significant saYing:"Many that are first shall be last, and the last first." These final words seem to make it unmistakeable that everything that has taken place between Jesus and the rich man on the one side and the disciples on the other involves a threat of judgment even for the disciples and a promise even for the rich man. It is to be noted that the basic presupposition is again predominant that the kingdom of Christ is the sphere in which the whole action is played out and to which it all bears witness. We do not hear of the saved and the lost, or of those who are within and those who are without, or of participants and non-participants, but of a serious, and yet for all its seriousness not an absolute, difference within the same sphere. We hear of the first and the last, and this means of the possibility of a very radical change within this sphere in the status and estimation of different people, the obedient and the disobedient, who are its citizens and inhabitants. The disciples with their obedience, which they do not owe to themselves, but to the divine ability bestowed on them, are now first, and the rich man, in virtue of his human inability, is one of the last. The former are distinguished, and the latter is disdained. Yet both participate in both presuppositions. The relationship between the former and the latter is reversible in virtue of the presuppositions that are true for both. The rich man, who is now the last, could become a first on the strength of the divine ability, which is not withdrawn even from him, but available even for his use. And the disciples, who are now the first, could become the last in virtue of their own human inability which resists the divine ability. We remember Rom. 1114f .• The visible situation which has developed between these men and that man is not fixed or absolute. Only the command of God is fixed. Only Jesus is absolute as King of the sphere in which both exist, as the rule of the divine pity to which both are accountable, and before which both stand in need of help. The interchange between Jesus and Peter in vv. 28-30, to which this final statement belongs, reveals at once both the high distinction and also the great peril of the disciples themselves. It shows that their position is first, but it also shows that from being first they may 115

[627]

S 37. The Command as the Claim of God [628J

[629J

actually become last. "Wehave left all and have followed thee," is what Peter said in v. 28 in reply to the saYingabout what is not possible with men but is possible with God. His words are appropriate in one sense. For on the strength of what is possible with God, the disciples had, in fact, done what is impossible with men. But they are also highly inappropriate, foras Matthew has rightly understood it-the announcement expresses a jarring concern: "What becomes of us?" This concern does not derive from faith in what is possible with God and therefore from the obedience which distinguishes the disciples from the rich man, but, if at all, only from what they unfortunately have in common with the rich man-the disobedience which was theirs too, and which was unmasked and condemned with that of the rich man. To judge by this concern, the obedience in which they had left all and followed Jesus had not been ajoyous obedience. Tojudge by this concern, they had no doubt looked forwards in faith, but they had also looked back at all they had left behind to followJesus. But how, then, had they really left it? How, then, had they-in contrast to the rich manreally followedJesus and really done justice to the substance of the divine commands? Was it not inevitable that, in spite of what they had done, they must see themselves seriously and totally called in question along with the rich man? How, then, could they fail to be threatened by the possibility which he now realised-the possibility of being last instead of first? He had gone awaysorrowful. But what had they done when, to judge by the concern in their question, they had come sorrowful? In this question, what is possible and impossible with men in regard to the command of God emerges no less evidently in the case of the disciples than it had done in the case of the rich man, and, along with it, the danger in which they, too, stood. Jesus tells them consolingly in v. 29 f.-to some extent quietening and dissipating their concern-that there is no man that has left house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children or lands for His and the Gospel's sake who will not receive a hundredfold for what has been surrendered, even now in this world in the midst of persecution, and in the world to come eternal life (and, according to Mt. 1928, He strengthened this promise by a reference to their apostolic office, in virtue of which they are destined to be judges of the twelve tribes of the people of God). But while this is true, we must not overlook the inherent reference to the danger that faces them, the threat of judgment that is addressed against them too. Those who, following Him, have for His sake left everything, are those who are not only certain of eternal life in the world to come, but have not really lost anything in this world, since they will receive again all that theyhave lost, not merely as they lost it, but a hundredfold, what they had never had before and could never have attained. They are those who already in this world proceed to the richest and truest reward. They will have to the full everything that man can have or desire in human and material values and goods. They are the meek who, according to Mt. 1129, will find rest for their souls, and, according to Mt. 55, will inherit not only eternal life but also the earth. But is this really the case? That is the very critical question which lurks in the promise. Are they those who have this promise and live with it? When they leave all and follow Him, have they heard and accepted the Gospel as good new~for life and death, body and soul? When they choose obedience to God's command instead of disobedience, have they really chosen the better, the best, which is what this obedience surely is? If they have done this, how then can they put the plaintive question: "What becomes of us?" How then can they look b~ck 'ruefplly, as"it were, at 'Yhat rhey hav~ given up? How can the man who is capable of looking back'be obedient, if obedience riJ.eans to gain by surrendering, to lose a little and be given infinitely more? If they' are capable of this backward look, are they even a single step in advance of the rich man who went away sorrowful? Do they not stand with him already among the last in the kingdom of Christ? Is it not possible that they may have at any moment the experience of being outstripped by him and seeing him in their place among the first? But, of course, it is not by accident that this question, and with it the threat of judgment addressed to the disciples and revealing their 116

3. The Form of the Divine Claim serious peril, is so completely covered and clothed by the dazzling promise which Jesus gives them. And the seriousness and weight of the threat lie in the fact that it meets them in this concealment-indirectly. Between the word of Peter in v. 28 and the answer of Jesus in v. 29 f. there is a supremely indirect relationship. A great gulf obviously opens up between the being which the disciples (within the limits of what is possible and impossible with men) have represented as theirs, and that other being, based on what is possible in God's free c()lnpassion, which is ascribed to them byJesus as their new and proper life; the being which He sees in them and does not cease to see in spite of their representation of themselves. When Peter and the other disciples look back in concern and half-regret at what they have lost they are obviously not the same as those whom Jesus-as if nothing had happenedaddresses as men who have left all for His sake and the Gospel's, and who as such are worthy and certain not only of this hundredfold temporal but also of the eternal requital and reward. Doesjesus not know that, as the saying of Peter shows, they are still these others, and that by this same saying they have unmistakeably denied what they are through Him? He obviously knows it well. The saYingdetermines His answer. But in His answer He steps, as it were, over that abyss for them and with them-again making them, from what they are by themselves, into what they are permitted to be by and with Him. This silent action is a repetition of the act of creative goodness, in which He called, indeed "made," them out of nothing to be apostles (Mk. 314 10). And on the strength of this act they are now addre'ssed as what they are not according to that anxious question. They have now ascribed to them an existence which is so contradictory of the presuppositions of the question. They are now described as those who are sure of all these temporal and eternal benefits just because they have lost all and followed Him, and can therefore be certain, and cannot therefore be anxious. It is to be noted that this is how they are comforted. In face of their scarcely concealed defection,jesus becomes and is again, and this time truly,Jesus the Saviour. He steps in again with His freedom to supply their deficiency. And in so doing He assuages and dissipates their concern. This would obviously not be possible in any other way. For in any other way they would be left standing on the other side of that abyss. Now that they had lost all, their concern would not only be natural, but necessarily it would be limitless and invincible. And how could they ever move away from this position? They are relieved of their concern by the fact that jesus takes it on Himself. And it is as He intervenes for them that the promise He gives them becomes powerful and decisive. It shines out for them and over them, because it is the reflection of His own glory, of His hidden but real kingship. As He Himself lays down His life in His great freedom for God and men, in order by this very means-risen from the dead, sitting at the right hand of God-to win it again in incomparable divine splendour, they will have the same experience, for all that He does is done for them. And as He Himself is already, here and now, in the secrecy of His existence in the flesh, really in possession of all the rights andjoys of His kingdom, the same is true of them, i.e., in and with Him, through the fact that all that is His belongs also to them. If it meant anything else but this, the promise of v. 29 f. could hardly be more than a strange jata morganaEN63 not very appropriate to the existence of the Church "in the midst of persecutions" (v. 30). It is because what jesus says to His disciples is filled with the dynamic of what He Himself is and does-is and does for His own-that His promise is full of reality, clarity and truth, and is therefore a consoling promise, not only contradicting concern, but destroying it. But as such, it is obviously directed not only to the disciples, but also to the rich man who went away sorrowful. From the Markan (and Lukan) account it is quite clear that this is the meaning of the text. To the saying of Peter: "We have left all and have followed thee," the answer of Jesus stands only in an indirect relationship with its general declaration: "No one that has left house, brothers, FNli:\

nlirage

117

[630]

S 37.

The Command as the Claim of God

sisters ... who shall not receive again a hundredfold." This is the general answer which holds for all the anxious, all who are not free, all who still stand on the other side of that abyss, all who are bound by what is possible and impossible with men. The decisive element in this answer is what Jesus is and does for those bound people. But this being the case, it is obviously true for the rich man who went away no less than for the disciples. No matter what attitude he assumes, even if he runs to the very depths of hell, he cannot evade either the command of God or the divine promise which is its meaning. What has been said and done in their favour by Jesus, the disciples cannot refrain from repeating in favour of him and those like him, and with the same indefatigability asJesus devoted to them. There remains for the rich man the explicitly stated hope: "The last shall be first." But we now understand the fact and extent that whatJesus said must really affect the disciples, too, as a Word of judgment-not in spite of the fact, but just because of the fact that it is so completely covered and clothed with the promise. If they were not still at the place where they were, according to the saying of Peter, how could they be accessible to God's accusation, or be held responsible as transgressors of His command? If it is not possible with men to be other than they are, is there not justification and even excuse for their anxieties? But they are accused and condemned because they are addressed on the basis of their new existence, as those who benefit by what is possible with God; because, indeed, this new existence is again and rightly adjudged and assigned to them. This, the grace of Christ, is the attack upon the old being to which, according to that anxious saying, they again wished to return or had already returned. It is this that makes them responsible, guilty, inexcusable and, of course-for otherwise the story would not be in the Gospels-ready to confess their guilt and repent. This is the demand-that they should turn and draw back, regretting their regret. They are told who they are, and at the same time who they cannot be; where they belong, and at the same time where it is impossible for them to belong. Thus the story of the rich young man shows us in all its aspects the constancy of the divine faithfulness in the divine command, so far as its substance consists in the fact that it binds the man who hears it (protesting against his unfaithfulness, but also victorious over the evil into which that unfaithfulness plunges him) to the person of Jesus.

118

[631] THE COMMAND AS THE DECISION OF GOD As God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ, His command is the sovereign, definite and good decision concerning the character of our actions-the decision from which we derive, under which we stand and to which we continually move.

1.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE DIVINE DECISION

The command of God is more than what may be connoted by the idea of a claim. We could not describe it in terms of a claim without exceeding the boundaries of the term. A claim confronts man from without. Of course, the command of God does this too. It must even be said that in the strict sense man cannot be moved and claimed from without except by God's command. But if it is characteristic of every other claim that it leaves man unmoved and unchanged in his innermost self, it must be said of the divine command that in virtue of its distinctive validity it so concerns man that by this claim he in some way becomes a different man from what he would be without it. A claim which is not that of the Word of God may be justified or not, possible or impossible, binding or the reverse. And the subject of it is himself more or less competent to decide whether it is so or not. But the claim of the divine command does not leave any place for this freedom. By its very nature it is ajustified, possible and necessary claim, by which the one whom it concerns and encounters is arrested, so that however he may react towards it he cannot possibly evade it as though he were not claimed. Other claims are limited by the fact that they can be satisfied either by obedience or disobedience. But the claim of God cannot be satisfied in this way, either by obedience or disobedience. For both obedient and disobedient it means, when they are claimed, that they belong to it, that they are marked by it, that it qualifies them ineluctably. Above and beyond whatever else might be described as a claim on men, the divine command is a statement about him. It not only subjects him to a requirement, but in so doing, places him under a conclusion. It not only demands that he should make a decision in conformity with it, but as it does so, and as man decides in conformity or contradiction to it, it expresses a decision about man. And as a statement, conclusion and decision concerning him, it moves and changes, marks and qualifies him. We must now examine this aspect of the matter in detail. 119

[632]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[633J

That God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ is the divine decision about our whole being, what we do and do not do. This is the will of God for us. In virtue of this will He has taken the initiative from all eternity and in the heart of time, making Himself responsible for our relationship to Him and participation in His glory. This is His will for us at every moment of our lives. The divine command is the witness to this will. It requires our obedience, i.e., that we should live in this surrender to God which He both wills and effects. It requires the witness of our will and actions as the praise of His great love. Our obedience, will and actions do not create the relationship through which we belong to God. Therefore the command of God does not require that we should create this relationship. But as this command bears witness to what God wills with us and does for us, it demands from us the witness of our will and actions as the confirmation of His grace directed towards us, our active acknowledgment of the fact that we are what we are by this grace, the response of our witness to what He has given us. To this extent the command of God is a claim. As we have seen, the grace of God inJesus Christ is not only the foundation but the content, the decisive form, of the claim addressed to us in the divine command. But it is not only this, and therefore the command of God is not just a claim. For what does it mean when we say that we belong to God in virtue of the divine will and the divine action corresponding to it? "We" are the men who stand before God as creatures, who for their part exist in willing and acting, in the venture of a series of decisions which is as long or short as our temporal life. The claim of the divine command is concerned with these decisions both as a whole and in detail. It is in these decisions that we give our witness to the fact that we belong to God. If they are subject to God's claim, this includes the further and greater fact that they are measured by the will and act of God, that the will and act of God is in some sense the prior decision by which they are all asked whether or not they attest and praise His great love. Because the will of God expressed in His Law is the good which as such requires our active recognition, it is also the criterion of the good or evil nature of our conduct. The latter is made accountable by it (from eternity and at the heart of time and at every moment of our life in time). We either conform to it or not in what we will and do. We either give or refuse it the testimony of our will and act. We either praise or blaspheme God's great love. This is what differentiates between the good and evil in our lives. And the differentiation is made in the fact that God is gracious to us inJesus Christ. This His will with us and His act for us is the law of our lives both as a whole and in each detailed moment. It is this because He is the Lord of our lives, because we belong to Him, because we belonged to Him before we existed and will always belong to Him-to no one else, and certainly not to ourselves. What we were and are and will be stands or falls by whether it is righteous or not in His sight. And the conclusion that we are righteous or not in His sight, and therefore stand or fall, is not for us to make but for Him. It is a matter of the primal decision made and expressed in the will of God from eternity and the act of God at the heart of time, and 120

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

continually made and expressed again at every moment of our life in time. What we will and do is exposed to this decision of God and awaits the disclosure of it. "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive ... according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad" (2 Cor. 510). The judgment seat of Christ, before which we obviously do not stand here and now, has already been set up, and whether we have done, do or will do good or evil has already been decided from it. We have been, are and will be observed and weighed. This is established by the fact that God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ. This fact is the starting-point of all the waysand works of God and our own starting-point. Because this is God's decision for us, it is also God's decision concerning us-the primal decision to which all our own decisions are subjected. And the command of God, which is the witness to His grace, is as such a witness to the infallible criterion whether we walk in light or darkness, whether we stand or fall. Because God wills to have us as His own, and already has us in virtue of His command, He also knows how He will have us and already has us. As He is our Lord by reason of His command, He is also the Law by which we stand or fall. Whether we remember or forget His Law, whether we study it or neglect to do so, whether we recognise and regard it or it remains distant and alien to us, whether we are compliant or refractory to it in the form in which we imagine we recognise and observe it, we must always recollect that it is a question of the presence of the One who does not merely require certain things of us-things great or smallbut who even as He requires them has already decided how we stand before Him, as good or evil; how we have come to Him and taken up a position with regard to His will. The Law of God as the divine demand, order, direction and commission is the crisis of our life both as a whole and in each individual moment. Whatever may be our attitude to Him, because it is our attitude to Him, it always includes in itself a definite attitude on the part of God to us. In some sense it is itself the realisation of this divine attitude. In our attitude and conduct we emerge always as those who are known by God as He gives us His command. This is the sovereignty of the divine decision to which the command bears witness. It does not really affect the freedom of our own decisions. It is our own free decisions whose character God decides even as we ourselves make them. It is they which are claimed and measured by His command. It is the use of our freedom which is subjected to the prior divine decision-the decision of the question whether it is right or not, whether it consists or not in the witness required of us. It is in the use of our freedom that we give an account how we stand in the sight of God, and are pierced to the depths by the searching glance of God. It is in the use of our freedom that we have to embody God's righteous judgment upon us. The sovereign decision of God by which we are confronted in the presence of His Law relates to our own free decisions. It is, therefore, a genuinely serious and relevant question which faces us when, in the light of the presence of the divine command, we are confronted 121

[634]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[635]

by the fact that our life consists in a continuous series of decisions which we have to make and execute. This is why we have necessarily to examine the direction of our way both as a whole and in its particular turns and sections, to scrutinise the nature of the choice which is now before us in its integral connexion with past and future choices. How will it be with us in this choice of ours, if, as we make it, God too will choose, deciding the character of our choice, whether it is good or bad, obedience or disobedience? The command is there. It is always according to its relationship to this that our choice will be good or bad, that we shall be obedient or disobedient. God will decide this. He has decided it from all eternity, and at the heart of time, in the person of jesus Christ. He will, therefore, do so in our own life also and at every moment of it; and therefore in the moment of decision which we now approach. But it is our decision that He willjudge. And it is in His command that His decision waits for ours, as it is there that it waited for us on our earlier path, and there that it will wait for us again on our later path. How, then, can and shall we encounter His judgment? With what understanding of the divinely given command? With what readiness for God's judgmen t, for His differentiation between good and evil? In what condition in view of the criterion by which we shall be measured? We obviously do not do justice to the sovereignty of the divine decision if we try to evade this testing, if at every moment of our willing and acting we are not occupied with the question of our readiness for willing and acting at the next moment, if our willing and acting at the present moment are not sustained and inspired by this question, by our knowledge of the accountability of our life in its sequence of yesterday, to-day and to-morrow. The sovereignty of the divine decision is obviously ignored from the outset if it is not regarded at every point as the criterion under which we stood and stand and will stand, as the seat of judgment from which we are already seen here and now as good or bad, even though it is not apparent here and now what we are there seen to be in the totality of our life decision. Our submission to this decision, and therefore our obedience to God's command, begins always with the fact that we look towards it as those who know that it is our own free decision which will there be judged. From the very outset, then, this our own free decision is there called in question, and therefore in need of preparatory testing as we approach it. We cannot attempt to make it without submitting it to this preliminary testing. Standing under God'sjudgment to-day, as we stood under it yesterday, we are claimed by the fact that we will always be exposed to it again to-morrow. That what we will and do should take place in this selfexamination-with a glance backward at what we willed and did formerly, and forward to what we shall will and do in the path that is now to be pursued or not, and therefore with a readiness for the next thing, or rather for the judgment which we approach in and with it-this is our proper attitude to the divine decision which awaits our own decision in God's command. It has nothing whatever to do with theory or contemplation. It does not form an empty moment between one choice and decision and another. On the contrary, it 122

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

belongs to every choice and decision and therefore to the practice of every moment. It is the bearing of every moment on both past and future moments, and on the totality of our life in so far as it is lived, not merely in our own decisions, but both as a whole and in detail under the divine decision, and its approaching disclosure. It is not made superfluous by the fact that the divine attitude and decision stands in sovereign independence of it. The latter is genuinely independent. It cannot be forestalled or compelled by any of our attitudes and decisions. No readiness in which we undertake a step can be a prescription for the divine judgment that will wait for us at the moment of each step, or rather that we ourselves will execute by means of this step. To be sure, the decision of God is always as superior to ours-whatever this may beas eternity is to time, as His holy and righteous knowing and willing is to our sinful and perverse willing and knowing. To be sure, we will not be our own judges when we make our decision, but will stand under the judgment of God, executing it ourselves. And the same is true of the self-examination in which we approach our next decision. But again and again, it is to our own free decisions that the divine decision about good and evil refers. It is they as such which are pleasing or displeasing to God, which are a praising or blaspheming of His love, and by which we ourselves are the executors of this divine decision. The divine person reacts to our person, and is not unknown to us but well known in Jesus Christ. In this person known to us, He is always the Law which will pass judgment upon us, upon our willing and doing and upon our decision. If He is utterly superior to us, if He knows infinitely more about us than we will ever know ourselves, and if He knows infinitely better what He wills from us than we could ever come to appreciate even in the most searching selfexamination, yet it is He-and not a blind fate or capricious demon-whose judgment we continually approach, under whose judgment we always stood and stand even now, when with the step which we now take we are in some way implicated in preparation for the next. Do we not make a mock of Him, and ourselves also, if we try to persuade ourselves, and act accordingly, that this sequence of our conduct is a matter of indifference to us, that we can carry it through without any real personal concern, that we are ignorant and incapable, that it is not worth while to take seriously this question of preparation? If, in our willing and doing, in our personal decisions, we have to do with the person of the omnipotent and omniscient God, this is obviously not in any sense an obstacle, but a cause and summons that we should reflect and prepare an account. It is an urgent and compelling reason why-in and with what we now will and do and with a view to the next step-we should consider the question what we ought to do, and then answer the question with what we next will and do, not forcing the divine judgment on the one hand, but also prepared to submit to it, to be condemned and judged by it. Between the arrogance of those who regard themselves as judges of what they will and do, and the false humility of those who take no notice of God'sjudgment because they cannot change it, there is the third possibility-the sense of responsibility of 123

[636]

S 38.

The Command as the Decision of God

those who know that God alone is their Judge and not they themselves, and that because God is their Judge they have every reason to remember Him in all their willing and doing, to keep Him before their minds' eye, and in their own self-examination continually to move towards their examination by Him.

[637J

We propose to elucidate this matter by a consideration of the New Testament use of the group of words, 80KLf.LOS, 80KLf.L~, 80KLf.La'ELV EN1.Assuming always the basic presupposition that God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ, this illuminates (1) the sovereignty of the divine testing,judging and deciding over human being, willing and doing; (2) the fact that it is precisely our own decisions which are subject to this sovereign divine decision of God; and (3) the necessity of making it alwaysin preparation for our approaching encounter with this supreme divine decision. In the LXX 80KLf.La'ELV EN2is the translation of bachan, and therefore recalls particularly the process of testing, searching, knowing and concluding which God carries out in regard to man, which, according to Jer. 1120, 1710, 2012, reaches to the heart and reins, which, according to Ps 139lf., we cannot escape in our downsitting or uprising, our going or lYing down, in any of our ways or thoughts or words-"whither shall I go from thy Spirit?" or "whither shall I flee from thy presence?" (v. 7)-a process in which the righteous man who knows that he stands in a covenantal relationship with God does not see a burden but, on the contrary, the proof and confirmation of divine grace, and fot which he therefore prays: "Search me, 0 God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Ps. 13923f.,cf. Ps. 262). It is not so much the fact that we cannot escape it, but rather that we cannot wish to escape it, which makes the divine 8oKLf.La'ELvEN3, the decision of the divine command, into the two-edged sword which pierces "even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow," the "discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," as it is described in Heb. 412,or the fire by which the work of every man shall be basically tested according to 1 Cor. 313.For God tests our works, saysPaul in 1 Thess. 24 (with a glance at his own preaching of the Gospel), by trYing our hearts-an obvious agreement with the Old Testament view.Those who stand the test, who are therefore 80KLf.LOL EN4in His eyes, and as such receive the crown of life, are, asJas. 112puts it, those who love Him in what they are and will and do. When the divine 80KLf.La'ELV EN5has a positive result, and the divine test is passed, its object is a human 80KLf.L~EN6 or 80K{f.LLOVEN7, i.e., the authentication of man as one to whom God is gracious and who is God's covenant-partner. The authentication consists in the fact that man proves himself to be such by his conduct, that his willing and doing proceed from a heart which is really in this matter and not in something else. Absolutely and properly, only the divine Judge is capable of this proving and testing of our works. He sees both our actions and also ourselves, the heart from which they proceed, To' KPV7f'"ro' TWV av()pw7TwvEN8 (Rom. 25 16).And therefore Paul is well aware that even though the work which he does may be good to himself and others-even though he is a preacher to others in the sight of God he may still be an d86KLf.LOS ENg(1 Cor. 927).We cannot be approved of ourselves and thereEN! EN2 EN3 EN4 EN5 EN6 EN7 ENS ENg

approved, provenness, to prove to prove to prove approved to prove provenness approbation the secrets of men a reprobate

124

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

fore we cannot ourselves claim to be such. Otherwise we exalt ourselves as judges of ourselves-which we cannot be: ou yap 0 EavTov avvLaTavwv, EKEi'voS EaTLv SOKLfJ-OS, dAAa ov o KVpLOS avvtaTY]aLvENIO (2 Cor. 1(18). And so, according to 2 Cor. 133f., Paul must be content to be questioned by the Corinthians about the SOKLfJ-~ ENII of the Christ who presUlnablyspeaks in him, without being in a position to demonstrate it to them, since only God sees it and knows it. His answer is to remind them that Christ Himself was crucified in weakness-His SOKLfJ-~ ENI2, too, was hidden from the eyes of all except those of God IIimselfand that He now lives in the power of God and is powerfully at work among the Corinthians themselves. Although he, Paul, now stands before them in weakness, unable to demonstrate to them the SOKLfJ-~ ENI:~ of his works and words, yet he hopes that in and with Christ, trusting in the divine SOKLfJ-a'ELvEN1\ in virtue of the power of God thus imparted to him, he will finally stand before them as SOKLfJ-OS ENI5. Meanwhile, they are to prove themselves, that is, to test their faith. If they themselves are not dSOKLfJ-OL ENI6, they will not try to regard and treat him as dSOKLfJ-OS ENl7 when he stands before them in all his weakness. "Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates." Man cannot be approved of himself. And as this passage shows, he cannot claim to be such either to others or even to himself. But this does not exclude the fact that he is approved by God, i.e., that the righteous vindication of God is pronounced over him in such a way that he himself must fulfil it in his will and actions, approving himself in his work and all the details of his work. SOKLfJ-~ ENIH is, therefore, at every point an object of Christian exhortation, the content of the imperative which is alwaysimplied in the Christian indicative. That the heart of a man is right-and God's concern is only with the heart-is to be shown in his work, in his conduct as a believer in this world in which we must walk by faith and not by sight, and therefore the life of faith means affliction-OAi'YJLs-in the most comprehensive sense of the term. How is it that Christians may prove themselves, i.e., fulfil the secret judgment of God under whose sovereignty they stand, in their will and action? In 2 Cor. 82,Paul congratulates the Macedonians that their joy has abounded even EV7ToAAfJ SOKLfJ-fJ OAbpEWSEN19,that even their deep poverty has been overwhelmed by the richness of their sincerity (a7TAoTY]s). What, then, is the meaning of SOKLfJ-~ OAtl/;EWS EN 20?According to Rom. 53f., it is not merely vindication in face of, and in conflict with, affliction as the assault of Satan, but, as is shown by the phrase of 2 Cor. 82 concerning the poverty which overflows in riches, the vindication resulting from affliction, evoked and produced by it. Christians are to congratulate themselves and consider themselves fortunate when they fall into trial and affliction, because they know that affliction results in steadfastness (V7TOfJ-OV~), steadfastness in experience and experience in hope; and that hope does not make ashamed, because those who hope as the approved are necessarily those in whose hearts the love of God has been shed abroad by the for it is not the one who commends himself who is proven, but the one whom the Lord commends ENII provenness EN 1~ provenness ENI:~ provenness ENI4 to prove EN I:) approved EN II, reprobates EN 17 a reprobate ENIH provenness ENI9 much proven in suffering EN~O proven in suffering

ENIO

125

S 38. The Command as the Decision of God [638J

Holy Ghost, and who therefore cannot be afraid but only hope. According to this passage, the testing which those who hope in this way have experienced leads to steadfastness; to the patient, persevering holding of the faith, to stability in face of the ground and object of faith, to fellowship with Jesus Christ. And Christians owe this steadfastness and stability to the fact that they are plunged into affliction and poverty-a copy of the situation of Jesus Christ Himself. The call of Jesus means that He places them in this situation and that they must suffer it for His sake. That they prove themselves in this situation by the steadfastness of their faith is their necessary and necessarily grateful answer to this call. As they give this answer, they may and must make progress as those who unfailingly hope. Only the unstable and therefore the untested can and must fear-those who do not obey the call of Jesus Christ which goes out to them in their position of affliction and who therefore show that the love of God has not been shed abroad in their hearts. It is worth noting that on the same presupposition and to the same effect the matter can be seen and expressed in reverse inJas. 12f.. That Christians should count it all joy when they fall into divers temptations is now based upon the insight that TO OOK{pvLOV upvWV TijS 7T{aTEWS EN21works patience, by the practice of which the work of man grows into a right-minded obedience corresponding to the meaning of the divine Law. U7TOPVOV~ EN22is obviously understood here as more than the continuity and sequence of the action which springs from faith and reveals faith. As such,. it is just as much a consequence of the testing of faith as in Rom. 54-as the U7TOPVOV~ EN23of faith-it is the presupposition and the mode of this testing. OOKLPV~ EN24 or OOK{pvLOV EN25 is grounded in the U7TOPVOV~ EN26of faith or reveals itself in the U7TOPVOV~ EN27of works. It is the power to persevere in the status of one to whom God is gracious, who has become His covenantpartner in Jesus Christ and who is confirmed in this status by the affliction, the manifold temptations, to which as such he is exposed. Thus, according to 1 Pet. 16f.,Christians are to rejoice in the adversities which fall on them because what awaits them in this situation, and must come to them from its inmost meaning, can only be "the trial of your faith," which as such-because it is the human fulfilment of the divine judgment pronounced in their favour-is "much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire." A relative manifestation of the proving which is required of us, and to be fulfilled by us in certain definite modes of conduct and situations, is not excluded by the fact that its recognition is ultimately and properly a matter of the divine knowledge and judgmen t. Paul tells the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 29 that he has written to them in order to have proof of their obedience. In 2 Cor. 88 he calls their attention to the question of alms for the Church atJerusalem in order to subject the genuineness of their love to the necessary test. And by the proof they furnish in this ministry (of alms) they are to praise God (2 Cor. 913). He can tell the Corinthians that there must needs be heresies amongst them tva oi OOKLpvOL 4>avEpoL YEvwvTaL EV upv'iv EN28(1 Cor. 1119). He can invite Timothy to be zealous to show himself OOKLpvOV 7TapaaTijaaL T0 8E0 EN29,a good workman who can rightly,distribute the word of truth (2 Tim. 215). And he can say of Timothy to the Philippians T~V oE OOKLPV~V aVTov YLvwaKETEEN30 in view of the fact that as a son with the father he has served with him in the

EN21 EN22 EN23 EN24 EN25 EN26 EN27 EN28 EN29 EN30

proving of your faith perseverance perseverance a reprobate provenness perseverance perseverance in order that the approved might be made manifest among you approved to stand before God you know his provenness

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

ministry of the Gospel (Phil. 222). He can exhort the Roman Christians to greet Apelles as 80KLJLOS EVXpLaTEpovTa EN64 if the reference is now specifically to a self-examination. The DLa4>EpovTa EN65 themselves are the various courses of action open to man in existing situations, and the object of the enquiry is to fix the mutual relationship between one or other of them, between the man himself in their realisation, and the will of God. To examine ourselves means, therefore, to prepare ourselves for the encounter with our judge. And it is not merely a warning against undisciplined and disorderly administration of the sacrament, but it has the deepest intrinsic significance, that we are invited to undertake this self-examination in relation to the Lord's but test all the spirits, whether they are of God Youknow how to test the appearance of the land and sky,but somehow you cannot test this hour! 'this time' signs of the times EN:,/) testing EN:,7 r~jection EN:,H they rejected EN:,9 rejection ENtlO testing ENI;) testing ENI;2 test yourselves ENtl:\ let each man test his own work ENtl-t various possibilities ENtl~ various possibilities

EN:,2 EN:,:\

EN:,.!

EN:>:>

129

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[641]

Supper. What is involved in the readiness engendered by the oOKLfLa'ELv EN66 emerges typically in our readiness for this action of actions, for our public and solemn participation in the communion of the body and blood of Christ. "Knowye not your own selves (the Pharisees of Lk. 1256 certainly did not know, although as Israelites, instructed by the Law, they ought to have known) how that Jesus Christ is in you?" we read in 2 Cor. 135. The goal of all oOKLfLa'ELvEN67 is finally and properly this self-knowledge correspondent to the action of the Lord's Supper, which is the good will.of God to man, inviting him to partake in this sacrament and expecting him at the table of the Lord. To be prepared for our Judge is to be those who worthily partake in the communion of the body and blood of Christ, who expect their spiritual nourishment from this communion and find in it their life, who can say of Jesus Christ: "I am His, and He is mine." In this readiness, the Lord's Supper is rightly observed, and is the constant renewal of the community as the body of Christ, and of each of its members as such. In this readiness for the Lord's Supper all readiness for theJudge of our actions finds typical expression and therefore all oOKLfLa'ELv EN68 in this oOKLfLa'ELv EavTovEN69• Ifwe examine ourselves at this point, we examine ourselves always and everywhere. If we fail to examine ourselves at this point, we do not examine ourselves at all. And all examination of ourselves and our works, of the divine will and the oLaePEpovTa EN70 and the time and its signs, can only be a repetition and modification of the self-examination in which we ask ourselves how it stands betweenJesus Christ and us, whether we are such as may live in the strength of His life, death and resurrection, of His Word and the power of His Spirit, whether we are "in the faith," as Paul puts it very simply in 2 Cor. 135. Ifwe "are in the faith," God will find our heart and works pure, and we shall not fail to hear the OOKLfL~ EN71 of our walking which He will pronounce upon us. But are we in the faith? Or will we be found amongst those who have rejected the stone which was to become the chief cornerstone? This is the question which is the true theme of all ethical enquiry.

It is the idea of responsibility which gives us the most exact definition of the human situation in face of the absolute transcendence of the divine judgment. We live in responsibility, which means that our being and willing, what we do and what we do not do, is a continuous answer to the Word of God spoken to us as a command. It takes place always in a relationship to the norm which confronts and transcends us in the divine command. It is continually subject to an enquiry concerning its correspondence with this norm. It is always an answer to this enquiry. Man does not belong to himself. He does not exist in a vacuum. He is not given over to the caprice of an alien power, nor to his own self-will. He mayor may not know and will it, but because Jesus Christ as very God and very man is the beginning of all the ways and works of God, man is inseparably linked with God and confronted by Him. He is subjected to the divine will, Word and command, and called to realise the true purpose of his existence as a covenant-partner with God. As a man, he is objectively tested by this determination and objectively questioned as to its fulfilment. This is the essence of his responsibility. And with what he is and wills, does and does not EN66 EN67 EN68 EN69 EN70 EN71

testing testing testing testing oneself various possibilities attestation

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

do, he is ineluctably caught up in one continuing responsibility, in the constant need to render an account. How far is he really God's covenantpartner? How far does he actualise his original and proper status? How far does he honour or dishonour it? That he is conscious of this, that his being and willing, what he does and does not do, are accompanied by the corresponding reflection, that, called to faith inJesus Christ and obeying this call, he gives an account to himself and is answerable to himself-all this is secondary. The primary and decisive thing is that, consciously or not, he continuously gives God an answer, that, objectively and constantly, and in the last resort with reference to the totality of his existence, his being and willing, what he does and does not do, are questioned by God and render an account to Him. The seriousness of the human situation consists in the fact that it is always lived in responsibility, both as a whole and in detail, and whether we understand it or not. We come from pure responsibility. We are caught up in responsibility. And we shall always be responsible. The whole of our life indeed, the filling out of the time allotted to us by our being and willing, by what we do and do not do, is one long responsibility. And because we stand before the transcendent divine decision, it is not at all the case that the full seriousness of our situation will become apparent and operative only with the termination of our life in time, when its responsible character will be expressed as a totality and will also be revealed to us ourselves. On the contrary, each of our decisions and responsibilities as such is an anticipation in miniature of the total responsibility which, with our whole life, we fulfil before God and in which, at the close of our existence in time, we shall stand before God as our Judge. Even in its apparent littleness it is no less important. Even in its temporal limitation, because it is a responsibility to the eternal God, it is here and now a responsibility of eschatological significance. The idea of responsibility, rightly understood, is known only to Christian ethics. This alone teaches a true and proper confrontation of man. This alone excludes the possibility that in the last resort man is utterly alone and therefore not in a position to give a true and proper answer. This alone knows of man's confrontation by One to whom he must give an answer, because He is the One who confronts him in sovereign transcendence and lays upon him an ineluctable obligation. And, again, this alone knows that the relationship between this Other and man is such that necessarily and in all circumstancesquite apart from man's own insight and judgment-what man is and wills and does and does not do is an actualisation of responsibility and therefore objectively an act of responsibility. Christian ethics alone understands the full seriousness of the human situation which this implies. Every non-Christian view of human life, i.e., every view which does not have a christological basis, will betray itself as such by the fact that while it may perhaps arrive at the idea of a certain claim upon man-although without making clear how or why it is binding-it will not attain to the idea of true and proper responsibility and therefore the conception of the uninterrupted responsibility in which we

[642]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[643]

[644]

stand. Without a knowledge of the transcendent divine decision executed in the grace of the covenant between God and man, or an awareness of the Law which God has eternally established in Jesus Christ and revealed in time, we can think and speak of responsibility only in a diluted form which does not do justice to the real significance of the term and which may eventually deny and d.issolveit. Christian ethics itself cannot limit its validity to Christians only, i.e., to those who are aware that their life is essentially and objectively a life in responsibility. How can it be Christian ethics if it does not know and take into account the fact that the divine covenant of grace with man is the beginning of all God's ways and works, and that the human situation grounded in this covenant is, therefore, the situation of every single man? Christian ethics, then, will see every man as responsible, and involved in the dreadful act of responsibility. It cannot believe or accept that he is left to himself, or to mysterious elemental forces, or to his own caprice, that he has no master or another master, that he is responsible only to himself or some other men, that he is only partially responsible or not yet fully responsible-or however else the qualifications may run. It cannot allow anyone to be content with this position, whatever may be the reasons or attitude with which he defends his irresponsibility. Because Christian ethics knows the transcendent divine decision, it knows the secret of all men-both believers and godless-and therefore its peculiar task is to attest the revelation of the secret of their existence, in the name of faith to the godless, and as a warning against godlessness to believers; to attest, that is, their responsibility and the fact that they are actually involved in responsibility. The idea of responsibility shows us what is meant by moral reflection, the examination of what we are and will and do and do not do, of the mutual relationship between the command of God and our existence. It consists in our attitude to the fact that we are responsible and are objectively involved in responsibility. It also presupposes that we know this and have therefore been shown our true situation. But we can be shown this only as we hear and apprehend in faith the message of the divine covenant of grace. It is the Christian who really knows man's responsibility, and the frightening fact that he is objectively and continuously involved in responsibility, in the rendering of an account to the sovereign decision of God. Who else really does know it? Who can know this of himself without that revealed message and faith in it? It is the Christian therefore, and he alone, who can take up a serious attitude to this fact. But, again, he cannot genuinely receive this message without becoming its witness to all other men. He cannot believe, and in faith adopt a right attitude, without implying by his faith that this attitude is necessarily demanded of all others, that the responsibility in which all are involved is a summons to all to adopt this attitude. To hear and believe this message is the determination of all men. Therefore a knowledge of the situation implied by our responsibility is expected of all men. The attitude demanded by this knowledge is not, then, a private concern of the Christian, but a universal human necessity, and it is to

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

be represented as such by Christians to those who are not yet or no longer Christians. The right attitude to the fact is, of course, to enquire how our being and willing, what we do and do not do, have stood and stand and will stand in the light of the command of God to which they are responsible; how far-in our being and willing, in what we do and do not do-we have acted and act and will act in true responsibility to God's command; under what judgment of this supreme court we have come, and come and will come. This question is the question of moral reflection as demanded by our situation in responsibility. It is put by the fact that what we are and will and do and do not do, and therefore our objective responsibility, is not an alien happening which passes us by at a greater or lesser distance without involving our participation, but that we are ourselves its subjects and it is we who are responsible in it. Therefore-notwithstanding the sovereignty of the divine decision-we ourselves are asked, indeed we are summoned to a prior decision how we are to fulfil this responsibility. Formally, then, it is a question of the rightness and goodness of our choice between the various possibilities of our existence, of its rightness and goodness in the light of the command and decision of God to which we alwayswere and are and will be subject in our whole existence, of the direction of our path in view of the fact that both as a whole and at each of its turnings it is good or bad according to the judgment of God. As we look towards the judgment of God with this question, it is, in fact, the question of our readiness-the readiness of our being and willing, of what we do and do not do-to receive this judgment. What ought we to do? If our action were to take place in an awareness of what we are asked with this question, the responsibility before God, fulfilled in our action, would mean our justification before Him. It would be the action of those who are holy in the sense in which God is holy. The will of God would then be realised in our lives in the sense that we had made it our own, and, willing what God wills, we fulfilled it of ourselves. Our decisions would then run parallel to God's decision, and to that extent identical with it. But in this case moral reflection would obviously be superfluous. But so, too, would the command of God as such-as distinct from what we say to ourselves. So, too, would Jesus Christ as the Mediator of the covenant between God and man. Of ourselves we would keep this covenant as faithfully as it is kept by God. But we are not at all saints in this sense. And the relation between God and man is not that of a parallelism and harmony of the divine and human wills, but of an explosive encounter, contradiction and reconciliation, in which it is the part of the divine will to precede and the human to follow, of the former to control and the latter to submit. Neither as a whole nor in detail can our action mean our justification before God. It does not spring from a true awareness of what we ought to do. It is simply the self-willed desire of man to know good and evil. It is his craving for the divine likeness of a human existence reconciled with God in and of itself, not needing divine grace. It is itself the fall which separates man from God. And in this way it establishes something that man would 133

[645]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[646J

prefer to deny-the character of the covenant between God and man as a covenant of grace. But this means that jesus Christ is indispensable as the Mediator of this covenant, and the Law of God as the expression of the sovereign decision of God in face of man's decisions. They are shown to be such by the presumptuous imagination. that they are unnecessary. "Salvation has come to us of grace and pure goodness." It is not intrinsic to ourselves but extrinsic. Our sanctification is God's work, not our own. It is very necessary, therefore, that there should be the encounter, the confrontation of our existence with the command of God. We must ask what the command of God is, and what we are to do, without having an answer ready and being able to furnish it ourselves. The divine work of our sanctification for God, the true preparedness for the responsibility which we must fulfil by our action, consists in this-that we should cleave to the salvation accomplished and prepared for us by the death and resurrection ofjesus Christ, and therefore to His sanctity, so that we for our part may ask in all earnestness: What ought we to do? When we do ask sincerely in this way, when we persist and progress in our search, when we accompany our deeds with this question, allowing them to be shaped and controlled by it, we adopt the right attitude to the fact of our responsibility and its actual realisation. It is right and proper that we should ask concerning the command of God as the norm which is not in us but over us. When we ask concerning it, we recognise and respect it. When we ask concerning it, we implicitly obey it. To the extent that our action is determined and controlled by this enquiry, it becomes obedient action. But it can never do so in virtue of any .supposed knowledge of it. A supposed knowledge of it, and all attemptsin virtue of this knowledge-to impart to our action anything in the nature of a divine likeness, signify at once and automatically apostasy from jesus Christ, the denial of the divine grace by which we live, and therefore a relapse into disobedience. Moral reflection as a reaction to the fact of our responsibility, as the establishment of a readiness to encounter God our judge, can only be the result of the most sincere humility which does not know but genuinely and indefatigably asks: What ought we to do? Our analysis of this question is as follows. (1) What ought we to do? If the What? is seriously meant, every answer that we and others may have given is continually questioned again. It is not, of course, dismissed and effaced. We are never tabula rasaEN72, and we cannot and must not try to make ourselves such. Integral to the humility in which we must ask what we are to do according to the divine command is the sober recognition that we always come from the school of the divine command and that we have not been in vain to that school, alwaysbringing with us all kinds of more or less well-founded hypotheses and convictions that the command of God demands from us. To forget all this could not possibly be a good presupposition and basis for ethical reflection. It is not the effacement but the quesEN72

blank slate

134

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

tioning of all our previous answers which takes place when we begin to put seriously the What? of the ethical question. Our previous answers cannot consist of more than hypothesis and opinion. They cannot be a knowledge of the will and command of God. We are not in any sense already in harmony with God's sovereign decision. This must be prayed and sought for as the grace of God-established and prepared for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the meaning of the What? of our question as the necessary presupposition of all further enquiry. It means that the goodness of God-including specifically the goodness of His work for our sanctification-is new every morning. It means that He will again receive and accept us as we are, and therefore with all our hypotheses and convictions as to what is well pleasing to Him, with our ethos, i.e., with all that we have made of what His command has meant for us as we have so far sought it-that in His grace (which we shall sorely need) He will receive and accept us again with all this. If we ask seriously: What ought we to do?, the What? necessarily means that we are not complacent about ourselves, that we do not anticipate the answer in view of the continuity of our previous works, that under the guise and pretext of the What? we do not secretly ask: How can I progress further on the right path which I am, of course, already treading? It necessarily means that even in relation to our best works and the most sacred of our hypotheses and convictions we confess that we are sincerely sorry and repent, not of the grace of God which has hitherto sustained and controlled us, but of the way in which we have treated the grace of God even in our best works and the construction of our most sacred hypotheses and convictions. Ifwe do not regret this, if we look back complacently to our previous progress under the grace and command of God, how can we be honest and sincere when we direct a questioning glance upwards and forwards? When we honestly ask: What ought we to do?, we approach God as those who are ignorant in and with all that they already know, and stand in dire need of divine instruction and conversion. We are then ready, with a view to our next decision, to bracket and hold in reserve all that we think we know concerning the rightness and goodness of our past and present decisions, all the rules and axioms, however good, all the inner and outer laws and necessities under which we have hitherto placed ourselves and perhaps do so again. None of these has an unlimited claim to be valid again to-day as it was valid yesterday. None of them is identical with the divine command. Even at best none of them is more than a refraction of the divine command in the dim and fallacious prism of our own life and understanding. Ifwe seriously ask: What ought we to do?, a radical attack is already opened on our own life and understanding as such. We have again admitted the great possibility of the grace of God, that our own life and understanding can be made new and different. We have thus already conceded that we again need a complete openness. We have already confessed that we will go forward in this complete openness. This openness to new insights cannot remain somewhere behind us as the past of an instruction and conversion already accomplished. But the 135

[647]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[648]

very recollection of earlier instruction and conversion, in so far as it is genuine, will be an invitation to us to fulfil the same movement, to accept this new beginning of our life and understanding. We can never look back upon a genuine previous conversion and instruction without its necessarily compelling us to be more serious than ever in our present circumstances, to prepare ourselves for fuller openness to truth, to enquire more searchingly than ever before: VVhat ought we to do?-so that in this conversion even from our best we may make up for what we have surely neglected (even in our best). It is to be noted that the continuity of divine grace in our life, and our obedience to it, will be maintained only in so far as we do not refuse the discipline of the new beginning of our life and understanding brought about by moral reflection. The continuity of a life which steadily affirms itself from one decision to another, developing from within itself, can only be the continuity of disobedience. For the law which governs the life of the Church is repeated in every individual life. The Church is most faithful to its tradition, and realises its unity with the Church of every age, when, linked but not tied by its past, it to-day searches the Scriptures and orientates its life by them as though this had to happen to-day for the first time. And, on the other hand, it sickens and dies when it is enslaved by its past instead of being disciplined by the new beginning which it must always make in the Scriptures. Similarly, the individual is true to himself, and to the history of the act of God from which he derives, when he allows his baptism to be the sign which stands over every new day. And on the other hand he necessarily sickens and dies from the moment he tries to place the new day given him by God's goodness under the sign of a previously experienced instruction and conversion (even the most radical). The principle of necessary repetition and renewal, and not a law of stability, is the law of the spiritual growth and continuity of our life. It is when we observe this law that we practise perseverance ({),lTOfLov~) in the biblical meaning of the term; a perseverance corresponding to the steadfastness of God Himself, which does not signify the suspension, but the continuing and indestructible possession and use of His freedom. Inevitably, therefore, all our answers that we think we know are weighed again and thrown into the melting-pot by the What? of the ethical question. The more truly it derives from previous ethical reflection and testing, the less will this process be injurious to it, the more surely will it again prove its value. But even ifit does not stand this test, even if our enquiry as to God's command leads us necessarily to a different answer to-day from that of yesterday, no wrong is done to the former. But supposing an injustice is done to it? Have we any guarantee that in our enquiry as to the divine command we will not go astray to-day, abandoning and replacing an answer previously affirmed, a hypothesis and conviction previously adopted? No, we have no guarantee against this. We can make a more serious mistake to-day than we did yesterday. Yet if the law of repetition and renewal is the law of ethical reflection, provision is made that if we err to-day, to-morrow or the next day we shall have the opportunity to retrieve an error of to-day by new instruction and

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

conversion, and so perhaps again to do justice to the answer of yesterday that to-day we have unjustly abandoned. Why should not the sincere confrontation of our life and understanding by the command of God, by the frank question: vvnat ought we to do?, lead often enough to the result (as happens time and again in the life of the Church) that we must know again an answer formerly rejected, a "tradition" formerly repudiated, because it has, in fact, been placed in a fresh light by the command of God? Those who are concerned about the truth itself need not be concerned about old truth as to-day they relentlessly open their minds to new truth. But again, they need not be concerned about the discovery of new truth, for which some are just as anxious as are others for the maintenance of the old. Our one concern must be with truth itself, and not with the maintenance of old truth or the discovery of new, not with the rights and wrongs of either anxiety. The truth itself demands complete openness. From the standpoint of the truth itself thoroughgoing conservatives are as useless as thoroughgoing modernists. The old will persist and the new will come if they are worthy to do so. And the old will pass and the new be excluded if they are not. The question: vvnat ought we to do? cannot be the question of our anxiety, but only the retention or discovery of what is intrinsically valuable. And what is intrinsically valuable truth is the command of God which always surpasses what we consider worthy either to be retained or to come, which always transcends our hypotheses and convictions of yesterday, to-day and to-morrow. When we ask seriously: vvnat ought we to do?, confessing that in our ignorance we are known by God, that His gaze is eternally fastened on what we are and will and do and do not do, we will leave it confidently in His hand, committing it to Him. If this is what we really mean by our What?, in the very fact that we ask we will receive the knowledge of God's command; in the very fact that we desire this knowledge, what we are and will and do and do not do will be directed by the command of God and obedient to it and sanctified by it-and the more profoundly, the more seriously our question implies our realisation of the sovereignty of the divine decision. Everything depends upon how far it does imply this. If this is the case, if our whole ethos is called in question in this way, this testifies to the fact that we have not been asking in the void, but in the presence of God's command, and concerning the character of that command as it must affect our actions. It testifies, therefore, to the fact that we know the divine command because it has itself revealed itself to us. 2. What ought we to do? the question continues. It does not ask concerning something that we might or must know merely for the sake of knowing. If it asks after truth, it is not the truth that we seek, but the divine truth that seeks us, the truth of the divine command that desires us and demands us and binds us and commits us, the truth that we must know because it is the rule and norm of our conduct. We ask after something which claims not only that we should consider it but observe it, not only that we should hear it but obey it. If our reflection is serious, we ask concerning what we ought to do. This is the second criterion of the genuineness of our preparation for our encounter with

[649]

S 38.

[650J

The Command as the Decision of God

the divine command. His sovereign decision about the good and evil of our conduct, under which we stand to-day as we stood yesterday and will stand again to-morrow, concerns our relationship to what we ought to do in virtue of His claim. We must ask, therefore, what is meant by this ought. It certainly means, of course, what we are to will. We ourselves, our will, even our free and joyful will, belong always to what is required of us and to what we ought to do. If we do not will, freely and joyfully, what we are to do in virtue of the claim of the divine command, we shall always be disobedient to it. Therefore the question of our obligation will always be that of what we are freely and joyfully to will. But it is not the mere fact that we should will it that makes it an obligation, the sovereign divine decision. The mere fact that its claim finds true hearing and obedience only when we will it freely and joyfully does not mean that we are responsible to it, and that our action becomes responsible. As we have seen, its requirement of this spontaneous obedience means that the claim of the divine command is different from all other claims. And our meeting of this requirement distinguishes our obedience to it from all other obedience. But our present question is as follows: What makes the divine command the transcendent decision of God over all other decisions? What distinguishes our (willing, free and joyful) obedience to it from disobedience? What makes the responsibility which we fulfil by our conduct something that is well pleasing to God? When we put this question-which is the question of ethical meditation-we have to remember that what is well pleasing to God, what makes our obedience obedience, and the command of God a sovereign decision, consists in the fact that our will is confronted by, and subjected to, an ought-and not conversely. Thus the ethical question: What oughtwe to do?, is not sincerely put if secretly or openly it means: What do we will to do? What do we will of ourselves, in virtue of the equally objective and indisputable claims of our own will, in responsibility-but not this time genuine responsibility-to the aims which our own promptings lead us to propose ? Aims of this kind-in their various combinations-are usually what appears pleasing and useful and valuable to ourselves. What seems desirable and necessary to us, and even what we think to be true and good and beautiful, can in its own way seem to be obligatory and present itself in the form of an imperative. There can be no question that these aims of our will are connected and point us to real problems. They are not, therefore, to be summarily discredited and set aside. And when one of the widespread and constantly re-emerging moral systems-hedonism, utilitarianism or eudaemonism, the so-called ethics of value-tries to use these natural aims as a basis for its presentation of the ethical, Christian ethics must be careful not to adopt at once towards this system the well-known and purely negative attitude of Kant and the Kantians. Where the obligatory is to be understood as the content of the divine command, we cannot refuse absolutely to interpret it also as that which is supremely pleasing and useful and valuable. That "he shall give thee the desires of thine heart" (Ps. 374), "upholding thee as thou desirest," and that He does this by giving us His command-this is also true in its own place and sense, and it must be stated, and justice must be done to it, in Christian ethics. On the other hand, 'Ne have to admit that Kant has expressed the essential concern of Christian

I.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

ethics by pointing out that of itself the concept of what is pleasing and useful and valuable does not give us the concept of what is obligatory.

Therefore when we ask: What ought we to do?, we must keep this question distinct from that of what seems to us to be desirable or necessary or even good and true and beautiful, from the whole question of even the supreme value of this or that action. However serious and deep our formulation of the latter, it can alter not at all the fact that we are asking about what we will-about what seems to us to be most useful and therefore most real, most real and therefore most useful, and on this basis supremely desirable. But to the extent that our decisions are subject to the sovereign decision of the divine command, we have not to be answerable to ourselves, and therefore to our own ideas of what is supremely real and useful and desirable. With all our ideas and the resultant aims, we are answerable to the divine command, so that the question is whether, as those who entertain these ideas and set themselves these aims, we are good or bad according to God's command. What we consider desirable, useful and valuable may be very important to us as the truth of what we ought to do. But we can understand and claim it as our true obligation only in a conditional sense, i.e., as conditioned by ourselves. For what validity has that which seems desirable and useful and valuable to us but the fact that it is understood and felt and viewed and experienced and therefore asserted and affirmed by us as such? What authority and power can its imperative have but that with which we ourselves are able to clothe it? If an imperative, a command, is to have the authority and power to claim nothing less than ourselves, our life-the only one we have to live-and over and above that to be the judge which decides whether our whole existence is good or bad, is it not necessary that this imperative should have far stronger qualifications? An imperative to which lowe absolute obedience must necessarily come in the most radical sense from within, in order that it may claim me most radically within. A command which transcends our actions cannot in the last analysis be merely a command which I have given myself on the basis of what I myself have seen and experienced and felt and judged of the good and the true and the beautiful. It must come to me as something alien, as the command of another, demanding as such that I should make its content the law of my life. If there is an ought, it must not be the product of my own will, but touch from outside the whole area of what I can will of myself. It must lay upon me the obligation of unconditioned truth-truth which is not conditioned by myself. Its authority and power to do so must be intrinsic and objective, and not something which I lend to it. Its validity must consist in the fact that the very question of its validity is quite outside the sphere of my own thinking and feeling; that I can no longer entertain the idea of making sure of its authority and power by seeking its basis in what I myself have understood or seen or felt or experienced; that I can no longer consider how it may best be proved and demonstrated. On the contrary, it establishes its own validity by asking concerning my own: whether

[651]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God and how far I can satisfy it and be justified and stand before it. The essence of the idea of obligation is not that I demand something from myself but that, with all that I can demand of myself, I am myself demanded. It is because it does not do justice to this meaning of obligation that serious reservations are required in our approach to every form of eudaemonism, both ancient and modern. And in this connexion, at least in regard to post-Kantian development, we have to ask whether this idea of obligation is so unequivocally attained in the sharply contrasting Kantian ethics of law, duty and imperative, and also of "freedom," that we can accept its formulations. We do not seriously ask what we ought to do except when we see our duty as the content of a decision which confronts our own will-even when it is supremely free in form-in absolute and inflexible sovereignty, so that, even when we give it our wholehearted, spontaneous approval, it is never the result of our decision, and therefore it never owes its authority and power to our decisions but always to itself. That this is the case is unequivocally clear, and safeguarded against all relapses into eudaemonistic distortions, only when we keep plainly in view-as Kantian ethics very obviously failed to do-the christological foundations of the concept and actuality of obligation.

[652J

The true and genuine obligation, law and duty voiced by another than ourselves, emerges and persists, in face of our own will with its conceptions and aims, in and with the fact that, in fulfilment of the divine will,jesus Christ has died and risen again for us, so that now that He is our Lord and our Head we should not belong to ourselves but to Him, and therefore should not live to ourselves but to Him. This is what makes us ourselves debtors to God; and we experience obligation-as distinct from desire-in and with the fact that we ourselves become debtors to God. This is the sovereign decision which confronts our decisions. This is unconditioned, self-grounded truth which establishes its validity by requiring that we should vindicate ourselves before it. This is transcendence-a transcendence which is basic, not merely transcendence in thought, but objectively-in face of the self-enclosed circle of our own desires and cravings, but also of our highest sublimations of what seems to us to be desirable and useful and valuable, and even of our conceptions of the good and the true and the beautiful. But it also includes our salvation, namely, what God ascribes to us as desirable and pleasant and true and good and beautiful. In face of it, the justifiable concern of eudaemonism need not be displaced. Here is a demand which is addressed wholly or altogether to us, quite beyond what we ourselves find to claim or postulate or desire from ourselves; addressed to us for our own highest good, so that everything-the lowest as well as the highest-which we might demand of ourselves comes into its own by the fact that it is we ourselves who are demanded. The obligation revealed and grounded in the person and work and lordship of jesus Christ fulfils the idea in all its strictness. It is a categorical imperative, not merely in name, but in fact. And as such-unlike the Kantian imperative-it reveals the fact that to obey it is not merely the highest duty but also the highest good. It is the moving and illuminating and uplifting of man-inextricably involved in the ideas and aims proper to his own will-by the goodness of the free transcendent

140

1.

The Sovereignty

of the Divine Decision

divine will. It is the promise which he is given of a new and eternal life of which he is not worthy, but towards which he may already move step by step in this life as he is confronted by the divine command. How could he make such a promise to himself? It is done by the divine command with its obligation as actualised in the vicarious person and work and lordship of Jesus Christ. To cling to the grace which takes the form of this obligation is the way to eternal life. And again, the position is as follows. When we ask seriously what we ought to do, we confess already that, implicated in our own will, caught up in our own ideals and aims, and therefore in so great need of the vindication and justification of our lives, we are not strangers to God because He obviously did not will to be a stranger to us but to reveal His will to us, because Jesus Christ was our Representative too in His person and work, because we too are in the sphere of His sovereignty. If this were not the case, how could we even so much as ask about our true and proper obligation, about the imperative which we have to obey? Those who ask after it already know it. And those who know it do not know it of themselves. Of ourselves we may well know what we want to do, but not what we ought to do. When we ask what we ought to do, we confess that obligation is not alien to us, that we are already involved in obligation, that the command of God has already been spoken and received by us. When we ask this seriously, we have already understood our decisions to be subordinated to the sovereign decision of God. We have already recognised ourselves to be those who are known by God. We have confidently committed ourselves into His hand. If our asking is sincere, we receive, as we ask, what is ordered by God's command, and what we are and do and do not do is directed by the command of God which it needs as a matter of our decision. Everything depends upon whether we ask seriously. Ifwe do, if we and our will are confronted by real obligation, the witness that we have to do with God and ask concerning Him is that He Himself has asked concerning us, that He has revealed and given us His command. 3. What ought we to do? The third criterion of the genuineness of moral reflection is whether in this matter we sincerely ask what we ought to do. It is, of course, a question of what we are and will and do and do not do in the light of the fact that it is subject to the sovereign decision of God whether this is good or bad. It is a question of the divine judgment on human affairs concealed in the divine command. But the human element referred to is man, and that means ourselves. It is we who are the subject which derives from God's decision, which is now its object, and continually becomes its object. It is we who are and will and do and do not do. The command of God, His infinite promise and terrible threat-all have reference to us. It is we who are the covenantpartners of God. And therefore the question of our readiness for confrontation by the divine command is necessarily: What ought we to do? Two delimitations are necessary at this point. The first is that the question cannot be put impersonally: What ought one to do? We do not ask concerning the action of others, but concerning our own action and its correspondence with

[653]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[654J

the obligations of the command. We ask concerning ourselves. As the question of grace and election must find its ultimate and decisive answer in the fact that we ourselves, in faith in the election ofjesus Christ, dare to live in correspondence to the divine predestination of man, so the ethical question can be answered only as we make our own the necessary reflection of man on his confrontation by the divine command. As long as we do not do this, but think we can solve the ethical problem by concerning ourselves with human conduct in general, all ethics is ghostly, insubstantial. For if we merely ask what "one" ought to do,.or with a false objectivity, what ought to be done, we can always stand aside and at bottom be interested only in what others ought to do or-as spectators of ourselves-in what we ourselves ought to do in a case which has not yet cropped up but may do so in the future. And the probability is overwhelming that in point of fact we shall remain detached, not realising that our inter-esseEN73 is an accomplished fact, but idly "interesting" ourselves in this and that-a procedure which has nothing whatever to do with our real inter-esse. In ethics it is not a matter of what somebody ought to do in a hypothetical case, but of what we ourselves ought to do in our own given situation: It is a matter of the step which we now take from the past into the future. The question is not whether men in general, or certain men, or even we ourselves in a hypothetical situation, but whether we ourselves in the actuality of our present, as it represents the totality of our life, are adjudged as good or evil by the divine command. And it is to the answering of this question-already answered in God's sovereign decision-that we must always look, and for it that we must always prepare, as we make our decisions. Confronted by this question, and dealing with the problems which it raises, we have no time whatever to look aside-to the character of human life in general, to the conduct of this or that group, or to ourselves in an imaginary situation. It may be right enough if in a historical and psychological study of mankind we look round at those who are in some way different from ourselves. But even here, if the study is to be fruitful, there are certain well-defined limits. And there can be no question of it at all in ethical reflection. We really know good and evil only when it is clear to us that it carries with it the judgment which has been, and is, and will again and again be passed on what we ourselves are and will and do and do not do until we are finally revealed to ourselves in the totality of our life as good or evil, in the way that we are now revealed to God. It is a question of responsibility. And responsibility refuses to be delegated to man in general, to this or that group, or to ourselves in a different situation from our real one. Responsibility cannot be surveyed and studied as though it were not we ourselves who constantly bear and shoulder it, as though it were not to us that the question is now put and we who must answer. No one can take our place in this matter. We ourselves are summoned. We ourselves must step out-even from the conceptual and imaginative shadows of our own existence. We ourselves must give an EN73

being-among

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

account. The ethical as opposed to a purely historical or psychological issue is whether in the question: What oughtwe to do?, we are ready to be open for the answer of the divine command. It is whether we are willing to accept the inevitable relativisation of all our own hypotheses and convictions. It is whether we are prepared to allow our own will and its aims to be confronted by the will of God as we meet it in His command. It is whether we agree.to be limited and determined in this twofold way,and what the choice will be that we execute in our own conduct in the light of this divine limitation and determination. The ethical question is our personal question, just as the grace of God concerns us personally, and therefore the command of God is addressed to us personally. This is the first delimitation which is necessary. The second is that the question must actually be: What ought we to do? and not, what ought I to do? The former does not exclude the latter. Indeed, it can seriously be put only if it really includes the latter. But, again, everything depends on whether the second is really understood as included in the first. I am myself the subject of responsibility to the command of God, and therefore the subject of which the question of ethical reflection speaks. But I am this only as included in the "we." I am myself the covenant-partner of God, but my God is our God. I may and must hear His command, but His command applies to us all. It is the act of His will for us all. I have to answer for myself, but before the judgment seat at which the secrets of all our hearts must be disclosed. I go forward to the decision whether I am good or bad, yet I never do so alone, but always in the midst of a great company. Even in the necessary testing of my conduct I cannot overlook or forget the fact that I am never alone, and never will be. And I must remember it-not merely as a kind of prologue or epilogue, but as a constituent element from the very outset-when I make the prior decision from which I move to the divine decision. The one absolute thing which is the object of God's command, and to which we are summoned when it is declared to us, is not something that I am and have alone, but only in the community and solidarity of many, perhaps of all men. It is only as I detach myself as an individual that I can seriously ask: What ought I to do? But as I do so, I do not really detach myself. I return at once to the ranks from which I step out. For even as I step out in the moment of my decision, and even in the moment of my corresponding reflection, I still belong. In fact, the question can only be: What ought we to do? I am invited and made responsible and enabled to fulfil my responsibility not merely as the specimen of a natural or historical collective, nor as a so-called personality or individual or special case, but as this particular man, i.e., this one beloved by God and therefore a responsible partner in the divine covenant. Even the claim which is addressed to me is not for me alone but of universal validity. And I have to understand the universally valid claim as valid for me too and applying to me. If I refuse to do this, then from the detached standpoint of the individual and peculiar characteristics of my situation, my special case, I can protect myself against the crisis which the existence of God's command signifies for me and brings down on me. And in the last analysis who

143

[655]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[656J

cannot claim in every respect to be in a highly singular situation? In the last analysis, whose case cannot be described as a very special case? Who, then, is not tempted to make of the unconditional truth of the divine command something conditional, to give only partial scope"to the required openness to it, ~y emphasising the exceptional character of his life-situation? There is an overwhelming probability that those who pose the ethical question only in individual terms will try to use this possibility of affirming the exceptional character of their case over against the claim and judgmen t of the divine command. And this is the very thing which must not happen. That the universally valid command of God applies to me and affects me in a very definite way cannot be taken to imply that I can treat it as conditioned by the peculiar factors of my personal situation; that I can secure and fortify myself against its universal validity as it certainly applies to me too. At this point, again, we have something to learn from Kant-from his definition of the ethical as that which is adapted to be "the principle for a universal law." If it is put seriously, then in face of all the singularity of my personal situation, my own particular question can only be: What are we to do?-which means that we have thrown off this most efficacious, because most obvious and apparently most honourable covering-the pretext of being so differently placed from others-and exposed ourselves to the crisis of the command. This does, of course, confront me in the singularity of my circumstances, as this particular individual, as this one of all the covenant-partners of God. It reaches and concerns me in and with my particularity, my own particular situation, yet not in such a way that it must adapt itself to it, but rather the reverse. It, and not I, determines the particularity of the practical realities of my life, of the obedience that it demands from me particularly. But we do not rightly understand the we of the ethical question, or take it seriously from the two points of view indicated, if we do not bear in mind here, too, the christological basis of the divine command. This we of the ethical question is not an unqualified we but the highly qualified we of those who-whether they know and believe it or not, whether we can appeal to them on this ground, or whether this is not yet or no longer the case-are elected in Jesus Christ to be covenant-partners with God and therefore placed under the divine command. An unqualified we-the universal we of the human race, or the special we of a particular group or collective-would be no safeguard against an escape into irresponsibility along the two lines indicated. For why should we see ourselves determined and confined within a we of this kind, and therefore denied all possibility of adopting the attitude of a spectator? And against what we of this kind may not the individual with some show of justification assert the exceptional character of his particular case? The we of those who are inJesus Christ makes us unconditionally the subject of the ethical question. To be elected, called, justified and sanctified in J esusChrist is not merely a predicqte which is placed injuxtaposition to man, in relation to which he can adopt a reserved and distant attitude, or with which he can concern himselfwith the leisurely interest of the historical or psychological spectator. To be in Jesus

144

1.

The Sovereignty

of the Divine Decision

Christ is to be oneself the new creature fashioned by Him, to belong to Him as a member of His body. We ourselves either are this or are not. And so we ourselves can only either believe or not believe. But if we do believe, our responsibility to God's command becomes what it is by its intrinsic natureour own personal responsibility; and so our ethical reflection becomes in,the strictest sense our intimate personal concern. And the we of those who are in jesus Christ-again according to the intrinsic nature of the term-includes every I as such. In Christ there are no exceptions. There is, indeed, the richness of many particular gifts, the manifoldness of the life of the members of His one body. But there can be no limitation of His lordship in favour of our own special concerns and peculiarities. There can be no competition between the uniqueness of the one Lord and our own unique circumstances-however noteworthy. We can say CredimusEN74 injesus Christ only when and as the I says CredoEN75, and when the I says CredoEN76, he does so with all the responsibility of the CredimusEN77• The unconditioned truth of those who prophesy and speak with tongues is measured by the unconditioned truth of the one Spirit of the community. For if their spirit is the Holy Spirit, it can only be the one Spirit of the community. And so the obedience which lowe to the command is measured by the obedience which it claims from us all. The qualified we of those who are in jesus Christ is safeguarded on both sides. It corresponds to the sovereign decision of God in relation to which we must pose the ethical question. We cannot affirm as much of any other we. When the we of the ethical question is seriously understood in this way, it is only because the questioners do not evade the order of Christ's kingdom and cannot disown the traces of this qualified we. And, again, we conclude with the observation that if in this twofold sense we ask seriously: What ought we to do?, we confess already that we know the divine command, that it is present to us, that it has been disclosed to us, and therefore that the necessary ethical reflection which sets this question cannot be made in vain. If the we of the ethical question is seriously meant from both points of view, then it is the qualified we of those who are in Jesus Christ. Our question is then in very truth a question about God's sovereign decision. Not knowing but asking what we ought to do, we confess that God knows about us. We subordinate ourselves to what He wills and orders, and our action is directed and established by His command. Everything depends on how far we ask seriously. But when the we of our question is seriously meant in this twofold sense, we ourselves are witnesses that we ask seriously concerning the divine command. 4. What ought we to do? It is not superfluous to be sure that we are really those who are asking what they are to do. This is not self-evident. The question: What ought we to do? might well be prompted by curiosity, by a playful desire EN74 EN7:) EN76 EN77

We believe I believe I believe We believe

145

[657]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God for knowledge, by a purely theoretical interest. And, of course, it is not a culpable but in many ways a laudable thing to be curious. [658]

Curiosity is a powerful motive in the pursuit of knowledge. And even human conduct can itself be a legitimate object of highminded curiosity. Practice can be the object of theory. Our inter-esse can be the object of our "interest." We again remind ourselves of the task, or, at any rate, the initial task, of history and psychology, which, in the broader sense of the term, include studies like statistics and sociology. This curiosity is misguided only when it refuses to recognise any limits to its investigation, i.e., to admit the independent existence of the ethical question beyond the sphere of its own researches, or-which is far worse-when it tries to identify its own enquiries with ethical questions, to pretend that it is itself ethics. Ethics, too, is theory. But it is a theory which has left even the most highminded curiosity behind. It is theory which-when the questions prompted by mere curiosity about human conduct have been asked and answered, as far as is possible along those various lines-asks and must know what we ought to do.

The we no less than the ought removes this question of the do from the sphere of purely detached consideration. What we are commanded is never something that we can merely wish to know. We cannot stand aloof from it with the degree of detachment in which it can be for us a mere object of knowledge. An object like this, standing at a distance which allows and requires us to be content with a mere knowledge of it, and critical investigation of this mere knowledge, cannot as such be that which is commanded, no matter how deep an insight or how pure an idea it may express. In this respect it is important that ethical reflection is itself an ethical act, a moment of what we are and will and do and do not do as subjected to the divine command, or rather a special determination of each such aspect. Ethical reflection is the awareness by which each of our decisions is accompanied as it looks back to those which precede and forward to those which are to come. This is what distinguishes human conduct from the actions in which the life of plants and animals and even nature as a whole runs its course. It is accompanied by awareness. This accompaniment can assume many forms ranging from fully reflective consciousness to the various degrees of what is called subconsciousness-which does not cease to come under the category of consciousness. But as long as man lives as man, this awareness cannot be broken off. In virtue of the unceasing accompaniment of our activity by our awareness, we ourselves are its authors and true subjects. In virtue of this awareness, it is responsible. Just as our activity cannot be abstracted from this accompaniment, the latter cannot be abstracted from our activity. The command about which we ask is the command under which we stood and stand and will stand. To ask concerning it is to ask concerning the One who was and is and will be our Judge. We ask, therefore, concerning ourselves, concerning our judgment by the command as it has already been accomplished, is in process of realisation and is still to be developed. We cannot, therefore, want to know about the command in such a way that we survey it detachedly from without, making sure of its contents, forming an opinion about it and finally adopting an attitude towards it. We cannot ask about what

1.

The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision

is commanded merely to amass material for answering the later question whether we are to perform a certain action or would prefer to do this or that. There are no times, no intervals or neutral points in time, at which we can make this separation and perform this separated action. Even though I apparently ask for the first time concerning God's command, I already behave in a certain relationship towards it, either of obedience or disobedience. And in my present action, I in some sense recapitulate all my past, and anticipate my future conduct. Therefore when I weigh my prior decision in relation to my future decision, I am not involved theoretically, in respect of the future decision that has now to be considered, but practically, in respect of the decision that is now being taken in the full crisis of the command about which I ask. And this present decision stands in unbroken continuity with all my earlier decisions. It is not merely what we do, our action in the narrower sense of the term, which constitutes our action from the point of view of ethics. What we do not do, our omission, is exposed to the command about which we ask. And not merely what we do or fail to do, but also what we will, which is the preparation for what we do or do not do-for what we will or do not will is also something that we do or do not do. And not merely what we will is under the command of God, but primarily and supremely what we are-we ourselves who will and do not will, who do and do not do, yet not abstractly outside but within the circle of what we will and do and do not do. When the ethical problem is posed, we have to do with a completely unbroken circle. This as such is the object of God's sovereign decision. This as such is the subject of our responsibility to Him. This as such is judged in some way by God in that decision. As our life runs its course in this closed circle, as certainly as it is our human life (and not plant or animal life) , it is accompanied by the ethical question which at every step necessarily challenges what I do and can never be mere examination and observation, mere explanation. Moral reflection is, of course, explanation. It means a realisation of the critical character of my whole situation, past, present and future. But this realisation is not the goal. The goal is that I may live in this realisation, that in respect of the whole serIes of my decisions (I now recapitulate the earlier ones and anticipate the future) I may be prepared for the divine decision to which my own are subject and responsible. In my doing or not doing of what we (in the twofold sense already explained) ought to do (in the precise antithesis of this genuine ought to our own will), the unconditioned truth of the good is present in a concealed form-as my pardon or condemnation. It is present here and not in a sphere outside or above what I do or do not do, not at a point where I can merely investigate and conclude without deciding, without making a decision in and with my investigating and concluding. Seriously put, the question: What ought we to do? makes the presupposition of the testing of our conduct a responsibility. It means that there can be no escape from ethos in to ethics, that for good or ill ethics is already ethos. All this can be true, of course, only if it is realised that it is the sovereign decision of God as the norm of all our decisions which makes it necessary to interpret our

147

[659]

[660]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[661]

own life as a closed circle of responsible being, willing, doing and not doing, as an indissoluble nexus of theory and practice, and that the sovereign decision of God is identical with the reality of the covenant which He has set up between Himself and us and sealed in the death and resurrection of jesus Christ. If it were a question of the mere idea of the will and command of God, a distinction could be drawn between our recognition of the good or evil of our conduct on the one hand, and its practical expression on the other. A neutral sphere could be marked off free from the responsibility of decision and apart from our own real decisions. There could be an ethics which is not itself ethos. Indeed, this would be basically necessary. For we are not responsible to an idea as such. We become so only when we recognise and acknowledge in it an authority which demands responsibility. In regard to an idea, the process by which theory and practice are nicely discriminated is justified. If we think of the divine will and command, the sovereign decision of God, in terms of an idea, then, as far as ethical reflection is concerned, we shall constantly relapse into this process, that is, we shall not be able to engage in genuine ethical reflection at all. But the idea of the sovereign divine decision as the norm of our conduct is not genuinely realised and assimilated by us if we think of it as an abstraction and not as the concrete reality of the covenant between God and man, as the person and the work and lordship of jesus Christ: His person, in whom the eternal Word has taken our flesh and assumed and accepted human existence in its totality into union with Himself in order that He may be the Head, and also our Head, in His community, but also secretly in the whole cosmos; His work, by which all human autonomy is delivered up to death and resurrected to a new and different life, as self-dedication to God; His lordship by which all the places where man might hide from God and arrogantly try to make his own decisions, all the refuges and strongholds of our ethical neutrality, are destroyed and dismantled. We cannot deal evasivelywith jesus Christ as one does with an idea. God's decision as it is really embodied in Him is a sovereign decision. It characterises not only our conduct but our asking what we ought to do as responsible decision. It drives us from the last of these neutral refuges-an ethics which tries not to be an ethos. It forces us out into the open, exposing us to the divine claim and the radical questioning of our whole being which it involves. When moral reflection is more than the play of what may, perhaps, be a highminded curiosity; when it has the seriousness not only of scholarship but of life itself-and therefore the seriQusness of scholarship as well-it can only be from this source. It is not in vain that jesus Christ is King and Victor. Theory and practice cannot be separated in the human world which God has loved from all eternity in Him and within which He has risen again as King and Victor. The Christian Church alone knows and confesses why it is that they cannot be separated, why it is that the will and command of God cannot consent to be treated as a mere idea, why it is essential, therefore, that ethics should begin where all mere curiosity leaves off. But the recognition of this indissolubility and necessity need not be always explicit. There is

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

alwaysan implicit practical recognition of it when the question: What ought we to do? is put with the particular seriousness characteristic of the concept of action. When this happens, we are not far from the will of God, even though we do not yet or any longer understand it as such, even though we are indeed aliens to its establishment and disclosure in Jesus Christ. When we ask seriously: What ought we to do? we testify that we ourselves are challenged by that supreme authority which makes all escape or neutrality quite impossible, because it is the supreme and in the strict sense the only judicial authority. God knows us, even if we do not know God. And He drives us, therefore, to serious reflection, and in our own limits to the ordering of our way according to His command. It is as well to remind ourselves, at the conclusion of this analysis, that the question: What ought we to do?, is the question which was put to Peter and the other apostles (Ac. 237f.) by those who heard Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost. This means that, although we ourselves have to ask it, we must not ask it of ourselves. We must ask it of God, of the God who has revealed Himself to us and has given us the witnesses of His revelation. It is a question which is put by Holy Scripture, and therefore we must put it to Holy Scripture as the witness to God's revelation. That the sovereign decision of God confronts us and our decisions objectively in Jesus Christ is, as we have seen, the supreme criterion of all ethical reflection. ButJesus Christ cannot be separated frorn His apostles, from the whole witness which underlies the community of God in the form of Israel, and then of the Christian Church. We hear Him as we hear His witnesses. It is in their testimony that the divine command is alwaysto be sough t and will alwaysbe found as the sovereign divine decision. We must not be surprised, then, if-in very different forms-we are always given what is in fact the one answer: "Repent, and be baptised everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."

2.

THE DEFINITENESS OF THE DIVINE DECISION

We have tried to see that the command of God is the inescapable verdict of the supreme Judge by speaking of its sovereignty-of the sovereignty of the divine decision. But the conception of the divine decision, and the corresponding conception of human responsibility to it, must now be particularly considered from the standpoint that the divine Word is given to us, and that it is concretely filled out, that it is given with a definite and specific content. It is in this way-and this way alone-that it is the inescapable verdict of our supreme Judge, the divine decision concerning good and evil in our own decisions. It is in this way-and this way alone-that we are responsible to it. That God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ means a total divine claim to our obedience and a total decision concerning good and evil in the choice of our decisions. It means our total responsibility. For the love of God in Jesus Christ intends and seeks and wills us in our totality. The work of atonement accomplished inJesus Christ refers to the whole of our lives. And therefore our gratitude for the divine love and its work can only be a wholehearted gratitude. We touched upon this problem of the totality of the divine command and our 149

[662]

S 38.

The Command as the Decision of God

responsibility to it when we pointed out that in its sovereignty the divine decision confronts all our own decisions and the whole series of actions of which our life is composed, and isJudge 'of them all. But fully to grasp it, we have to consider an aspect without which our recognition of the totality bf the divine command, and therefore that of its sovereignty, and that of our responsibility to it, and finally our appreciation of the essential character of moral reflection, will necessarily be incomplete. This is that the divine command as the judicial divine decision confronting all our own decisions is given to us with a definite and concrete content. It is the particular command which faces each of our decisions, the specially relevant individual command for the decision wHich we have to make at this moment and in this situation. The radical nature of the decision made concerning us in Jesus Christ, the whole seriousness of the holiness and mercy, the omnipresence and eternity of God, the penetrating energy of the love but also the freedom, the patience but also the omnipotence in which He has turned and is still turned to us in Jesus Christ, do not permit us to understand His command in any other way,any the less intimately and intensively. The divine command to which we have been, are and will be subject, before which we have been, are and will again be responsible, was and is and will be God's voluntas specialisEN78 and even specialissimaEN79, His mandatum concretum EN80 or rather concretissimum EN81. In it as such God is near to us, wills to sanctify us for Himself, wills to draw us to Himself, wills to be ours and to have us as His own. In it as such God is our Judge, deciding about the obedience or disobedience, the good or evil of our decisions. In it as such we are asked concerning our faith, our love, our hope. The genuinely particular, the concrete, the individual, the uniquely determined, is not, therefore, as is readily supposed, our moment in time and its inward and outward conditioning in itself and as such.

[663J

We remember that it is not time itself which is originally determined as the fulness of times. But God's. eternity as such is the fulness of all times and therefore of each of our moments. It is not in and of itself that space has the infinite diversity of its various places, but in God's omnipresence-or, rather, it is because of the original spatiality of God Himself that there are many spaces in His creation, each in its particularity, but all corresponding necessarily in their particularity to the fact that God Himself, the Lord who occupies space, has willed and posited them in their manifoldness. It is not the manifoldness of creation, its nature and history, which is the true manifold; but because the one and only God is Himself the manifold; the eternally rich God, that there is also manifoldness and rich variety-only a drop from the ocean of His plenitude-in His creation. And, again, it is not our human individuality and its vitality in space and time, not the mystery of our personality with its contingent potentialities and decisions, which is the true and original source of vitality and individuality; but what we know and enjoy as such is only the created reflection of the vitality and individuality of God, of the freedom of His personal life, of the contingence of His will EN7S EN79 ENSO ENSI

special will most special concrete command most concrete

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

and action, of the particularity of His grace and mercy and patience, which would belong to His eternal being even though we and the whole world did not exist, but in which He willed to turn to the world as its Creator and Lord, and in the world to us as His covenant-partners. Therefore even the glory of the special, the concrete, the individual, the uniquely determined is a glory that belongs to God and not to us. It can be our glory only in so far as we may have a part in it as the creatures and children of God, acknowledging and magnifying it as His glory. But it cannot in any circumstances be claimed and asserted as our own glory as distinct from the glory of God.

Here we cannot try to secure for ourselves an advantage as against the command of God by understanding and asserting it as a general rule but regarding its application, i.e., its concrete embodiment, as a matter for our judgment and action, so that the particular individual expression of what is laid down and prescribed in the command as a universal rule is only actualised in and with our own decisions-like the verdicts of a human judge, which are particular applications in each case, according to his own discretion, of what the law prescribes in general. The Law of God cannot be compared with any human law. For it is not merely a general rule but also a specific prescription and norm for each individual case. At one and the same time it is both the law and the judge who applies it. For as God is not only the God of the general but also of the particular, of the most particular, and the glory of the latter is His, so is it with His command. His command is not at all an empty form to which we have to give specific content (appropriate to this or that moment of our lives) by our action and the accompanyingjudgment of our ethical reflection. It is not a generalised thing to which particularised expression must accrue from elsewhere. The command of God is an integral whole. For in it form and content, general prescription and concrete application are not two things, but one. The divine decision, in which the sovereign judgment of God is expressed on our decisions, is a very definite decision. This means that in the demand and judgment of His command God always confronts us with a specific meaning and intention, with a will which has foreseen everything and each thing in particular, which has not left the smallest thing to chance or our caprice. The command of God as it is given to us at each moment is always and only one possibility in every conceivable particularity of its inner and outer modality. It is always a single decision, including all the thoughts and words and movements in which we execute it. We encounter it in such a way that absolutely nothing either outward or inward, either in the relative secret of our intention or in the unambiguously observable fulfilment of our actions, is left to chance or to ourselves, or rather in such a way that even in every visible or invisible detail He wills of us precisely the one thing and nothing else, and measures and judges us precisely by whether we do or do not do with the same precision the one thing that He so precisely wills. Our responsibility is a responsibility to the command as it is given us in this way.And ethical reflection means that we render an account in these terms, that we were and are and will be responsible

[664]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[665J

to the command as it is given us in this way-really given, and given integrally, concretely filled out, and with a definite and specific content. It is surely apparent at once that the concept of an unconditional truth of the divine command is incompletely grasped, or not properly grasped at all, if its definiteness is not taken into account. No description of the command can do justice to the concept if it leaves us to understand by the command merely a general norm or rule which has no definite content and the truth and validity of which are to be perceived and recognised apart, so that-on the basis of this perception and recognition-we can choose and make our own application of what it prescribes by our action. For according to this widely held view the case would be as follows. On a way which has still to be more narrowly determined, we must have the knowledge and conviction that our conduct stands under this or that universal rule and must always assume the corresponding form. But it is for ourselves to say exactly what we are commanded to do-not in general but here and now, at this moment with its concrete characteristicswhat therefore we ought to do (assuming the general conformity of our action). And granted this conformity, we can count on the fact that what we do will be well done-that it will be what we are commanded. Is it not obvious, however, that according to this conception precisely the decisive thing to which any serious command must relate, namely, the origination of our conduct in the command, is not attained, that it is, in fact, surrendered, that we ourselves are to judge concerning its conformity with the presupposed universal rule? If the content of our action is not determined by the command, is it not necessarily a doing of what we ourselves wish? And is it not all the lllore objectionable because we are justified in regarding it as something that we ought to do? The best interpretation that can be put on obedience to this command is that we have allowed our will to be limited, in some degree canalised, and to that extent co-determined by the obligation laid on us by the universal rule. A less favourable construction is that we have poured the dictates and pronouncements of our own self-willinto the empty container of a formal moral concept, thus giving them the aspect and dignity of an ethical claim (although, in fact, it is we ourselves who will them). We have vindicated ourselves as judges, i.e., as interpreters of that law,justifying our own will in the concrete situation. Strictly speaking, a generally formal abstract command of universal import is not a command at all, for it does not become anything like a command until it is first heard, and understood, and acknowledged in itself, then made a law on the basis of that perception and recognition, and then given the necessary interpretation and application to the case in hand-which is, again, of course, a matter for our own decision. In this conception far too much devolves upon those who, in relation to a real command, do not enter in except as the obedient or disobedient. We cannot, therefore, recognise in this "command" the claim which a real command makes on man or the judgment which it passes. We cannot describe it as a command in the true sense. Whatever else it may be, a command whose truth is conditioned in this way is not a

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

real command. A command-that is, the command in the strictest sense, the command of God-is a claim addressed to man in such a way that it is given integrally, so that he cannot control its content or decide its concrete implication. A command is a demand and not merely a theoretical exposition of the form which it may take. It comes to us, therefore, with a specific content, elnbracing the whole outer and inner substance of each momentary decision and epitomising the totality of each momentary requirement. It does not need any interpretation, for even to the smallest details it is self-interpreting. Only when the command has this character is it obviously a question addressed to us and demanding the response of our actions-the action of every moment with its concrete characteristics. Only then is the command distinguishable from the answers which we ourselves have continually given and give and will give to ourselves. Only then are our actions distinguishable from mere repetitions and corroborations of the dictates of our self-will. Only then do we stand in a relation of responsibility, of obedience or disobedience, to Another, to a transcendent Commander andJudge. Only then is the question of our responsibility different from that of our agreement or disagreement with ourselves, of our loyalty or disloyalty to the criterion which we ourselves have discovered and established. This is not to deny that the latter can in its own way be a very important and interesting question. But it is certainly not the same thing as the ethical question. The ethical question begins with the fact that even the special, concrete, particular and uniquely determined features of our action are commanded and that in this way our real action is claimed and judged; that we are, therefore, asked concerning the specific theory which is commanded, and that even in its particularity this is not left to our own discretion, but is a matter for the divine decision. The "idea of the good" cannot be the same thing as this specific divine decision. It cannot be denied that there is an idea of the good-the concept of the perfect correctness and therefore morality of human will and conduct, which may be identified with that of perfect being, and even of the original transcendent ground of all being and therefore regarded as the sum of all that is required and commanded. The idea of the good is that of the norm of actuality, or actual norm, which, as it is the unconditional ground of our being, also makes an unconditional claim and passes an unconditional judgment on our will and conduct. Now, undoubtedly, the idea of the divine command is to some extent coincident with this thought. For the idea of God's command, too, includes that of the perfect correctness and morality of human conduct. It, too, understands this supremely correct and moral element as something required of us simply because it is being at its truest and highest, because, indeed, it is the origin of all being, because we can even say that it is God Himself, because our own participation in being and its original depths, our existence as God's creatures, depends on whether we reflect His character, the correctness and morality prescribed to us by the character of His own essence. But the identity of the two ideas is only on the surface. They are distinguished by the fact that the idea of the command is not a norm which we have thought out for ourselves, i.e., acquired and established by the process of dialectically developing and deepening the insights of our own will and conduct, but something which we plainly encounter from without. The idea of the divine command is the idea of something which is incomprehensible to man of himself-that he is not his own master, and that it does

153

[666]

S 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[667J

not lie in his competence to think out and prescribe for himself the rule under which he lives, to lay down the lawwhich he is to obey, but that he has a Lord whose lordship over him is rooted in His personal will and defined and determined by it, and whose law is not a matter for our own discovery but for His revelation. In contradistinction to the idea of the good, even in its most mature conceivable form, the idea of God's command is that of the good which is proclaimed to man and required of him, which claims him and judges him. This distinction is seen in the fact that God's command is specific and concrete in its living relevance to every moment of human life, whilst the idea of the good can obviously be a command only in so far as he himself, as he has conceived and planned and established it, gives it its concrete embodiment in particular cases according to his private judgment and discretion, so that in concretoEN82 he is his own lord and master. But the fact is that we always will and act in concretoEN83• How, then, in this presupposition, can we be anything else but our own rulers? In what sense can we be the object of divine decision? It isjust the same with regard to the so-called "categorical imperative"-the idealistic doctrine of law and freedom. We will assume that it is understood in the formal purity in which Kant himself wished it to be understood as a characterisation of the unconditionally binding nature of the moral law: "Actin such a way that the principles of your mode of action may at any time become those of universally valid legislation." We will also allow that this formula is not purely formal but material to the extent that it seems to make at least human society and its maintenance a genuine obligation, a substantial demand. We will also take it that this Kantian formula-as the followers of Kant have tried to prove with more or less success-is .capable of various other material extensions. Yet, however we look at it, whether in the formal thinness originally envisaged or with the greater material fulness which it can be given, it can never be more than a formula for the idea of the imperative abstracted from the actuality of the imperatives which encounter us-"categorical" in so far as it defines, illuminates and describes the category of the imperative, differentiating it from all sorts of suppositions, desires and aspirations which as such cannot constitute an imperative because they do not correspond to the necessary definition of an imperative. But this or any similar formula can never be an imperative in itself and as such, or "categorical" in the current (but not originally Kantian) meaning of the term, i.e., confronting man with an absolutely obligatory demand, in such a way that he must and will obey this formula. The categorical imperative as such will never be a command. It can become this only when we receive, not this formula, but a real imperative-distinguished by the fact that it corresponds to the formula-and we bow or do not bow before this real imperative-but not the formula. It can become a command in the mouth of another only as this other somehow acquires "thecourage and authority-after concluding a study of the formula as such-to approach his fellows and to tell them-not in a repetition, but in an adequate interpretation and application of the formula-that in certain specific situations or questions they must do this and not do that. In proportion as a demand remains general, formal and abstract, leaving the question of in terpretation and application to those to whom it is addressed, it is not yet a command, but at best only a perspicuous discussion and description of the command. It is to the credit of Kant that his imperative was not meant to formulate the command as such but only to show what is alwaysinvolved in a real command. In his strict formation (even if it was not perhaps so strict in practice as in intention) he was far less inclined than those who thought they could improve on him to imagine that one of his formulae could take the place of the gen uine moral imperative, of the command which is actually addressed to man and claims and judges him. The imperative itself can never take the form: "Actin such a way ... ", but: EN82 EN83

concretely concretely

154

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

"Do this, or do not do that, in the unique and unrepeatable situation, the position in which you find yourself at the moment: not because you have discovered that this line of conduct corresponds to the general form of an imperative, not because you are your own judge applying this principle to your own circumstances and concluding after due consideration that with this line of conduct you will be in harmony with the command, that you can claim and vindicate the principles underlying your present mode of action as those of universal legislation; but do this and do not do that, because I-and in this connexion an'!' which is distinct from and confronts my own I is quite indispensable to the concept of the command-command it, and because I have the right and power to order you to do this, because you must respect and obey my command (simply because it is mine), because you stand or fall by whether you do my will or not." If it is a question of the imperative itself, the detailed and concrete determination of what is required of us is none of our business. The command is intrinsically concrete. It is already interpreted and applied to myself and my circumstances, to my position at the moment. There is nothing that I myself can add to it. I am asked only concerning my obedience or disobedience. I am not asked concerning my interpretation, but only my perception and the consequent practical recognition of the form in which it is given me. Formal general conceptions of what is commanded-even those which approach more nearly to the material and concrete than is the case with the Kantian imperative, even those which have the form of material rules (though still generalised and in need of particular application)-can never be more than reminiscences and indications of the command which has been or is actually issued. Understood in any other way, they can only minister to the illusion in which man wills to be good of himself and to impute the good to himself instead of allowing it to be the good in such a way that it comes to him and confronts him as the real command which itself reaches him, demanding his perception and practical recognition and therefore making his decision a decision between obedience and disobedience. The same is equally true if we try to make conscience the supreme arbiter to which man is responsible and either obedient or disobedient in moral decisions. Conscience is the totality of our self-consciousness in so far as it can receive and proclaim the Word and therefore the command of God as it comes to us, in so far as we can be participants in the divine knowledge (avvEL8oTfS, conscientesEN84) because God Himselfwills to speak with us. The Word and command of God which comes to us is the promise that we can be this. We have to see, then, that accurately and seriously understood the concept of conscience (like that of the "spirit" in man corresponding to the Holy Spirit and in contradistinction to body and soul) cannot be classed as an anthropological but only as an eschatological concept. It is only in the light of the integral connexion of our existence with that ofJesus Christ, in the light of the future consummation which is our inheritance and possession in Jesus Christ, that conscience or our self-consciousness can be understood and claimed as the organ of the divine will and claim and judgment confronting our will, and therefore as the organ of our participation in the good. Above all, the conscience which lives wholly in the strength of this promise, and has it only in this eschatological context, in faith and only in faith, cannot possibly he interpreted as an independent "voice of God," or ranked above or even alongside the Word and command of God, but only subordinated to them. Conscience knows the command of God as it hears it. It gives it authority over us by bearing witness to it. The command is not revealed and given by conscience but to conscience, so that it cannot first gain through conscience the definiteness which alone makes it an effectual command. That it is both given and given in concrete definiteness derives from its own essential power and dignity. It is not, therefore, the function of conscience to interpret and apply, as though the command in ENH4

'co-knowers'

155

[668]

S 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[669]

itselfwere empty and needed concrete filling. In conscience, then, we are not made judges, but witnesses to the judgment to which we are subjected. Conscience can only be a reminder and indication that the command is addressed to us in all conceivable definiteness and that we have to render account to it in this its definite form. Conscience itself-all the more in proportion as it is awakened by the divine command and we allow it to speak definitely-will warn us against every perversion of the divine command into the dictates of our self-will. Conscience guards the frontier between the will of God and our own will. Conscience will see to it that the freedom of the command is maintained to be alwaysa total command to the totality of our life. Finally, it would be an even worse abuse if we were to understand the ideas of the will and kingdom, or the glory, righteousness or love of God, only formally as normative concepts like the "idea of the good" or the "categorical imperative," which have to be filled out in content by our interpretation, according to our own judgment and discretion. It is not as if these concepts derive from our own mental activities and, in order to constitute them as norms, we have to impart to them fulness and concreteness by our own reflections. It is, in fact, alwaysa matter of the will and kingdom, the glory and righteousness and love of God in the command, and in what we will and do and do not do in subjection to the decision of His command. But all this denotes the concept of the God who has a personal life and therefore acts and speaks directly and concretely. How can we possibly be taking the idea of God seriously if we try to understand by His will and kingdom, His glory and righteousness and love (as a summary of the command which claims us) a mere schema, the practical realisation of which God Himself ,vatches only as a spectator encouraging and consoling and finally distributing rewards and punishments-a formula with certain subdivisions, the contents of which can only be supplied by our application of it to our own particular case. How can the command of God be regarded as unconditional truth and confront and bind and claim and judge us as such if what these solemn ideas of God imply for us in concretoEN85 is subject to our own preference to the light shed by our liberum arbitriumEN86? These concepts which are all of them, in fact, titles for God's command, are, of course, so many names denoting so many different perfections of the essence of the personal and living God who rules all space and time in His creation. How, then, can these concepts coincide with, and justify, the presentation of a synergism in virtue of which there can be no doubt that we ourselves are finally the lords and masters of the divine command? How can it be that we see portrayed in them only the good in general and not the good in the most detailed particular, and so do not understand the divine command as the requirment to serve and do justice to the will and kingdom, the glory and righteousness and love of,God, and therefore as a command which has a concrete content, as a mandatum concretissimuumEN87

It is in this definiteness that the command is unconditional, leaving us no other choice than that between obedience and disobedience. Its unconditional character consists in the fact that, independently of our own views, alwaysand in every relationship in which I find myself placed it has the particular form that God demands from me in all seriousness this or that concrete thing. The divine decision, therefore, in regard to my conduct does not mean that God later approves or disapproves, rewards or punishes, my own choice and decision in the interpretation and application of His command-as EN85 EN86 EN87

concretely free will most concrete command

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

though the latter were simply a kind of proposal and programme within the bounds of which I had to find my bearings to the best of my ability and goodwill, being pleasing or displeasing to God according to the result. The divine decision over me is already made in the command itself to the extent that it wills and expects from me something quite specific to the exclusion of all other possibilities, so that, as it is given to me and my reaction to it becomes a matter of personal decision, the verdict upon me is already included and expressed: I shall either do or not do what it .willsand expects from me, and therefore be pleasing to God or not, deserving His reward or falling under His condemnation. And on the other hand, my human decision in face of the divine command does not consist in a decision of the question whether this or that is the good, whether the command wills this or that of me, whether I am to do this or that-this question would be just about as intelligent and relevant as the question whether there is a God, who and what He is, how and what we ought to think of Him, when all the time He Himself has already decided all this in His Word and revelation, and our task can only be to think precisely about what He affirms in this revelation. No, my decision-the human ethical decision-is whether in my conduct I shall correspond to the command which encounters and confronts me in the most concrete and pointed way,whether I shall be obedient or disobedient to it, whether I, for my part, shall meet it according to my election (the election of Jesus Christ) as a believer or an unbeliever. The objection is obviously futile that God has not really given, and does not and will not give, His command with such wholeness, clarity and definiteness that it only remains for us to be obedient or disobedient, and not to try to discover what the divine command really is; that we cannot be unequivocally responsible to it simply because it has not been unequivocally given to us. This objection is futile because it tries to evade the objective fact that God-God in His Word, the God who has sacrificed Himself for us in His Son and who in His Son is King of kings-is present to the world and each individual, and confronts him in the smallest of his steps and thoughts as his Commander and Judge. Because God has given us Himself, and constituted Himself our Lord, He has also given us His command. Because He is ours and we are His, He gives us His command. Because He will not cease to be ours, as we cannot cease to be His, He will not cease to give us His command. We are able to hear it, as surely as we belong to Him and to no one else. The question cannot be whether He speaks, but only whether we hear. And this means that we are already faced again by the question of our obedience or disobedience, our faith or ungodliness. For obedience and faith begin as we hear, as we recognise what is spoken to us. And ungodliness begins with our not hearing, and our lack of vision. We are already involved in the decision which is assessed and judged in God's command, and pleasing or displeasing to God, when God's command either confronts us with the wholeness, clarity and definiteness

157

[670]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God which are its intrinsic qualities, or seems hidden in a cloud of various possibilities, between which we have to choose and among which we think we can seek and determine that which is for us the divine command. This supposition is in itself the fruit of our disobedience and unbelief, and, according to Rom. 122, there is only one remedy for it, namely, our transformation by the renewing of our minds, by penitence, by a return to the obedience and faith in which we shall certainly attain the right kind of testing, which does not consist in an investigation whether this or that is the will of God, but in the testing of ourselves from the point of view -of our readiness to conform in our conduct to what we know well enough to be the will of God. The objection that the divine will is not known to us, or not sufficiently known, in its definiteness is not only futile but cunning and deceitful because it makes a virtue or an excuse out of our need, because it raises our unwillingness to hear carefully what is precisely spoken to us as those to whom God is present and near, to the status of a necessity on the basis of which we can withdraw into the supposed neutrality of an arbitrary questioning as to the good, so that we are acquitted in advance if in our arbitrary choice between the many possibilities open to us we may not coincide with the will of God. Our very retirement into this neutral position is in itself the signal of a perverse decision, an act of disobedience and unbelief. We should not overlook the fact that, according to Gen. 31, this apparently well-founded objection was first raised-and raised by the serpent-when man was not at all confronted by a welter of possibilities, and could not evade the divine Law by exegesis and application, but when he was faced by the mandatum concretum EN88, or concretissimum EN89, that he should not eat of a certain tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It will alwaysbe the case that when the divine command makes its impact upon us in its most concrete and piercing form we are most disposed to evade it by the suggestion that the divine will is so obscure that we have first to investigate and establish in what it actually consists.

[671J

We have to realise both the futility and the deceitfulness of this suggestion, and therefore seriously to reckon with the fact that the divine command is always a command given to us in a concrete embodiment, and not a requirement of a merely general nature to which we have to impart the necessary validity and authority according to the light of our own understanding and judgment. The fact that the decision of God which claims and judges us in His command is a specific decision is something we must affirm because this is how matters stand according to the witness of Holy Scripture, and therefore the witness of God's revelation of His real relationship to us and our real relationship to Him. It is in this way,concretely, that man is commanded in Holy Scripture, and from this we may infer that it is in this way, concretely, that we ourselves are commanded. Furthermore, in Holy Scripture we have to recogEN88 EN89

concrete most concrete command

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

nise the witness to the concrete command that encounters us too, and by which we too are confronted. It bears witness, not to an alien and dead, but to our own living Lord and Commander andJudge. As it attests and discloses to us the grace of God as the truth of God which transcends all human godlessness and resignation and despair, as it proclaims aloud what always and everywhere was and is and will be true, namely, that God's faithfulness is greater than our unfaithfulness, it also attests the will and command of God as the order which covers even the unfaithful and disobedient, to which they too are objectively subject and responsible, and which can only seem novel to them because of their futility and cunning. That all are without excuse in their perverse decision, because God has spoken and speaks and alwayswill speak to all, is made plain by the witness of Scripture. In the sphere of its witness, in the sphere of the elect community of God called by His Holy Spirit to faith and obedience, in the sphere of Israel and Church, of the self-attestation of jesus Christ and its echo in the prophets and apostles, this objection is unmasked and shown to be invalid. When the witness of Scripture is heard and accepted, it is known that this objection is a deception, and the real situation of man is known: that in truth he is alwaysconfronted by the whole and clear and specific command; that it is his own fault if he supposes himself to be in a fog, and is actually befogged in this opinion; that in such an error he is disobedient (disobedient to the command of God as it is specifically given) when he becomes his own lawgiver and poses as the interpreter of his own laws.On the basis of the witness of Scripture, which attests its true Master to a supposedly masterless world, it can be known that the supposedly lawless man, who decides and chooses for himself, who is his own lawgiver and judge, is a liar. As he can only play the part of the divinely rejected with a false-if dangerous-theatricality, it is only with the same theatricality-which is bad enough in itself-that he can play the part of the godless. He does both as he is opposed and given the lie in advance by the election of jesus Christ (to be the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world and to be the King of Glory to whom all principalities and powers are subject). That this is so is once for all revealed in the epiphany, in the death and resurrection ofjesus Christ in opposition to the natural but false witness of the whole world. And the witness to this revelation is the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments. By holding to this witness we oppose to the heathen doctrine of the vagueness and uncertainty of the divine command that of its definiteness and concreteness. This is its Christian antithesis. But this does not mean that the doctrine is true and valid only for Christians. It means rather that it is generally true and valid for all men and for each man. It must be steadily opposed under all circumstances to all error and disobedience in this matter.

Ifwe are to assure ourselves of the specific character of the divine command in view of the biblical witness, we must distinguish the following two facts: (1) that the divine law in the Bible is always a concrete command; and (2) that this concrete commanding to be found in the Bible must be understood as a divine command relevant to ourselves who are not directly addressed by it. The question to which the first point is an answer is exegetical in the narrower sense. When it is a matter of the divine command in the Bible we usually think too readily and one-sidedly of certain contexts in which (according to an equally facile and one-sided exegesis) we believe we have to do with lists of universal

159

[672]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[673]

religious-moraljuridical rules and therefore with legal codes that are valid regardless of space and time. But, however these passages are to be interpreted, it is surely arbitrary to seek the biblical witness to God's command, and therefore what might be called biblical ethics, only or even primarily in these contexts. What God's command is, and what it means even in these particular contexts, is rather to be derived from the greater whole to which they belong. Thus it is certainly not the case that, according to the Bible, God commands only or even primarily where these universally valid rules are thought to be discovered. We should rather consider the fact-putting aside for the moment the question of the interpretation of these particular contexts-that the whole relationship of God with man in the course of the historical unfolding of His covenant of grace, which forms the true content and object of the biblical witness, is continuously realised in the shape of the divine commanding and prohibiting, the divine ordering and directing. We fail to see the wood for the trees if we refuse to recognise that, apart from those particular contexts, the whole remaining content of the Bible is replete with ethics-except, of course, that what is usually understood by "command" and "ethics," namely, universal rules, is not to be found there. For, as the Lord of this history, God seems hardly to be interested at all in general and universally valid rules, but properly only in certain particular actions and achievements and attitudes, and this in the extremely simple and direct way of desiring from man (as a father from his child, or a master from his servant) that this or that must or must not happen. Nothing can be made of these commands if we try to generalise and transform them into universally valid principles (unless, of course, we artificially distort them). Their content is purely concrete and related to this or that particular man in this or that particular situation. It consists in what GO,dwills that he shou~d do or not do in a specific situation. Commands of this sort must be left as they stand. They belong directly to a specific history, and they must be left in all their historical particularity and uniqueness. What God wills and for what purpose He requires the active participation of man, for what purpose He claims his being and willing, what he does and does not do-this is the course of this history, which consists, therefore, in purely individual, concrete and specific events. Thus God's commanding can only be this individual, concrete and specific commanding. We must divest ourselves of the fixed idea that only a universally valid rule can be a command. We must realise that in reality a rule of this kind is not a command. We must be open to the realisation that the biblical witness to God's ruling is this: to attest God as the Father, or Lord, who in the process of the revelation and embodiment of His grace, hie et nuneEN90, orders or forbids His child, or servant, something quite specific, and in such a way that there can be no question of an appraisal or judgment by man of what is required (which would be legitimate and necessary if the command conEN90

here and now

160

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

sisted in a universally binding rule), but the question put to man can be only that of his hearing and obeying. Byway of factual example we must remember that up to the first edition of the Ten Comnlandments in Ex. 201f., and the legislation which immediately follows, the Pentateuch does not contain any element that could conceivably be transformed into a universal principle. The very first command in Gen. 128: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it," is specifically and concretely addressed to the first man and woman after creation and before the fall, and it is unique and unrepeatable in its unconditional character. It takes on rather a different form when, later on, after the fall and the flood, it is addressed to Noah (911".). In 21t)f. this command is followed by the one already mentioned, which, in truth, embraces and exhausts all ethical disciplines, and yet is not universal but highly particular. This is the prohibition with regard to the eating of the tree. And, significantly enough, the point of this prohibition is that man should not know good and evil for himself, and on the basis of this knowledge become his own judge. But this knowledge and judging are not forbidden as such. To prevent them, what is forbidden is what seems to be the ethically irrelevant eating of the tree. And it is by the transgression of this purely factual prohibition that the fall takes place as a type of all sin. The next plain command of God is the meticulously exact instruction given to Noah regarding the building of the ark (614). The next is the command to Abraham (121): "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, into a land that I will shew thee." There follows the summons to Abraham to walk through the land of Canaan as a symbol of its future possession (1314f.), and in 15 we have a detailed prescription concerning sacrifices on the occasion of the setting up of the covenant. It is striking enough that here especially there is no question of any other ordinances, more purely religious and moral our sense. In 169 and 21 12 18 directions are then given concerning the relationship of Isaac and Ishmael. In 1710 we have the ordinance of circumcision. In 1715 Sarah is told to change her name. In 1912 Lot is commanded to leave Sodom; in 207 Abimelech to free Sarah; in 222f. Abraham to sacrifice Isaac; in 262 Isaac to remain in Canaan; in 313 Jacob to return to Canaan, and in 463 to go into Egypt. In Ex. 3:>Moses is told to remove his shoes before the burning bush; in 43f. he receives directions about his appearing before Pharaoh; in 419 he is ordered to return to Egypt; in 427 Aaron is told to approach Moses; in 613 they are given their joint commission to Pharaoh, which in cc. 7-10 is repeated in individual commands. In 122f. 43f. and 13 If. we have the institution of the Passover and the consecration of the first-born; in 141 15 directions concerning the crossing of the Red Sea; in 164 details about the gathering of manna; in 175f. instructions to Moses about the rock in the wilderness; in 1912f. 2lf. warnings against an unauthorised approach to Sinai. The list is remarkable enough. According to the witness of these texts, when God confronts man with His commands, what He wills is purely ad hoc actions and attitudes which can only be thought of as historically contingent even in their necessity, acts of obedience to be performed on the spot in a specific way,pure decisions the rneaning of which is not open to discussion, because they do not in any sense point to a higher law, but is rather contained in the fact that God has decided in this way and spoken accordingly, so that human decisions can only obey or disobey the divine decision. In these texts there is no such thing as a general rule which can be debated and needs to be filled out in its application. If this vexes us, it cannot be helped. But there is no real reason to be vexed by it. For it does not mean that they tell us nothing about the will of God. Do they not mean just what they say-the supremely specific thing that in contrast to all other commands the command of God is the command of the good and therefore indisputable even in its definiteness? And this series of commands, as could easily be shown, continues throughout the whole of the Old Testament. Apart from the codified laws in Ex. 20 f., God does not cease to 9

161

[674]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[675J

demand specific things from Moses, and Aaron and the whole people, and later from all His charismatic leaders and representatives, repeatedly confronting them with the necessity of making the most concrete decisions. And there can be no doubt that the sequence of these concrete ordinances characterise the course of the history of the covenant which it is the aim of all parts of the Old Testament to attest and proclaim. It is exactly the same in the New Testament. We shall take our examples only from St. Matthew's Gospel, leaving aside for the moment the Sermon on the Mount and other discourses which might seem to justify the usual interpretations that we have to do with the proclamation of universal principles. It is obvious that we are still wholly in the atmosphere of the patriarchal stories when we are told in 120 how God uses an angel to tellJoseph to take Mary to wife; and in 213 how he is to flee with her into Egypt, and in 220 to return from Egypt. From this point onwards the expressions of the will ofJesus are themselves authoritative, and the first is the insistence in 315 on the necessity of His baptism inJordan: "It becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." In 419 He orders Peter and Andrew to leave their nets and come to Him. In 83f. His Word to the leper is quite specific: "Iwill; be thou clean." So, too, is His Word to the ruler of Capernaum in 813: "Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee"-in exact correspondence to what the latter had said about himself in v. 9: "For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant. Do this, and he doeth it." In 822 the man who is called to be a disciple but first wants to go and bury his father is given the very precise direction: "Followme; and let the dead bury their dead." In 832Jesus commands the demons to go into the swine. In 2119 He orders the fig tree never to bear fruit again. In 96 the sick of the palsy is commanded to take up his bed and walk; and in 99 Matthew is required to leave the seat of custom and follow Him. In 924 He ejects the mourners from the house of Jairus. When the blind man is cured, He forbids him (in 930) to declare what has happened; and He forbids His disciples to disclose that He is the Christ (1620). In 1 05f., when sending out His disciples, He gives them the most concrete directions concerning those whom they shall meet in the way. In 114 He sends a message concerning His deeds to the imprisoned Baptist. In 1213 He says to the man with the withered hand: "Stretch forth thine hand." In 1416 He orders His disciples to give them to eat, and in 1429 Peter is told to come to Him out of the ship. In 1717 He orders that the lunatic boy should be brought to Him. In 1623 He tells Peter: "Get thee behind me, Satan." And when Peter, James andJohn fall on their faces on the mount of transfiguration, He commands them to get up and not to fear (177). In 1921 the rich young man is to sell all that he has and give to the poor, and the Pharisees and Herodians are to pay tribute (222lf.) and thus render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's. In 21 2f. it is purely and exclusively a question of the ass and her colt which the disciples are to free and bring to Jesus. The words at the Last Supper are: "Take and eat," and "Drink ye all of it"; and then in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Sitye here" (2636), "Watch with me" (v. 38), "Watch and pray" (v.41), "Rise, let us be going" (v.46), and finally to Peter (v. 52): "Put up again thy sword into his place." Last of all, in 2810 He sayswith a new authority: "Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me." The list is again remarkable enough. It could easily be extended from the other Gospels, the Acts and in a different way the Epistles. This is how Jesus spoke to command or forbid, in His intercourse with His disciples and other men. What would become of Matthew's Gospel, or the Gospel as such, if we tried to think away this list? The most important insights and decisions depend on these commands. None of them can be dispensed with. None is irrelevant. We are surprised to see how far they go beyond the sphere of human willing and not willing, the human sphere in general. And yet they are none of them less fortuitous, contingent, unique and involved in time and space than the commands of God in the Pentateuch, each provoking the question: Why has Jesus ordered this? Why is it that this must be done? And, again, it

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

is the case that those who want religious ethical principles will find nothing here, but will have to turn to the other words ofjesus which seem to be more pregnant in this respect. Yet if they do they turn away from the living and acting person of jesus Himself which is the content of the Gospel. They overlook the fact that we can best learn what the commanding of Jesus means at this point where we are so unequivocally confronted by His sovereignty, where He Himself and His will take the place of every universal precept, and where we see Him make this very definite use of His sovereignty. This is what happens when jesus commands. The essential character of His command is as we see it here.

It can hardly be disputed that in this question of God's command in the Bible the obvious thing is to keep first and primarily to these series of direct commands which abound profusely in all parts of the Old and New Testaments, and in which we see the commanding God and Lord directly at work as it were, and obedient or disobedient man directly involved in the corresponding deed. At this point, do we not have to infer as a decisive principle of biblical ethics the fact that primarily the divine command does not take the form of universal and general rules, but that of individual concrete and specific orders and directions, so that man is not required to assimilate general rules, himself deciding about the good and the bad when he comes to apply them, but rather to keep steadily before him the special and definite thing that God enjoins him to do or not to do? One thing is clear-that the consideration of these historical pictures, with what seem (in content) to be such fortuitous and contingently historical directions, compels us in a very special way to interest ourselves in the One who issues these directions. Just because it is a question of purely material circumstances and conditions, and we are not given any general ideas and points of view, the one sure thing is thrown so much more clearly into relief: the hand of God which is mighty and disposes in His Word; the will of God which is revealed as such; and the person of God in its sovereignty, which stands before us as directly as a human person, but, as distinct from the latter, with a majesty which allows neither contradiction nor reserve. In the command of God we are face to face with the person of God, with the action and revelation of this person, with God Himself. This is the lesson which we have to learn from these historical pictures. And we certainly cannot learn it from the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount if we consider them in the usual fashion as separate from these historical pictures and not as integral parts of the one great biblical view of history. The decisions of God which are normative for those of man are always made in this personal encounter, as is clear from the issue of these commands. He, God-and in the New Testament, Jesus-precedes us with His transcendent knowledge of what is necessary and right and salutary, declaring and presenting it to man as His resolve, which man must acknowledge and execute as such. And the whole singularity and uniqueness of God as the Lord is reflected in the particularity of what He wills and commands, of what the man who confronts God in this way is ordered to do or not to do. The command is always the particular decision and disposition, and therefore the particular revelation, of this supremely

[676]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[677J

particular Commander. This is the truth which emerges from these historical pictures. Yet this does not mean a dissolution, but an intensification, of the idea of command. An ethics which separates the idea of what is commanded from the person of the commanding God; an ethics which is more concerned about the erection or discovery of definite human orders than the personal will of the divine Orderer, can hardly be constructed, if at all, on the basis of these historical pictures. But this is an even greater challenge to take them as our primary point of orientation. For the seriousness and value of an ethics of this kind is highly questionable. If there is a genuine and unassailable order, self-grounded and secure, it must be rooted in the living and indisputable presence and counsel of an Orderer who is superior to man. And this is how it is presented in these biblical texts, which seem to be so barren from an ethical standpoint. But we have not said everything when we have shown that the divine person and its authority and freedom are marks of the command as attested in these texts. The fact that this divine commanding is contingently historical, involved in time and space, concrete and not abstract, does not mean that it is accidental or meaningless. The person of this God is a very definite person, and in its definiteness, in the character of its will and the bent of its purposes, it is not concealed from us, but revealed and known. What this God determines is not a whim, and what He presents to man to do or not dq is not the product of the fickle caprices of a tyrant whose right consists in his might. We have already pointed out that the dealings of God with man, which always take the form of this commanding and forbidding, constitute the history of His covenant of grace, the story of the actualisation and fulfilmen t of the love in which from all eternity He has inclined to man in the person of His only Son, the application of the predestinarian decree of His election of grace. God is faithful and constant. He is the God of this election of grace. In the event which is the object of the biblical testimony, and therefore in the divine ordering, there can be no question of a mere play of His almighty pleasure with all the variety of man's creaturely possibilities. In this connexion those to whom we owe the biblical text and canon, the biblical witnesses of the Old and New Testaments, the community in its form both as Israel and the Church, saw both a way and a plan. As hearers and readers of this testimony we can and must realise that it is all well thought out, even where it is not easy or even impossible for us to follow in detail the way and plan to the framework of which the individual event belongs, to demonstrate and verify it in detail. The question of the meaning of the will of God, of His decisions, of His commanding and forbidding is not,. therefore, suppressed and eliminated in this consideration of these historical pictures. But we must be concerned to discover the meaning of the will of God in His commanding and forbidding and not a general human meaning behind what is commanded and prohibited. We must keep in view and try to understand His own purpose and action as the true content of what He commands and forbids. But His purpose and action in the story of the

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

covenant of grace to which the Bible bears witness is the mercy for the sake of which and in the strength of which He draws man to Himself in the person of jesus Christ, in which He Himself becomes man in order to execute on man the just judgment of sin, that man may be pure and free and blessed, to give man over to death that he may come to a new life which is life indeed. This is the simple and sufficient meaning and content of the covenant of grace which characterises and inspires all the divine commanding and forbidding to which the Bible bears witness and which is its true ratioEN91• For the sake of His mercy, and therefore for the sake ofjesus Christ and through His agency, God wills to bring into being His community in its form both as Israel and the Churchthis one people with its twofold testimony and message which in both respects means the proclamation of the one Lord jesus Christ: on the one side His death, on the other His resurrection; on the one side the rejection of man which God has taken upon Himself in Christ, on the other the election in which God has turned to man in Him. The history of this one and twofold people as the circumference of the man jesus of Nazareth, the history of its preparation and guidance to be the witness of the one Saviour, and therefore the witness of God's mercy to the whole world, the Bearer of which both derives from this people and is the origin from which this people springs-this history is the history of God's covenant of grace to which the interest of the whole Bible in both its parts is indissolubly directed. And it isjust in the course of this history that there arises the commanding and forbidding which is now our special concern. If we are to understand this, we may as little think of abstracting from this story as from the person of the God who commands. On the contrary, we must continually keep before us and therefore understand the person in the history and the history in the person. If God wills this or that from these men according to the texts, commanding and forbidding so particularly, it is because and to the extent that He wills supremely and uniquely this particular thing-the actualisation of His election of grace, man as the object of His love in His own Son, and therefore the death and resurrection of the One as the end and new beginning for all, and therefore Israel and the Church, and therefore their preparation and equipment for the office of witness. That this is God's will and action is the testimony of the Bible, and it makes this testimony as it testifies to God's commands. Since this history is its essential theme and content, its only possible testimony in relation to the decision of God concerning what man does and does not do is that He wills that it should correspond to this history, that it should be subordinate to its purpose, and adapt itself to its course. God wills that man should be called and gathered to this people of His choice to share in its office of witnessing. God wills that he should be and will and do and not do the unique thing required by the unique thing which God Himself is and wills and does and does not do injesus Christ. FN~I I

reason

[678]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God This particular thing which cannot be reduced to any moral common denominator is the specific meaning and content of the demands which God makes on man as we see from the historical pictures. How strangely would the Bible deviate from its proper theme and content if it presented matters otherwise than it actually does in the shape of this, so to speak, historical ethics, if it were to describe the will of God as the establishment and proclamation of general precepts and rules which can be filled out only on the basis of the reflection and decision of man! It does not do so. It represents God as the Father or Lord who requires always this or that, a particular thing. It would not be the Bible, but the code of a Hammurabi or the law of a Solon or Mohammed, if it put things otherwise, if it knew of any other duty for man but that in his time and place and situation he should take the part allotted to him in this history. It is not in virtue of any intrinsic universal truth, but in virtue of the special truth of its divine foundation and embodiment that this duty signifies the good which man is to perform (co-operating in the course of the history of the covenant of grace) . [679]

If we again consider passages already adduced from Genesis and Exodus, it cannot be denied that the divine commanding and forbidding follows a distinct thread-that of the history of the divine covenant of grace. It is not alwaysand everywhere that this commanding and forbidding is specially emphasised. But it certainly is at all the critical points of the story where the presentation aims at making clear both the sovereign initiative of God and also at the same time the fact that God requires the active co-operation of man as a partner in the divine work. This is the case with the command: "Be fruitful and multiply," which does not seem to reckon with the possibility of sin; and the prohibition concerning the tree of knowledge. The grace of God wills that man should live (as the animal denizens of the sea and air are also told to do in Gen. 122), but live without question or discussion and not as his own judge. If, in spite of the transgression of this command and its consequences, God remains true to him, then, as we see from the command to Noah about the building of the ark, he may not expect his salvation from any self-discovered technique, but only from the strict observance of a precise divine prescription. The command to live must now be repeated under the sign of the divine patience, and from now on it must be heard under this sign and with this caveat. And if in the covenant with Abraham this faithfulness of God assumes the form which in the opinion of the redactors of Genesis was clearly foreshadowed in the story of Noah's ark, there can be no question at all of man's initiative, but the initiative of the divine election of grace must necessarily be accompanied by all the special commands with which the story of Abraham is so thickly scattered and that of Isaac and Jacob somewhat less thickly.A similar crucial point in the story is obviously to be found in the Exodus and the story of Moses, who is secured from the temptation to interpret himself as a religio-political leader by the fact that all his decisive actions are characterised as fulfilments of direct divine commands. And that the people of Israel itself has not helped itself but received divine help emerges clearly in the fact that its movements, too, are either directly or indirectly (through the mouth of Moses) accompanied by divine commands. God actualises His covenant with man by giving him commands, and man experiences this actualisation by the acceptance of these commands. The people of God from which Jesus Christ will spring is constituted by this immediate and direct guidance. Similarly, according to the typical material surveyed in St. Matthew's Gospel, the Church is constituted as the second form of the community-that which itself derives from Jesus

166

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

Christ. If the directions to joseph, the foster-father of jesus, form in a certain sense the conclusion and climax to the call of Israel, the commands of jesus Himself all reflect more or less clearly the two aspects of the Messianic presence, the two poles of Christology: the humiliation and exaltation of jesus, the hiddenness and manifestation of His election, His suffering to take away the sins of many and His lordship as the Giver of life to these many. When jesus commands and forbids, it means that He discloses His Messiahship and that He summons men to share either in His priestly or His kingly office, either exclusively as recipients or exclusively as those who are themselves to work and give. It is alwaysa question of His person, but because this is so, it is a question of the imminent coming of God's kingdom, of the revelation of the secret of the election of grace in its twofold form. It is because the divine person and the divine cause are so specific in both the Old and New Testament that in both the commands and prohibitions of God are so specific and are always filled out so concretely.

But we must not overlook the fact that there are some biblical contexts in which the command assumes the form of general rules which are valid for large numbers of people and are detached from any particular historical circumstances. The question arises how far the command in these passages is to be interpreted differently from the historical sense upon which we have insisted. It cannot be denied that these passages exist and that if we could take them out of their context, or if they had come down to us otherwise than in the larger nexus of the biblical writings and Canon, it would be quite possible to interpret them as if they were a statement of principles and rules and to understand the commands of God to be rules and principles of this kind. And the question certainly arises-and it is an exegetical question of the first importance-whether we have to interpret these special texts in the light of their historical context, or whether, conversely, we have to interpret the historical context in the light of a general ethical understanding of these texts. To a very large extent, both openly and secretly, the Christian Church and theology have taken the latter course. They have viewed these passages in isolation, trying to explain their historical context as a more or less important or unimportant excrescence, or as a mere illustration. They have understood these passages as if they stated ethical principles, definite norms for the determination of good and evil actions and attitudes, the former commanded and the latter forbidden. They have interpreted them as if these principles had a weight of their own, an autonomous significance; as if the command and will of God, the good which God requires of man, were to be found in these principles as such. This interpretation easily recommended itself by its convenience. It meant that the command of God could at once be understood in formal analogy with what man usually understands in any case as the sum of the good, as law, even apart from God. And on this presupposition there could easily be found in what these texts describe as the good a good deal of what man thinks to be the good in any case, and the rest with a little adaptation. It was thought that the substance of the whole biblical witness could be seen in these passages as interpreted in this way. The rest of the Bible had then to be explained and appraised by them, and it was only a secondary question

[680]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[681J

whether the historical context was despised as a (basically obstructive) scaffolding or honoured as an illustration of the principles which were found here and in which it was considered that the substance of the whole biblical witness was contained. The first attitude was the more natural where the historical difficulties were more keenly felt, the second where it was thought possible to overcome them. But it ought to be said that this solution of the problem is in no sense that of a sound exegesis because it rests from the very outset upon a capricious assumption. For it is capricious to detach these texts from their background and to prefer them hermeneutically to their background simply because it is thought possible to recognise in them something already familiar. It is obvious from the supposedly secondary background of these passages in both Old and New Testaments that the theme of the Bible is something other than the proclamation of ethical principles. This cannot be denied, whatever may be our attitude towards the fact. Therefore those who decide for that solution of the problem must realise that they are taking a disastrous freedom with the Bible, and if they appeal to the Bible they must be reminded that they are appealing to a Bible which they have first adjusted to their own convenience. If we keep in view the theme of the whole Bible-whatever may be our attitude towards it, whether sympathetic or not-there can be only one prior decision in this fundamental exegetical question. It can be expected that this will be the theme of these special contexts, that even the divine commanding and forbidding of which they speak will therefore have the same meaning as in the rest of the Bible, and that in them, too, this theme will have to be understood historically and concretely and not in a general, non-spatial and nontemporal sense. These texts, too, obviously purport to be witnesses of what God-or in the New Testament jesus-once addressed as His demand either to one man or to many. In this respect they do not differ from the other passages. Nor do they differ from them in the sense that they, too, point to a historical occasion for the divine communication of the Law, or at least allude to a person who has heard and imparted to others the disclosure of the divine command or the counsels of the divine wisdom. Again, they do not differ from them in the sense that they, too, plainly and exclusively refer to the sphere of the community as it is elected, separated and gathered by the will and Word and act of God. As it is presented in these passages, too, the command is an event which forms a particular step in the nexus of the history of divine grace, and which in fact can be understood only in this context. The special feature of these texts consists (1) in the fact that, according to their witness, the command appears to be addressed to an indeterminate number of men, and (2) that they therefore appear to be concerned, not with the specific actions of specific men, but generally with certain possibilities of action on the part of all kinds of men. If this twofold appearance is not a mere appearance we are naturally forced to conclude th-at these passages proclaim something like general principles as the command of God. But the appear168

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

ance is, in fact, deceptive. It could arise only from the fact that in these texts we have to do with collections or summaries of divine commands. As several beams of light are brought to a focus in a lens, or several threads in a cable, so many particular commands are united and expressed in these comprehensive demands addressed to the people in the Old Testament and the Church in the New. It is certainly not the purpose of these collections either to compromise or weaken the directness and urgency with which God elsewhere turns to the individual man, to exchange here His personal address for a more generalised word by which the individual may feel himself affected or not. There is here no dismissal, but an extremely energetic apprehension of the individual in his capacity as a member of the people or the Church. This is the intention of the comprehensiv~ demands expressed in these passages. They are not in any sense meant to blur the definiteness with which God elsewhere requires concrete individual decisions, replacing them by abstract rules or general points of view by means of which the individual has then to decide for himself how he must obey. There is here no evasion, but in the true and strict sense a strengthening of the concreteness of the divine demand, for everything which God requires from the individual is proclaimed in these summaries as His will for His people or Church, and therefore for the individual members of this people or Church. It is not, then, the intention of these proclamations of law to replace and supersede the special events in which God addresses the individual as such and wills to be heard by him. But what takes place in these proclamations is that God declares Himself to be the Subject of all these special summonses, the One who has the power and right to confront the individual in these specific addresses with binding commands and prohibitions because He is the Lord of the people or community to which the individual belongs, whose property the individual is, and to whose control and claim the individual is subject. They speak of Himself and His sovereignty, of His essential nature in contrast to that of other lords, of the constitution of His people or community and the implied conditions and characteristics of the individual members who belong to it. These summaries remind us of the obligation which God has undertaken with regard to each of the individuals who belong to Him and which each of these individuals must accept in relation to God. They affect in some sense all the individuals to whom God belongs and who belong to God, who form this people or community. They concern them because they are not just any men-as God is not just any being-but these particular men and women to whom God has specifically bound Himself and who for their part are specially bound to God by the divine election of the community whose members they are and who therefore share its divine election. These summaries of the command concern the true individuality of man in that they claim him for the cause of God. They put before him, and prepare him for the fact that as the One He is God will always continually claim man as the one he is in the whole range of his life. As God speaks in the events of these summaries, He will always and in all circumstances speak to each individual, 169

[682]

S 38.

[683J

The Command as the Decision of God

and the one who is now man as the object addressed in these summaries will always and in all circumstances be face to face with God, whoever he may be. God will always say to all individuals: "Be ye holy, for I am holy." But what this holiness is, and the holiness always required of each individual, they are in all circumstances to learn from these proclamations of law. That is why they must continually hear them and hand them on from generation to generation, so that they may rightly hear at all times the God who always speaks to each individual, not confronting Him as though He were a stranger, or confounding His voice-the voice of the Good Shepherd-with other voices. These summaries are, therefore; in some sense the solemnly proclaimed self-qualifications of God, and at the same time, and by the fact that they are revealed, the solemnly proclaimed qualities of His own, of those with whom He has resolved to speak and whom He has called to hearken to His voice. They reveal the background against which the dealings of God with man are always unconditionally transacted with the urgency and immediacy which characterise them; the presuppositions on both sides; the series of divine attributes and human obligations which will form the framework of the particular events of divine commanding and forbidding, of the actual encounters between God and man, of the events in the history of the divine covenant of grace. They distinguish these events from events of other kinds. Therefore the passages in which we have to do with such summaries are not concerned with special commands above and beyond those which God give to His own under the conditions and definiteness of time and space. On the contrary, they speak of the commanding God as such and committed man as such. They show how God and man and man and God are bound to one another-bound in exactly the same way as emerges in the other texts with the descriptions of concrete and definite divine-human encounters, of the definite and special divine commanding and forbidding. They proclaim this interlocking as such. They are, therefore, indispensable alongside the other texts. They form with them a single whole. And the command of God which they attest is no less historical than in the latter, even these proclamations of law being described in the express form of definite historical events. Indeed, we can only say that they present us with a kind of concentrated ~orm-the basic historicity-of the divine command. For an appraisal of the Ten Commandments, which we will take as illustrating our point (for what follows, cf. Alfred de Quervain, Das Gesetz Gottes, 1935 and 1936), it must primarily be noted that their proper and original proclamation consists in such an action as takes place between man and man, i.e., in a direct encounter between God and Moses from which the mass of the people are held aloof by the strictest warnings. In both Ex. 195 and Deut. 5 God's speaking with man is represented as a highly particular and dangerous matter, accompanied by thunder, lightning and the blast of the trumpet, phenomena against which the rest of the people can only take fearful precautions. The man who is fitted to meet and speak with God must be marked out for this purpose, and called and equipped by God Himself. Moses is a man of this kind, but he is the only one in these passages. As a representative of the people, he receives the commands appointed for the ordering of their life. He receives

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

them (Ex. 321:>1".) on two tables of stone inscribed on both sides. "And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables." As their first and qualified recipient, Moses is then to give them to the people. But even this seems too direct for the people, and is, in fact, frustrated. Before Moses has come down again from the mountain, and before the people have received the commands, they have sinned with the golden calf, and in view of this event "his anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount" (Ex. 3219). In the event, the people finally receive two other tables (Ex. 344, 28) hewn out and inscribed by Moses himself. Thus the command to Moses-he alone was the man to whom Yahweh spake face to face as a man speaks with his friend (Ex. 3311 )-was from the very outset distinct and different from the cOfilmand which was later given to the people and received by it. The former revelation was an absolutely unique event between God and Moses. The latter-in a quite different sphere-is simply the attestation of that revelation. This is made unambiguously clear by the whole narrative. It is to be noted further that, according to the accounts in both Exodus and Deuteronomy (Ex. 342H, Deut. 522,104), the Ten Commandments are only the peak points ofa whole series of special decrees and ordinances. "And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said will we do" (Ex. 243ffo). This means that the Ten Commandments belong to the whole corpus of ordinances for the common life, law and culture revealed to Moses and declared by him to the people. It is another question that these detailed ordinances are partly (but only partly) to be read as a commentary on the Ten Commandments, which are perhaps their original and oldest form, or to be understood, conversely, as a summarised extract from them. What cannot be disputed is that the former stand with equal seriousness and weight by the side of the latter and that the latter can properly be understood and valued only as constituting with them a single whole. This means again that the Ten Commandments, revealed to Moses and attested to the people of Israel, are to be interpreted as part of the direction given for the concrete shaping of the people's life in the presence of its God. It cannot be said that this particular part of the direction was singled out for special veneration in the other Old Testament writings-historical, prophetic or otherwise-and that we are therefore constrained by them to isolate it from its immediate context. Nor, above all, can we say that it constitutes a blank sheet which has to be filled by interpretation and is thus susceptible of various interpretations. The fact of the matter is that the Ten Commandments are fairly exhaustively interpreted by their immediate context. These apparently formal and general directions, which seem to be open to various applications, have in reality a very precise content. For example, we cannot really understand by "killing" anything but deliberate murder, or by adultery anything but illicit intercourse between one man and the wife of a third party, or by bearing false witness against one's neighbour anything but malicious false testimony before a court of justice. It has also to be remembered that the reference is always to relationships between members of the people. We are not at liberty to understand anything and everything by these things, but must keep to what they intend to say,and do actually say,according to the clear declarations of the context. The third point to be noted is this that in the strict sense the Ten Commandments do not contain any direct commands, but only prohibitions or rather delimitations. The holiness of God, and the holiness of man conditioned by it means delimitation, separation, setting apart, as befits the divine election and the position of the elect defined by it. In this context even the command with regard to the Sabbath day, as also that concerning the respect due to parents, has the following meaning. A definite sphere is marked out, but not positively and inwardly. No account is given of what must happen within this sphere. Directions to this

[684]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[685]

effect obviously belong to quite a different plane and cannot be discussed in connexion with the Ten Commandments and the related legislation. We are simply told what must not in any circumstances take place in this sphere, what can do so only in definite conflict with the divine will and as an absolutely reprehensible action on the part of man. It is impossible for the member of the community to which these general and juridical and cultic directions are given to have any other god but the Lord who led Israel out of Egypt. It is impossible for him to make images of this God and worship Him in them. It is impossible for him to use the name of this God for profane purposes. It is impossible for him to work on the day when the Lord rested. It is, therefore, impossible for him to treat his parents without respect (to strike them or curse them, as is explained later). It is impossible for him to murder, or to violate the marriages of others and thus to jeopardise the legitimacy of his neighbours' offspring. It is impossible for him to steal, or to slander, or to covet the goods of others. What must happen positively is another question. But whatever it be, it must not violate these prescribed limits. It cannot be what is here declared to be impossible. In concretoEN92 many other things not excluded by these terms are illegitimate. But what is excluded by them must not be done in any circumstances. How and in what God alwayswills to be honoured by His people is the theme of the first four laws,and how and in what He wills to see His people protected against fratricidal strife and self-destruction is the subject matter of the last six. Taken together, they mark off the sphere within which the dealings of God with His people and their conduct before Him and towards Him are to run their course. They are the indication of a definite sphere. The legislation which follows is only a fuller and more detailed form of this indication. It is a very substantial indication. We can infer from it quite' enough in relation to the interested parties. They tell us of a God who has shown Himself unique and incomparable by constituting Himself the Lord and Helper of this people and thus claiming it as His own.Just because He is this free and loving God, He is not interchangeable with any creature in heaven or on earth, or with the likeness of any product of human imagination. He is sovereign, and His name is holy above every other name, and not to be named with any other in the same breath. And as this sovereign God, He gives His people a place on the earth. In the land which He will give them ~e promises to show them mercy to the thousandth generation, and to cause their history to move to the Sabbath rest of consummation, just assymbolically-every working week culminates in the Sabbath. And, again, they tell us of this people as a people from whom the worst is alwaysto be expected. They have to be warned and protected against committing the most blatant sins against Himself and one another. They are inclined by nature (Heid. Cat., quo 5) to hate God and their neighbour. But because God has joined Himself to them and adopted them as His sons they are actually warned and protected against these things. They can therefore live ~ith Him and with one another. The weak are protected from the strong .Justice is done especially to the weak. And the people are secured against self-destruction and dissolution. This is the place indicated by the Decalogue as widened and completed by the legislation which follows. Because it is itself an event-in fact the basic event in the story of Israel-it unfolds the programme of the whole history of this people, or rather of God's dealings with it, of this people as controlled by His guidance, and therefore by implication of the whole history of His elect community-of the Church as it is prepared and announced in Israel and finally derives from Israel. It was not, therefore, without justification that the Decalogue was adopted as the basis of the Christian catechism. It is the foundation-statute of the divine covenant of grace and valid for all ages. Everything that the true God, the Founder and Lord of this covenant, has commanded and forbidden, or will command and forbid, is to be found within. the framework of the proEN92

concretely

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

gramnle of all His decisions and purposes as contained in the Decalogue. In all His commands and prohibitions it will always be a question of the divine glory and the divine protection as revealed to Moses as a type of the Mediator between God and man, and attested by him to the people of Israel in the summary of the Ten Commandments and the more detailed legislation which follows. The action of the true God and the life of men in fellowship with Him will alwaysbe distinguished by these limits from the action of all other lords and from all other possibilities of human life. The only thing is that we must not expect to find here something more or other than a framework and programme of the divine action and corresponding human conduct, and therefore of the real history which takes place between God and man. God will command and forbid within these limits and not elsewhere. But His commands and prohibitions will not consist simply in repetitions and applications of the Decalogue. There would be no sense in giving them an artificial interpretation as if they contained already all the directions in which God requires man's obedience and his life or death is decided. The nature of the relationship founded and ordered by God between God and man, and of the concrete divine directions to man which this relationship involves, is another matter. What these directions are, their aspect and character, is something that we cannot infer from the Ten Commandments or the wider associated legislation as such. On the contrary, we can only find it in the other biblical narratives, in those accounts of the living demand for obedience directed to particular men in particular situations, as, for example, in the direct intercourse of God with Moses on the mount (Ex. 19 ff.). The revelation of the Law as such proclaims who it is that deals with His own in these directions, and who they are that can receive these directions as His own. But it is the event of this direction itself only for Moses, who has to attest it to the people, in order that they, for their part, may be prepared for the reception of this direction, for the further development of the covenant history which will take the form of these events. Later this people is expressly told (Ex. 2320f_): "Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way,and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him. But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries." The whole history of Israel develops, accordingly, within the framework provided by the revelation of the Law, but not as if this framework were itself the picture: for the latter consists in the special concrete events of divine commanding and forbidding, of human obedience or disobedience, not envisaged in the Law as such. The salvation or overthrow of Israel depends upon whether or not it will hearken to the voice of this angel, to the living voice of Moses and later of the prophets (in the broadest sense of this term), and therefore to the living and never utterly silent voice of God Himself. What is the use of Israel's possessing and observing the Law ifit does not do this? How it sins against the Law itself-perhaps even in a literal sense, but at all events against its spirit even though its letter be strictly observed, and therefore against the meaning and the purpose in which and for which it is given-if it is not obedient to the angel, for whose voice it should have been prepared by the Law and to whose authoritative office the Law bears witness! How the Law is misused, and made an instrument of sin in the sense finally indicated by Paul, if man considers himself obedient and righteous, and himself wants to bring about the fulfilment of the promise, by keeping the Law-as though he could keep the Law in any other waybut by being willing and ready to obey the voice of God who has called him to Himself in the Law, and willing and ready to be the man-the man committed to this Lord-who is marked as such by the Law! To keep the Ten Commandments is to take up the position which they outline and define, and in this-the only possible-position to wait for the specific commands of God for which the proclamation of the Law prepares us, to be constantly obedient to His call. The man who does this is righteous and will live. The man who does not

173

[686]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[687J

transgresses all the Ten Commandments and the whole Law, however precisely his conduct keeps within the limits defined by the Ten Commandments. For without living obedience to the living God, he does not in fact stand in the place to which he is directed by the commandments. All this becomes still clearer when, again by way of illustration, we turn. to the so-called Sermon on the Mount as presented by Matthew. (Cf. for what follows the monograph of Eduard Thurneysen, Die Bergpredigt, 1936, which is so illuminating in this connexion.) Ifit is the basic rule of interpretation, which we must apply to this passage too, that a text must be read in the light of its context, i.e., in this case against the background of the rest of St. Matthew's Gospel, then in this instance it is clear that the decisive character of its contents is to be sought in its special connexion with the theme of God's kingdom as it has come in the person of Jesus Christ in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. This is true of the Sermon on the Mount as of other great discourses in Matthew. The special feature of this reference in the Sermon on the Mount consists in the fact that now it isJesus Himself (as once the God of Moses) who defines, in the form of comprehensive positive and negative directions, the sphere in which He is present with His own, with those whom He has called and will call, the sphere of His care for them and lordship over them. It is the sphere where it is proclaimed and heard and authentic that the kingdom of God has come because and as He, Jesus, has come,.because the seventh day, the day of days, has now dawned. The Sermon on the Mount outlines the order proper to this Sabbath day. It cuts across the Ten Commandments in a new dimension not yet visible in them-vertically, on the presupposition of an event coming from heaven to earth. It makes clear what is still concealed there in the expectation of this event-that God Himself in His own person not only faithfully upholds the covenant that He has established with man, but Himself completes it in favour of man and fulfils its conditions. The order which constitutes the life .of the people of God-for this is what the Sermop on the Mount is, and to this extent it isonly a repetition and confirmation of the Ten Commandments and the whole of the Old Testament Law-is now set in the light of the fact that, as it was founded and proclaimed by God, so now is it fulfilled by Him for man's salvation, which means, however, that the life of obedience for which it prepares and summons man, rejected by the people of Israel in its conflict with Moses and the prophets, is now established and fulfilled by Israel's Messiah for the Israel which has alwaysrejected and now definitively rejects Him, and therefore for all men. In the light of this fact what can the lifeorder of the people of God be but the definition of the sphere within which men cling to this life of obedience lived out on their behalf and use the grace thus shown to them-the sphere in which they may live withJesus their Lord who has made Himself their servant and who in this service proves Himself their Lord? It is of the order of life seen in this light (and in substance it is the same as that described in the Law) that the Sermon on the Mount speaks. It is true that it attacks and overthrows the Judaistic understanding of the Law, the understanding of disobedience. But this is only in some sense incidental. The fact that this understanding is the false understanding of disobedience only confirms the obvious teaching of the whole of Israel's history. Even more true is the further point that the superior righteousness of the kingdom of heaven is revealed by which man's disobedience is uncovered, but uncovered only that it may be at once and finally and effectively covered, and by which the air in which this disobedience can breathe and subsist is dispelled. It is also true that the Sermon on the Mount orders the life of man in the light of the fact that the seventh and last day has now dawned, so that the time which mankind now has, the time of the six worldly and working days, is only borrowed and improper time, the end of all things being at hand and men being able to live only as members of the last age. But this again is only in a sense incidental. It does not constitute the substance and meaning of this order of life. For it is not the end of the old and the beginning of the new aeon which forms the nerve of the

174

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

order proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount, but the fact that Jesus is both end and beginning, that both are fulfilled in Him, in the reality of the kingdom which has drawn near in Him. That He rules in virtue of His ministry as the Mediator between God and men is even more true than the establishment of the dawning of the last age and the implied necessities, and it is this alone which gives to the eschatological assertion its proper weight and characteristic seriousness. It is also true that the directions of the Sermon on the Mount seem to be objectively concerned with certain problems of human life and the false or correct solution of these problems-the maintenance of life and marriage, the question of swearing and justice, the problem of enemies and the matters of almsgiving, prayer and fasting. But it must not be overlooked that this, too, is incidental and only by way of illustration. And, as in the case of the Ten Commandments, the negative far exceeds the positive. For it is essentially a question of delimitation. That is why it has alwaysproved impossible to construct a picture of the Christian life from these directions. The picture that they offer is, in fact, the picture of the One who has given these directions and of the light which He Himself sheds on the problems raised, and not only on these, but on man as a whole as he stands face to face withJesus. The Sermon on the Mount is intended to draw our attention to the person of Jesus-to the question of this person-which shows itself, of course, to be the original and (necessarily) the final point at issue in all human conduct. The Sermon on the Mount, too, is primarily and decisively a notification, a proclamation, a description and a programme. Its imperatives, too, have primarily and decisively the character of indicating a position and laYinga foundation. The position indicated and the foundation laid are the kingdom, Jesus, the new man. And these are not three things, but one and the same. The kingdom is the new man inJesus.Jesus Himself is the kingdom of the new humanity. The new Adam isJesus the Bringer and Herald of the kingdom. Proclaiming this threefold unity, the Sermon on the Mount proclaims the consummation of the covenant of grace, and therefore the telosEN93 of the Law and the Ten Commandments. It proclaims the position which in the Ten Commandments was determined and promised to Israel, but only determined and promised and not given. The Sermon on the Mount, like the New Testament as a whole, defines and describes it as something now given. If the Ten Commandments state where man may and should stand before and with God, the Sermon on the Mount declares that he has been really placed there by God's own deed. If the Ten Commandments are a preface, the Sermon on the Mount is in a sense a postscript. The history of the covenant of grace has reached its goal and end. It does not continue in the history of the Church at whose beginning there stands the declarations of the Sermon on the Mount. For time does not continue after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It can only move awayfrom this its centre-moving to its already appointed end. For its end is determined by the fact that it has been given this centre. The Church is the community of God in this time which moves awayfrom this centre to its appointed and already visible end. The covenant of grace as such has no further history in this time. The only question now is whether the Church will live or not live in the fulness of life already granted to it, in recognition or nonrecognition, gratitude or ingratitude, in face of what God has finally and once for all accomplished for man, in the freedom which God has decisively accorded to man, or the bondage from which he has been finally and conclusively released, and which has now become a complete anachronism. The Sermon on the Mount, as a postscript, as a document of the completed covenant of grace and its concluded history, defines and describes the freedom which is given to the people of God in its new form as the Church, and which is to be proclaimed by the Church to the whole world. FN~I:~

goal, end

175

[688]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[689]

As an announcement of the kingdom of God, the Sermon on the Mount makes the following declaration. Here on this earth and in time, and therefore in the immediate context of all human kingdoms both small and great, and in the sphere of Satan who rules and torments fallen man, God has irrevocably and indissolubly set up the kingdom of His grace, the throne of His glory, the kingdom which as such is superior to all other powers, to which, in spite of their resistance, they belong, and which they cannot help but serve. The concrete existence of the kingdom of God means not only opposition to this resistance, but victory over it, like an offered checkmate, after which the defeated adversary, ifhe is not sufficiently intelligent to give up the game, may wonder for yet a few minutes whether there is not the possibility of avoiding it. To the extent that this lack of understanding on the part of the defeated adversary is a fact, the conflict seems as if it would and could go further. The kingdom of heaven seems not yet to have come, or merely to have drawn near, or merely to beckon to man as a future possibility. The Sermon on the Mount reckons with this powerful and fatal appearance by saYingof those that weep that they shall be comforted, of the meek that they shall possess the earth, of those who hunger and thirst after righteousness that they shallbe filled (Mt. 54f.). That it is only an appearance, it attests by the fact that its overwhelming and decisive emphasis is not on the future but on the present. It says of those who are poor in spirit that theirs isthe kingdom of heaven, and again of those who are persecuted for righ teousness sake that theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Those who hear and believe the message, who do not see a future but a present transformation of the whole world situation, and therefore of that of man-the twilight of the gods completed, Satan falling as lightning from heaven-such begin to live on the basis of this change. Because they hope in what is promised to them by this declaration, they already have it. Because they have understood that the kingdom of heaven has drawn near, they are already called to be its citizens and to participate in its rights and duties, in its active proclamation. That is why it is said: ''Yeare the salt of the earth" ; ''Yeare the light of the world" (513f.). By the witness of their own experience, they are exponents of the kingdom which comes and has already come. The new man of the Sermon on the Mount is not, therefore, a beautiful dream or only a divine promise. The Israelite man of the Ten Commandments is this-and it is a good deal. But the new man of the Sermon is a present reality. He is this because Jesus is there, not merely for Himself, " but as the Herald, Proclaimer and Bringer of the kingdom, the One who speaks of it with Egova{u EN94 (729), because this is His right, because He is the One in whom it comes into proximity with all human spheres, and because with this Egova{u EN95 He speaks to other real men. As He does this, as He is heard and believed by the latter, the kingdom achieves reality and, in spite of all appearances, unmasking it as appearance, there is human life in the kingdom of heaven. "Therefore whosoever heareth these saYingsof mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock" (724). But in and of himself man is not this-nor can he be according to ~he evidence of the whole of the Old Testament and of the manner in which Israel reacts to the advent of its Messiah. He can be this wise builder? a (LuKapLOS (5 3f.), and then at once also the salt and light of the earth, only as he hears and does the"words ofJesus. No human life is constructed as the Sermon on the Mount depicts it. Who can ever find himself achieving that higher righteousness (520), or really fulfilling the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law, as indicated in 521£. ? For whom can the picture of the truly pious man, the man who rightly gives alms and fasts and prays (61£.), or that of the man who is not avaricious and therefore truly carefree (619f.), or that of the man who refrains from judging his neighbours, ever cease to be a novelty, the picture of a new and different man, as compared with his own state of life? Most certainly, we EN94 EN95

authority authority

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

are not this. And in view of the notorious non-fulfilment of the Ten Commandments by the people of Israel, it would be sheer folly to interpret the imperatives of the Sermon on the Moun t as if we should bestir ourselves to actualise these pictures. Yetthe whole picture of the new man which seems to be there unfolded is not a fantasy but a reality. It has not been introduced as a reality by us but for us. We hear and do all this as the Word ofjesus. We must be pleased to allow our very different life to be illuminated byjesus. This is the point of these imperatives. They demand of us that we be pleased to accept the supremely wonderful and unexpected interpretation of the dark text of our lives by the grace of God which has appeared in jesus. You wretched ones are truly blessed! You transgressors and evil doers are righteous! You hypocrites are sincere! You victims of the lust for gold and possessions, you prisoners of care, you blindjudges of your neighbour are free! How does this come about? It comes about by the Word which I speak to you-the Word which contradicts your life, and in so doing catches it and holds it and saves it, interpreting it according to the purpose of its Creator. It comes about by the light which, from the fact that I am in your midst, falls from above upon the tangled skein of your life. It is not by yourself, but by Me. Condemning you, I exonerate you. judging you, I accept you. SlaYingyou, I make you alive. The life of the new humanity is that which is interpreted byjesus and lived out in this interpretation. Of course, it is a life in hope to the extent that it can be lived as new life only as we hear the Word of Jesus, to the extent that man has continually to look beyond himself in order, in that moment to be able to live in this moment the life of the new man. But it must also be realised and said that in this moment it is objectively present as new life. Man does not look only to the future as such, but to jesus as His only and real future. And this future is not a mere future without present actuality, or a mere promise without present fulfilment. His Word is the truth-not to-morrow only but already to-day-for His kingdom, the kingdom of heaven proclaimed by His Word, is the kingdom of the eternal God Himself, and this God is faithful. That is one aspect of the position defined in the Sermon on the Mount. As a self-disclosure of Jesus its message is as follows. The kingdom, and with it the new man, has now appeared. For the Lord of the covenant, and therefore the Lawgiver Himself, the Ruler and Controller of life in this covenant, has now in His own person become the neighbour of man and of all human spheres. Because this has happened, the covenant is completed, its history is closed, and the time still left has become a mere running out of time to its appointed end. The Law, as it is given to Israel, and within the framework of which the living voice of God was heard through the prophets, is not revoked by this new indication corresponding to the effected transformation of things. This is strongly emphasised in 517£.: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Not one jot or tittle of the Law shall pass away until everything is accomplishedeverything that is to be accomplished in confirmation of the already realised fulfilment. Therefore there can be no question of the Sermon on the Mount setting up a new Law in place of the old, or taking up a different position from the old in relation to the covenant. The position is not a new one, but the old one differently expressed. The difference is that the Lawgiver on the mount does not keep back His disciples who are to receive His Law, as God once kept back the people, but calls them to Him, and opens His mouth and speaks to them, as God once spoke to Moses like a man to his friend. What Moses brought down from Sinai was not the kingdom and the new man, but the promise of them; the definition of the sphere in which the history of the covenant will run towards the kingdom and the new man. As against this, what the disciples ofjesus, and in them the Church, take awayfrom this other mount, is the full reality of the kingdom itself and the new man. For what is ascribed to them is not a law of righteousness but righteousness itself: the righteousness of the kingdom (633); the higher righteousness without which (520) no one can enter into the kingdom of heaven; to hunger and thirst after which (56) is not, therefore, a question of mere inclination, but a

[690]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[691]

real, the most real determination of human life; to which every man willingly and wittingly or not, is subject; but in which no one can participate (510) without being persecuted for it and therefore having to suffer. It is the fulfilling of all commands (633), and therefore in itself the command. But this can be said only if we mean by it that it is itself the Commander who embodies the command. For righteousness in the Bible is not a constitution and state conceived as an idea or decree, but a deed and action, inseparable from the conception of a human person, in which a wrong state of affairs is restored and reconstituted, and by which those who suffered by the wrongness are helped. Or, more precisely, it is the verdict of a judge, expressed and executed with full competence, who as a righteous helper proclaims and secures the right where wrong was triumphant. This is the righteousness with which we have to do in the imperatives of the Sermon on the Mount. They require a life controlled by the right, by the strictest and most real, the divine right. As is well known, they stand at right angles to the Old Testament Law to the extent that with their "But I sayunto you" they exalt into something universal all that is there meant and said with supreme particularity as the forbidding of a transgression of definite limits, giving to everything that is there connected with the outward form of human life a new orientation to the inner life of man, and his existence in its totality. God does not merely forbid killing (52lf.), but the contemptuous word, the careless connivance in the existing accusation of another. He does not merely forbid adultery (527f.), but the lustful glance at the wife of another. He does not merely forbid the false oath (533f.), but the oath-taking which encourages human falsehood. He requires order (538f.), but an order which does not need to prevail through violence. He commands love of one's neighbour (543f.), but the love which recognises a neighbour in those who are most distan t, and therefore also and especially in one's enemy. This is necessarily the state of affairs in human life when it is controlled by divine righteousness. So complete and thoroughgoing is that righteousness! And the Word of Jesus which blesses those who hear and keep it, comparing them to wise builders, to the salt and light of the world, creates and establishes this righteousness, setting up this order of righteousness in contrast to every other, in contrast to everything which in the affairs of men is considered to be an order of righteousness, and which in this contrast can only be revealed as unrighteousness. The Word of Jesus as such, performed by those who hear it, is righteousness, and therefore a powerful help to all who suffer from unrighteousness, and in such a way that it proclaims the existence of a man which is controlled by the divine command not only in particular things but integrally, not only outwardly but inwardly and therefore in its totality. This man is obviously the Israelite, the man of Jer. 3133, of whom it is said that God has implanted His Law in his inmost being, and written it on his heart. As it is said to a man by Jesus, and he allows it to be said: Thou art this man!, as he accepts the Word of Jesus and dares to live in the strength of it, righteousness is imparted to him, the unrighteousness that Satan and he himself have brought upon himself is dispelled, and he becomes a righteous man. The grace of this Word, the Word of truth, makes him this. In contrast to the promised grace of the Ten Commandments with their reference to the sphere within which God wills to and will deal with His people, it is the real grace in which God in person has fulfilled His promise, sought out His people, and in His own person led His people to that place and established them there. Thus the grace of this Word is itself the righteousness which comes to man and is to be exercised by him-the higher righteousness of the kingdom. It is better than the righteousness of which, even with the best will and knowledge, the scribes and Pharisees can speak (520), and it is the righteousness of the kingdom (633), because it consists directly in the deed and gift of the Lawgiver andJudge, because it is powerfully created and imparted by Him, because it is the living righteousness of those to whom He utters it and who allow Him so to utter it. Those who hunger and thirst after it-which means objectively all mankind-will be filled because He creates and imparts it (56). For He has come to fulfil

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

the Law (517). That is why the Law in His mouth stands at right angles to the Law of the Old Testament. That is why the rigour and fulness of the divine right controlling human life emerges only with the "But I say unto you" which He opposes to the Old Testament Law. That is why this emergence of the rigour and preciseness of the divine righteousness is at the same time and as such an act of real grace-not merely promised but consummated. jesus has come to fulfil the Law.To fulfil, 1TA'YJpwaaL, means alwaysin St. Matthew, and therefore here too, to do and achieve those things-as only jesus can and does-to which the Old Testament pointed as prophecy and promise. In the person of jesus the people of Israel takes up the position assigned to it by the Ten Commandments and the whole Law. The newness of the new covenant ofjer. 3131 consists in the fact that all Israel, small and great, will know the Lord, to know whom it was invited by the covenant made with the fathers and by the Ten Commandments-an invitation which it was the duty of each brother to extend to his brethren. This original knowledge of the Lord, which does not need any such invitation, has become an event and reality for all Israel injesus Christ. He has come to fulfil the Law. He has given God the glory which He ought to be given according to the first table of the Law,and He has fulfilled the purpose of the second table and its demands. He has made true the whole prophecy of the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law by its fulfilment in His own person. And in His own person He has fulfilled it and made it true for all Israel. In the Sermon on the Mount we see the completion ofwhatjer. 3134 proclaims as the presupposition of the doctrine of the new covenant: "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." That is why He dares to pray in His own name as in the name of all His disciples (69), and to place this prayer upon their lips: "Our Father which art in heaven." That is why the request: "Give us this day our daily bread" (611), is accompanied by the command: "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink" (625); and the prayer (612), "Forgive us our debts," by the realistic observation: ''Yecannot serve God and mammon" (624). That is whyjesus can count on the fact that there are those (717) who bring forth good fruit like good trees, those whose light must shine before men (516), so that men may see their good works and glorify their Father in heaven-although naturally the goodness of these fruits and works (723) depends absolutely upon the fact that He,jesus, knows those who bring forth such fruits and do such works, and according to the conclusion of the parable (724f.) the question whether the house built by men will stand the shock of storms depends absolutely upon whether he does or does not do the Word ofjesus. Thus the righteousness which the Sermon exacts is inseparable from the One who exacts it. It is His righ teousness. It does not consist in the greatness and splendour of what man himself achieves. He may speak as a prophet (721), cast out demons, do many mighty works and yet belong to those who do not know jesus, and therefore do ex definitioneEN96 that which is against the Law.Everything depends on this €yvwv vpjis EN97-onjesus Himself. Everything depends on the fact that the required righteousness does not now consist in a self-assertive grasping at the promise, in a self-willed desire to fulfil the Law, as though this were an independen t Law and not the one fulfilled by Him, as though He were a lawgiver like Lycurgus and Solon, as though He were not the Lawgiver in the sense that in Him it is embodied and fulfilled for all, so that there can be no question of any other objection but to Himself, so that no other obligation can supplant this, so that every other obligation is, in fact, utterly at variance with this one essential obligation to the divine Law. Where it is lacking, man is necessarily (71;,f.) a false prophet, a wolf in sheep's clothing, a corrupt tree which can only bring forth corrupt fruit, however fine it may appear to be. The righteousness of man required by the Sermon on the Mount consists objectively in the fact that jesus recognises

FN~16 FN~17

by definition 'I knew you'

179

[692]

S 38.

[693]

The Command as the Decision of God

him as His own, and subjectively in the fact that this righteous man belongs to jesus, to the people which jesus confesses in the judgment, which will not be condemned in the judgment (71) but will receive mercy (57). What decides his righteousness is not his life and work, nor his confession ofjesus, but jesus' confession of him. Thus his confession of the fact that the decision rests onjesus' confession of him is a confession of the divine grace revealed and operative in Him. But this genuine confession is itself grace. Those who keep to the content of it will not boast about it ("Lord, Lord, have we not ... ?"). That is why the Sermon begins with the blessing of the poor in spirit (53), of those who are convinced as such by the Spirit, who are poor-absolutely needy-and impotent in themselves, but rich and strong only in the One who pronounces them blessed. The single eye which is the light of the whole body (622), the "pure heart" which has the promise of seeing God (58), is the realism of those who accept the decision and Word of Jesus, being pleased to live the life conferred on them by this decision: no more, but no less; nothing above, or below, or alongside. To do this is to pass through the straight gate, to tread the narrow way (713£_). For many other things seem more inviting than having the single eye and the pure heart. Many things seem more tempting than the realism of those who are prepared to rely on the Word and decision of jesus, and therefore content to reckon and confess that they are amongst the spiritually poor. The arrogance which would seize the promise on its own initiative, the delusion which would aspire to fulfil the Law in human strength, the mischievous error of the sick who think that they are whole and in no need of the physician, will alwayslead men past this narrow gate. This is the parting of the ways.This is the crucial point where the righteousness required by the Sermon is attained or not. At this point sinners are righteous, and therefore on the way to life, and the righteous are sinners, and as such on the way to death. The whole promise of the Sermon (already fulfilled), and its whole threat, are concentrated on this one issue, on this straight gate, this narrow way of the poor in spirit. "Few there be that find it," while the wide gate and the broad way are used by many. It is the uniqueness of the One who has fulfilled the Law for all which is reflected in this relationship of the few to the many. This is inevitable. For the required righteousness is His, the righteousness of the One. He, this One, is Himself the embodiment of the righteousness He demands. In essence, therefore, this righteousness is itself highly distinctive. The existence of those for whom this One is can never be anything but that of brands plucked from the burning. It is grace-election-that we are permitted to live this life; to be new Israelites, the new men of jer. 31, the men for whom the position in which we may live with God and unto God is not merely indicated, but actually en tered and adopted. The Sermon on the Mount proclaims this grace, this election, because it is the Sermon of Jesus, the disclosure of His person as the One who brings the succour of divine righteousness, who bears and brings and heralds the kingdom. That is the second aspect of the definition of position achieved by the Sermon on the Mount. And as an indication of the new man as such, the Sermon on the Mount tells us that the new man is called into life by the fact that there is addressed to him byJesus the Word of the higher righteousness, the righteousness of the kingdom, the Word of the grace of God directed to him. The one who is addressed in this way,and lives as such, is the new man. By the fact that the kingdom has drawn near to him in the person ofJesus Christ, he has become a new creature. It is not a newness of which he can be conscious and boast, except in jesus, except in the approach of this kingdom. According to the description of the true saint (64 6 18) it is a newness that is concealed from all men and even from himself, and yet a real newness of life. The decision and verdict ofjesus do not take place in vain. Those for whom He accomplished it share in the fact that He and He alone has obediently fulfilled the Law to the glory of God and the salvation of mankind. Those who in themselves are disobedient are claimed and absorbed by the act of His obedience. The kingdom which has come to them in all its strangeness is the reality which is so transcendent and efficacious to them that it can180

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

not remain a merely external fact hanging over them. They themselves have to be within it. It is necessarily made their own. It has to be put in their inward parts and written in their hearts Uer. 31). The step which God has taken towards man in fulfilment of the history of His covenant of grace with him is a step which He has taken into man, and with which He makes Himself the Lord of man. Thus the Sermon on the Mount-although it is still a description of the standing of man in the light of this fulfilment, and, indeed, as it exactly defines this position-is instruction and exhortation, the training and exercise of man. Every "Thou shalt!" and "Thou shalt not!" is seriously meant as an intensified indicative which has the force of an intensified imperative. The man who is reached and affected and determined by these imperatives is the new man: Jesus in His own, Jesus in His disciples, Jesus in those who hear and do the Word of grace spoken by Him, Jesus in those who have recognised and assimilated the higher righteousness of the kingdom which He Himself is and proclaims; jesus in them, but also Jesus in them, Jesus who gives them a share in the fulfilment of the Law as He has accomplished it, and from whom they have received this share as a gift. Because they will possess the earth, they are the meek and to be honoured as blessed (5:»' Because they will obtain mercy, they are the merciful (57). Because they will be called the children of God, they are peace makers (59). Because their trespasses are forgiven them, they forgive the trespasses of others (612 14). Because they will not be judged, they do not judge others (71). They mete out with the measure with which they are themselves measured (72). The newness of the new creature is not, therefore, a goodness which he has achieved himself, or which has been imparted to him or infused into him, but simply the goodness promised and done to him in the new position of his proximity to the kingdom of God, his confrontation with Jesus. But it is this very newness as such which has the significance and force of an imperative. To this category there definitely belongs the saying which at first sight seems so strongly reminiscent of a general moral principle: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" (712). The addition: "This is the law and the prophets," obviously means that this is the Law and the prophets in the authentic exposition which it receives from the fulfilment of the promise. This is the conduct of the new man to which the Law and the prophets have referred. The saying stands imrnediately before that concerning the straight gate, and it has nothing whatever to do with Kant's categorical imperative, or with a recommendation to treat one's neighbour with an amiableness that one would like to receive from him. Jesus did not address this saying to men in general, but to His own, to those whom He called. What can the latter will that people should do to them? They can only will that they should approach them as the vessels and witnesses of the mercy and forgiveness which they themselves have received and which they need constantly as their daily bread. It is what they have received and would alwaysreceive that they are to bring to others. They must not withhold from others the witness which they themselves need to receive from others. Not "give and take" but "take and give" is the golden rule of life for the Israel which stands at the goal and end of the covenant history and is regenerated by the presence of its Messiah. The members of this people love their enemies and pray for their persecutors because it is only in so far as they do this that they can continue to grow as what they are: children of their Father in heaven (544). Because their reward is so incomparable they cannot be content like the publicans and heathen to love those who love them and to greet only their brothers (545f.). Because they have one Father in heaven, who is TE"\EtOS' EN9H, who has a total concern, who causes His sun to shine on the evil and the good and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust, they, too, can and must be TEA-EOt EN99 and as the witnesses of grace have a total concern. And because this is rewarded by their

EN~Il-l EN~I~I

perfect perfect

[694]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[695]

Father in heaven who seeth in secret, they do not need to expect or solicit any other reward-the reward of men, nor will they practise almsgiving, prayer and fasting to be seen and praised of men, but for its own sake, or for the sake of the will of God (61-18). Because they are concerned to lay up for themselves lasting treasures in heaven they cannot allow themselves to be consumed with the toil of amassing transient treasures here (619f.). Because they have one Master who is not mammon, but God, they cannot serve two masters, God and mammon (624)-and "therefore (8(,(1 TOtJ'TO) I say unto you, Take no thought for your life" (625) • Because God cares more for them than for the sparrows and lilies of the field (and He does really care for these too), because He knows and does not forget what they need, they can seek first the kingdom and its righteousness, and-as they do this-receive other things in addition (626-34). Properly speaking, it is not the case that all the astonishing things required bear to some extent the character of an obligatory response. It is true, of course, that (with the Heidelberg Catechism) we can and must understand the good works of the new man as the fruit of thankfulness. But this thankfulness, this EvXaptcrT{a ENI00 itself must be understood as a primary and fundamental God-given xaptcrfLa ENI0l, as a work of the divine XaptS ENI02. For the demand addressed to the new creature is the gift in itself and as such. It is the divine mercy and forgiveness, the divine sonship, and the comfort which it brings on every side, the rich and generous reward of those who are called to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is not something which only follows upon this gift, and can, in fact, be differentiated from it. This new man does not live at all ifhe is not subject to the claim of this demand, ifhe does not recognise it as rightfully addressed to him. It is his own claim to life, which he cannot surrender and disown. It is suicidal for him to reject it, to refuse to obey it. The saying about not casting that which is holy to the dogs (76), and pearls before swine, is relevant in this connexion. It stands between the sayings about judging and about tireless asking, seeking and knocking. If it were only a warning against the imprudent publication of the secrets of the kingdom, it would have no meaning in this position, and would be alien not only to the Sermon on the Mount, but to the Gospel as a whole; for elsewhere Jesus never warned against such publication on the ground that it could be dangerous to the disciples. But the saying becomes intelligible and important if it is a warning against this suicide on the part of the new man-the suicide of judging, for example, when he himself is not judged but receives mercy, or loving only those who love him when he has as his Father this TEAEtOSENI03, or of being anxious like the heathen when God has pledged Himself to care for him. To do this is to cast that which is holy to dogs and pearls before swine. It is to imperil one's own life in the Spirit. It is to surrender again to a different order of life-to the order, or disorder, which stands outside the sphere of grace, which is far from the kingdom of God, and under the wheels of which man can only perish. The one who does this is like the wicked servant of Mt. 1832f. And he need not be surprised if the holy loses its virtue and the pearls their value. Grace must be lived out, or it is not grace. The sayings about the city on a hill and the light under a bushel (514f.) are obviously important in this connexion. The new man lives in virtue of the fact that he does what is described in 7 7f .. He has his Father in heaven who, in a waywhich far transcends that of any earthly father, is ready to give the good to those who ask Him. The position accruing to the man who lives by the mercy of God, the divine fulfilment of his claim to life, is seen in the fact that he makes use of it-asking his Father, knocking, seeking what he needs, i.e., the mercy which he has already received but must receive ever continually to be what he is. When he does this, he does not give that which is holy to ENI00 ENI0l ENI02 ENI03

gratitude gift of grace grace perfect

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

dogs, but is definitely maintained and secured in the order of grace under which he is placed, and all the promises linked to these requirements will be fulfilled to the letter. "For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." The man who does all this can grasp the fact that God never makes a mistake, and that for all his fallibility he himselfwill not make a mistake. Asking, seeking and knocking, he will definitely do the will of God. He can only fail to do this if he neglects this asking, seeking and knocking. That this asking, seeking and knocking are necessary, that the will of God, the life of grace, the righteousness of God's kingdom can be fulfilled only when this asking, seeking and knocking continually take place, in a clear reminder, of course, that he who is called to follow Jesus is always as much in need of the Master Himself and His accomplished fulfilment of the Law (517) as he was on the first day-which means that apart from his relationship to Jesus, apart from what the Father is and gives to him in the Son, he would be no more than the Pharisees on the one hand and the heathen and publicans on the other. Left to himself, he would certainly give that which is holy to the dogs in favour of a system of law or lawlessness. His gratitude would immediately be turned into ingratitude. The goodness of his works would disappear at once. "Without me ye can do nothing." It is not for nothing, therefore, that the Sermon on the Mount has its heart and centre in the passage in 6 where Jesus teaches His disciples to pray. It may well be said that the whole relationship of Jesus to His own, with which the saving presence of the kingdom of God stands or falls for them, works itself out exhaustively in the fact that He prays for them, and that this means at once that He prays with them and bids them pray with Himself. It is impossible that the Sermon on the Mount should place its hearers in a position of in dependence over against Jesus, that its directions should have in view a work which they are themselves to accomplish in competition with the work ofJesus. Again, we must not conceal from ourselves nor be astonished at the fact that these directions as a whole are so extraordinary. This is inevitable, seeing that their aim is to call upon men to pray with Jesus, and therefore to enter with Him under the order of grace and never to leave it again. The new life which Jesus has promised and given to those who in themselves are sinners like all other men is so new that even in its reflection in their conduct it appears highly unusual and reminds us all too plainly of the strait gate and narrow way. It has occasionally been said too loudly and confidently that in the examples formulated in 521-48 the radical deepening of the Old TestaInen t Law is not mean t to be understood in terms of Law, as so many precepts which we are literally to practise. And it is good that there have always been so-called fanatics who have understood these requirements, and all those of the Sermon on the Mount, as a Law which has to be fulfilled literally. For it is true enough that what we have here are only examples. But it is also true that these examples are intended to make clear that the grace of Jesus Christ, the grace of the kingdom which has dawned, claims the whole man absolutely. It is also true that the only One who really fulfils the Law as understood in this way is Jesus Himself. All others are called to obedience only by the fact that Jesus is obedient for them. It is also true that because Jesus has fulfilled them the radicalised demands of the Mosaic Law are declared and established among His disciples and indirectly in the world as a whole. The uneasiness which this fact causes is very real and cannot be argued away.How can a man pray withJesus ifhe insulates himself against this uneasiness, or can handle it in such a way that it ceases to disturb him? These sharpened requirements point-inevitably-to superhuman possibilities. It would be wrong to say that any of them are inapplicable to us-even the plucking out of the eye or the cutting off of the hand (529), or the smiting on both cheeks (5:~~})-on the plea that they have been fulfilled by Jesus, and therefore we do not need to fulfil them again, but have to learn from them how great is the distance which separates Jesus from our sinfulness. Far too many things in the Sermon on the Mount and the rest of the Gospel would go by the board on this view. To be sure, these demands and those of all 9

1'.

[696]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[697J

the Sermon on the Mount and the rest of the Gospel, do put us in our place over against Jesus. They do hold up a mirror before us. And, of course, we do have to confess our sin and unworthiness for fellowship with Him. But all the same they do not leave us in that place, nor do they allow us to be content with it. On the contrary, they claim us as sinners-but as those for whom Jesus prays and whom He summons to pray with Him. They insist on the obedience of the disobedient, and the latter cannot elude this obedience by referring to the measure and limit of their capacity. The limit of their capacity becomes irrelevant when that which Jesus the Lord accomplishes for them occupies the centre of the picture which is a norm for their own life's picture. We cannot play fast and loose with the grace of God, as if the supernatural life that it confers could suddenly have only what we judge to be natural consequences. Grace itself decides what is natural in its own sphere. And so we must accept the fact that-whether their fulfilment seems possible or impossible to us-these demands denote modes of conduct which can become possible and necessary even in their literal sense for those who will hear and do the words of Jesus. They show very plainly that the impact which is made on man by the mercy of God revealed and operative inJesus Christ is something radical and revolutionary. If each individual must first decide about the particular thing ~hat this impact means for him and his life, none has the right to insulate himself against it from the very outset by that over-subtle argument. The existence of the new creature depends on the fact that we stand defenceless in face of the impact made by the Sermon on the Mount as recorded not only in the fifth, but also in the sixth and seventh chapters; that we accept the fact that the sphere in which man is claimed for obedience to God-to the God of grace of the New Testament-is alwayssomewhat greater than we would like to think and have it of ourselves (not giving the glory to this God of grace). That is the third aspect of the position indicated in the Sermon on the Mount. To sum up, the Sermon on the Mount, too, is from every point of view the indication of a position and the laying of foundations. Parallel in form to the Old Testament Law, and not superseding but confirming it in content, it describes the conditions of life of the people of God from the new standpoint, which sheds a new light even on the Law, that God has set up the kingdom of His covenant of grace with man in such a way that He has now finally and efficaciously translated man into this kingdom in the person of His only Son. This is the event of the kingdom, of the person ofJesus, of the new man, which is reflected in the claims. of the Sermon on the Mount. Because the Old Testament Law points forward to this event, its requirements, the conditions of life of the people of God laid down iinthe Ten Commandments, are not superseded or suspended by the new Law of the Sermon. The people of God needs the prophecy of this event as well as the proclamation of its fulfilment. It livesjust as much in and with Israel in Advent as it does as the Church in the light of Christmas. But as it can live in the light of Christmas and not merely in Advent-and this is the new thing in the New Testament witness-the divine requirements of the Old Testament witness, although they have not been suppressed or replaced, have acquired for it the new dimension, the radical depth, which characterises the Sermon on the Mount in contrast to the Ten Commandments, and gives to the latter themselves their true force. That the Law of God demands a life lived from and of and with the grace of God is something which the Sermon on the Mount as distinct from the Ten Commandments clearly shows to be not only the omega but also the alpha of the divine demand. Everything that the Sermon scorns to require differently and to a fuller extent than the Ten Commandments rests upon this difference, reflecting the revelation of the fact which is also attested in the Ten Commandments, yet not yet openly, but only in a concealed manner-the actuality of the kingdom, of the person of Jesus, of the new man, the objective existence of man in the sphere of the divine covenant of grace. Israel makes shipwreck on the hiddenness of this objective fact to the extent that the Decalogue is given to it but not the Sermon on the Mount. Without the

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

revelation of this fact the decisive claim of the divine demand is exposed to human misunderstanding and distortion, and the divine Law, as the history of Israel shows, can only be transgressed and broken by man, as he replaces the required life in grace by the arbitrariness of his own works by which he aims to seize and obtain grace, and the life of the promise by the attempt to bring about its fulfilment according to his own ideas and resources. It requires not only a reference to the real fulfilment of the promise, but the real fulfilment itself, to overcome and dispel this misunderstanding and distortion, and so to give effect to the divine Law,procuring for it respect and obedience. It is not by the mouth and witness of Moses, but by the mouth and witness of Israel's Messiah, that the Law gains this efficacy. What man receives from the mouth and witness of Moses-not through any defect in the Law which Moses proclaims, but simply because Moses is only Moses and not jesus Christ, only the witness of the Mediator and not the Mediator Himself-is merely a disclosure of man's opposi tion to the divine Law, and as the history of Israel shows, although this disclosure will take place objectively, it will remain concealed from those who are guilty of it. They will not themselves contradict their own contradiction. They will continue to regard their transgression and breaking of the Law as its true fulfilment. They will increase their sin against it. They will disown and repudiate the Messiah Himselfwhile alwayssupposing themselves to be obedient to the Law. It is not until the Messiah Himself comes that the Law can be fulfilled by His death and resurrection. It is He who will reveal the Law as an order of life embodied in His own person, thus bringing His people into the right way,and showing how the forgiveness of their sins is the real beginning of their life with God. It is He who will reveal it in such a way that this life acquires substance and meaning as life lived under a Law that is not transgressed and broken, but kept and fulfilled. Martin Buber is more right than he supposes when he accuses the jesus of the Sermon on the Mount of trying to go back "into the cloud above the mountain from which the voice sounds," of trying "to penetrate into the primal intention of God, into the primal absolute of the Law, as it existed before it was cast into the mould of human material." He is mistaken, of course, in making this a sul~jectof accusation against jesus, condemning it as cruelty to a "people which is no more able now than formerly to breathe in the atmosphere of primal purity" (qtd. from E. Gaugler, "Das Spiitjudentum," in Der Mensch und die Religion, 1942,288). This is the inevitable error of the neo-Pharisaic jew, and of all those who think they should read and understand the requirements of the Sermon on the Mount in abstraction from the fact that they are reflections of the Messianic event. What necessarily appears to them as cruelty, is in reality the mercifulness of the Sermon and its Preacher just because the voice which sounds out of the cloud, and with it the people "who will be able to breathe in primal purity," have been introduced in its requirements. It isjust the life of this people that is described in the Sermon on the Mount. By this, of course, we do not mean-and here we return to the main line of our argument-that the Sermon on the Mount any more than the Ten Commandments replaces the events in which the life of God's people actually takes its course, and God's dealings with man find expression. The individual concrete directions of jesus to the men who surrounded Him, and the concrete decisions and ordinances which Paul issued to the community ofjesus Christ in His name-what is described in the New Testament as the guidance of the community, of the apostles and its other members by the Holy Spirit-are no more made superfluous by the Sermon on the Mount than are the voice and leading of the angel by the Ten Commandments and the whole Mosaic Law. It is not the case that the community and its members, now that they possessed the authentically interpreted and effectually operative Law of God were left to themselves in respect of their obedience and disobedience, their private interpretation and application of this Law.The Sermon on the Mount as

[698]

S 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[699]

little precludes the concrete actions and attitudes which are decisive for the preaching of the kingdom of God, the person of jesus Christ and the new man, as does the Law of the Old Testament all the turns and movements which, according to the historical and prophetic records of the Old Testament, it has necessarily to take as it leads up to the appearance of the Messiah. The proclamation of the divine Law in the Sermon on the Mount and in the other comparable parts of the New Testament is clearly one thing, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the new life it inspires is quite another. For all the difference between the Sermon on the Mount and the Ten Commandments, what we have in it is obviously the delimitation of the sphere in which the life of the divine community will be fulfilled under the control of the Holy Spirit. The fact that it is the people which is not only called, and under an obligation, to live in the sphere of the divine covenant of grace, but may and will actually live in it, receiving the Holy Spirit and being ruled by it, is something which is certainly affirmed and decided in the Sermon, for it manifests the kingdom, the person of jesus and the new man as the conditions of life which are not only promised to it, but created and given by God. Yet the life itself and as such which will be subject to these conditions is not yet lived with this proclamation, but what is given in the proclamation is the basis, the immovable framework and the objective order within which this life may and will be lived. The life itself will alwaysinvolve a series of events in which there will be a repetition and confirmation of the fundamental event attested in the Sermon on the Mount. The group of requirements addressed to the men belonging to this kingdom will certainly not be greater or smaller than is here outlined. They will have to be prepared to render nothing more or less than the obedience of which we have here a positive and negative description. They are here shown why and for what purpose they will be impelled by the Holy Spirit. How sharply and deeplyif He wills it-God's commanding and forbidding will pierce their lives is something for which they have to prepare themselves by a consideration of this collection of commands and prohibitions. They have neither to exceed nor to fall short of this revealed standard of the life of man in the Messianic time between the death and resurrection ofjesus Christ and His return, because the commanding and prohibiting God who is the Lord of this time will alwaysbe the One who has here revealed Himself as at once the Law, the Lawgiver and the Fulfiller of the Law.They will have to recognise the voice of the Holy Spirit and to distinguish it from the voices of other spirits by the fact that, in repetition and confirmation, in elucidation and application of the Word of the Sermon on the Mount, He will lead them in to all truth and from one truth to another. But this necessary repetition and confirmation, elucidation and application of the Word of the Sermon, and therefore their progress from one truth to another, will not be their own concern but that of the Holy Spirit. just how the Holy Spirit, and in the Holy Spirit jesus the Lord, and in Him God, will in fact govern men is as little foreshown in the Sermon as in the Ten Commandments, and as far as the biblical witness is concerned, it will have to be inferred from other parts of the Old and New Testaments. As "the law of the Spirit of life" (Rom. 82), which is what the Sermon on the Mount undoubtedly sets out to be, it is wrongly understood if it is not understood as a constant direction to new and particular obedience on the lines it lays down. A man can be obedient to the Sermon on the Mount only in so far as he is ready and prepared for acts of the most specific obedience on the lines it indicates and as God demands them from every man in his own hour and situation; only in so far, that is, as man is content to fill the position it requires and therefore to feel that he has no other choice but to direct his life according to its claims. What happens in this position will be the good in the New Testament sense, and what happens in any other position will be the evil in the New Testament sense. But as we learn to distinguish in it the voice of the Good Shepherd, and to discriminate that voice from others,

186

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

again and again we shall have to hear that voice itself afresh in order to hear in concretoENl04 what this good and bad are, and what in concretoEN105 the will of God is. If the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount seem to be well-chosen and even classical examples of biblical texts which may be plausibly interpreted as expressions of a general law without concrete or specific content, we can now see that this appearance is deceptive, and that the biblical witness knows no such thing as universal moral principles. What it does know are summaries of divine commands-as the basis and sphere of the kingdom in which God confronts man either to command or to forbid, as self-determinations of God who does this and the determination of man who experiences the divine encounter, as indications of the relationship in which God utters His definite Yesor No to man's action, as ordinances with which a man must be familiar in order to be able to hear, and actually to hear, the decrees of God which concern his actual life. But obviously the requirements of these texts are neither addressed to an indefinite number of men nor, as regards their content, concerned in general with certain possibilities of human conduct. On the contrary, they belong to the history of the covenant of grace and its goal to the extent that they aim at the conduct of man in his relationship to it. They aim, therefore, at the individual and concrete things which God will command and forbid man in regard to his behaviour in the context of this relationship. They point to God as the Subject and man as the object of a most personal election of grace; to God as the Lord and Head and man as the member of the body of His community, Israel and the Church; to God as the Father and man as the brother of Jesus Christ. They describe the union as such between God and man and man and God. They prepare the wayfor that openness of heart which is not an end in itselfbut which has to be demonstrated and realised in a specific obedience which is alwaysnew. Texts like the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount do not, therefore, contest but confirm the insight elicited from the many other texts that in the Bible the idea of the divine command is inseparable from the realities of history. A place has to be found for them in the biblical picture of God's dealing with man merely because they make clear its underlying character, presuppositions and intentions. The angel of the covenant and the voice of God heard by the prophets in the Old Testament, and the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, are not a nameless and formless numen EN 106, but the God whose face bears the features which emerge in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. And so we can also see in these texts the distinctive features of the man who is brought into this relationship with God. This is what these texts make clear. How, then, can they obscure the fact that the relationship between this God and this man is one which is constant and alive and continually renewed? It was only with post-biblical Judaism, and then unfortunately the post-biblical Christian Church, that this was misunderstood, and the idea arose that all the descriptions of the concrete divine commanding and forbidding should be disregarded and zealously replaced by the command and commands of God in the Mosaic Law and the nova lexEN107 of the Sermon on the Mount as a kind of universal moral code established in complete detachment from the historical process. And then, of course, it was not an accident that it was thought necessary in both cases to give life and relevance to the biblical divine command (understood in this way) by all sorts of elucidatory appendices, so that, in fact, it was increasingly divested of its divine character and authority. The fundamental misunderstanding had already changed the divine command into a human command. In both cases it was inevitable that it should be shrouded and concealed, like every human command, in a cloud of

EN IO~

concretely concretely

EN IOn

spirit

ENI07

new Law

EN

104

[700]

S 38. The Command as the Decision of God further legislation which is supposed to make it more effective but, in fact, can only weaken it.

[701]

We take it that the result of these exegetical considerations is to prove that in the Bible itself the divine command is always a concrete command. But this being the case, we can now turn to the question which we have answered in our second proposition, viz., that the concrete divine commanding which we find in the Bible must be understood as a divine command which concerns us also. A systematic survey must now be added to the exegetical. In respect of what it says about God's command, the Bible is a witness to the will and work and revelation of God. Other men-the biblical authors-testify to us, their readers and hearers, that God has confronted other men, the persons of biblical history, in these specific ways, commanding one thing and forbidding another. They attest to us that this is the will and work and revelation of God. This is the fact which must form our point of departure. It may be summarised as follows. We understand from the Bible that a very definite God has entered into relations with very definite men at very definite times in such a way that He has commanded and forbidden very definite actions and attitudes with a view to the conclusion and consummation of His covenant of grace, and later on with a reference back to this event and in relation to His own action. The definiteness of this Cod and these men results from the fact that this God is the Subject and these men are the object of His eternal election of grace, or, more concretely, that this God and these men are linked together in the person of Jesus Christ. The determination of the times of the divine commanding and forbidding and the determination of the commanding and forbidding themselves result from the way which this God willed to take and has, in fact, taken with these men in the historical process which leads up to the goal of the covenant of grace, and in the subsequent development which follows the attainment of this goal. That this is what happened there and then is the testimony of the Bible. Yet it does not give us this testimony merely out of an interest in the facts or a desire to record them, but in the character of a witness before a court of justice, whose statement is made for the sake of our judgment, and therefore claims our acceptance and acknowledgment of its truth with a view to our own decision and reaction to what is said. The Bible speaks of God's command in order to call our attention not merely to what the will and work and self-revelation were there and then, but to what they are here and now for us ourselves. In its capacity as witness it claims not only our recognition of facts but also our faith, not merely our appreciation of the past events which it attests but also our realisation that matters are still the same here and now, and that as and what God commanded and forbade others, He now commands and forbids us. The Bible wills that we should be contemporaneous with and of the same mind as these other men in regard to the divine command, our hearing and understanding of it, and our situation as affected by it. In this connexion we are to be in every sense the contemporaries of these

188

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

men. Whether or not we comply with this biblical intention is another question. But it cannot well be denied that this is its intention, and that its texts were conceived and written down with the object of exercising this influence upon its readers and hearers. It is of the essence of the situation in which a witness finds himself that he can be accepted or rejected as such, i.e., with his claim to credibility. But it cannot be denied that since he is a witness he does make this a claim. What he says cannot easily be divorced from the fact that he says it with this pretension. The Christian Church as such, without whose existence there can be no dogmatics and therefore no Christian ethics, assumes that this claim will be accepted, and the biblical witness approved as true. It is on this presupposition that our own thinking must proceed. It is on this presupposition, again, that in this matter of the definiteness of the divine decision we had to dissociate ourselves from the very outset from all those ideas which represent the command of God as a general rule of conduct which has to be concretely filled out by man. We have now to show how from this assumption we arrive at the opposite conclusion that God's command is always for us also a concrete and specific demand. If the Bible is right in regard to the special witness it bears to God's command, we deceive ourselves about God if we think of Him as a Lord of our life, and human life in general, who gives man certain guiding lines and principles on his way,but then leaves him to his own devices, i.e., to his own understanding of this given norm. But we also deceive ourselves about ourselves if we believe that man is left to himself, and that in this abandonment he is compelled and competent to be the interpreter of the divine norm and therefore to be his own judge, although in some way bound to the divine Law. If the will and work and self-revelation of God of which the Bible speaks apply to us too and are normative for us, if the dealings of God with man never take place in any other way but that described in the Bible, if the dealings of God with man are in point of fact summed up in what is for the Bible the focal point in these dealings, namely, the consummation of the covenant of grace, the fulfilment of the divine election of grace in the person ofjesus Christ to which everything else that may be classed under this heading can form only a preparation or an appendix, then the thesis to which we have referred is proved to be impossible on both sides, in respect of God on the one side and of man on the other. For God is not far from us but near-the living Lord of the people who both in eternity and therefore in time is faithful to them both as a whole and in regard to each of its members, not turning to His people only to leave them to themselves, or having mercy on them only to abandon them to the decisions of their own wisdom, but approaching them to go with them truly and wholeheartedly every step of their way. And again, man is not far from this God but nearactually or virtually a member of the community of God, of Israel and the Church, who either has been or will be called as a member of this body, who either has been or will be freed by faith in Him. A God of any other description

189

[702]

S 38. The Command as the Decision of God [703]

[704]

than this does not exist, the Bible tells us. And it tells us with equal definiteness that a man of any other description than this does not exist. All other gods and men are creatures of our imagination opposed and dispelled by the reality attested in the Bible. And this leads .to the further conclusion that a divine command conceived as a general rule of morality does not exist, or exists only in our imagination as a shadow and caricature of the real command of God which is opposed and dispelled by the living reality of the divine command to which the Bible bears witness. The real command of God has the same aspect as it bears in the Bible as an event of commanding and forbidding, obeying and disobeying, between the God and man of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. The good required by the command of God is not a general and intrinsic good, as is presupposed in every moral scheme, but the good of the divinely controll~d history of the covenant of peace and its subsequent developments, the good of God's eternal election of grace, the good which bears the hame of Jesus Christ. As God and man do not confront each other in empty space, but in a given space-time situation, so the divine decision and judgment about man, and the divine command as its underlying point of reference, are integrally bound up with this history and its sequel. What God wills and works in this history and its sequel-and in both cases for the sake of Jesus Christ-is the good. And the good of the command which He addresses to man, by which He invites him to be a participant, bearer, object and witness of His will and His work-the good of this history and its sequel cannot in any sense be separated from the latter. Whenever God commands according to the witness of Scripture, there can never be any question of the fulfilment of an ideal of human conduct as such, but always of an action which is integrally connected with the establishment and proclamation of His covenant, with His promised kingdom which has now drawn near. There can never be any formal question of the performance of something good in itself, but always the material one of the execution of a commission or partial commission in the service of this cause. According to the command of God as it is understood in Scripture, like Abraham, Moses or David, Peter or Paul, the centurion of Capernaum or the rich young ruler, we constantly experience one of those greater or lesser movements of hope or gratitude, of expectant or fulfilled joy, performing those ministrations of the servant or child which are good because they are necessary as a vital act of the divine community in its members, as an expression of the true Israel and the true Church, and their fulfilment is part of the earthly existence of the divine people and its vocation, and therefore a divinely appointed task. For it is of divine appointment, and can only be of divine appointment, to have a part in this work. This commission, and therefore what is required of each individual in a specific time and situation, whether it be great or small, cannot be undertaken by anyone out of nowhere, nor can it be self-prescribed and self-appointed. There are here no questions of reflective appraisal or arbitrary decision, however wise. The Lawgiver and Judge, who alone is competent in this matter, will Himself dispose and decide. 190

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

Who He is, and who man is who is subject to Him and has to obey Him, cannot be hidden here, in analogy to the biblical relation and occurrence to which we are called by the witness of the Bible, just as the basic matter at issue-both in small things and great-is not concealed. From God's side nothing is hidden at this point. Man will be and actually is told what is good and what the Lord requires of him-and with absolute definiteness, so that only obedience or disobedience remains, and there is no scope for his free appraisal and will in regard to the shape of his obedience. At the place where God encounters man-according to the witness of Scripture-He will always require of him specific things; and then-also according to the witness of Scripture-man in obedience will always have to do this one thing, while everything else can only be disobedience. But if the Bible is right in its witness to God's command and we must accept this witness, we are not only in some sense theoretically instructed how God commands and forbids us too. This is certainly the case. The Bible gives us a basic orientation concerning the God who commands and forbids us, concerning ourselves, concerning our position with regard to Him, and finally and above all concerning the fact that the divine commanding and forbidding is always a specific concrete decision in which we are confronted by God as Lawgiver and Judge, according to which our own decision has to be directed and by which it is appraised, without our being able to change it one whit. But that is not all. The Bible not only instructs and guides us concerning the command of God, but also attests and mediates its revelation. It tells us, not only that God does demand and how, but also what He demands. Its voice, the voice of the Word and command to which it testifies, is the divine secret, the divine criterion, the divine judgment with which we have to do in all our decisions from one moment to another, in all that we do and do not do. This does not mean, of course, that we possess in the Bible a kind of supernatural register or arsenal con taining all sorts of counsels, directions and commands, each one of which has an even more supernatural connexion with the life situations of men in the most varied circumstances, so that we have to be on the look out for direct hints, and if possible-it has, in fact, been done-to consult it as a kind of box of magic cards. When it is used in this way, the historical uniqueness of its contents is necessarily overlooked; the unity of its actual connexion is destroyed; it is itself profaned; and the specific concrete command of God which it really attests is surely missed. What is undoubtedly the wonderful richness of its real relevance to us men, and our times, and life in the inexhaustible fulness of its development and forms, consists in the unity underlying all the details of its content.

It is the case, then, that both as a continuous whole and in its individual parts the Bible attests the existence of God as the Lord who rules over us, but who discloses this divine existence in the act ofRis lordship and work, and Ris work as that of establishing, maintaining and confirming the covenant of grace. This Lord in the fulfilment ofRis work is the biblical Word. Those who accept the witness of the Bible submit to the truth of the Word which is identical with this work, and those who do not accept this witness-although they do

[705]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[706]

not submit-still stand under the truth of this Word. For the Lord in fulfilment of this work is the Lord of the whole world and-whether He is recognised, loved and honoured or not-the Lord of each individual life, who is present with every man at every time and in every situation in life, and confronts him to judge and recompense not only in the greatest things but also in the smallest, not only openly but also in secret. The voice and witness of the Bible is God the Lord in the fulfilment of His work. In the fact that it proclaims this objectively it declares to us in fact, not only that God's command commands us and how, but what it commands us. This Lord in the fulfilment ofRis work is Himself the divine command. And by the very fact that He is the divine command, the latter is concrete and specific and relevant to every moment and action of every human life. Therefore the Bible is the source.and norm and judge of all ethical disciplines, not as a pack of cards, not as it is divided and dissolved into a multiplicity of timeless revelations of the divine will unrelated to history, but in the historical unity of its content. And its Word is to be understood and valued as a Word of command (and not merely as ethical instruction, as a collection of ethical principles or example). Goel the Lord in the fulfilment of His work, who constitutes the hist'orical unity of the Bible, is rich over all and for all, abounding in counsels and purposes for all, and working in all things, in the whole space-time multiplicity of their existence. And He is rich as He lives and acts and speaks. If He is present with them, confronting them in life and speech and action, then concrete commands are issued. But if the meaning and substance of the biblical testimony is the revelation of the reality of God in His works, then we cannot avoid the conclusion that the Bible itself is this Word of command. The Bible itself does not only give instruction or formulate rules or furnish examples. It issues decrees. It effects decisions. It makes us responsible by continually commanding this or forbidding that. When we say the Bible, we do not mean, of course, the Bible in abstractoENl08. We do not mean the biblical authors-Moses and the prophets, Matthevy and Paul-:in their own name, but the God to whom they all bear w~t~ess.But this pod clQesnot sp~ak ill:this waywithout their witness. This God speaks in His reality revealed by their witness. This God speaks as the Lord whom they attest in the fulfilment of His work in the establishing and maintaining and preserving of His covenant of grace. The Bible alone of all possible witnesses attests His revelation and therefore His Words and acts. In practice, therefore, this God and the Bible, His commanding and its commanding, are not r9 q~ separated. If there is no abstract authority in th~ Bible, there is no abstract authority ienGod. If the BIble is the living speech of God only in so far as it attests it, the living speech of God cannot be other than that attested by the Bible. It follows, then, that by the biblical witness we are not only called and set, as already formulated, in an analogous position to the biblical relationship and occurrence between God and man. We are not only invited to be ENI08

in the abstract

2.

The Definiteness of the Divine Decision

contemporaneous and likeminded with the biblical men. We are not only exhorted to hear the command of God as they heard it. But at once the God who has spoken and acted in relation to them also becomes our God in virtue of their witness. And so the command given to them and heard by them becomes directly the command given to us and to be heard by us. Their task becomes our task. They and we are not identical, nor is their time or situation ours. In so far as everything is different as seen from below, here and now God must speak to us as then and there He spoke to them. But the divine command which can and will be given to us, and heard by us, even though then and there it was uttered once and for all, cannot either formally or materially differ from that which was given to them and heard by them. The Ten Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount, and the other ordinances of the Bible, and all the specific individual directions in which we hear the God of the Old and New Testaments speak in a specific way to particular men, concern us directly and not merely indirectly. That is, they do not concern us only when we have discovered a translation and application of those commands in which they may seem practicable, but absolutely in their historical concreteness and singularity. They demand that in our own very different external circumstances we should not only act like Abraham, Peter, the centurion of Capernaum, the Israelites or the Church at Corinth, but again act as those who then and there were addressed by God, allowing the command given to them to be again, in our very different time and situation, the command given here and now to us, and therefore ranking ourselves with them, and in their divinely addressed person taking our place in the history and sequel of the covenant of grace, accepting and fulfilling our mission, or partial mission, not as something new and special, but as the renewal and confirmation of the task laid upon them. We cannot aspire to get beyond the existence of the Israel, and hidden in it the Church ofjesus Christ, which then and there moved towards and derived from the fulfilment of the covenant of grace. The people of God in all its members and in the whole life of its members can only be this people-Abraham and Peter. It can only live out its own history in this utterly unique history and its sequel, and therefore recognise in the wholly concrete commands and prohibitions once given to the people of God the ordinances and commands given to itself. The witness of the Bible does not, therefore, refer to a temporary expression of the divine command which we have to divest of its temporary character if we are to deduce from it an eternal content valid for us. It refers to the divine command which has eternal and valid content for us precisely in its temporary expression, and demands that we should hear and respect it in our very different time and situation. Ifwe take it in this way, the concreteness and definiteness of the divine command need not be our concern. As the Word of the God who is eternally rich, and speaks with living power in His eternal riches, it has these qualities in itself and therefore for us-to be perceived by us if only we will listen to it, if only we will take up the position which it calls us to adopt, if only we will again allow ourselves to be addressed as those to whom it was given 193

[707]

S 38.

[708]

The Command as the Decision of God

then and there, if only we will accept it as also meant for us. The realisation depends, of course, upon whether we do accept this, whether we allow that the biblical witness is right. If we do, then the command certainly confronts us with concrete and specific content. We have presupposed that we are willing to do this. We have rested our argument on the fact that the Christian Church, and therefore all that we here adduce in understanding of God's command, is founded upon the assumption that the biblical witness speaks the truth. But this presupposition is not self-evident. We can see this from the inferences here drawn from it. It is by no means the case that even what we know as the Christian Church, even those of us who call ourselves Christians, have taken this presupposition so sincerely and unreservedly that we see this insight as an obvious deduction. There can be little doubt that to a very considerable extent the so-called Christian Church and we so-called Christians do live and think as though the biblical witness is not the truth, as though its "Thou art the man!" is not to be taken quite so seriously, or at any rate quite so literally, as though when we answer the question what the divine will requires of us we have to take into account all possible voices alongside or apart from the biblical commanding and forbidding, with. the result that the present inference can only affect us as a very curious paradox. For the present we must be content merely to report, as it were, that if the presupposition is seriously made and accepted, the deduction is also valid that in its biblically attested form the commandment of God is the concrete and specific command which concerns us also, that it is not merely instruction, regulation or example, but is itself the demand with which we ourselves have to do both here and now and always and everywhere. But the truth of this point of view does not depend upon the fact that we realise it when and because we have fully and seriously made the requisite presupposition. We have not only to reckon with the fact that the so-called heathen world unreached by the biblical witness-both outside and inside the sphere of the Church-is not capable of this insight. We must also and especially remember that it is to a large extent hidden from the Church and Christians too...:-even from the best of us-because we have not really made the necessary presupposition fully and seriously, or realised radically enough what obedience to Scripture entails. We do, no doubt, regard the Bible as in a specific and perhaps good sense the normative Word of God. But over a large area, and perhaps with only insignificant exceptions, we think and live as though this were not the case. It is no wonder that the sense of our confrontation by God's specific and concrete command, which is always an event, is so rare and superficial. But it is not our awareness of this point, or the awareness of the Church or the world, which decides its truth. For, in the last resort, what is even our keenest awareness of it in comparison with its truth? That God is the immediate Lawgiver and Arbiter of all our actions is true even when we do not know and consider its truth, even in and over the terrible ignorance and thoughtlessness with which we constantly face this truth. We stand under the arbitra194

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision ment of God's precise and definite command and prohibition, not as and because we realise it and think of it, but as and because He has issued His command once and for all, and therefore for us and our times and all the situations of our lives, in and with the history, and its sequel, of His covenant of grace. For by this covenant we are not only embraced by the fact of the death and resurrection ofjesus Christ, whether as believers or unbelievers, righteous or unrighteous, saved or lost, and always as both in the specific meaning of the election of grace fulfilled injesus Christ. We are also embraced (and closely so, without any empty or neutral zones) by His living command through which He wills to sanctify us, attract us to Himself, and therefore awaken us to obedience, as partners in His covenant. However we react to it, we are confronted and claimed by this command, which wholly embraces and accompanies our whole life, not only in accordance but in and with the fact that this happened to biblical man, the original and proper witness of the person and work of God, His severity and His mercy.

3. THE GOODNESS OF TI!E DIVINE DECISION We understand by goodness the sum o£ all that is right and friendly and wholesome: the three taken together. If we subtract two, or even one of the three, we are not speaking truly or seriously of goodness. What is merely right and not also friendly and wholesome is not goodness. What is merely friendly and not also wholesome and right is not goodness. And what is not right and friendly is not wholesome. God and His command are good in the full sense of the term-genuinely and truly good. We are speaking of the One whom the Bible calls God, and of what the Bible calls His command. Any evaluation of the idea of the good to the exclusion of even one of its aspects involves a loss of the idea of this God and His command. On the other hand, every dissolution of the idea of this God and His command entails a dissolution of the idea of the good. This is so because the two conceptions are synonymous. God and His command are good, and the good is God and His command. We must emphasise this because the idea of God and His command are absolutely and unquestionably prior to the idea of the good. The good is a perfection predicated of God and His command. God and His command comprehend all that is right and friendly and wholesome. In this far-reaching sense the command as a divine decision is a kind decision. God establishes the right, doing what is appropriate and creating order, by making a decision about man in His command. But He is moved to do this by His friendliness and good will to man. And what He purposes and effects is man's welfare, salvation, life and eternal joy in His presence. When man encounters God's command, he is confronted by the decision of God which is kindly in this broad sense. Without prejudice to its sovereignty and definiteness, or rather in its true sovereignty and definiteness, 195

[709]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[710J

this divine decision is the decision of God's goodness. When it is rightly declared, its proclamation, like that of the divine election of grace, is evangeliumENlo9, good news. Those who have the task of carrying it out must remember that they have to declare something good-the very best-to others. And those who may hear it, and hear it rightly, have every reason to be grateful because the good-the very best-is announced to them. But however the proclamation of God's command is performed and received, we must remember that the case is alwaysobjectively as follows. The command is God's good decision. In it, man does not meet with any injustice, or harshness, or injury. In it, God is not against man, but in all His glory for him. We bear in mind this objective reality when, over and above all the embarrassments and misunderstandings caused by the human element in the proclamation and hearing of the command, we remember that inherently and as such, as it proceeds out of the mouth of God, it is unquestionably the instrument of His election and covenant of grace, that it is called jesus Christ, that it is nothing but the birth and life and death and resurrection ofjesus Christ, and His'revelation as it is attested by Moses and the prophets, the Evangelists and apostles. This essential theme lies behind the command of God even in its most imperfect declaration, and even where it is most imperfectly understood there is always at the back of it the objective fact that this is the decision of the divine goodness. It is, therefore, a challenge to obedience, and the full meaning of disobedience to it can only be established and disclosed in all its frightful impossibility against this background. It is the norm and criterion of what we do and do not do. We must pass judgment on ourselves according to the command of God's goodness, and we shall alwaysbe measured and judged by this command. We have often touched on this element in the idea of the divine command as the divine decision. But we must now emphasise it again because it is adapted to give an indispensable final ~larification not only t? tlJ.-eide~ of the sovereignty but also to that of the definiteness of this decision. When we spoke of the sovereignty and definiteness of the divine command we had to underline the particularity both of God in His relation to man and of man in his relation to God. We had to mark off this element of particularity from the wrong idea of universal truth and validity both in regard to the divine work generally and the divine command in particular-an idea which in itself has nothing to do with the will and command of God. God confronts man in an individual and solitary relationship when He gives him His command and prohibition, and again man stands before God in an individual and solitary relationship when he has to receive this command and prohibition. This is what happens when God makes man responsible and therefore when He makes him really responsible. What this means finally became clear to us especially in our ENI09

gospel

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision consideration of the particularity of the divine decision. God intends and finds and reaches man in the most detailed way when He gives him His command. He does not give us a selection of possibilities between which we must decide according to this or that rule. He confronts us with a concrete necessity in relation to which obedience puts us in the right and disobedience in the wrong. This specific necessity is always at one and the same time the sovereign and definite will of God. At this point, however, it is important to think again and in particular of the goodness of the divine decision. This is the secret and truth of the concrete encounter between God and man. It characterises that element of singularity and solitariness which cannot be sufficiently emphasised. It differentiates the latter from an isolation and fortuitousness which are not at all true of the encounter between God and man, but can only be a caricature of what really takes place. The goodness of the divine command is something universal; the universal truth and validity of God in this specific relationship. That God is kind in His commanding and forbidding is always and everywhere important for every man in every situation because in this truth consists the inalienable and unchangeable substance of all His commanding and forbidding, because His goodness is His very essence. Because God is rich in His goodness, His commanding and forbidding are not uniform, but particular, and therefore so manifold. But because God is rich in His goodness, this universal element persistently lives and works in the particularity, in all the manifoldness of His commanding and forbidding, as a bond of peace, which prevents the particular from becoming the isolated and the fortuitous, not allowing the manifold to split up and disintegrate, but uniting and holding it together as a single whole. Whatever God wills and demands in the sovereignty and definiteness proper only to Him, in the great singularity and solitariness of His decision, it is always the case that He loves the right, that He is friendly, that He wills and eff~cts what is wholesome. He wills what He wills, and demands what He demands, in the process of realising His eternal counsel formed in Jesus Christ. He wills and demands it in the sequence of His acts, which form the history and its sequel of His covenant of grace. As we have at all points interpreted both the sovereignty and the particularity of the divine command in this connexion, we have now to retract nothing of what we have said concerning its particularity. But we have now to clarify further this specific element by saying that though it distinguishes it does not divide, and that it does not distinguish without welding together and uniting. That the command of God has this specific character does not mean that it dissolves itself into a chaos of individual conflicting intimations to individual men in individual situations. And, similarly, the men addressed by the divine command are not split up into a chaos of alien and conflicting individuals, each of whom is placed in a different relationship to the commanding God from his neighbour; nor is the life of the individual man disintegrated into a chaos of diverse temporal existences in which he stands in different unrelated and conflicting 197

[711]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[712J

relationships to God. This might well be the case if the real God was a capricious God, capriciously determined, and if the divine commanding and forbidding were simply the execution of His whims. We must constantly be on our guard against this fiction and its evil consequences. We must always make sure, in regard to the revelation of the real God, who and what He is. The real God and His commands are good. This puts an end to all possible errors concerning the sovereignty and particularity of His decision. Because it is the decision of His goodness, it is not disorderly nor does it operate chaotically, but it establishes and creates fellowship: fellowship as the inner connexion of all that God wills and requires yesterday, to-day and to-morrow, from this or that man, in this or that situation; fellowship as the inner connexion between all those who hear and accept His will, but also as an objective inner connexion between all those who do not do so; and finally fellowship as the inner connexion binding into an integral whole the life of each individual. Because the goodness of God is the one thing in which He is rich, it is also the one thing in which His command as it addresses the individual is particular and diverse. Again it is the one thing, and the universal thing, which He says to each individual in particular -and to all of them in common, and which they all have to hear in common. Again, it is the one thing which is for each individual the constant factor in all that God has to command and forbid him on the various stages of his path. 1. Because God and His command are good in this full sense of the term, the divine will may not be atomised, as though in the last resort it consisted in, or could be resolved into, the fact that different men in their different times and situations received specific divine intimations; as though it could be related closely, and even identified with the needs and urges and instincts of the individual life. What corresponds so closely with the voice of our inner man, or is indeed identical with it, is not in any case the command of God, for even if we tried to distinguish them conceptually from our own impulses, we could not say of its atomised dictates, addressed exclusively to individuals, that they even remotely fulfil the idea of the good-except, perhaps, that they sound very friendly to us. For the same reason, the divine will cannot be split up into different commands for the men of different epochs, or nations, or social groups, or spheres of life-for example into a multiplicity of religious, moral, economic, scientific, artistic and political dictates. If by divine dictates we understand the VOfLOL, rules, maxims and usages, customs and agreements which h"aveemerged and shown themselves useful in these various spheres of life, we cannot deny that these dictates exist, or that there are very considerable contradictions between them. But it is not the case that there are also these discrepancies in God's command, that it, too, contains these inner contradictions, so that it now demands something right which is not also friendly, now something friendly which is inconsistent with what is wholesome, now something wholesome which is in contradiction with the right. We may believe that this technical and departmental wisdom is unavoidable in practice. But if '\Ie do it is entirely on our own responsibility. It has no foundation in God's 198

3. The Goodness o/the Divine Decision command. On the contrary, it is necessarily limited and relativised by this command. We recognise the divine command in all times and places, nations and spheres of life, by the fact that it is good in the full sense of the term. For this reason, the divine command cannot be split up even in view of the fact that it concerns both our relationship to God and our relationship to other men, our natural being and our being under grace, our outer life and our inner life, our position in the Church and our position in the state. It cannot be divided into the Christian command on one side and natural ordinances on the other. However varied it may be in its concrete content, it is the same in both connexions, and recognisable as the divine command by the fact that nothing can be added to its goodness on the one hand or subtracted from it on the other, just as nothing can either be added to the one God Himself or taken from Him. Either we hear it as the command of His goodness (even though it is a command to shoot) or we do not hear it at all (even though it commissions us to preach). Either we obey it in the unity in which it is always and everywhere true and valid on the various planes which call for consideration, or we do not obey it at all. We love, or we do not love. We are grateful or ungrateful. It is at this point that the fundamental cleavage, the real contradiction, begins. It is not in God Himself or in what is commanded us. What is commanded is always and everywhere that we should allow ourselves to be summoned to penitence by His goodness. We will first illustrate this unity of the command itself by a study of the paranetic chapters of the Epistle to the Romans (121-1\ 13). Paul seems sometimes to have known, and sometimes not to have known, the congregation at Rome and its members, circumstances and problems. It is difficult, therefore, to be sure whether and to what extent the imperatives and directions in this chapter are to be regarded as comparable with many passages in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, Corinthians and Pastorals and taken as direct exhortations, or whether they are to be thought of like the Sermon on the Mount and interpreted as a general indication of place and order for the outliving of the Christian life by the Christians at Rome Passages like those about the political responsibility of Christians (131-7), or the discourse about the attitude of the "strong" towards the "weak" in the congregation, can be properly understood only as very direct and special intimations. But as against that the rest of the material relates it more closely to the indirect formulations of the divine command. The distinction is not important for our problem. There can be no doubt that in these chapters Paul has given a discursive and comprehensive-if not exhaustive-account of what he thought could be more narrowly stated as the will and command of God for the active and passive conduct of the members of a Christian congregation, and of this one in particular. And there can be no doubt that these essentials of Christian living which he tries to bring out in the form of exhortation (-1TapaKATJaL~) form for him a single and indissoluble unity. We must first notice the external unity of what Paul has to say.He speaks expressly (123) to "every man that is among you," according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. Every man must "be fully persuaded in his own mind" (145). Everyone of us must please his neighbour for his good, and that of the whole community, to edification (152). Everyone "shall give an account of himself before the judgment seat of God" (1410 12). "The God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according

199

[713]

S 38. The Command as the Decision of God to Christ jesus, that ye may with one mind our Lord jesus Christ" (155 6). Thus it is not evade what Paul proclaims as the divine another law, that in one regard or another

and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of the case that any member of the community can command by suggesting that there is for him he stands under a different order and necessity,

and is not, therefore, required to obey what Paul dictates, except perhaps in part or in a particular respect. Diversity there certainly is, but only within the bounds of the one Law which is asserted here. The form of obedience varies, but it is always to this one Law, just as gifts of grace (125) are all gifts of the one grace, and members (individual Christians in the distinctiveness of their personal calling and task) are all fellow-members of the one body of the community. Again, it is not at all the case that, apart from what he has to put before the community and Christians, Paul has to reckon further with the existence and relevance of another will and command of God determined and valid for other men and other planes of life. That which is a Law for the community is the Law of God. What Christians, transformed by the renewing of their minds (122), are to prove-the bar before which they must standis the will of God: what is good, and acceptable to Him, and perfect. It is obvious that neither for them nor for others has the form of this passing world any significance as a source of law and principle. Neither for them nor for others is it their reasonable or relevant service to conform to it. The service of God which is required is the reasonable service. There is no good apart from that (129) to which they must cleave, no evil apart from that which they

[714]

must abhor. They have to pay heed to the good (1217) which by its very nature will prove and commend itself as such in the sight of all men. They have to overcome evil with good (1221). Without losing sight for a moment of the Christians to whom it is addressed, the demand for political responsibility is expressly directed to every man (7TG-au ~VX~). Paul does not need to trespass the limits of specifically Christian exhortation to speak also of this matter, nor does he need to refer to any law of nature. And notice that, when he comes back from this apparently generalised human address to the apparently peculiarly Christian command to love (137-8), he deliberately effaces the distinction which there seems to be between the two very different spheres. Hard on the challenge to owe nothing to state ordinances and their representatives, to give them in every respect what is their due according to their divine institution: "tribute to whom tribute; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour" (137), there comes with an almost confusing change of viewpoint, but obviously for Paul in essential continuity, the summons that Christians should see and fulfil their whole obligation by loving one another, that in reciprocal love they are to build up and maintain the Church and so fulfil the whole Law, thus proving themselves to the world, and accepting their basic responsibility to the divinely instituted order of the state, not out of fear, but because they know the will of God (0(,(1 T~V avvEtoYjaLv, ENllO 125). Similarly, the insights developed in the passage 141-153 regarding the relationship of the "strong" to the "weak" in the community (149) have their basis in the fact that Christ is the Lord of the living and the dead, and, again (1410f.), that we must all appear before His judgment seat, as we read in Is. 4918: "As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God." And when finally Paul compares the relationship of the strong and the weak in the community to that betweenjewish and Gentile Christians, or even between Israel and the heathen world as such, his final peroration is almost lyrical in quality: You must receive one another, because Christ has received you all, because He has made Himselfboth a minister of the circumcision in fulfilment of the promise to Israel, and the Lord of the Gentile world in virtue of the fact that the mercy of God is the meaning even of the promises made to Israel. Because in Christ all are chosen and called to thank and praise God, there must be reciprocal acceptance in the Church. Even in regard to the outward form of this Pauline

ENIIO

through their consciences

200

3. The Goodness o/the Divine Decision exhortation, we cannot say that even the least trace of an atomisation or disintegration of the command may be detected, although there is, of course, an obvious diversity of its expression in particular cases. That the will of God is one in spite of the diversity of its expression emerges even more clearly when we analyse the inner roots of Paul's exhortation. In this connexion, it must be em phasised that the expression for what Paul does when he proclaims the will and command of God to the community is 1TapaKaA€LV ENlll (121), which signifies both exhortation and comfort (cf. 155). In face of the utter misery of human existence, which is theirs, Paul comforts them by exhorting them. And he exhorts them and invites them to live in faith by comforting them and strengthening their faith. He beseeches them by the mercies of God. He does not appeal, therefore, to their reason, insight and freedom, nor to their own goodness, but to their acknowledgment of the goodness of God. According to Paul, what God wills from them has its foundation and meaning and authority in the fact they are men who have experienced and known the mercy of God; they have felt and tasted how gracious the Lord is. This is the ground of all exhortation, and it is on the basis and in attestation of it that Paul exhorts them. We certainly ought to notice at this point the connexion between 121 and the conclusion of I I, where in v. 30 the thought had been developed that Christians and unbelievingJews must confess that they are those who because of the steadfastness of God's promises can live by God's mercy alone, and may and should actually live by His mercy. Even in this matter too, as a Christian moralist, Paul speaks as an apostle ofJesus Christ, "through the grace given unto me" (123), and not therefore as though at this point a new task were taken in hand or a new principle or method used. What Paul is about to proclaim as a divine cOlnmand is also the Gospel-the one thing which he has to declare in the whole Epistle. Where it is genuinely proclaimed and truly heard it is also exhortation-a proclamation and hearing of the divine command. Only in the Gospel can this command be truly proclaimed and heard. In this respect it is noteworthy that in its ethical aspect as admonition the Epistle to the Romans is nowhere addressed to outsiders-either Jewish or Gentile-although both classes are discussed extensively enough. Its ethic-and we mean this, of course, in its most universal sense-is exclusively addressed to circles where the Gospel has already found obedience. Its intention is to discuss and explain this obedience as a life of obedience. This is confirmed by the striking fact that the special admonition of 141-1513 does not take the form we might have expected. It is not an equal admonition both to the strong and the weak in faith. But up to 157 it is preponderantly an address to the strong and an exposition of the rules to be observed by them in regard to the weak. Almost everything that the weak have to note in this admonition is said only implicitly and can be elicited from the text itself only indirectly. The command of God can be declared plainly and with binding force only when an appeal to God's mercy is possible. In proportion as this is not possible, or not possible with complete clarity, as seems to be the case with those who are weak in faith, the exhortation dies away,although it obviously remains in force. To hear it is the privilege of believers, and of those who are strong in faith. It is significant that they are the very ones who need it and are bound to observe it. The admonition which the apostle has to give "through the grace given un to me" has as its essen tial theme that its hearers should present their bodies (i.e., their whole person, including all its elements, possibilities and functions) a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. It is evident that this claim can be recognised and accepted and satisfied as meaningful only where a man realises that his life is a living and sacred gift, a sacrifice well pleasing to God, and as such desired and claimed by God. This is not at all selfeviden t. That man is to be understood as a sacrifice devoted to God and welcomed by Him, and that he is authorised and called to bring this sacrifice as a priest, is the truth of human EN I I I

to appeal

201

[715]

S 38.

[716]

The Command as the Decision of God

existence as it is realised only in Jesus Christ. He,Jesus Christ, is alone the acting and directing subject (both offering and offered) of the reasonable service of God which corresponds objectively to the real relationship between man and God. To participate in this divine service is not for everyone-although this is the only reasonable service of God there is. To participate in it is only for those who believe in Jesus Christ, i.e., who confess Him as their Lord, who put their trust in His person and work, who are baptised in His name, who share in His Holy Spirit, and are therefore ready and able, in their own sphere, to have a part in His office and mission. Because believers inJesus Christ know and accept the truth that His righteousness avails for their unrighteousness, His holiness for their sin, His life for their death. because they put on the armour of light (1312), or Jesus Christ Himself (1314), they are the ones to whom this demand applies, to whom its fulfilment is vital, and from whom it can be expected. Their nobility obliges them, not to something which is not binding upon all men, but to a life which, because it is binding upon all men, must at all costs be lived out among all men as a token of its universal obligatoriness. As witnesses to the death and resurrection of Christ, they have to attest by their life that the fashion of this world passes away, because the kingdom of God has drawn near. They have to do this by refusing to conform to this world (122), asking, in opposition to it, what is the will of God-that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Notice in this connexion how in 1311 there is a reference back to the faith of those whom the admonition concerns as the history from which they come: E7TLoTEvoap.-EvEN1l2-this being succeeded by a forward look to the future as it is shaped by this history: d7ToBwp.-EBa, EVDvowp.-EBa, 7TEpL7TaT~owp.-EV ... EN1l3 Between this past and this future they are like those who are awakened in the middle of the night while the rest sleep. They have already slept but (like those who must be astir first on guard duty) they now have to get up. The day has not yet dawned, but they have to walk as in the day (ws EV ~p.-EPct). Now that they are awake the night and its life are behind th~m. It may lie heavy on their eyes and in all their limbs, but it exists as that which is past. They know that Christ has rec'eived them (157); and therefore they have no option but to receive one another. They know that they can no longer live and die unto themselves, for whether they live or die they belong to the Lord (147ff_). It follows, therefore, that what they do or do not do as those who are strong in this faith, if it is rightly done or not done, must always be an act of EvxapLoT{aEN1l4, of thanksgiving to God (146). They know that they must always serve Christ in the Holy Spirit, and so be well pleasing to God, and approve themselves in the sight of men (1418). It follows, therefore, that they must alwayssee and seek the kingdom of God, not in licence to eat and drink as they please, but in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost (1417). The whole admonition of the apostle can be summed up, therefore, in the prayer (1513): "The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." Throughout Paul is concerned about this abounding in hope, about the joy and peace which spring from this hope and which he presumes his readers to have as those who have come to faith inJesus Christ. That they might not be empty, but full of this hope, that they might alwaysshow themselves to be aware of the goodness of God in their conduct-this is what constitutes the inner unity of the admonition and command which he has to set before them. And this inner unity is the root of the outward unity-the fact that, according to this text, there cannot be any other command of God but this. 2.

ENl12 ENl13 ENl14

Because the command of God is good, this means that, in spite of all the we have believed let us put off, let us put on, let us walk thank.sgiving

202

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision diversity of its claims on men it unites them. It has never yet appeared that generally recognised principles can produce real unity among men. On the contrary, they require interpretation. Indeed, they require individualIstic interpretation. If they are to be applied, this is a downright necessity. Thus their establishment alwaysexercises a secret centrifugal effect. They bring into play self-will, better judgment, particular standpoints, various interests, jealousies, cleavages and parties. Moral fellowship can and will arise where people see and know that they are in the same situation and in the same ground to the extent that they recognise themselves to be placed under the sovereign and definite decision of God. Where the living command of God claims andjudges two or three people it may do so in very different ways, but the very fact that in these different ways they are claimed and judged by this command will necessarily bring them and hold them together. It does not always go without saying that they can accord each other mutual respect as true hearers of the command. The question of confidence can be seriously posed among them. Yet this is not an insoluble problem, as it is when we have first to believe in the goodness of the other if we are to have confidence in him and in his interpretation of moral principles. There is here an archimedian point beyond all existing differences. It is always possible and even necessary to enquire about the unity in and beyond all diversity. In every case-both where it is heard, and also objectively where it is heard only imperfectly or not at all-the command of God is a revelation of the freedom of the Lord of all men. But where this freedom is disclosed, it is objectively quite impossible that those who stand together under the judgment of this Lord should judge one another. On the contrary, the objective possibility or necessity is to be mutually free for this Lord, and in this way, in this freedom, to come together in a true fellowship. The oneness of their Lord can and must obviously find a reflection in the unity of His servants. And where the command is truly heard, this objective possibility and necessity becomes a subjective reality. The reflection of the divine in the human takes historical shape. Men are actually in fellowship one with another, however far apart they may seem to be in consequence of the diversity of the concrete manifestation of the divine command to each individual. Mutual trust and living fellowship are then present. Common responsibility emerges without any mutual encroachment, or usurpation of individual responsibilities. This is the case because God's command is good in the full meaning of the term. The command of God will never allow a man to escape his personal and direct responsibility, to shelter from the divine claim behind the overwhelming force of the opinions and judgments current in his environmen t, to bow before the dictate of another conscience. The command of God will always place man in the freedom of immediate obedience. Again, the command of God will never allow him any other freedom but a freedom in fellowship. It will never permit him to break off his unity with others, no matter what may be the circumstances of his relation to them. It will never allow him to pass from a relative to an absolute conflict with them. It is never the fault of the 203

[717]

l S 38.

The Command as the Decision of God

command, but only of its hearers, if men think that there is no furth~r place for right and friendliness and wholesomeness in their mutual relations and that they should engage in mutual conflict on the basis of this kind of abstraction. Only a relative conflict is possible and necessary in respect of the hearing of the one command which is good in the fullest sense. We cannot and should not spare either ourselves or others this conflict. But it can and will be rightly conducted only as we recognise that in itself the command of God is the command of absolute peace, and that we can engage in strife only for the sake of peace. To hear and obey the command of God is always to be on the way to fellowship. Ifwe are not, if our feet are on the opposite path, there can be no doubt that-even under the most honourable title-we are in conflict and contradiction with the command. True and radical division amongst men begins only as they oppose or accept the command of God which is the command of His goodness. This division does not consist in God, or in what is required of us. For it is always required of us that we ourselves should become and be good in correspondence with the goodness of God. [718]

From the very first sentence (121) Paul addressed those whom he admonished in his Epistle to the Romans as brothers, and the expression is emphatically repeated (1410) when there is a particular question of differences between the brethren. Here, as elsewhere, the phrase is obviously meant to remind us that the God whose commanding and forbidding we must recall is our Father because Jesus Christ is our eldest Brother. Because they are addressed as brothers, those who are admonished are from the outset brought together on common ground. The exhortation which they are to hear cannot possibly involve divisions or the recognition of divisions between them. There can be no question of the one judging or despising the other when both live by faith (1410). Brother cannot possibly give offence to brother, i.e., threaten him by his conduct with exclusion from fellowship with God the Father and His SonJesus Christ (1413). He cannot trouble him, i.e., confuse him in his own particular faith, which is the only one he has. Whatever the divine command as focused by the apostolic exhortation may mean for each individual, it is certain that it will signify his share in the sacrificial act (121) to be accomplished by a single race of brethren, in the service of God which as such is not the private business of anyone individual, and in which none can act in opposition to the others in the name of God, but which can only be rendered in common. They must all together, if in different ways,make that protest against the form of this world, and transform themselves by the renewing of their minds according to the will of God (122). Therefore the particular admonition of the apostle begins with the warning that none should aim his thoughts more highly (lJ'TTEp1JpovELv) than he ought, but each should think discreetly and soberly according to the measure of faith which God has given him. It is obviously unfitting, because over-ambitious, if a man accords absolute value to the measure of faith assigned him, and therefore aims at pitting it against the faith of others. Sobriety is the attitude of those who recognise in their own faith, but also in that of others, the one true faith-its ground and object-but in the strength of this faith are prepared to live with those who believe differently. The reality of the difference between them may, of course, rest (14lf.) upon the serious difference between strong and weak faith. But even in this case it does not offer any occasion for an absolute division or disintegration of the community. Even then the relative conflict can only be waged for the sake of the absolute peace of the community. But Paul only speaks of this at the end. For the moment, he points out (124f.) that the one undivided body of Christ, to which all believers (strong as well as 204

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision weak) belong, has many members, and the one indivisible grace-the same for all, strong as well as weak-is diverse in its operations. Whereas the diversity of human gifts and temperaments and tendencies can only divide, the diversity of the members and the manifold operations of grace can only unite. So certain is Paul of this that in 126[., for example, when he had to speak of these human differences, he did not take the expected course and warn men to keep in the background the divisive factors and concentrate on the unifying. On the contrary, he summoned each member not to allow his vitality to be impaired but to make an earnest and consistent effort to use the gifts granted to him. Each one must make full use of what has been given him by the will of God, doing that which is committed to him. It is by the freedom in which he will live on the basis of the freedom of the Lord who thus calls him that he will live soberly ( 1 23) and build up rather than destroy the common life. The gift of grace given him as a member of the body of Christ-the prophetic word or the service of love or teaching or exhortation or liberality or administration or mercy-cannot be a cause of dispute. It is not made in order that he may serve himself (as he would do ifhe lived according to his impulses and desires), but in order that he may serve the community, and in it all others, and beyond the community and all others the world, to which the community is engaged, as both the community and the world are engaged in the service of Him who is the Lord of both. In and with all this he will definitely take part in the common act of the reasonable service of God. There then follows (129-21) a chain of loosely linked intimations consisting almost entirely of short adjectival, participle phrases. Notice that not a single one of them relates to the private life of individual Christians. Formally, the whole series is connected with the passage about gifts of grace by what is strictly an imperceptible transition. Materially, it contains directions about the life of Christians in relationship with others: first (129-1:~) their fellowship among themselves, and then (1214-21) their contacts with the surrounding non-Christian world. The admonition to accept the political order follows on quite naturally from this (131-7). The insistence upon the law of love, which sums up the whole Law (13R-1O) and by which the Church is built up in the world and therefore the work of God done, brings the sequence to a conclusion which is both meaningful and in harmony with the beginning in 129• It is evident that here, too, we have a description of that act of fellowship, with the emphasis on its public aspect. Under the category of aya7T'Y} ENl15 (129) the whole conduct which Paul requires of Christians is included-even what is said about their relationship to the state. The love which edifies the Church is without dissimulation and genuine when it is sincere, and it is sincere when it bears witness to the love of God of which each member of the Church may confess himself the object. This love will be full of wisdom towards one's neighbour. It will be able to overcome the evil which it encounters in him and strengthen the good. In this wisdom it will be an inward brotherly love (121O)-the affectionateness in which we seek neither ourselves nor others but the common Lord in brotherhood with others, gladly seeing in our brother, although without surrendering our own freedom and responsibility, the representative of our eldest Brother, and therefore the common Father, and thus yielding him the preference and honour. The zeal of this love, awakened by the Holy Ghost and under its control, will not fail. Its flame cannot be quenched (Cant. 87). Its service (of the Lord) cannot be interrupted. Its hope (1212) will alwaysrejoice. Its steadfastness in adversity is constant. Its prayer does not cease. It will never neglect the needs of the saints-for that is the life of the whole community directed to the service of the Master. It is in this way,in the form of this full and uninterrupted but, as may be seen, very material claim upon each individual, that love lives in the community. It is in this way that there is fellowship in that reasonable service. Personal inclination of the one towards the other is certainly not excluded, but it does not seem to be necessarily demanded ENII!>

love

2°5

[719]

S 38. The Command as the Decision of God by what is here described ness and freedom, is genuine

as love. This Christian

love has the meaning

the infinity and limits, of supreme

that it can never fail (1 Cor. 13S), that it cannot

and capable of endurance,

erate into sentimentality

and power, the serious-

objectivity. And it is in this form that it

nor grow weary nor be deflected

into indifference,

degen-

aversion

and

divisiveness. By claiming all passion, though not itself passion, it acquires permanence, power and authority. Both its movement and its rest are rooted in grace and not in nature, in the office and commission

of the community

the men there assembled, in nature

caught up and renewed

serve the Church

by grace, in the personal

and its Lord, in the respect

What Christians another

and its Lord and not in the personal

in the fear of God and not the respect of persons-or,

decidedly

of persons

owe to the world

need that sees itself obliged

(13S-10)

is just that they should

with all its fervour

and for the whole world. In this good work every individual realism.

love one

in all its depth and reality,

that must not be confused

passion, the Church is edified, the good work which God requires inner circle of Christians, but with the creation and maintenance is one who loves with this supreme

to

that flows from the fear of God.

in this way. In so far as this love is alive among Christians,

with all the joy and sorrow it brings,

needs of

conversely,

with

takes place, not only in the of this circle for everyone

Christian

has his share as he, too,

In so doing, he will give what is due to all his

neighbours. Thus the special fellowship of the Church, whose formation and preservation is the basic divine purpose, does not mean an absolute separation, but is the basis of a world-

[720]

wide fellowship.

Protesting

against

the form

of this world

(122),

the Church

against but only for the men who are still caught up in this world. Therefore all its individual

members

them with curses-as (1214) . As Christians

cannot

are still enemies.

and themselves criticism

pursue

and opposition

and fulfil the ministry

But they cannot their own Christian

directed

and threatened

against

(2 Cor. 51S) while ways

path. They can only bless them as they answer all in fellowship

with those that are without,

with them, acting towards them as brethren (1215). This will and loss but by the confirmation of their own characteristic

living according

Els dAA~AOVS

of reconciliation

bless them if they let them go their different

by living all the more

rejoicing with them, weeping not happen by the surrender Christian life-by its task (TO aUTO

the persecution

be and

though it were a question of conflicting parties-but only with blessing themselves were reconciled to God when they were still enemies (Rom.

516), so now they must undertake others

meet

cannot

the Church

to the way suggested

~POVOVVTESEN1l6,

by the unity of the community

and

1216). And this way consists in the fact that

they will not share in the distinctive desire for prominence (cf. 123), the impulse to be as gods, which is so characteristic of the form of this world and to which the children of this world are enslaved. On the contrary,

they will be found in the world, offering

their sympathy

injoy and sorrow, at the point where God's grace came to them-in the humility ofa humanity which is conscious of owing nothing to their own cleverness and strength, where nothing is to be expected from man and everything from God, where men acknowledge their own frailty in contrast to every presumption of divine likeness (1216). In this verse we have again the all-important ~POVELVEN1l7 of 123, and to it is added: f.L~ YLvEa8E ~p6VLf.LOL 7Tap' EavToLsENllS. We are reminded again of the warning as to the impartation and right use of the gifts of grace. Even within their non-Christian environment Christians will always be "brought down" to the Ta7TELva EN1l9, the little things, the less distinguished, less popular possibilities. They will be found at the side of the minority, the humiliated and oppressed. For they are what they are only by grace. Only by grace are they endowed with gifts and held

EN1l6 EN1l7 ENllS EN1l9

thinking in harmony with one another 'think' do do think too highly of yourselves humble

206

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision together as a fellowship. It isjust in this disposition, as those who are endowed by grace, and therefore humble, and in this way held together in a unity, that they face the surrounding world which contradicts and opposes them, or rather stand as priests at its side. In this disposition they will certainly not pit themselves against their adversaries as one party against another (1217), requiting evil with evil, answering worldly arrogance and force with Christian. But in the sight of all men-whether the latter perceive it or not-they will work for the objective grace and the common weal of all. Only those can do this who do not consider themselves as wise because they know the wisdom of grace. But these can do it-and they can do it in all circumstances. As those who have received and accepted the divine offer of peace (Rom. 51), they are themselves a living and absolutely sincere and in every way irrevocable offer of peace in the sight of all men (1218), and most of all in the sight of their adversaries. The outcome is not in their control. But within the limits of the possible, so far as in them lies, they cannot wish to be other than this universal and absolute offer of peace. They do not fight in their own cause, and they cannot, therefore, wish to vindicate their right (1219) when a wrong is done them. They are the beloved of God who as such, as is indicated by their submission to the political order which God has instituted for this purpose, are not concerned to attest the wrath of God. For they know that this will be done in another way.Even as Christians they are responsible, according to 131, for seeing that it is done at the right time and in the way which God has ordained. Because they do not evade this responsibility, because they give the wrath of God its due place, they go beyond this place, for they do not only know about the wrath of God, but realise that His wrath is the burning of His love. The mission of the Church and every Christian (1220) does not deny the mission of the state, but includes and transcends it. It consists in the fact that instead of requiting like with like, it requites like with unlike. In this wayit resists and overcomes the enemy, the man who refuses to accept the message of reconciliation. For it does not recognise him seriously as an enemy. It does not allow him to persist in his hostility to the extent of provoking retaliation. The Christian will refuse to become his enemy even within the framework of the political order and its necessary fight against disorder. Even within this framework, and in fulfilment of the divine meaning of this order, he will not be against him but for him. He will beat him decisively,heaping "coals of fire on his head," by treating him as one who is in need-hungry and thirsty-and giving him food and drink and all that one in supreme need requires. Christian intransigence, the Christian resistance to evil, consists in this, that the Christian never allows himself to be seduced from his offer of reconciliation, never lets himself be overcome by evil, is never enticed to requite evil with evil, is never led astray from the overcoming of evil with good, and therefore from the path of fellowship with the enemy. He does not refuse communion to the enemy, but to evil.And for this reason he seeks it even with the enemy. The famous verses in 131-7 do not form any exception to this fundamental rule concerning the Christian's relationship to the world. They suggest that no one need fear the outbreak of general chaos as a result of following this rule. Provision is really made that God's opposition to the world's evil will be vindicated where the Church's message of reconciliation is not yet or no longer heard and received. That is why Christians do not need to form a party in the struggle against the wicked, but can and must continue undismayed to tread the way of fellowship with the latter, because God has long ago taken sides against their violence, has long since barred their way so that although they may rattle the bolt they cannot open the door. The wicked are objectively controlled by the order which God, the Father ofjesus Christ, has established and confirmed even in the world outside the Church, His Son being the King and Ruler over all powers, and ruling as such in might. Protected by Him, Christians and the Church are free to requite evil with good. "Allpower is given unto me in heaven and in earth," Mt. 2818• "Thou hast given him power over all flesh" Un. 172)-even

2°7

[721]

S 38.

[722J

The Command as the Decision of God

genuine political authority. For this reason the special duty of the Church extends to recognising this true political authority, and its special mission includes sharing the responsibility for the execution of this authority. Everyone-every member of the Church, "because of the mercy of God," must submit himself, not blindly and uncritically (Paul never means that when he speaks of tJ'lTOTaaaEa8uL) EN120, but with true self-adaptation to this political authority. The power of the state as such is of God (131), and wherever this power is found (not in so far as it may be partially anarchy or tyranny, but in so far as it is legitimate authority) it is ordained of God, so that those who try to evade or oppose it resist the ordinance of God and the kingly rule of His Son. It is God's ordinance for the security of the collective life of man even where the latter provides no scope for grace, where, because the light of grace cannot yet shine, the shadow of divine wrath must be cast. But divine wrath does not really exist apart from grace. That God's grace prevails here in the form of His anger is shown by the fact that the political order is the order of the sword, of compulsion and fear. It reckons with the destructive power of natural human ambit!on (1216) which is so characteristic of this world, with the aggressive, explosive effect of all thinking which has not yet (122) been renewed and which makes man esteem himself wise. It is not God's will that men, in this condition, should mutually devour themselves as would necessarily be the case if they were left to themselves. God has not given up humanity as a prey to its own lusts (cf. Rom. 124 26 28), for He has restrained men against breaking out in a way which would be the natural c()nsequence of their own lusts. God is patient. God will give men time to recognise His grace. God will also grant His Church time to proclaim His grace. That God wills to give the world and the Church time to receive grace is the secret purpose of the political order. That it must be an order of the sword, compulsion and fear, springs from the essence of this divine intention. Where the grace of God is not yet known and exalted, has not yet found obedience, only the sword and compulsion and fear can reign. Where it is only a question of finding time and freedom for the proclamation and knowledge of grace, of making possible the social life of men under the presupposition that their life is lived apart from and contrary to the grace of God, grace itself must assume and maintain the form of a graceless order. This graceless order, corresponding to the form of this world overcome and abolished in principle by Jesus Christ, is the political order, the rule of law, which is established and protected by threats and the use of physical force. Why may we not evade or oppose it? Simply because in all its gracelessness it is an expression of the kingdom of grace: of grace in so far as this refers and extends itself to humanity still involved in the form of this world; of grace in so far as it has the character of a protecting and restraining patience. Christians who are treading their very different path to fellowship, consistently with the fact that the kingdom of God has now dawned, must recognise the grace of God even in this graceless order. They cannot be ungrateful to the God who wills to give them and the world more time and opportunity. They themselves would be such as esteem themselves wise if they refused to recognise this ordinance of God. For this reason the apostle invites them to adapt themselves to this temporal order. This does not mean that they give up their special task, their special way of life in fellowship, which springs from their apprehension of grace. In so doing they as little compromise with the form of this world as does God Himselfwho appoints this order for humanity as it is entangled in the form of this world. For He does not do this in order to confirm this form, which has been overcome and abolished in Jesus Christ, but to prepare its final and total dissolution. It is in this sense that Christians must adapt and subordinate themselves to the temporal order. It is in the most literal sense a provisional dispensation, preceding and making ready for that which is ultimately to be revealed. As such it is of God's appointing, declaring itself to be such by the fact that it, too, represents a kingdom, a EN120

submission

208

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision 1TOA{TEU/-ta EN121 and that though it does not itself create and proclaim that which is good and right and friendly and redemptive, it provides and safeguards the external conditions for this proclamation (in so far as it is an order of state and not its opposite); for, in spite of every manifestation of the evil which has not yet been identified and abolished, it preserves the common life, keeping it from a destruction which would inevitably make the existence of the Church irrelevan t. Because Christians recognise the order of God in the order of the sword, compulsion and fear, they themselves can be neither anti-political nor a-political. They can be neither hostile to this order, nor alien, indifferent and aloof. If they were, it would indicate that they were abandoning their own way of fellowship by themselves ceasing to be hearers, bearers, doers and proclaimers of the divine command, guarantors of the kingdom of Christ, and that they themselves were willing to let go of the grace of God-their sale support-in the delusion that th«y had no further need of God's patience. If they do not cease to be what they are, they will not become impatient where God Himself is patient. They will then understand, and realise in practice, that their reasonable service, consistently with the will and work of God Himself, must take the form of the service of God in politics, consisting in their participation in the life of that provisional, graceless order of earthly things. In 134 the power of the state is expressly described as SUIKovos (}EOV EN122, and its bearers and executives, rulers and their officers, as AELTOVpYOL (}EOV EN123. But where God is served in these things according to His appointment, Christians can neither make objection, nor stand passivelyaside. They cannot regard this order, as is explained in 135, merely from the point of view of its gracelessness, as the order where the wrath of God finds expression (cf. 1219). They cannot subject themselves to it only as they would have to subject themselves to an outbreak of plague or an earthquake-as other tokens of the divine wrath. They cannot be willing merely to suffer under the existence of the state. On the contrary, they are enjoined to adapt themselves to it SUI T~V GVvEtS'YjGLVEN124, and to recognise in this graceless order an expression of the gracious will of God. They are enjoined to offer it, even in this form, a free and willing obedience, to affirm it sincerely, actively and completely. It is just because and as they render to God what is God's that they will also-unreservedly-give to Caesar what is Caesar's-every personal service required of them and necessary for the maintenance of the state (136£.), and therefore a share in the responsibility for the continuance of this dispensation. It is they, above all, who know what they are doing when they think and act as citizens of the state. It is they who are competent and called to do this in all seriousness. For them it is not a matter of chance motives or personal inclinations, but the service of God. But they know, too, the limits and the provisional character of this matter. They therefore bring it the necessary temperance, the candour and the courage necessary to distinguish between a political order and all the forms of disorderliness concealed under the appearance of a political order. They will always understand Caesar better than he understands himself. They will alwaysbe in a position to give him what it is right, to give him better than he himself can demand it. They will rightly obey men within the framework of this order because even here they obey God, who is the Founder and Guarantor of the order, rather than men. They will be citizens in all seriousness because they are not merely or primarily or finally citizens, but citizens as those whose 1ToAtTEu/-ta EN125 is in heaven (Phil. 3~W). Their service of God is not simply to be equated with political service. It only includes the latter. Their thinking and action as Christians transcends their political thinking and

state servant of God servants of God EN I 24 in their consciences EN I 2 .•.. ) citizenship ENI21

EN I 22

EN I 2:~

2°9

[723]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[724]

action. Their special way of life as Christians does not break off altogether with their subordination to the state, but is only intersected by it. Even here they still continue to overcome evil by good (1221). They still continue to love as God Himself does not cease to love when He establishes and maintains this order, but continues to do so in a special way.The Church with its proclamation of grace lives on within the graceless order of the state: not in contradiction to the latter, but revealing its ultimate meaning and purpose, providing its ultimate vindication and therefore transcending it; not confined to the immanent purposes of the state but beginning where the possibilities and powers of the state end, and living, therefore, its own characteristic life. It is clear from the context in which Paul introduces the subjectfrom the preceding verses in 1214ff. as from the continuation in 138f. to which we have already referred, from his smooth transitions from the distinctive notes of the Christian life to its political repercussions and then back again to the special Christian way-that he does not intend the incorporation of this central political section to be understood as an intrusion in his admonition. The work of Christian love takes place as the Christian community lives its own life. But the characteristic life of the Christian community has this political dimension. Otherwise it would not be the supreme way to fellowship. Yet even here everything depends upon the fact that it continues to be the life of the Christian community. The Christian life, Christian love has, therefore, this aspect. It expresses itself in its nonChristian environment as described in 1214f .• Aware of God's patience, it demands that Christians should participate in the work of the state. The meaning and power of this admonition are wholly dependent on whether the Church remains the Church, whether there is the common endeavour of Christians in the cause of their Lord as described in 129ff., and therefore whether they fulfil the whole Law by their mutual love, by a continuation of the act of fellowship described in 123ff'-an act which is made possible and evoked by the grace revealed to the community and recognised by it, on the basis and within the limits of the gift of grace imparted to each individual Christian. Everything depends upon whether Christians are really the host that is awakened and astir in the midst of many sleepers (1310f.). If they are not pursuing the path of fellowship among themselves, how can they be in their relations with the surrounding world, in their participation in the life of the state? The Christian fellowship is the essence of all fellowship, both of those which Christians have to evangelise with their message of reconciliation (129f.) and of those toward whom they have to act as Christians (13 If.) in a sphere which their Gospel has not yet penetrated and. in which the patient will of God demands that there should not be the destruction of human life in community but its preservation. Whether Christians love in these ways, and in so doing fulfil the command of God, depends on whether they love each other. The great concluding passage, which obviously refers to a special difficulty of the Church at Rome, deals with this essence of all fellowship. There is not only, as described in 123ff., a diversity of gifts of the one grace, in face of which the command must be that each shall make full use of the gift vouchsafed to him, thus living the life of a holy member of the one holy body ofjesus Christ, representing the whole in his own place ana sphere, and therefore deliberately serving all others and the whole. Apart from this diversity of gifts, there is a diversity in the appropriation of the one grace, and therefore a humanly conditioned diversity in the form of the obedience required from all. This flows from the fact that the Church has a provisional character and is conditioned by the form of this world which, although it overcome and abolished in principle, still has power over it. For this reason alone it cannot escape solidarity with the order of the state which rests upon the same presupposition. From the point of view of the grace revealed to it and apprehended by it, ofjesus Christ and His Holy Spirit, it cannot be understood or explained that there are those who are weak in faith (141) as opposed to those who are strong (lSI). Paul did not undertake to justify the diversity a.mong the members of the Church. He simply registered it as a fact, just as he did the 210

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision continuing manifestation of evil in the world as the presupposition of the political order. He did not, therefore, praise the diversity as adding to the richness of the Church's life, nor evaluate it as a sign of vitality. He simply reckoned with it, and gave directions about our attitude to it, seeing it cannot be simply set aside and dissolved. It is clear that he ascribed the dimension of patience to the grace of God in this respect too-in respect of its appropriation by the community, of its effective presence in the prism of this Christian humanity. He therefore required of Christians that in their mutual love they should be patient, and that their forbearance must persist in face of this diversity. It is to be noted that Paul nowhere takes a neutral position in regard to the divergence in question, which is obviously conditioned only on the human level. He does not in any sense adopt a mediating standpoint between the strong and the weak. According to the whole tenor of the argument, there can be no question that as an apostle of the Gospels he regards the activity of the so-called "strong" as intrinsically the better. But as he views the non-Christian world, not outside the kingdom of Christ but within it in the form of the state, he sees that Christians who do not have this better, strong faith are not outside the community, but represent a type of Christian life which we must tolerate and respect. He says that the community, or, concretely, those who are strong in faith, must not recognise the position of the weaker brethren as an equally justifiable possibility, nor must they merely tolerate them. They are to receive them (7TpoaAaJL~avEa()aL), to invite them, to keep company with them and to bear their infirmof our ities (151), as Christ has received us all. This is something which-independently judgment about the divergence-is better than their higher degree offaith. This is the good req uired of Christians in face of this divergence. It can only be the good of Jesus Christ Himselfwho is Lord of the living and the dead (and how much more Lord of the strong and the weak!), who did not live to please Himselfbut His neighbour, bearing the shame of those who despise God (to whom the strong in faith might also belong), who as He fulfilled the promises made to Israel is also the God whom the heathen magnify (who therefore wills to be magnified by both the strong and the weak together). In subordination to this Law, the community, and especially those in it who are strong in faith, must be prepared to accept the fact of this divergence, being made responsible for the fact that, as the command is one, so also the obedience to be offered by the community must alwaysbe one, in spite of all serious differences as to its form. They have received no better grace than the weak. That they have assimilated it better cannot be allowed to separate them from the latter, but only bring them so much the more together. Otherwise their better is the enemy of the good-of the good which isJesus Christ Himself. This is what must not happen-any more than the resistance or indifference of Christians to the state regarded as the form assumed by the kingdom of Christ in the world outside the Church. In both cases it is a question of obeYing the Lord. In both cases the better and the best expression of human obedience is measured by whether we are really obedient to the Lord, and not disobedient, in spite of the appearance of this better or best form. Those who are obedient to Him-and the primary appeal is to the strong in faith-will see to it that no SLaKptaELS SLaAoYLaJLwv EN126, no divisions arise in the community through the particular (less sound) opinions of the weak, the special principles and practices with which they think they must maintain their faith. Those who hold these views-the weak-must not judge others. But, above all, the strong who do not hold them must not despise others. Why not? Because God has received both (143). Because both are servants, each serving the Lord with their better or less good faith, each finding in the Lord his own Judge and Saviour. They cannot exclude each other when God has accepted both and willjudge their faithfulness or unfaithfulness by His mercy. Let each be certain in his own mind whether he can confidently proceed on his chosen course. Each man can do this EN

126

divergences of though t

211

[725]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[726]

(146-12) when he does what he does in gratitude to God and the Lord and not in a spirit of self-seeking. Each and all are to be measured by this standard. By this standard the Christian with the better and freer faith might find himself condemned, and the Christian whose tottering faith needs support might find himself justified. Who can dare to make this the crucial test (and no one can fail to do so, for each is asked whether he does what he does thankfully, for the Lord) and then proceed to judge or to despise? As we are asked this question, can we do anything but join with those whom we might well have had cause to judge or despise in bowing our knees before the One who is Lord of the whole Church and who alone is right as against all the members of the Church? As for those who would like to judge or despise, when they do this do they not show that their conduct is not rooted in thankfulness towards God and service of their Master? And if this is the case, how can they behave with absolute conviction that they are right? If they behave with complete assurance, in thankfulness towards God and for their Lord, and therefore in a common subservience with those whom they might have had cause to judge or despise, then, according to 1413f., all pretentious behaviour is excluded by the fact that another positive duty presses upon them, namely, not to be a cause of stumbling or offence to their brother, never to confuse him in his faith (whether it be sound or less sound), never to induce him to do what can only be sin in his case, since he cannot do it in faith (1423). Each has to be concerned that the other should strictly cleave to the waywhich his faith (whether more sound or less) dictates to him as the recipient of grace he is. This is the positive concern which replaces the temptation to judge and despise others, and it is a concern which we can none of us attempt to evade. No objective right against others can excuse us if in the exercise of this right we provoke them to disobedience, to do what they can only do through disobedience. No objective right ever permits any of us not to walk in love, to bring to ruin those for whom Christ died. In common with them (1416f.), and therefore in a concern for our own faith, we must secure the good of God's kingdom and not the good of our own better faith and better way.Let us show the superior soundness of our faith by unhesitatingly preferring to our own objective right our concern for the peace and the common edification of the Church and therefore for the faith of our neighbour. This is precisely what the strong in faith can do. And they especially are bound to do this when this course is dictated from that higher standpoint. Those who are objectively right are the very ones who must be able to resign all thoughts of asserting and maintaining this right if they cannot do this without forsaking the way of love or the common upbuilding of the Church, without destroying the work of God. The strong in faith do not become weak when they act in this way but evince their strength by the fact that they do not only tolerate the weakness of the weak but genuinely bear it, making it their own, being weak with the weak. It is the strong who owe it to their strength to do this (151). They owe it to their strength to live for the sake of their neighbours, not just in a waywhich pleases their neighbours, but in such a way that what happens to their neighbours necessarily happens for their good, for the upholding of their faith and therefore the edification of the community. The more strongly and consistently faith is directed to Jesus Christ alone, and the life of the believer nourished by Him alone, the more necessary this is. For Jesus Christ (153) did not live for His own sake. He emptied Himself of His divine majesty, and took the form of a servant, and became like men, and took to Himself the shame of those who dishonour God. The strong in faith are ~alled upon to imitate this His conduct. How can it be strong, how can it be faith at all, ifit does not involve this imitation? By cleaving (154f.) to the One who, according to the witness of Scripture, humbled Himself for us all in the omnipotent mercy of the living God, it has no optio~ but to affirm the corresponding unity of all who believe in Him and live by Him. On this model the strong and the weak in faith are so bound up with each other that the strong have to carry the weak and care for the weak. Seeing themselves in this mirror, the strong in faith cannot live to please themselves. They cannot live out the

212

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision strength of their faith. They can live only in the community, and therefore in a fellowship of faith with the weak, and therefore without despising them (even though the latter judge them!), and therefore in a readiness to praise God in consideration for their weakness. In this unity of faith, and with this united faith praising God in the world of which they are appointed to be the light, the strong and the weak (157) in the Christian community will receive each other, as they have both been received, having no existence except in this reception, but in this common reception their one and all. Where would be either the strong or the weak in the Church at Rome ifjesus Christ had not revealed and actualised the faithfulness of God (15H-12) as the Messiah of the jews and the mercy of God as the Saviour of the world, thus making one body of the elect people and the many non-elect? What is the antithesis of the strong to the weak in comparison with that of light and darkness which jesus Christ overcame at the cost of His death on the cross? It is worth nothing that already in 155-6 and again in 1513 Paul's admonition passes over into prayer and intercession. And in 1513 it does this in such a way that the specific content of this concluding section needs no further mention. It obviously needed only this apostolic prayer and its hearing to bring about what was urged particularly in this concluding section-but also from the very outset. The hearing of the divine command will then lead and keep Christians in the way of fellowship even though it is understood that the command is heard well and less well among them.

3. Finally, because the command of God is good, it unifies each individual man in himself. At this point too-and supremely-there is the threat of contradiction, conflict and chaos. It is because man is not at one in himself that we are not at one with each other. It is because inner consistency and continuity are lacking in the life of the individual that there is no fellowship among men. Yet the fault is not with God's command, but with man himself-not with his obedience but with his disobedience to the command-if he cannot be at harmony with himself and others. In Rom. 77f., Paul has described how the real work of sin consists in misinterpreting and misapplying the divine command. Sinful man makes of the command a pretext for trying to justify and sanctify himself, instead of allowing himself to be justified and sanctified by the command. He then goes on to show in 713f. that when man tries to do this he gives himself over to death, i.e., to the disunity of an existence in which he does not will what he does, or do what he wills. The various attempts which he makes along these lines, the various possibilities at which he catches in this enterprise which is so contrary to the command, the various stages on his way as conditioned by the varied forms assumed by this attempt will always necessarily be variations on this one unhappy theme, serving only to demonstrate afresh the reality of his inner conflict. He can never be alone without fighting against himself, without being necessarily locked in inner strife. Therefore he will fear nothing so much as being alone. And driven by this fear he will turn outwards towards others and will have nothing to bring them except himself and his own dispeace. He will try to escape from this condition by giving it the form of conflict between himself and others. And the more he succeeds in doing this, the less will he be able to escape from the toils of his personal conflict. All this is relevant to the divine command only to the extent of making it crystal clear that we cannot trifle with it, that if it is not seen and accepted as the "law of the

[727]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[728J

Spirit of life" it must work itself out as the "law of sin and death" (Rom. 82). As the Law presents itself in its self-revelation, and is heard and accepted as such, it does not divide but unite. It unites the individual in himself and then makes him an instrument and messenger of this harmony to others. Only the opposite can be said of all moral principles. These are instruments of the misinterpretation and misapplication of the command, provoking the very desires which are excluded by the command, the very attempt at human selfjustification and sanctification which is forbidden by God and absolutely fatal. They may be absolute in appearance, but in fact they are altogether ambiguous and dialectical. They can and must continually be completed and replaced by others. As they are established, recognised and applied, they constantly provoke antitheses. With them man can only give a fresh demonstration that he does not will what he does, and does what he does not will. The result is that they all have their season. They cannot bring consistency or continuity into human life. But the good command of God does do this. From the height which transcends this opposition, it comes down to the man who is shut up in this opposition. It always tells him, of course, that he is not his own master. It always opposes the error and folly of his own attempts at living the fact that God is for him, and that He demands only-but with sovereign power-that he should and must direct his life accordingly. It always advises him that all his attempts at selfjustification and self-sanctification are futile; that so, too, is his consequent inner conflict; that so, too-and basically and essentially-is the disharmony which in his flight from himself he thinks he must spread around him. The divine command sets him in the truth of the peace in which God has accepted him as one who has no peace in himself, so that in this peace, which passes all understanding (Phi. 47), he may live a life which is maintained and guarded and protected by it. He is commanded to live in this peace, beyond all conflict with himself, by the command of God-the law of the Spirit of life. This law requires that man should be in inward harmony, i.e., that he should leave his dispeace below and behind him and therefore be free. It wills that his life should have a single direction and constitute a single whole. It creates and fixes this direction and wholeness by freeing him from his attempted selfdominion and placing him under the lordship of God. It will reward us to consider the admonition in Rom. 12-15 from this standpoint. It has also the following fundamental significance. In and with the life of the community it reduces to a common denominator the life of its individual members-Christians-and, prophetically foreshadowed in them, the life of individuals generally. It takes the individual as such in all seriousness by seeing all individuals only in the light of the community, with an apparent unconcern for their private life as such. In this connexion it is of importance to note that it is awp.,ara up.,wv EN127 which are expressly claimed as materials of the living sacrifice, holy and well pleasing to God, which is to be offered to Him. These are, of course, the same awp.,ara EN128 of which it is said in Rom. 810 that they are dead through sin, but that He who EN127 EN128

your bodies bodies

214

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision raised jesus from the dead will also quicken them TO. 8V'YJTo.aWfLaTa VfLWV EN129 for the sake of the Spirit who dwells in them. As the mortal is claimed by the divine command it is clearly viewed and treated in the light of this hope. Its destiny (1 Cor. 1553) is to put on immortality. It has not yet done this. We have still to say of it what Paul said of the "body of this death" (724) in Rom. 7. It is still locked in that inner conflict. But already as a living body it is claimed and evaluated as the material of that sacrifice. Its inner conflict is already overlooked and outmoded. Man is viewed and addressed as a single whole, as if he had already found harmony and peace. Already it can be postulated and expected of the man who has no peace-and this is the interesting light which is shed on him in 123fo-that as an independent member of the body of Christ, as the recipient and bearer of a special gift of the Spirit, he will serve the cause of reconciliation both in a narrower and wider sphere, in the Church and in the world. What, then, has happened to his inward dispeace? That it is simply effaced and overcome is the meaning neither of Rom. 7-8 nor of this passage. The Christians whom he exhorts in Rom. 12-15 are obviously neither angels nor saints-if we understand by saints those for whom the inward conflict has simply ceased. But it is their personalities which-although they are wholly mortal, although they have fallen victim to the death described in Rom. 7, to the fatal contradiction between willing and doing, and therefore to the separation between body and soul (which is death!)-are claimed for this sacrifice. If, in spite of everything, they are living and holy, well pleasing to God, it can only be because the Holy Spirit dwells in them, because He is the Spirit of the One who raised jesus from the dead, because the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is also their hope. Apart from this, we can only conclude that they are not in any sense released from their dispeace, that the latter is still the most characteristic thing proper to these Christians. It is because this is the case that they need admonition. They must still be exhorted: "Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" (122); and: "Let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light" (1312); and: "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof' (1314). The fact that we are still dealing with the man described in Rom. 7-in his weakness as in his strength-ought to be plain from the sentence (1313) which was once so important for St. Augustine, for according to this verse it was apparently not self-evident that "revelling and drunkenness, chambering and wantonness, strife and envying" are not compatible with a walking EvaX'YJf.L6vw~, W~ EV~f.L€P~ EN130. Naive talk about the spiritual reality of the life of the early Christian Church ought to be sobered by this verse, which is not without parallel. From the point of view of the Christian man, we have here a degree of worldliness no less than that of which the later Church is often so severely accused. We may rather ask whether the worldliness of the Christian man is not to be seen more radically here and given its true name, whereas the true evil of the later Church consists in the fact that the humanity of its members could disguise itself more cleverly. At any rate, admonition is necessary at this point, and it is radical admonition. Its final word, that Christians should put on the Lord jesus Christ, is obviously the first as well. It amounts to this-that they all have reason first and foremost to become what they are, and that they are invited and challenged to do this. But the amazing thing about this invitation and challenge is the serious way in which accoun t is taken of the reality of the resurrection ofJesus from the dead, of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit among and in even these worldly Christians, of the sure hope given to them as an ever present truth. Their new standing as Christians has still to be assumed. Yetit is not treated as an ideal and distant goal, but as the basic implication of their whole existence. What happens to the dispeace of the Christian as he becomes the object of the apostolic ENI29 EN I :iO

'your mortal bodies' properly, as in the day

215

[729]

S 38.

[730]

The Command as the Decision of God

admonition is that it is placed under the presupposition and category of this higher and truer reality. From this higher standpoint it is challenged and attacked and overcome by the victorious transcendence of the ground and origin of absolute peace. In the fact that the Christian is a member of the body of Christ, a recipient of the Holy Ghost, what happens to it as the dispeace of the Christian is not that it is removed but that it is relativised exactly as described by Paul in Rom. 725• The unity of the body of Christ implies the inner unity of all its members, and the unity of the Spirit implies also the inner unity of all those who receive His gifts. Whatever may be the state of their inner conflict, as they live the life of the members of this body, as they make considered use of the gifts severally imparted to them, according to the command of 123f. they find themselves on the far side of this conflict; Those who may prophesy, or minister, or teach, or exhort, or exercise liberality, do not in so doing live within but beyond their personal conflict. From the standpoint of their vocation and mission, their life in conflict is made a thing of the past. And as they exercise this mission, they will be able to treat their life in this inner disunity only as a thing of the past. That they should do this is the point of the apostolic admonition to the extent that it is directly relevant to this inner conflict, as in 1312f .• Rom. 88f. applies here: "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.'But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." In Rom. 12-15 it is not concealed that this insight must be lived out, that the saving warfare of the Spirit against the flesh must be waged (Gal. 517). That life in personal conflict is in truth to be treated as a thing of the past. It is to be demolished and buried. The imperatives of the Epistle to the Galatians (516, 25) are in force: 'Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." "Ifwe live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." But it is characteristic and significant that here as elsewhere the apostolic exhortation applies for the most part only indirectly to this conflict, that its primary aim is that this conflict should be daily made a thing of the past, that it urges men, as in Rom. 123f., to live as members of the body of Christ and recipients of the Spirit, and therefore to be freed in principle from that conflict and on the way to overcoming it in practice. Each man has only to do, in the unity of the Church and the Spirit, that which according to the measure of his faith (123) and the faith of the whole community (126) he in particular is called upon to do. If he does, then no matter what may be the state of his inner conflict, the unity of the Church and the Spirit will necessarily be reflected and evinced and expressed microcosmically as his own personal unity. The same attitude to the problem emerges in the sequence which begins in 129f .• It is again presupposed as self-evident that what each individual has to contribute to the life of the Church, and as a member of the Church to manifest to the world, is not the explosion of his own inner disharmony, but love. From what is described in these verses as Christian fellowship in the Church and with the world we can understand to what inner state of mind the apostle appealed in addressing these men, what point of departure he simply ascribed to them in his exhortations. If they do what he here demands, they will alwaysleave their own dispeace behind them, living and acting at peace with themselves. We have already referred to the substance, and the unremitting commitment to it, which is so characteristic of the picture of the Christian life sketched in these verses. This unremitting commitment is obviously of advantage not only to the fellowship of Christians and non-Christians with each other but also to the inner unity of each individual Christian life. Those who obey the challenge to co-operate in responsibility, as is here implied, will necessarily find that the whole matter of their personal disharmonies grows noticeably pale and dim and pointless. They no longer live in the contrast between willing and doing, even if they are not yet freed from it. They are no longer, or only subordinately, occupied with the hopeless task of trYing to solve or suppress their problem from one or the other point of view.They have no more time for it. They are otherwise engaged. ,Conflict or no conflict, they have their call and mission to 216

3. The Goodness of the Divine Decision fulfil. And if this is the case, then, however sick they may be, according to the opinion of the apostle they are on their way to health, and their conflict is indirectly overthrown and buried. The genuinely relevant and important antitheses are now very different from those which threaten their personality as such and characterise it plainly as 8VTJTa aWfJ-aTa EN131. They can now be critical in the spirit of love, distinguishing between good and evil as described in 129• They can now move within the pregnant dialectic of hope and affliction and prayer (1212). In Christian solidarity and sympathy with the children of this world, who understand themselves so badly, they can now share their joys and sorrows. Where this takes place seriously, what is their inner agitation compared with it-however distressing? Is it not at least checked, its importance at least much diminished, by the fact that as Christians they have such very different impulsions. Again, and all the more forcibly because indirectly, the admonitions of 1 214f. suggest that Christians, as they live outwardly, are caught up as such in an inner process of healing. Their inner peace cannot be more strongly implied and asserted and demonstrated than by the fact that, according to the tenor of these verses, they cannot allow themselves to be overcome by the evil which they encounter objectively as something that assails and pursues them, but that they will overcome it with good (1221). Are they the men to achieve this victory? Is it not their own enemy whom they must necessarily recognise and resist when they meet it openly in their neighbour? Is it not inevitable that their unredeemed humanity will now break out again? Paul seems not to have been aware of the problem as such, although he cannot really have forgotten Rom. 7, and 1312f. plainly enough recalls the truth of Rom. 7. But he does not really conceal anything, because the life and mission of Christians as members of the body of Christ and recipients of the Spirit is for him a definite fact by which the inner enemy which each man is to himself is so contained and arrested and disarmed that Christians can be confidently enjoined to give their enemy food and drink, in this way ignoring his hostility, instead of allowing their own inner conflict to boil up again and treating him as what he declares himself to be. According to 1218 there is a possibility of doing what the man torn by his inner distress cannot do. This is the possibility, as much as in them lies (TO €~ VfJ-WVENI32), of living at peace with all men, of bringing to all men peace and not war. This possibility is certainly not one which they can have of themselves. Even Christians do not have it of themselves. They have it only as Christians, only as they accept the injunction to be, and continually to become, what they are-and yet only to the extent TO €~ VfJ-WVENI33, as a work of which they are capable and which can be confiden tly expected of them. Those who are in a state of inner disquiet can and must be peacemakers. And how can they be this outwardly if it is not already true inwardly, in spite of their dispeace? Thus the passage about the state (131-7) has also to be interpreted from the point of view which, as against all schizophrenia, all division of spheres and incompatibility of outlooks, all dualistic mythology and all double standards, reduces Christian and civil responsibility to a common denominator, understanding Christian responsibility in itself and as such as political, and political as Christian. The thesis defeated by the Pauline exhortation (which ascribes to the Christian a kind of dualistic existence in this respect, in which he has to regard as evil from one standpoint what is good from another and vice versa) is only a special reflection of the conflict which rages in the inner life of the individual. Paul himself sees this matter very differently. He speaks of it at the very heart of his exposition of the love which Christians must alwaysevince. It is obvious that in so doing he does not see and understand it in the light of the inward malady, but appeals to the inner unity of the Christian life

ENI~H EN I

~~2

ENI~~~~

mortal bodies of yourselves of yourselves

217

[731]

~ 38. The Command as the Decision of God

[732J

which necessarily permit and command Christians even in these very different spheres to be true to themselves and self-consistent, keeping to the one course and not living a double life or alternating between two contradictory methods. It is rather strange that this passage has been constantly used to justify an oU,twarddisunity in human existence, and even to introduce it wherever possible into the idea of God. But this disunity can derive only from man's internal disharmony. And far from approving it in this passage, Paul disputes and denies it in the name of the inner peace of the Christian. The admonition of chapters 14 and 15 is written on the same presupposition. The dispute between the strong and the weak in the Church cannot, then, be conducted in such a way that the work of God is destroyed (1420). For Christians as such are in a position, and are summoned, to seek and to will in common Ta TTJS Elp~vYJs Kat Ta TTJS OlKOSOp.-TJS EN134. And for this purpose they have only to be prepared to accept the challenge that "each should be fully persuaded in his own mind" (145). Their own conviction will necessarily lead them to a grateful service of the Lord and therefore to a maintenance of communion with others. Is this really the case? Have we not necessarily to reckon with the explosive effects of the common inward conflict in this dispute between the exponents of a stronger and a weaker faith? It is quite evident that Paul does not do so, or does so only to a ltmited extent, in respect of what is impossible to the Christian as such. Here, too, those whom he addresses are assumed to be integrated personalities, so that he can confidently appeal to their conviction and therefore to their sense of fellowship. The basis and justification of this striking appraisal of the Christian man are even plainer in chs. 14 and 15 than in 12 and 13. Who and what is the Christian man? According to 147ff., he is the man who does not in fact live to himself, or die to himself, but who-whether he lives or dies-belongs to the Lord. If this involves death, it also means life. If it involves dispeace, it also means peace. Both the past that has gone and the new that is to come are from one and the same hand and stand under the lordship and control of the one Lord. Under the sovereignty of this one Lord the Christian is and becomes the one he is. He finds and possesses the unity which, apart from this sovereignty, he can only lack. In all his dispeace, he is surrounded on all sides by absolute and unshakeable peace. And it is not too much to ask of him, nor is it asked in vain, that even outwardly he should be and, become a messenger of peace.

EN134

what is peaceful and what is edifying

218

[733]

~ 39 THE COMMAND AS THE JUDGMENT

OF GOD

As God is gracious to us inJesus Christ, He judges us. He judges us because it is His will to treat us as His own for the sake of His own Son. He judges us as in His Son's death He condemns all our action as transgression, and by His Son's resurrection pronounces us righteous. He judges us in order that He may make us free for everlasting life under His lordship.

I.

THE PRESUPPOSITION OF THE DIVINE JUDGMENT

It is not without purpose that the command of God is at one and the same time God's claim upon us and God's decision concerning us. Defined in this way,the command is not an abstract idea, but a definite event. God's claim and God's decision is God's way of dealing with men. The meaning and character of this event is again God's judgment on man. In God's claim and decision God's sentence on man is prounounced and fulfilled. We have still to speak of this event, of the divine decree and ordinance concerning man, executed by the divine command. In the doctrine of God the concept of the divine judgment brings us, as it were, to the reverse side of the concept of the eternal decree of the election of grace at the beginning of all the ways and works of God. The judgment of God in His command is the sum of every earthly realisation of this decree, its temporal explanation and revelation. What God wills with and for and from man takes place as He judges him in His command. But this event is, in fact, identical with that of the atonement. From this final point in the doctrine of God we thus look forward already to the centre of all Christian truth, and therefore of all Church dogmatics. The concept of God is completed as God is understood to be the One who not only wills the reconciliation of the world with Himself, the judgment on man by His command, but who actually causes it to become a fact. He is God in this act, in His ways and works at this central point. It is obvious that we here reach the outermost frontier of the doctrine of God as such. How God is God in His ways and works, and in this their central act, can only be understood and developed independently in the wider contexts of Church dogmatics. For the moment, we can only state that He is God in this way,in the form of a very brief anticipatory sketch. The purpose of this sketch is simply to establish the f~ct, and it is surely indispensable at this point, not only for the sake of completeness, but by reason of the matter itself.

[734]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[735]

We now understand the divine command, its claim, its sovereign, definite and good decision, expressly and in particular as the temporal, historical event in which God, commanding man, and in vindication of all that He wills to be for him, and to have from him, encounters him as his Lord who deals with him. The meaning and character of this event is necessarily that man isjudged by God, that his existence is measured and weighed and assessed, not merely intellectually and verbally but in fact, by God as His absolutely competent and omnipotent Lord. That is to say, his actual standing, which is his standing before God and in relation to Him, is genuinely ordered and controlled by this Lord. The real nature of man is disclosed as God maintains His command against him, and therefore judges him. The primary and fundamental proposition which we have to make concerning this event-on the basis of the connexion between the divine election of grace and the divine command and in conformity with what we have already said respecting this command-is obviously as follows. However this judgment may turn out, whatever man may show himself to be in it, or whatever he may really be on the basis of it, it is quite incontestable that God receives him in this judgment, that He judges him because He wills to treat him as His own. It may well be the case-as indeed it is-that man cannot stand when measured by God's yardstick, that he is found too light when laid on His balance, that if he is placed under His sentence he will necessarily be condemned. But the positive presupposition which we have always to make and remember is that he does actually lie in God's balance, that he is actually measured by His yardstick, that he is actually subjected to His sentence. Summoned to appear before the judgment-seat of God, forced to receive His enactment and disposition concerning himself, incapable of being or making himself anything other than what he is, as he stands manifest before Him, he is first and foremost invited to the recognition that God counts him as His own, that He has received him into fellowship with Himself, that he belongs, as it were, to the province of God, that he is considered and treated as His possession. The judgment of God is significant and possible because God does actually make this presupposition. Man is, in fact, a dweller in His household, a member of His people, a citizen of His kingdom. It is as such that God calls him to account when He meets him in His command. It is as such that He makes him responsible. It is as such that He judges him according to the full righteousness of His yardstick, balance and sentence. If man could not be measured or weighed or assessed by Him, how could His command become ajudgment on him? If his existence had no connexion with the will of God maintained in His command, what appeal could be made to him in this context. How could he even be judged and rejected and condemned by the will of God? Genuine wrath is obviously possible only on the basis and in the context of original and true love. The judgment pronounced in God's command concerning manwhatever else it may involve-is always the demonstration of His love for man, even if it is only an angry, burning and consuming love. lEman were alien and 220

1.

The Presupposition of the Divine Judgment

indifferent to Him, how would this encounter come about? How would even its most negative outcome be explicable? The mere fact that it takes place at all, that God stands before man as his Lord, that man's existence can become his confrontation with God's command, always means that God does not will to be without us, but, no matter who and what we may be, to be with us, that He Himself is always "God with us," Emmanuel. To hear the command of God means then, first and decisively, to hear that God is our God, and that we are His Israel, His Church. For the positive factor first and decisively stated by the command is that the man on whomjudgment is passed is God's-a member of His family, of His people, of His kingdomand therefore whatever this may involve, that he must be assessed and distinguished and loved as one who is subject to God's command, and judged by it. The man who does not hear this original Yesof the command does not hear it at all. But, again, the man who does hear it is already justified in the judgment. The command is fulfilled so far as he is concerned. Even in the midst of the condernnation which had certainly been pronounced upon him, he is already placed on the way of forgiveness and obedience which is the intention of the command. The basis of divine judgment in the command consists in the fact that God has first bound Himself to man, and then and for that reason bound man to Himself, calling him to answer before His judgment seat, and ordering and controlling him as He does when He encounters him as Lord. His love lives and rules before and over and even in His judgment. Thus even as the ineluctable judgment of wrath, which is the form it necessarily takes, His judgment is the instrument of His love. The command is the pledge of this love. And its work is done when it is given to man and fulfilled by him. For as the command of God is spoken to him, he is told that he is loved by God. And as he hears the command of God which is spoken to him, and is obedient to it as such, he acts as one who is loved by God before his own decision, before he shows himself to be God's servant in it, before he betrays himself as God's unprofitable and disloyal and perfidious servant, before he accepts God's forgiveness, and before he hears and embraces His call to a new obedience. With regard to the final and proper meaning of his decision, commission, failure, justification and conversion, a prior decision is made in the command of God as it is given to him. It proves itself as such to be the decision of His love. For even as God orders man He addresses him as one whom He loves. To hear and obey God's commandment is to hear and obey this prior decision. When a man does this, when he acts as the beloved of God, as which he is always addressed in God's command, he will certainly stand as such in the judgment of God, however severely he may be condemned by the divine command, as he undoubtedly will be. He will always act in such a way that the judgment which overtakes him can only confirm that he is God's. But if he will not hear and obey this decision, he imperils everything, and has every reason to fear the judgment of the command. The love of God, and the knowledge of His love, and therefore His command-when it is heard and heeded as it wills to be221

[736]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[737]

do not permit anyone to be afraid of His judgment, even though for his own part he may have everything to fear from God's wrath. The command of God wills the sanctification of man even as it judges him. It tells man that God wills to have him for Himself. Those who hear it cannot possibly hold that they are alien and indifferent to God. Their primary conviction is necessarily that God is presented to them, and that He seriously receives them, so seriously that He may ask concerning the conformity of their will with His, concerning their justification before Him. The severity of judgment which there may be in His answer will not obscure the fact that God is presented to them, and that they are seriously received by God. Their only real fear is that God might cease to do this, that they might become alien and indifferent to Him. The command does not give them any occasion for this fear. The harder they are pressed by His judgment, the less ground they have for this fear. If there is one thing which is made clear to them by the radical No which necessarily affects them in this judgment it is the extent of God's concern for them, and His expectations for them when He asks them so sternly and inexorably concerning this conformity to His will. Can they possibly wish that God should treat them otherwise? Would not every mitigation of His severity mean only that He loved them less? Is there not every reason to rejoice that God does judge them with the severity that He does? This very severity is simply the measure of His love and faithfulness, His grace and heartfelt compassion. God judges us, and gives us nothing, because He has given us everything in His SonJesus Christ. He has given us Himself, and direct fellowship with Him. It is in Him that He judges us. In Him He must deal sternly and inexorably with us. InJesus Christ He has chosen man from all eternity as His own, for life in His kingdom, to be a member of His people, His possession. In Him He has bound Himself to us, before He bound us to Himself, and before we bound ourselves to Him. In Him He has decided Himself for us before all our decisions, before we recognised ourselves as His servants, His unprofitable servants indeed, before ever He forgave us our sins and called us to a new obedience. In Him, the everlasting Son, He has recognised us as His servants from and to all eternity. In Him He has loved us, and we are those who are loved by Him. Because this "in Him" is valid, because it is revealed truth inJesus Christ that the commanding God is related from the very first to those whom He commands, the love of God is the real presupposition of the divine judgment and not merely an ideal and purely conceptual presupposition. Jesus Christ Himself is the divine pre-decision, made in God's eternal decree and at the heart of time, from which we already come when we approach God's judgment-seat. He is the image to which we have to conform ourselves, the basis, assurance and significance of the relationship between God and man. He Himself is the command whic"htells us first and foremost that we are to live as the beloved of God, and as such to give account of ourselves before Him. For He Himself in person is the act of love in which God has turned Himself to man, to every man, from all eternity and in time. In Him God deals with us so 222

1.

The Presupposition of the Divine Judgment

seriously that He cannot spare us the judgment, that He cannot condone anything, that we must experience the full severity of His measuring, weighing and assessing. We sever ourselves from Him if we wish God to encounter us in any other way than this. We follow Him when we approve and accept the fact that God encounters us in the very way in which He does in fact encounter us. He is the promise that we take with us when we come into God'sjudgment. He is the reason why we can be without fear in God's judgment. Looking to Jesus Christ, we need not fear that we can ever become alien and indifferent to God. And since this was the only basis of our fear, what need have we to fear? Indeed, we can go further and say that the only way in which we can approach God's judgment is with real joy in Him. This is the very way that Jesus Christ has trodden before us. God's judgment in His command has been achieved and may be contemplated properly and primarily in His person. Primarily and properly He is man confronted with God's command. Primarily and properly He has taken to Himself that which must overtake man in this confrontation. Primarily and properly He has entered the place where man might be afraid, where he will in fact be afraid when it weighs upon him that he might conceivably become alien and indifferent to God. But this did not happen whenJesus Christ entered this place. Far from treating man as alien and indifferent to Him, God treats him as His beloved Son, as He there allows the judgment of God's command to overtake Him. It was, indeed, the good-pleasure of God in the man who allowed this to overtake Him. Surely all the choirs of angels rejoiced when it happened. This event was, for the man who endured it, the entrance to everlasting glory. The man who is judged by God's command stands even now at the right hand of God the Father, and all the extremity and shame of the judgment are covered over by this glory. If God is a radiant King, so too is the One who is judged. If holiness and peace may be expected, it is only with Him, and in fellowship with Him. And the command of God summons us to this fellowship. The thing we are to hear as we hear the command is that we may belong to Him. To obey God's command is to accept this invitation to live as those who belong to Him, and therefore to rejoice as we stand in fellowship with this One who has been judged. We must be very clear about this, for an understanding of the presupposition of divine judgment is absolutely dependent on the understanding of this fact. Primarily and properly, what God wills with man and to have from man is not decided and executed and revealed in us, but in Jesus Christ. He is the only-begotten Son of the Father, loved from all eternity and in God's eternal decree commissioned for the sake of man, for our sake. And He it is who in God's eternal decree, and by His corresponding Word and work in time, is at once the Son of Man endowed and claimed by the grace of God. It was He who first perceived God's will with man, when He was in the bosom of the Father. It was He alone who in the first instance heard and took to heart the command of God for man. What we learn of this, we learn from His witness and know 223

[738]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[739J

when we receive His witness. And so it is primarily and properly in Him that man's confrontation with God's command takes the form of God's judgment on man. That is to say, it is in this relationship, between this Lord and this servant, that there takes place the measuring, weighing and assessing which mean that man is asked by God about his righteousness; asked by the One who has the competence and power to ask, and who has given man the dignity of letting himselfbe asked concerning this thing which cannot be meas~red. The fact that the meeting between God and man has this character, the form of an act of judgment, does not follow from any conception of God and man. It is the reality of man's encounter with God, infinitely humbling and at the same time infinitely exalting, as it actually took place in Jesus Christ. This is the content of His witness. When we receive His witness, it becomes an insight for us. But it is in Him that the event actually takes place, and on His witness that the insight depends that in this judgment man is actually lost. This means that, measured by the standard of what God expects and requires and orders in His . command, his existence and actions and decisions are shown to be unrighteous, contradicting and opposing God's intention, and therefore provoking the wrath of God. It is to be noted that primarily and properly it is not in his own person, but in that ofjesus Christ, that man stands under the judgment of God's command in such a way that he is threatened with something worse than God's wrath, namely, that he might become alien and indifferent to God, that God might cease to have any concern for him, as ope who is completely unusable. Jesus Christ Himself is the man for whom the question: "MyGod, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" could and did for the first time become a genuine question. He is the man whom God in His eternal counsel, giving Him the command, treated as its transgressor, thus rejecting Him in His righteous wrath, and actually threatening Him with that final dereliction. That this was true of Adam, and is true of us, is the case only because in God's counsel, and in the event of Golgotha, it became true first of all inJesus Christ. InJesus Christ God has recognised Adam and all of us in our relationship to His will and command, and has uttered and fulfilled over Adam and over all of us the sentence which corresponds to this recognition. In Him, He has sentenced Adam and all of us to death, and has handed us over to death. And yet, in the judgment that overtook Him, this sentence and its execution were not the whole of God's judgment, or the last word of His righteousness. In Him the wrath of God and the condemnation of man do not mean that there is that dereliction of men which does of course threaten, and concerning which Jesus asked that question on the cross. Neither does it mean that man might become alien and indifferent to God. And it is not merely that the judgment of the command of God which Jesus Christ suffers does not mean this abandonment. The truth is rather that as God fulfils this judgmen t in Jesus Christ, He treats this One who is judged as His Elect and eternally Beloved. The very condemnation and reprobation here executed on man are the decree and the work of the love in which He 224

1.

The Presupposition of the Divine Judgment

has, from all eternity and here and now in time, loved man and drawn him to Himself. Even this judgment is the form of God's eternal predestination and the effectual working out of it in time. Even though conflict between God and man in Jesus Christ is so much to the detriment of man, the reconciliation necessary to man, and desired and fulfilled by God on man's behalf, is resolved and accomplished-his reconciliation, the reconciliation of the world with God. For there takes place in it the sanctification of man for God. The fact that he belongs to God is possible and real as he experiences God's command as God'sjudgment, and God'sjudgment as his own condemnation and execution. In this way he is made free for what God wills for him-that he may live with Him for ever. And in this way there is accomplished what God wills from him. It is accomplished in Jesus Christ, as God gave Himself up in His Son to be this man, to be the transgressor and sinner who must bear His wrath and be condemned and die. Between the eternal Father and the eternal Son, and therefore between God and man, there is established inJesus Christ the order in which man, even though he is a transgressor and sinner, but put to death and destroyed as such, may live before God. This order consists in the judgment which is executed upon man by God's command. Obedience to God's command, the maintaining of this order, consists, therefore, in our submission to this sentence, in a readiness to be put to death and destroyed, because in this way God's good will for us is done. AsJesus Christ renders this obedience. He acts both as the electing and sanctifying God Himself, and also as elect and sanctified man. As He renders this obedience-which is both the obedience of the Son to the Father, and the genuine obedience of man to God-He acts in the Holy Ghost, the bond of peace between Father and Son, as the Mediator between God and man, making atonement, not between God and man, for this is quite superfluous, but between man and God, which can exist only in the rendering of this obedience. It is to be noted that primarily and properly it isJesus Christ who has rendered this obedience, for primarily and properly He is the Elect of God, sanctified man. It is He, and not Adam, who is in the state of original innocence. It is He, and not we, who is in the state of eternal innocence, righteousness and holiness ordained for us. Adam's innocence and ours are possible and real only because Jesus Christ, when He was rejected by God and bore His wrath, and was judged and put to death according to His command, was never less abandoned by God than in His selfexposure to that threat and posing of that question. Adam's innocence and ours are possible and real because Jesus Christ was innocent even in His suffering of the divine judgment. Indeed, He was obedient in it. Even as the object of God's wrath, He was also the object of His supreme good-pleasure, the fulfiller of His will and command. It is for this reason that there is for Adam and for us a state of obedience, just as Adam's state of disobedience and ours is not in the first instance his and ours, but in virtue of the inconceivable wisdom and mercy of God has been made that of His o,vn Son. 225

[740]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[741]

For it is our place, the place which belongs to us, that is the place which this man has chosen for Himself, and for which He is chosen. It is our election and sanctification which are determined and fulfilled in Him. It is for our sakes that He is the man chosen for rejection, who, by God'sjudgment of wrath, has become and been sanctified man. It is we whom God has loved and has drawn to Himself in Him. It is we whom He has ordained in Him for life in covenant with Him, to eternal life before Him. It is we whom He has made His children by giving us His Son as our Brother. It is we whom He has created as His Israel, and called to His Church, by instituting Jesus Christ the Messiah of Israel, and the Lord and Head of the Church. It is we whom from all eternity He has seen in Him as unable to stand in face of His command, as able to be sanctified and rescued only by His judgment of wrath, and yet as neither willing nor able to bear this judgment of wrath, as incapable of reconciling ourselves with God, of being our own mediators between Himself and us. And, again, it is we whom He has not abandoned in Him, as we had well deserved. It is we, the rejected, whom He has chosen in Him, and sanctified and rescued by the judgment of wrath which has overtaken Him. Again, it is to us that all the love of God is turned with which God in His counsel, before all worlds, has loved this One in view of the judgment to be fulfilled on Him-and loved Him even as He actually fulfilled this judgment on Him. God's eternal Son in the bosom of the Father did not need this love, for He possessed and enjoyed it already-the same love with which He had loved the Father from all eternity. But we needed it and lacked it. We would not exist if God did not love us, and love us with the whole of that love with which He loves Himself, the Father the Son, and the Son the Father. "For us it is, all this is done." It all has reference to us in Jesus Christ. It is our reconciliation with God, the world's, that is accomplished in the fact thatJesus Christ became obedient to God and was truly guiltless, that He bore the sin of man, that He stood before God burdened with it, and made atonement for it in God's judgment. The presupposition of the divine judgment so far as it actually concerns us is that in the first instance it has fallen on Him and not on us. Our concern is to hold fast to Him, that is, to e~ter the darkness to which God has sentenced and condemned Him, in which He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, and descended into hell. Our concern is to submit to thejudgment that has fallen on Him, so that in virtue of His rejection we may be the elect and sanctified, consenting to hear and accept the curse which is pronounced on us as it was pronounced on Him, but also to hear and accept the promise of love and the divine goodpleasure, as the object of which He was on the brink of dereliction, because for our sakes God did not will to abandon Him and did not in fact do so. It is our part then to share in His election and sanctification, to recognise ourselves as those who have participated in it, and for the sake of it to accept our condemnation and rejection as fulfilled in Him, our own death as already suffered by Him. In God's command, even as it becomes our judgment, we have first to recognise God's love as it is directed to us in the man who fulfilled His com226

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

mand. We have to hear as His basic imperative: "Be ye reconciled to God." Be those who are reconciled to God in Him, and nothing else. If God's command then judges us too, it cannot judge us except in accordance with itself, and as it has judged Him: to perish, and yet to be saved from perishing; to death, and yet to life from death; to rejection, and yet to the saving rejection of the elect. The comforting presupposition on which we go to God'sjudgment, the sure promise which accompanies us, is that in Jesus Christ we are fellows of the household of God, members of His people and citizens of His kingdom, and that it is as such, and only as such, that we come into judgment at all. Jesus Christ is the basis of judgment, andJesus Christ is the promise which confirms itself as such in the midst of judgment. For this reason there is no fear, but there is only joy, at the prospect of coming into God's judgment. For this reason we shall stand in the judgment of the command only, but very definitely, when we go to meet it without fear, in the joy of those who belong to Jesus Christ.

2.

THE EXECUTION OF THE DIVINE JUDGMENT

The first result of man's confrontation with God's command is that he is proved relentlessly and irrefutably to be its transgressor. The man who has no knowledge either of God's command, or of himself, or of the fact that God's command refers and is given to him and must be kept by him, would like to deny this, to acquit himself of transgressing God's command. It is the essence of every transgression of the command, the decisive proof that man is a sinner, that he continually denies the fact, trying to excuse and acquit himself in face of the accusation and sentence against him. This is the sin that is blacker than any other sin. Of all the things that God hates, the most hateful is that we should not admit ourselves to be the transgressors that we are, but should try to excuse and justify ourselves as what we are. In this we follow (Heidelberg Catechism, Question 5) the propensity of our nature, the fallen human nature which we have in common with Adam, hating God and our neighbour when we ought to love them. We can love God and our neighbour only if we recognise and confess ourselves as the transgressors we are without any attempt at excuse or self-vindication. As we are confronted with God's command, we are revealed as those who do not do this, but who permit that bias of human nature to run its course, so that in the effort to excuse andjustify ourselves we can only hate God and our neighbour, struggling with might and main to know nothing of God's command, or of ourselves, or especially of the fact that God's command has specific reference to us. But the fact remains that the command of God is in force, and we are what we are, and the command of God is specifically given to us. The fulfilment of the divine judgment cannot, therefore, be arrested. The whole attempt of man to arrest it can only confirm that the sentence which is reached in this judgment is not unrighteous, but 227

[742]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[743]

righteous. We are in fact transgressors. We are useless for what God wills with us and wills from us. We are lost for Him, and be~ause everything depends on what we are for Him,. and before Him, we are really lost. We may sustain and develop this insight by a retrospective glance at the contents of the last two sections. We are neither those who fulfil and satisfy the claim of the divine command, nor those that we ought to be on the basis of the \ decision made concerning us in the divine command. We do not keep or fulfil the command, and therefore in the first instance the judgment in which we stand can consist only in our condemnation. Yet it is not in the fact that God is gracious to us, and that we ought to believe in Him, that we do actually seek and find the basis of the divine claim. Curiously enough, we would rather have nothing to do with this God who wills and does the very best for us, and whose claim has an actual basis, a real and compelling authority. Instead we reinterpret Him as an aggregate of the supreme power, majesty, and above all worth, whose claim permits us to assert our own claims in face of Him, until finally we understand Him only as the sum of our own claims. Why should we keep God's command if our work and attitude are opposed to the basis of His claim? Again, it is not in the fact that we are required to approve the gracious act of God on our behalf that we do actually seek and find the content of the divine claim. We do not at all respect the Law as the form of His grace and therefore as the demand to conform our life to His grace. We do not live and behave as those who are God's property, to whom He is merciful, of whom He Himself is the righteousness. To this, the clear will of God, we remain in the deepest sense hostile, indifferent, selfwilled, loveless. We desire many things-under the plea and excuse that we can and should desire them in virtue of the divine claim-but we do not desire the one thing that is really demanded of us. There is obviously no real thought of keeping and fulfilling God's command if we wish to overlook and hurry through its own proper content. And further, we do not truly seek and find the ,distinguishing form of the divine claim in the fact that, as distinct from all other commands, it orders us to make use of the freedom accorded to us by the grace of God as those who are loved by Him. We do not obey Him as those who are permitted to obey Him. We do not recognise His sternness and severity in the joy and conscientiousness and fearlessness in which He commands us to live as those who are given permission and freedom to live in this way.We do not keep our allotted place. We do not stand in the order in which we are set. We always think we know better than God does in His command. We keep the freedom to be our own judges of good and evil, always imagining that this is more salutary than the freedom of the children of God. We continually protest and revolt because the command of God pursues us so relentlessly. How can we possibly keep it and fulfil it if we treat it as though it were a feeble, manmade command, dependent on the judgment of ourselves or others? In short, have we ever even heard the claim of the divine command? Do we seriously accept the fact that it raises this claim and has this basis, content and form, and

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

therefore demands a corresponding obedience, not just any obedience, but this particular obedience? When and where have we ever rendered this obedience? When and where do we not fall far short of that which is by nature indivisible and will bear no diminution? When and where, in face of the alternative with which we are here confronted, do we not deny that it is even raised and pressed? Who is righteous in face of this claim? By the fact that it is raised and pressed-and we may doubt this fact but we cannot alter its reality-we are proved to be transgressors against it, and doubly and trebly so in the fact that we do not recognise this proof, that we deny and question it, for this means only that we confirm it in this way, committing fresh transgression, which the claim of the command discloses as it is raised and pressed. This, then, is the situation in relation to the divine decision executed in and with our encounter with God's command concerning us. Who and what are we in face of the sovereignty of this decision, in face of the fact that, by the command of God, our whole existence and action are revealed as responsible, and as the actual discharge of responsibility, to Him? What have we to bring forward in this encounter, in which we are required to adduce, with our existence and actions, a correspondence to the will of God for us and with us, namely, an obedient prosecution of this will, as it is revealed and must therefore be confessed in His command? All serious preparation for the encounter with the One who here decides concerning us, or radical ethical reflection on the inward questioning of our whole existence which takes place in this meeting, can result only in the knowledge that this inward questioning cannot be avoided, that there is preparation by which we can save and safeguard ourselves in face of it. This is because the will of God, not through its own fault but ours, in consequence of the mistaken and stupid and malicious way in which we ask concerning it, is never so fully known to us that we can arm ourselves in advance with righteousness in face of it, let alone imagine that we can really produce this righteousness on the basis of this preparation. But if we do not do this, who and what are we in God's sovereign judgment? Yet it may well be that, in face of our responsibility and actual response to the divine decision, our only thought has been that of flight, and we have never made any attempt at honest preparation. For when and where were we ever really honest in this matter? When and where have we ever seriously enquired concerning the will of God? But this being the case, how very far we are from fulfilling it! Now we are really at the place where there can be no alteration of the decision made concerning us in the sovereign command of God. But, again, how do we stand in relation to the fact of the definiteness of the divine decision if it is true that no general principles have anything to do with the command of God and no supposed obedience to them is the obedience which we owe to this command? Ifit is true that the required good is a matter of our choice between several possibilities laid before us, a matter of our interpretation and application of this or that general rule, we can set our minds at rest. We know that we can fulfil this choice, interpretation and application with 229

[744]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[745]

the utmost sincerity, the best of good intentions, and a good conscience which we can certainly concede to ourselves if we have this power over God's command. But, amongst all the possibilities, God's command alwayspurposes and wills one thing only, this or that specific thing. Our obedience has to consist in an exact and concrete doing of this or that, as a human correspondence to the specific divine precept. To fulfil the command of God, I must be the kind of person who passes day and night as God's friend, who hangs day and night on His Word, who hearkens day and night to His bidding. We may again doubt, but we cannot alter, the fact that God on His side is so close to us in His grace, that He speaks with us so truly and continuously in His Word, that we are in a position to hear Him with the same truth and exactitude, and to obey Him accordingly. But this is the very thing that we do not do. When and where do we ever hear God's command with any exactitude even when we take the exceptional step of expressly undertaking to do this? And how can we really expect that this will happen in any useful manner when it is so exceptional, when our hearkening to God's command is never more than transitory, when we come running to God only on special occasions to hear His instructions, when we do not spend our lives generally as the friends of God that we ought to be, but in every other possible sphere of friendship? And how shall we fare if in this respect also our direct thought is only of flight from the command of God, namely, from the concrete and specific thing that it wills to have from us here and now, if we refuse basically to have in God's command a real "lamp unto our feet," if we persistently pursue a worldly or even a Christian righteousness of regulations, i.e., an arbitrary self-righteousness? This is just what we do! But where then is our actual righteousness, our righteousness before God, concerning which we are questioned? Can it be anything other than utterly filthy rags? And finally, how do we stand before God's command in view of the fact that it is definitely the command of His goodness, that it requires from each and all of us, in every respect, that which is right and friendly and wholesome? Where do we really find, in correspondence with this one universally valid command, the single-minded orientation of those to whom it is directed, their unity in and among themselves, which obedience to it would necessarily bring in its train? Does it not seem rather that we are subject to a very different command from this, and have to obey it? Does that which we do and do not do, in our own orbit and in relation to others, in the smallest as in the greatest spheres of hum~n existence, produce the evil instead of the good which corresponds to the command, the wrong, the unfriendly, the harmful, and therefore discord in big and outward things and schizophrenia in little and inward as well as big and outward, the one conditioned by the other and calling to the other? This is quite inevitable when we deny the sovereignty and definiteness of the divine decision. But how diversely we stand in relation to this needle point, this simple content-that it is our determination to goodness! We are creatures cast in a very different mould, living according to quite different laws; creatures who do not appear to be able to stand comparison

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

with the being of God given them in the command; creatures who, brought into this light and placed in this atmosphere, can obviously only perish like fish on dry land, dissolving like snow on a hot stove. But here, too, the true and characteristic mark of our conduct may well be flight from the command. We need not waste many words on the subject, because the phenomenon is well known, and has often been described, that we know and easily enough recognise the good as such, thus proving the proximity with which God always honours us in His command whatever may be our attitude to it; but that we do not really accept it, far less love it; that its opposite, evil, is always much closer to us than this thing which is closest of all; that even in its darkness it is always much more illuminating than good, and even in its unnaturalness much more natural. How can we really come to the point where, in accordance with the command, we may treat the good, not as something alien, but as our very own rendering to the command outward and inward obedience, as those who are obedient from their hearts, in fellowship one with another, and in the inward peace which it obviously requires from us? Who really adapts himself to its decision, according to which we have to confront it in this unity and fellowship? If it is difficult or impossible to give to all these questions the answer that we are those who can stand before the decision of God's command; if the recognition is unavoidable that we in our decisions stand opposed to the decision of the command in every kind of incongruity and heterogeneity, and that we show ourselves to be sinners against it, then the execution of the divine judgment can be seen by us, and we can realise quite conclusively that we are lost in this judgment, and unserviceable for God when measured by what He wills from us. The reason why God is angry need not be asked, and the threat that He might turn away His face from us altogether is quite understandable. But we must not deceive ourselves. It is when and as the judgment of God is executed that these questions are unanswerable, and we are proved by God's command to be transgressors. The road which leads to an establishment and development of the knowledge that we are unrighteous before God is necessarily this. We realise that we are confronted with God's claim and decision. We constantly ask how we really stand in face of this claim and decision. And our answer is to the effect that we obviously stand very badly or not at all in this judgment. It is also very right and necessary to strengthen this answer from the very outset by realising that every other answer, and every contradiction against this one answer, can only confirm and underline its rightness. The command can require nothing higher of us than that we should be willing to be those as whom it addresses us. We cannot transgress more heinously against the command than by not admitting its accusation, for it is the blackest of all sins to try to deny that we are sinners. But at the very moment when we understand the matter in this final sharpness, we must be clear that this answer, and all the way that leads to it, has no real certainty in itself, but only in the fact that God's judgment is actually exercised in His command; that the fulfilment of the divine judgment is an event that takes place between God and man, and

[746]

[747]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[748]

that all that we have said in description of our confrontation with the command, and about the questions to which it gives rise and their tentative answers, may lay claim to be a description of this event, and to be indisputable in the light of it. Apart from this event, it would certainly not be indisputable. The proposition that we are in the wrong before God is proved by the fact that God shows it to be the case, i.e., that He actually puts us in the wrong, so that we actually are those who are put in the wrong by Him. This is not merely because we are aware of that confrontation, or ask those questions, and then more or less definitely admit and confirm that they are unanswerable, or, at least, that they can only be answered negatively. Even where this is the case we do not see that we are those who are put in the wrong by God. If it were not the case that God's judgment is actually executed in His command, we could not possibly ignore the fact that man has the power finally to contradict that proposition, and openly or secretly has quite definitely done so. The mere concept of the divine command as claim and decision cannot of itself force us to accept the verdict that we are its transgressors, and guilty and lost as such. Those who seriously recognise and confess that man is a transgressor of the command must also see that this recognition and confession cannot be occasioned and enforced by any demonstration, however clear, of the situation between God and man, by any posited questions, however pertinent, or by any given answers, however apposite-unless, of course, they are all sustained and verified by the fact that God's own action may be seen as the subject of this demonstration, revealing Himself and speaking for Himself, and thus giving force to the demonstration, questions and answers, and driving us into the position where we are inevitably put in the wrong before God. Without the proof of the divine act, it is always possible to contradict even the best human evidence in this matter. The transgression goes to such lengths, the transgressor uses such crafts, and his transgression is so hopeless, that unless this fact of the divine proof supervenes and prevents him he can listen to everything that must be said concerning his confrontation with the command, and asked in relation to it, and maintained as the obvious answer, and yet not really hear it, but still persuade himself and even assure others that he is not actually conscious of any lack of righ teousness before God. Grace is the secret of the command, and except in the light of this secret it cannot be understood how strong and radical its claim and its decision are; nor can it be known that we are put wholly in the wrong by the command. Except in the light of this secret, men speak of the judgment of God's command in the same way as the blind speak of colours. The contradiction cannot be silenced by the demand that they should recognise themselves as the transgressors of the command or the reproach that it is insincere, flippant and superficial not to be prepared to do this. We must not be deceived. In the last analysis no arguments can overcome it, however cogent. No direct means will suffice. The contradiction can be beaten down only by the divine judgment itself. The blind man would not be blind, but endowed with sight, if he were to talk about colours in any way other than the

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

unfortunate way in which he does. The secret of grace must first have been seen if we are to demand of anybody that he forgo his selfjustification. The transgression of the sinner must first have been forgiven and he himself acquitted if he is to recognise and confess that he has no possible hope of standing his ground before the claim and decision of God. No exhortation and no persuasion can create this situation. We can none of us put either ourselves or others in it. It arises only as the judgment of God is executed. It arises only as we come under the fatherly chastisement of God, which consists in the revelation of the secret of His grace, and therefore of the sternness and severity of His judgmen t. If we really understand that we are transgressors, that we are all apostate and worthless, that the people of God is alwaysand at all points a people of the lost, which cannot of itself receive or pronounce its own justification, which can live only by the justification of God, we shall always remember this, knowing that every demonstration of judgment in which we stood or stand or will stand has validity only when it is actually executed upon us by the Word and work of God, only when it is an actual event. We shall know that this event is, for him and for all others, the act of divine proof. It is of this act of divine proof that we must now speak as giving force to all that we have so far said concerning the divine judgment. The death of Jesus Christ is this act of divine proof, the execution of the judgment. This is the miracle whose occurrence alone can decide, and has in fact decided, the truth of the statement that we are sinners. In the death of Jesus there occurs visibly, effectively and once and for all the confrontation of God and man, of the divine command and man's existence and conduct. For on the basis of the eternal election of this One, of His personal unity with God, on the basis also of God's will to act with and for us all in the person of this One, His own Son, God stands before man and man before God in a mutual encounter. In God's encounter with this man it is a matter of the decree and the act of love in which He loved and loves and will love us all. And the love of God finds in this One, as the Representative of all the rest, nothing worthy of love, nothing that He can affirm or approve or praise, nothing in which He can have pleasure-no inward, excellent part in man, no higher striving, no imperfect obedience which might constitute even a relative perfection and therefore make him righteous and acceptable to God. If man has a glory, or even an exculpation and vindication to bring forward, where is God more likely to find it than at the point where he stands before the Father in the person of the Son of God Himself? Will not even the most secret good there may be in us, or at least in a few of us, be disclosed at this point? But in fact not a single argument is here adduced in our favour. The election of this One, the representation of all by God's own Son, bring a very different truth to light. For in the name of all of us, Jesus Christ can only produce our sins, our transgression of the command. In His person man is shown to be a recreant and rebel, an enemy and opponent of God, whom God can meet only as such. In this person the case is instigated against him. In this person he is impeached

233

[749]

S 39.

[750J

The Command as theJudgment of God

and sentenced and condemned. ~he one Righteous has no righteousness to proclaim in our name or to our credit. This one Righteous can be righteous in our place, can be obedient for our sake, only because He acknowledges our sin, and drinks to the bitter dregs the cup of temporal and eternal destruction which must follow our transgression. The only thing that affords any real plea for the rest of us is the fact that He has done this for us. And be it noted that this is what He has in fact done. He has openly confessed and avowed our apostasy. He has borne our guilt, the suffering of the righteous wrath of God on our behalf. This is what God has done for us by giving us His own Son as our Brother. For the rest of us there remains only the cardinal fact that our sins are forgiven because He Himself has confessed and atoned them in our place. This is the execution of the divine judgment. This is the way in which God actually contradicts our contradiction, silencing the voice which denies our transgression, and which we cannot silence just because we are transgressors. This is God's fatherly chastisement in the revelation of the secret of His grace, a chastisement which takes place and concerns us all and is therefore inescapable. We can, and indeed do, evade every selfjudgment that we try to execute on ourselves in the form of a reconstruction of our actual meeting with God, or every theoretical computation of our standing in relationship to the command of God and its claim and decision, unless there stands behind it God's own judgment, the real judgment, giving to our selfjudgment a seriousness and force which it cannot have of itself. In defiance of every computation, unless God's own judgment gives it force, we will continually excuse and vindicate ourselves, and that voice of denial, a thousand times contradicted, will continually be raised again. How can ajudgment be anything but worthless if the judge is himself the transgressor? How can we ever expect a man like this to pronounce himself guilty, even if the law and prosecution and hearing of witnesses speak clearly against him, and the speeches in defence are quite empty? We cannot and we will not escape the real judgment of God which is executed in the death of Jesus Christ, for it is our actual meeting with God, which we can hardly reconstruct in all our selfjudgment, even in the best of circumstances. In Jesus Christ God has found us once and for all as the men we are, irrespective of any present or future ideas we might have of ourselves, adjudging ourselves to be more or less sincere and logical. For it was and is God's good will from all eternity to see us inJesus Christ, to deal with us as He deals with Him and therefore as the men we are, to find us in Him, to judge us as He judges Him. It was and is His good will to give us in Him our Head and Advocate; to establish and ordain our whole relationship to Him in His relationship to His person, and therefore to reveal the truth of our existence in His. As this happens, as from all eternity, and in what God has done in Him at the heart of time, we are those who are loved and known by God in Jesus Christ, all selfjudgment to which we might submit ourselves is absolutely subordinated to His judgment. Any reconstruction of our actual meeting with Him can be only a reflection of the meeting with man which He has willed and 234

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

accomplished in the person of His dear Son. In this meeting we are in truth what we are. And there is no escaping the truth of what we are in this meeting. Before the voice of this reality, the voice of denial, my voice as the voice of the transgressor, is necessarily silenced. In place of every weak theory of our relationship to God and to His command there comes the powerful theory of this practice-the theory of our actual relationship to God. And in place of the weak selfjudgment in which we cause ourselves to be exculpated there comes the powerful selfjudgment in which we must and will declare that we are guilty, because we ourselves, as the sinners we are, can only repeat the divine sentence, adding to it not at all either for good or evil. There, on the cross of Golgotha, hangs the man who in His own name and person represented me, my name and person, with God; and who again in His own name and person represented God to me in my name and person. Everything, therefore, that God has to say in His relationship to me is originally and properly said to Him; everything that I have to say to God in this relationship is originally and properly said by Him. All that I have to do, therefore, is to repeat what is already said in this conversation between God and the Son. But what takes place in this conversation is that in the person of jesus Christ I am addressed as a sinner, a lost son, and that again in the person of jesus Christ I confess myself to be a sinner, a lost son. In this conversation the voice of denial is absolutely silenced. For in the death of jesus Christ, this conversation between Father and Son is conducted with me and about me-with me and about me in His person as my Advocate before God. Even in the soliloquy and selfjudgment which I cannot escape in face of the divine colloquy and judgment the voice of denial cannot be raised. I am not one who, as a hearer of this divine conversation, and a participator in this divine judgment, can either hear or make any kind of excuse. At the point where God deals with me, where He has sought and found me, at the cross of Golgotha, I am exposed and addressed as a sinner. Indeed, I have found and confessed myself to be this. I have nothing to add to what is said and confessed there, nor to subtract from it. The transgression in all transgressions, the sin in all sins, namely, that I should refuse the name of a sinner, is made quite impossible. It is literally nailed to the cross with jesus Christ. It can only die. The only thing that I can do is recognise that my sin is really dead-the sin from which I cannot cleanse myself, the sin which I cannot even recognise and confess, the sin which I could only see awakening, and myself awaken, to constantly new forms of life if it were not already dead in the fact that God has pronounced and executed His sentence on His beloved Son in my place, and that the latter has accepted it in my place. This is the execution of the divine judgment which takes place as God gives us His command; for He gives it as He is gracious to us in jesus Christ, as He gives us this His beloved Son to be our Head and Representative, as by Him He speaks to us and causes us to speak to Himself, as by the Holy Spirit He accomplishes our unity with His Son, for which He has destined us from all eternity. In the same Holy Spirit, in which that divine conversation is conducted and divine judgment

235

[751]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[752]

fulfilled at the cross of Golgotha, it is also true that they both happen in our name and in our place and that we are actually made participators in them, called to faith in jesus Christ, awakened to the knowledge of our unity with Him, and therefore given a share in the confrontation with God. In this confrontation, there is no escaping, or trying to escape, the recognition and confession that we are transgressors. On the contrary, we are ready to live as those who are in the wrong before God, expecting every good from our continuance in this knowledge and confession, and fearing nothing more than attempts to remove ourselves from this position. It is clear that even the reference to the actual execution of the divine judgment, to the death of jesus Christ as the unmistakeable exposure of our transgression, can never be more than a reference. And it, too, is a reference which we can only fill out with human words, not displaying or introducing or exploiting as such the event which it signifies. It is really. a matter of the act of divine proof which alone can decide in this question, and which obviously cannot be either created or replaced by this final consideration. If the Holy Spirit does not Himself speak, so that we see what is to be seen in this consideration, the secret of the grace of God will not be revealed even by the most basic deliberation, even by this final reference. The revelation of this secret is really a matter for the Holy Spirit, and not for our spirit. But this does not make our final reference superfluous any more than it did the reflections with which we started. It reminds us that the whole recognition of man's sin and guilt, which is our present concern, cannot be achieved in a self-imposed and selfconducted conversation and judgment; that it is no less the work of God in us than everything that we have still to consider as the grace of God in judgmen t; indeed, that in itself and as such this recognition is an inalienable constituent of the recognition of the grace of God. In actual fact, it can be achieved only in prayer. It is in prayer that what we have referred to is really true, i.e., that in view of the death of Christ our excuses are all silenced, however obvious they may be or however eager we may be to find them. The man who really prays never attempts to justify himself. In true prayer, he knows that he cannot do so. When we really pray, the voice of denial, which we have no direct power to stifle, definitely cannot be raised or heard. We are in the position where the only thing that we can hear is the divine sentence on man visited on jesus Christ, and the only thing that we can express is the confession of the transgression and misery of man which jesus Christ has once for all defeated. When we really pray we believe in Him; and the work of the Holy Spirit is in process of fulfilment. The meaning and value of the final reference is that it directs us to the point where there takes place radically and irresistibly God's effective contradiction of our contradiction, and the shattering of all self-righteousness. This point is neither remote nor unattainable so long as we pray, and believe as we pray, and in faith participate in the death of jesus Christ, and in this participation abandon every other life but that of the lost son. All this, however, is only our first word concerning the execution of the div-

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

ine judgment and a second must be added if we are to say all that has to be said on this subject. We cannot understand the full truth of the first unless we first think of the second. We can really comprehend that we are in the wrong before God only in the light of the fact that God will put us in the right in His judgment, that He is gracious to us inJesus Christ, and not the reverse. As He actually addresses His love to us, He condemns us as transgressors and malefactors in the person of His own Son. But we are acquitted and justified because, although this condemnation refers to us, it does so in the person of Jesus Christ, and therefore in such a way that what remains for us is the forgiveness of our sins. It is in this way that it does really affect us. And it is when it is understood in this way that it forces us to recognise that we are sinners. The forgiveness of our sins in Jesus Christ is God's judgment on us, and only the revelation of forgiveness is the revelation of our sins. It confronts us with ineluctable and incontestable compulsion only when it alone forms the true and final reality. For this reason we must now turn our attention specifically to the fact that God's judgment is executed in the forgiveness of our sins, or, positively, in our justification. As God's command is given to us, what we do and do not do is shown in different ways and to differing degrees, but at bottom in every respect, to be apostasy, treason and revolt. But on a Christian view, although it is true, it is only a penultimate and not an ultimate fact that, measured by God's command, I do the evil and not good, never being in the right but always in the wrong before God in all my thoughts and words and acts. For my whole calling and ability and competence and right to say that which is ultimate, to create eternal facts, to make divine decisions in my acts, is completely abrogated by the fact that the judgment of God is executed on me by His command. Only the man who does not yet know the divine command, who has not yet submitted himself to its judgment, can think it possible to make an eternal choice as though he were a second God. If he does, he really suffers under the curse which actually accompanies our own choice, and he is forced to bear it as an eternal curse. This is precisely the error of unbelief. What is promised man by the judgment of the divine command is a perfectly definite, but as such a strictly limited, self-knowledge. As self-knowledge, the realisation that we are transgressors in all our actions is incontrovertible truth which cannot be abrogated, with which we have to live, for it cannot in any sense serve our peace of mind to renounce it. Only this self-knowledge corresponds to what man is and alwayswill be of himself before God, the state in which he is sought and found by God. To deny this state is nothing less than to deny God's grace. For the grace of God has reference only to those who are transgressors of their own accord, and the revelation of it has reference only to those who acknowledge and confess themselves to be transgressors. But it is not the will of the gracious God, nor is it the purpose of His command, to enslave man with this state in which He seeks and finds him, or with the corresponding self-knowledge. Nor will He enslave Himself with this

237

[753]

S 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[754J

I

antithesis of His own holiness and man's lack of holiness, His own righteousness and man's lack of righteousness. The final end of Hisjudgment is not the disclosure of this state of affairs between Himself and us, so that we are compelled to confess this, and He deals with us accordingly. For in the execution of His righteous wrath, this could mean only that He would drive us from His face, i.e., abandon us to eternal destruction. But when He gives us His commandment, He brings us to judgment as those who are elected and loved and blessed by Him. He takes us so seriously as His covenant-partners that these are the lengths to which He is prepared to go with us. Because His faithfulness is eternal, our unfaithfulness is necessarily revealed and self-endorsed. But He cannot leave it at that. For where is His faithfulness if our unfaithfulness has the last word? How can His right be divine right if our wrong is allowed and able to maintain itself against Him? What Titans we necessarily are if we can posit ourselves absolutely, as it were, in the corresponding self-knowledge, as if we could create and provide it for ourselves, as if it were not inherently the work of God's grace, and to be attained only in prayer! For if on the one side man is obviously the transgressor of the command which he is found to be in God's judgment, on the other he is the object of God's love which he was before he became a transgressor, and cannot cease to be even as a transgressor who is condemned in the divine judgment. If, on the one side, there is man's self-knowledge as a transgressor, which he cannot avoid and definitely must not renounce, on the other there is his knowledge by God. For this certainly confirms the truth of his self-,knowledge. Yet it is not exhausted by this truth, but transcends it. In it, even as the transgressor he is, man is elected and loved by God, the partner of His covenant and the possessor of its promise. And he does not cease to be this. But because there are these two very different aspects, we can and must regard even the incontrovertible and relentless proof that man is an evil-doer as only a first result of the confrontation of man with God's command, and not as its final outcome. In this antithesis, we are, in fact, something very different from what we are in and of ourselves. In it we have an additional quality which we cannot possibly maintain in any continuation or extension or intensification of our selfknowledge, and which has nothing to do with any dignity that we may oppose to God-as if we either possessed or had obtained it for ourselves. Yet it is a real quality of our own, and it persists and prevails as such in and in spite of our judgment by the divine command, and cannot be denied, but only confirmed, by the necessary self-knowledge that we are transgressors. It is the quality in which God knows us beyond His knowledge of us as sinners. It is the quality in which we do not know ourselves but are known by Him; our quality as those to whom He has sworn and maintains fidelity in spite of our infidelity. Because of this quality, we ar:ejustified in the judgment-the very judgment in which, on the basis of our other qualities, we are shown to be wholly unjustified, in which we can answer and adduce absolutely nothing in selfjustification. We have neither the power nor the liberty to evade at any price the sentence on our

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

actions and their value, on our life as we live it of ourselves. But we cannot and must not evade the further judgment in which this first sentence is included. It is true enough that our actions are valueless in the sight of God, and our life forfeit. But we evade the righteousness of God if we try to refuse to hear His sentence beyond this conclusion. It may well imply a final and particularly evil form of selfjustification if we insist rigidly in the self-knowledge-which we cannot resist and definitely must not renounce-that we are transgressors, placing ourselves as such in absolute antithesis to God: as though by what we are and do-and therefore by what we are and do as sinners before God-we had made, or were in a position to make, an eternal choice; as though we had in this way introduced an eternal factor into our relationship with God. At this poin t what seems to be the deepest and most sincere humility may obviously be only the crassest pride, which merely betrays the fact that we have not yet accepted the sentence executed upon us by the command of God, or attained the corresponding self-knowledge. If we have really done this, we must not resist the fact that God knows us in another way than we know ourselves in this self-knowledge. Ifwe have really attained it, we must not oppose the fact that God will pronounce us free and righteous, forgiving our sins and addressing and treating us as His dear children, on the basis of the one quality which, beyond all our reprehensible qualities, He sees and finds in us, on the basis of His own goodness, in which He wills to see and seek us in this way. The actual and necessary penitence for our sins is obviously fulfilled in the fact that we are ready to accept this, just as the judgment of God is fulfilled in the fact that He addresses us and deals with us. Our penitence is not fulfilled, and we have not accepted our sentence, if we try, as it were, to rivet ourselves to our sins, ignoring the fact that God can see and judge us otherwise than in relation to our sins. He can indeed look beyond our sins even as He sees them, and, in so doing, pronounce upon us the final and decisive Word of His judgment, in face of which we have real cause to humble ourselves. I have not really humbled myself at His first Word if I refuse this final Word. God is righteous in this Word, i.e., He maintains His right to us, and vindicates it against the claim which Satan might make to us, and the false claim which, seduced by Satan, we might think we have to ourselves-thus creating our right before Him in face of the wrong which Satan does us and which, seduced by him, we do ourselves. For in virtue of that quality which is known to ourselves but well known to Him, denied and forfeited by us but indestructible according to His will, God looks upon us as His children and covenant-partners, and acquits and justifies us as such. Our justification takes place in default and defiance of our merit, but even so in true and supreme justice. It does not take place because of a weakness or indifference in relation to our transgression, but as this is expressly perceived and treated as such; yet not in such a way that, constrained by it, God is forced by our unfaithfulness to abandon His faithfulness, but in final confirmation of His faithfulness. It takes place by way of forgiveness, by the conscious non-imputation and non-assertion of our sin, and yet in all seriousness

239

[755]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[756]

as the decisive action of God against our sin, as His most forceful protest against our transgression of His command. How indeed could He protest more energetically against it than by the mere fact that He does not lay it to our charge, that although He knows and convicts us as sinners, He does not treat us seriously as such, but in spite of our sin continues to deal with us as He had decided and as He wills? The objective meaning of our justification in God's judgment is that God does not permit Himself to be hindered and arrested in His course by our sins, but maintains His right against us, not merely in opposition to us-He does this, too, but if this were the whole story it would be a human, one-sided right and not the right of the supreme Judge over all parties-but in fellowship with us. It therefore takes the form, not only of the revealing and chastisement of our wrong, but also of the annulling of wrong by right. We can be pardoned in the judgment-and our sins forgiven-because God wills to be in the right, not only for Himself, but in fellowship with us, and because He wills not only to reveal wrong as such, but also to destroy it. The forgiveness of our sins is the final and decisive word which the command has to say to us, and which we have to consider. Forgiven sin does not mean sin connived at or forgotten or no longer indicated by the command. The statement that it is forgiven does not mean that there is no longer sin in our self-knowledge, or that penitence is no longer required. We have not received forgiveness, nor are we acquitted and justified in God's judgment, if we do not acknowledge and confess our sin, if it does not grieve us to the heart, if we do not remain under the accusation of the command, if we do not maintain the responsibility which we owe to God for what we are and do and which shatters all our assurance. Our forgiveness means that God does not allow us to fall under the past, present and future accusation of His command; that even as the accused and condemned people we were and are and always will be before Him, we do not cease to be His children, and to enjoy all our rights as His children. Forgiven sin means real sin, but sin in which God does not see or accept our sinfulness, the folly and wickedness of our intentions and actionsfar less the doubtful relics of an accompanying good, or the relative perfecting of an unfulfilled obedience, or anything of that sort-but primarily Himself, His love to us, His sworn covenant, His faithfulness, and then ourselves as He knows us, as He has known about us from all eternity. Forgiven sin is our being and action as-corrupt in itself, and not to be considered apart from penitence and sorrow-it is received and accepted by Him as good in virtue of His imposed, unarbitrary, infinitely righteous, but free and fatherly good-pleasure. It is good, therefore, because He does not allow our sin, folly and malice to prevail before Him, or recognise it as our essential being and condition, but cancels it; because He sees us as snow-white, and because, in the creative truth of His being and condition, we are actually snow-white where we have made and always make ourselves blood-red in His judgment. Forgiven sin is our being and action in so far as God takes us to Himself, even though we and our deeds are evil, accepting our being and action as real obedience and right-

240

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

eousness before Him. The forgiveness of sins, or justification, is thus the total and radical acceptance of the sinner, and the total and radical reversal and conversion of the being and action in which he appears before God's judgment-seat, unable either to excuse or justify himself. When He justifies us, God does not interpret evil as good; for He never allegorises. Nor does He call evil good when He forgives us; for He cannot lie. But in virtue of His omnipotent compassion, and because He is Lord andJudge over good and evil alike, He makes that which is intrinsically evil good, that which is sick whole, that which is feeble glorious, that which is dead alive. We are totally evil when we enter His judgment and totally cleansed when we leave it. In the one sentence of God we are both semper peccatoresEN1 and semper iusti EN2. The forgiveness of sins consists in the fact that these two predicates do not exclude one another, that they stand opposed, not in dialectical equilibrium, but with a preponderance of the second over the first; in the fact that their sequence is irreversible, that God never creates evil out of good, but good out of evil; in the fact that semper iustiEN3 is the second and final word which is to be heard and considered at this point. This is God's grace injudgment. It is just when we are in utter terror for ourselves that we are completely comforted, and in such a way that we can put the whole fear, however serious and settled it may be, behind us, and have all the comfort of the inconceivable divine inversion and transformation of our being and actions before us. The command of God, as it becomes our judgment, places us in this direction. It cannot be otherwise if it is true that the Law is the form of the Gospel. We must now emphasise and underline the fact that all this is true in the event and execution of the divine judgment-powerfully, compellingly and convincingly true. What we have just completed is again a reconstruction of this event. The execution of the divine judgment itself is another matter. It alone can provide the compelling truth of even the most accurate reconstruction. If we assume that our reconstruction is accurate, God judges us in the true and righteous judgment of His command, according to His own truth, according to the law of His covenant of grace, according to the righteousness of His mercy, and therefore as His own people, as those whom none can pluck out of His hand, and therefore, as He condemns our transgression, as those who are righteous before Him, so that our evil being and action are good, our perverted works are righteousness before Him. Nobody can say that this incredible proposition, the doctrine of the justification of sinners in God's judgment, is either clear or self-evident. It is attested by the event to which it refers and which it reconstructs, but not by the proposition as such. It is proved only by the act of divine proof. As a proposition, it is no less contestable than the prior affirmation that in the divine judgment man is found to be a EN 1 EN2 EN:'\

always sinners always righ teous always righ teous

[757]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[758J

transgressor. If we realise that both propositions speak only of God's own grace, we shall have to admit this. Only God Himself can speak of His grace in sucli a way that every contradiction and misunderstanding is excluded. Is any doctrine more contestable than that of the justification of the sinner? And is there any doctrine which can be more perilously affirmed? If we try to understand it in abstraction from its reference to the actual execution of the divine judgment, we can only misunderstand it, whether we accept it or reject it. Here, too, the blind eyes must be opened if true statements are to be made about the colours. Here, too, the divine proof of the actual execution 0'£ the judgment must first speak for itself-the doctrine of justification does not do this in its own right-if the contradiction and misunderstanding of it are really to be excluded. We have again to consider this act of divine proof, which we can now interpret only as a divine miracle. This act of divine proof is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection alone is decisive for the truth that, as sinners before God, we are pronounced righteous. It silences both the contradiction and the misunderstanding of this proposition. In it, the confrontation of man with God has run its course and reached its end. This end is that the sinful man who was condemned and punished by God on account of his sin is acquitted and justified by the same God, being invested with all the glory of one who is righteous, and therefore rescued from the death into which he had fallen. And this man was sinful in the sense that He was the Bearer of our sin and took our place before God, and therefore accepted God's sentence and punishment for us. As our Head and Representative, He was sinful, and died for sin. And as our Head and Lord He also rose from the dead, and beyond that sentence received God's justification. Having first been humiliated, He was now exalted to the right hand of God. And just as He was our Head and Lord in the first case, so, too, He is in the second. Just as the Ecce homoEN4! is true in the first case, excluding every contradiction of the conclusion that we are sinners, so, too, it is in the second, resisting every contradiction of the truth of our justification, and every misunderstanding of this truth. The resurrection of Jesus Christ reveals the fact that God makes no mistake in His faithfulness to His dear Son, and therefore that the latter does not cease to be this because He stands before the Father at Golgotha burdened with all the actual sin and guilt of man and of each individual man, and is treated in accordance with the deserts of man as the transgressor of the divine command. The Father in His faithfulness has set Him there, and the Son in turn evinces a corresponding faithfulness by allowing Himself to be set there. And it is for our sakes that the Father has set Him there and the Son has allowed Himself to be set there. His name, therefore, represents and includes our name, His person our person, both in what He suffers and in what He does, in what He undergoes both as condemnation and as justification. If the resurrection of Jesus Christ is simply the revelation of the faithEN4

Behold the Man

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

fulness of the Father and the Son, which persists in the judgment to which He was subjected, it is also the revelation of the faithfulness which persists in our judgment. It is the revelation that even in the judgment which affects us and to which we have to submit we do not cease to be the elect and beloved of God. It is the revelation that God does not maintain and uphold His right against Satan and against ourselves by turning His face away from us and letting us fall as we had deserved, but by turning His countenance to us and safeguarding and honouring our own right to live against Satan and against ourselves. That is how He treated His own Son when He raised Him from the death to which He had been delivered. And that is how He has dealt with us in Him as our Lord and Head. He has "delivered him over for our transgression, and raised him for our justification" (Rom. 425). The sentence which God has pronounced on His own Son, and on us in Him, has, in fact, the twofold character implied in the doctrine of justification. It speaks both of our transgression and also of our justification. In the light of the original form of this sentence as a sentence onJesus Christ Himself, it is impossible either to contradict the doctrine of justification or to misunderstand it. Who is the God of whom the doctrine seems to say such wonderful things? If He remains true to the transgressor of His command, even to the extent of acquitting andjustifying Him, He remains equally true to Himself, because He has promised fidelity to the transgressor in Jesus Christ; because the sentence and condemnation of the transgressor is executed to the letter in the person of his Head and Advocate; because, now that this has happened-not for our sakes, but for the sake of our Head and Advocate-He owes it to Himself, and therefore, for the great love with which He has loved us in Him, to us, to receive us as those who are free from every sentence and condemnation and righteous and acceptable to Him. There comes on us inJesus Christ that which is supremely fitting for us as those who are elect in Him, sinners whose sins He has taken to Himself, justified on the basis of the righteousness of His obedience. That there comes on us that which we have deserved we cannot, of course, say in any meaningful way.Even the reward whichJesus Christ Himself receives for the obedience in which He took up our case-our liberation,justification and atonement-is not really a strict repayment, for He is obedient as a Son to the Father, and it is simply a free gift of the Father from the wealth of His possessions which are those also of the Son. And the fact that we receive this reward certainly cannot be understood in terms of any merit of ours. It is sufficient proof of the righteousness of God that in His judgment we actually receive that which is fitting and proper for us, our right and due: in Jesus Christ the condemnation and rejection corresponding to our transgression; and by Jesus Christ the justification and adoption corresponding to our election in Him. The forgiveness of our sins is indeed an act of free divine mercy, as is also the whole fact that He has loved and elected us in His own Son, that He appointed Him our Head and Advocate in both evil and good, in relation to our transgression and also to our justification. The rule of this compassion 243

[759]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God [760]

[761]

of God is fulfilled in the form of an act which cannot be interrupted or denied as such. It is true that our sin is real sin and unpardonable as such. But as real sin against God, it can be forgiven as in the person of His own Son God Himself intervenes in accordance with the love with which He has loved us from all eternity, taking upon Himself the condemnation and rejection corresponding to the reality of our sin, and finally, in keeping with the power of this vicarious act, taking away its guilt and punishment and forgiving us our sin. When He does this, He does not act as an unjust judge, but as the most just of all. Someone might ask: What kind of knowledge is this, in which God is in a position to see and accept as good, in fact to invert and transform into good, that which we have done from evil motives, and which He Himself has defined and characterised as evil? The answer is: It is His almighty and holy knowledge of the truth in His everlasting Word which is Jesus Christ; in the Word at the beginning of all His ways and works by which He sustains all things, which He opposes, pre-eminent and triumphant, to Satan, to evil, to sin, to Adam's fall, and to each individual sin of each individual man from all eternity, in which He saysNo to all these things from all eternity, but in which, in spite of all these things, He has said Yes to man. That He sees and hates our intrinsic sin, that He sentences and condemns us as sinners, is so true that it led to what took place at Golgotha. But it is also true that He does not allow our sin to prevail, that He defines it as falsehood, and puts His vital and powerful truth in its place. This is indeed the essence of truth, which proclaims itself in that sentence and condemnation, and is directly revealed in the justification of the sinner. For it is what took place in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea that reveals the secret hidden in the event of Golgotha. God has recognised and known us only in His eternal Word, which is Jesus Christ. We hear this one Word of God, and therefore who and what we and our existence and activity are in God's cognition which is the epitome of all truth, when we finally hear His command and judgment as our acquittal. And who is the man to whom God has simply sworn fidelity, with whom He will keep covenant in all circumstances, in whom God has such interest that He regards him as His under all conditions and in spite of his transgression? It is the man whom God has recognised and known from all eternity in His own dear Son, whom He has loved and elected in Him, to whom He has given Him as Head and Advocate, and whom He has destined to live in and through and for Him. This man as such is as assuredly the object of the fidelity and unalterable interest of God as isJesus Christ Himself. That this is the case is the revelation of Easter Day. In relation to this man, there is no right of God against Satan, or evil, or his own sin, which God champions and asserts except in such a way that man's own right of existence is also revealed and vindicated in face of the death to which he has fallen victim. This man's cause is, in fact, God's own cause. He is certainly the man who cannot help himself. But powerful and decisive help is given him in Jesus Christ. Of himself, he has nothing to bring before God but his sin. But in his shame and nakedness he is covered byJesus

244

2.

The Execution of the Divine Judgment

Christ, by the righteousness of his Head and Advocate. In it he is righteous and acceptable to God because, over and above the sin which speaks against him, he can allow the forgiveness accorded him to speak for him. In it, God's own Son speaks for him. Where, then, is his sin and guilt? It persists to the extent that he does not live by the forgiveness which he is granted, that he does not allow God's Son to speak for him, but continually tries to conduct his own case, refusing to confess his sin, preferring to excuse and justify himself. This is his continued sin and guilt. We need not look very far for the sin. We shall continually meet ourselves on this way, and in so far as we are on this way our sin and guilt lie on us in all their gravity. And the more eagerly we proceed on this way, the basically evil way of all apostasy, the more heavily they do so. But if we realise again that God's Son is made sin for us, if we hear afresh the annihilating accusation that is raised against us, if we listen anew to the voice of the selfsame Son of God speaking for us, we certainly cannot continue in this way. We are made responsible as we have heard the voice of the risen Lord, and it is our responsibility to continue to hear this voice. It is as hearers of this voice that we are taken seriously in God's judgment, and it is as such that we must take ourselves seriously. As there is no other true responsibility, there is no other true seriousness. All other seriousness is frivolity, a gamble with eternal perdition. It is by this seriousness alone that we can turn our back on the possibility of eternal perdition. This is the seriousness of those who are ready to live only by the forgiveness granted to them. And it is the true and vital seriousness demanded of us. And in it we cannot fail altogether to see the particular attribute in which God considers us in this astonishing judgment-the unknown subject of our life, whose predicates are all so very different from what we must ascribe to ourselves if our self-knowledge is authentic and accurate. Ifwe keep before us the fact that 'Jesus lives, and I in Him," this unknown attribute, the new subject of human life may be very hard to see or demonstrate in ourselves, yet it is no mere paradox, but the most obvious and natural truth. This unknown quality consists in the fact that from all eternity we confront God, not in some form of self-will or self-sufficiency, but in His own Son; that we are what we are, not in our own name or person, but in the name and person of Jesus Christ. The existence of the new man in us, which is so hidden when we try to observe and investigate and confirm it in ourselves; our existence in eternal membership in God's Son; our being inJesus Christ-all the new and inconceivable predicates of our life are real because they are the predicates of Jesus Christ, and they are revealed to us in the fact that in His resurrection, rescued from perdition and death, He is invested with them; that He is revealed rather as their original and proper Bearer. He is our Head and Representative, so that we have only to look at Him to discover them as our own predicates, and we give Him the lie if we are not willing to admit that we possess this quality, that we are actually the new man with these inconceivable predicates.

245

[762]

S 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[763J

Where in truth is the insoluble contradiction between ~he concepts of God and of man which we might oppose to the doctrine of justification? Where is the overpowering proximity between the holy God and unholy man, or the obscuring of the command of God, which are laid to its charge? It is itself justified against all critics, and becomes strong, convincing truth, the moment we understand it, not with anthropological narrowness, but in its proper christological breadth and depth. If it is understood in this way,it certainly does not give any occasion for the misunderstanding of an unwelcome applause. How can we really go to meet the judgment of God without fear for our own persons if we do not continually fear it in face of its fulfilment in the person of jesus Christ, and 'of the accusation which He causes to fall on Himself and which is therefore raised against all men? Ifwe try to seek and find any other freedom than that of the Son of God taken from judgment and raised again from the dead, we are not free-either in a moral or a non-moral sense-but the slaves of sin. We are not free in God if we think we can be free in any other way than by allowing God to make us free. We are not free if we do not know that it is only by the grace of jesus Christ that we are made free, and that this happens on the brink of the abyss into which our self-will and self-sufficiency can and should hurl us every day and every hour; if we do not know that we alwaysneed the One who is our Head and Advocate in the kingdom of the living God, and by whom we are torn away from every path of self-excuse and selfjustification which leads directly to destruction. We are not complete if we do not know that we constantly renounce this path, not trying to find our fulfilment, even in the slightest degree, outside the name and person of Jesus Christ. Man's justification in judgment, as it has taken place in jesus Christ, is as little exposed to the perfectionist or libertine misconception in any of its forms as it can be confounded with it in any competent criticism. Always-as the actual execution of divine judgment-it will speak for itself both on the right hand and the left. But it is salutary and necessary for us to add at this point: Yes,when it does so, when our justification in jesus Christ itself speaks to us. For the reference to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which has the decisive word at this point, can only be a reference. We cannot produce the event itself and its attestation. When we speak christologically, we do not leave the sphere of theology and enter that of the divine action to which the whole of theology can only refer. We have considered the secret of Easter Day. But the Holy Spirit is the secret even of that which, in the revelation of the eternal divine purpose, took place between the Father and the Son on Easter Day, at the heart of time. And it is the work of the same Holy Spirit when this secret does not remain dumb but speaks with us, so that the secret is revealed to us and our justification inJesus Christ does itself speak to us in a way which we can neither contradict nor mistake. This last reference and consideration necessarily remind us again that, however earnestly theology may struggle to achieve breadth and profundity, it is always impotent until it transcends itself, until it becomes the theology

3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment of the resurrection, which means concretely, until it becomes prayer. In prayer the work of the Holy Spirit, who is the secret of Easter Day, is done in those who pray. In prayer this secret is disclosed to them. In prayer they live as those who are risen with jesus Christ. We cannot expect the actual disclosure of the secret of the risen Christ, or the effective dissolution of resistance to the doctrine of the justification of the sinner, or the removal of the possibility of misunderstanding it, merely from a broadening or deepening-however serious-in the understanding of the doctrine as such. To the impure all things are impure. These things can be expected only when the doctrine itself is made a matter for prayer. Then we shall not wait in vain for this disclosure, for the dissolution of all resistance, for the removal of every possibility of misunderstanding. In prayer this tenet becomes true. In prayer no one has ever found any contradiction in the justification of the sinner, or its presuppositions with regard to God and man. As we really pray we are freed from all contradiction and live in the truth that sinful man may stand before his Father as God's dear child, and have familiar intercourse with Him. As we pray we cannot misunderstand or misuse this tenet, or convert it into its opposite. As we genuinely pray we understand it correctly, and make proper use of it, venturing the very thing we can and should venture in the atmosphere of this truth, and refraining from the very things that are made impossible and excluded. The work of the Holy Spirit is really done where there is real prayer, and the work of the Holy Spirit is the power of the resurrection of jesus Christ from the dead, and therefore the power of the divine justification of sinful man. When we pray, we are engaged in a decision for the truth, not of a doctrine of justification, but of justification itself. When we pray, justification speaks, specifically and conclusively, for itself. To refer to this point where the decision is made by God Himself is the true purpose of the christological explanation of justification. To the extent that the decision is made, justification-and it is only now that we can say this-is our justification by faith, by faith alone. For it is only faith that really understands its truth. It does so because faith in jesus Christ is itself life in its truth.

3. THE PURPOSE OF THE DIVINE JUDGMENT The presupposition of the divine judgment is that God wills to have man for himself. The execution of this judgment is that He creates right for the man who is in the wrong before Him, setting him in the right against himself. Its goal and purpose is that man should be the one who passes from this judgment, the one who is judged by His command. It is as such that God wills to have him for Himself. It is as such that man can and should live in covenant with Him. We must now speak more particularly of this purpose of the divine judgment and therefore of the command by which God judges man. 247

[764]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[765]

The execution of the divine judgment does not take place in vain. Nor is this true only for God, who as such knows and wills and attains what He wills. It is true of the God who elects man and deals with man and has entered into covenant with him. Therefore, as it is true for God, it is also true for man. The man who comes from the judgment of God is not the same as the one who comes to it. And the judgment of the divine command is the secret of every day and hour of human life. Man is always on the point of coming to the divine judgment and coming from it. To the extent that he comes from it, he is never the same as he was. He is always another man. He is newly orientated. He lives always in a post judgment epoch in which he is a new being-an epoch which in this life will always be a prejudgment epoch as well, lived in expectation of the new judgment of the next hour, the following day, to which he moves. Yet he lives always in this post judgment epoch. The judgment from which he comes has not taken place in vain. The grace of God which is its presupposition was not addressed to him in vain, whatever may be the use he makes of it when he moves forward to fresh judgment. The purpose of God has as such definitely been fulfilled in him. He can never be the same as he was before. The effectiveness of the divine command, and the power of his condemnation and acquittal, have not been for nothing. Whatever he may make of it, he stood before the God who loved him and willed to have him for himself. He stood before Him as a malefactor and enemy, and God stood before him as the One who did not allow Himself to be deflected, who did not suffer any breach of His own right and therefore his right, whose faithfulness persisted. Man may forget or despise this, but the fact remains that it is true and actual, and always true and actual for him, that after this has happened he is different from what he was before. Between God and him a new beginning has been made, and an order has been set up corresponding to this new beginning. The evening and the morning have given rise to a new day. What it will bring is another matter. But it is a new day of grace. Our Church hymns, with their relating of night and day to the death and resurrection of Christ, to the putting off of the old man and the putting on of the new, are an exact description of the true state of affairs: "New every morning like the dew, The grace of God is sure and true, It never ends the livelong day, But is a certain strength and stay." The fulfilled purpose of the judgment from which we come is the decisive law of our future, the given atmosphere of each new day, of each hour we enter. We live after the judgment in which we are accused and condemned, but also pardoned and justified. And the decisive preparation for everything that follows definitely consists in the fact that we accept this, that we allow this law to obtain. If there can and must be a new evening and night, if we must stand again in the judgment as before, this is clearly bound up with the fact that we have either not sung our morning hymn or unfortunately ceased to sing it because we regard other things as more important. But this does not alter the fact that it was morning and that we come from this morning of God. It does not alter the effectiveness of the judgment of God which is behind us. The humiliation and

3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment exaltation which have come on us have actually taken place and cannot be reversed. The invitation and permission and exhortation that we receive still hold good. We ourselves are still those in whom the grace of God has acted in the judgment. No matter what we make of it, no matter what attitude we take to it, it is still the case that we are judged by the command of God. And in the full sense of the term developed in the preceding sub-section, this means that we are directed to live by the grace of God. We are unmasked and convicted as those who in their wickedness and folly try to escape the command of God, and thus give themselves up to the destruction to which this desire can only lead us. And yet in spite of this desire we are not allowed to fall, but upheld and carried above the yawning abyss where no power on earth, and least of all our own, can save us from a headlong plunge to destruction. We are sinners before God, but this fact is c~vered by the high righteousness of the divine forgiveness. That we are judged in this way is the purpose of the divine judgment as it is not merely attempted but actually fulfilled. It is on this basis that God will again see and address us. It is as such that we are sanctified by the command of God. It is as such that God will take us seriously the next hour and the next day. Thus it is not a mere problem and postulate of our existence that we should be this. But the character always given already to our existence, our modification and orientation by the divine judgment, consist in the fact that we actually are this. And the true problems and postulates of our existence only arise from this fact. It is only from this fact that we can ask what the actualised purpose of the divine judgment can mean for us the judged in all the hours and days which are still before us; what it will mean to live by the grace of God in these coming hours. The moment we forget or depreciate the fact that we live by the grace of God, all questions as to the manner of this life, all the problems and postulates of our existence-however seriously they may be posed and tackled-are quite irrelevant. We have forgotten and depreciated the command of God itself, and therefore broken it. For what we must keep before us is that we are judged by God's command, and therefore directed to it, to the right created by it, and therefore to live by the grace of God. Beside this one thing we cannot know anything else in obedience to the divine command. It is in respect for this one thing that all further questioning necessarily ensues. As those who are judged by God, and directed to His grace, we are, in fact and objectively, called to faith. "In fact and objectively" means independently of whether faith has already been proclaimed to us by the preaching of the Gospel, or what attitude, if any, we have adopted to this proclamation. Faith is something which is objectively demanded from us by the judgment of God, irrespective of whether we know and receive it or not. The preaching of the Gospel can only proclaim and show that this is how things stand objectively. And when we take up an attitude to the preaching of the Gospel, we can only take up an attitude to the fact that this is how things stand objectively, that our existence as characterised and modified and established by the judgment of

249

[766]

S 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[767]

God can be lived only in faith. Faith corresponds exactly to the judgment and grace of God. In faith we acknowledge that we are judged, or rather that we are directed to live by God's grace. In faith, and only in faith, we can meaningfully ask what this reality necessarily means for us. In faith, and only in faith, the problems and postulates of our existence can be meaningfully considered and treated. Without faith, and therefore without corresponding to the call which in fact and objectively has come to us by God'sjudgment, without hearing this one demand from the very outset of each new day, we can never correspond to the reality of this day, but only be betrayed into futility when we ask concerning its significance for us. Whether proclaimed by the preaching of the Gospel or not, whether heard or not, the grace of God in His judgment:- issues always a call for faith, i.e., for our practical affirmation of the judgment fulfilled in our being and action. Faith is practical acknowledgment that right is done to us by God. Faith is an acceptance of the lightness of this right of God. We believe when we live before God and with God as those who are judged by Him, whom He has made His own, in whom He has glorified Himself by humbling and exalting them as He has done in His judgment. All sin, great or small, conscious or unconscious, flagrant or refined, consists in the fact that we do not do this. It consists in an attitude in which we ignore in practice where we have our origin and what God has done in us and for us. All sin consists in unbelief-and perhaps in error or superstition as particular forms of unbelief. Not merely the sin of the Christian who is expressly called to faith by the preaching of the Gospel, and confesses faith, but the sin of the whole world, which in fact and objectively is continually called to faith by the execution of the divine judgmen t, consists in unbelief. Unbelief is the denying and 0 bscuring of the purpose of the divine judgment. In itself, therefore, it is an impotent action. It is, of course, deadly enough even in its impotence; for it calls for new and heavier judgments, and how can unbelief know that these are again the judgments of divine grace when it does not know this, or has forgotten or discounted it, in relation to the judgments from which it has come? To believe is not to forget or discount the judgment of divine grace from which we come; not to deny or obscure its purpose. We believe when we consider this judgment in what we do; or rather, when we attest it in our action (because God has Himself attested it to us in this judgment); when we magnify it (because God willed to magnify Himself in us in this judgment): when we display it in our action before God and men and all angels. In faith man confirms that he is not merely presen t in the judgmen t of God's command as a hearer and spectator, but that he is its object, that he is himself the accused and the acquitted in this judgment, and that he has come from it as such. It is at once apparent that the idea of a purely theoretical faith separable from life can only be an absurdityjust as absurd, in fact, as that of a life separable from faith. If the existence of the judged man is the purpose of the divine judgment, the acknowledgment of this fact by man obviously cannot consist in any contemplation or conviction which may be differentiated or separated from the totality of his existence-as

3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment though he were only a spectator of the judgment-but only in the total shaping of his existence. Faith, then, can only be a determination of his whole being and action, which is, of course, in the first and decisive instance a determination of his knowledge, but as a determination of his existence-how else can it be genuine?-a determination of his life, and therefore the obedience of faith. Faith never understands itself as an enterprise undertaken in man's own caprice or capacity or competence. It never understands itself as an original or meritorious achievement of man. It is an answer to the divine call and can only try to reflect and correspond to the fact that we are directed to live by the grace of God. It is the acknowledgment and attestation of the basis of right which is created by the mercy of God and to which every achievement can only be an achievement of thankfulness. But if faith understands itself only as a miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit, this does not alter the fact that it has to be undertaken as a conscious and determined act of the man whose being and essence are condemned and rejected in the divine judgment, and whose whole sinfulness is now forgiven. Man does not try to transcend himself in this act. But he is to give place to the God from whose judgment he comes. And ifit is true that even this act as such-faith as our act-is not without sin, but will appear in the judgment as everywhere spotted with sin, this does not mean that we can neglect it. For the grace of God calls for it. When we are referred to the grace of God, we have no option but to give the response of our Yes,and we must not hesitate. Even this action, even our faith, will always need forgiveness when we bring it to God. It is a faith in which we can only cry and pray that God will help our unbelief. But this cannot alter the fact that we are always summoned by the fact of our sanctification in God's judgment to give it to God, irrespective of whether it is good or bad, strong or feeble. That God's forgiveness is and always will be the last word is something that we acknowledge and attest when we are not afraid but confidently dare to give our faith to God even in its need of forgiveness, not withholding it in an affectation of humility. How can we live by God's grace if we refuse to believe because our faith is always weak and poor? It is not the man who believes, but the God in whom he can and should believe, that makes faith the sacred work of an answer to the judgment which is passed on him. If we try to clarify the nature of this faith which thankfully responds to the divine judgment and therefore corresponds to its purpose, the simplest and most comprehensive insight is yielded by the fact that in its origin and basic form faith is always the act of repentance, i.e., of the conversion which corresponds to the morning of each new day. The new day which we enter when we come from the judgment of God is characterised by the fact that our sin is recognised as such and forgiven as such. To walk in the light of this day, and therefore to believe, is obviously to affirm in practice that our forgiven sin is recognised as sin and that our recognised sin is forgiven as such. When we do this we repent; we are converted; we turn from disobedience to obedience. And this is what God wills of those who are judged by Him.

[768]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[769]

1. It is only of forgiven sin that we know that it is recognised as sin, that it'is sin. What we may more or less know apart from forgiveness is perhaps defect, error or vice. But to know sin as sin, as our rebellion against God, as our transgression of His command, we must know its forgiveness. It is unequivocally from this standpoint that it is spoken of in the Penitential Psalms. Only those who are justified by God are awakened from the sleep of the opinion that their acts can be justified of themselves. And it is (Rom. 24) the goodness of God which leads us to repentance, i.e., when repentance means more than remorse, self-accusation, despair and the like, when it means that man has really come to an end of himself, when it has to be understood as the corresponding knowledge of this fact, and the attitude corresponding to this knowledge. That I do not love God and my neighbour; that I thus bring mortal guilt on myself; that I put myself in mortal need; and more than that, that I am a man who of himself will always go this way, even in his best efforts; that, although there is nothing to force me, I can never be anything different; that, however heavily they oppress me, I can never free myself from my guilt and need because of myself I do not seriously wan t things changed; that there is in me no archimedian point from which I can reverse my transgression; that I do not control any resources by which to escape disquiet in my own strengththese are all things that I learn only when and as I learn the grace of God. The sinner whose sin is not forgiven is always distinguished from the sinner whose sin is forgiven by the fact that he does not know these things, that he does not think of admitting them and living by this admission. He will always be distinguished by the fact that he has still a great deal to say in his own favour. But a confession like that of Paul in Rom. 7 not only shows that the Pharisaism of the one who speaks is overcome, but that this has taken place because the forgiveness of his sins has been revealed, because he has not come in vain into the judgment. Similarly, the fifth petition in the Lord's Prayer-for Jesus Himself is the first to use it-can surely be understood and prayed only out of the fulness of forgiveness. And there can obviously be no better place for the Kyrie eleisEN5 than at the end of the Christmas hymn "All praise to thee, 0 Jesus Christ." We can all ask for pardon-and we all prefer a good conscience to a bad. But we can cry for God's mercy and therefore for forgiveness only when we know that although we are lost God has accepted us and redeemed us. How else can we know that we need mercy and forgiveness? How else can we know to whom we cry? How else can we know that we can and should cry to Him? Only from the deep .quiet of the knowledge that grace is given does there follow the genuine disquiet of the knowledge that we need it, and not vice versa. It is the Gospel, and not a Law abstracted from the Gospel, that compels us to recognise our transgression, to take our guilt seriously, to accept the consequent distress as a just punishment rather than refusing it as an injustice. That we yield to this compulsion, not rejecting that disturbance, not ceasing to

EN5

Lord have mercy

3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment pray: "Forgive us our trespasses," not suppressing that Christmas Kyrie eleison, always thinking and speaking and acting, just because we are forgiven, as those who need forgiveness-this is the one vital thing in the faith which is demanded from us by the divine judgment from which we come. To believe is to admit that we are at the end of ourselves because God wills to make a new beginning with us and has actually done so. To believe is to take the place which belongs to us as those who are helped, and can still be helped, by the divine mercy. To believe is to act in big and little things alike as those who can expect all the necessary seeing and hearing, insight and experience, power and perseverance, only from the fact that we may continue to pray, and to pray: "Forgive us our trespasses." To believe is to accept and pursue, for the sake of the peace that we are granted with God, the conflict in which we are quite finally alone apart from the fact that God is with us, in which we have finally no weapon apart from that which God supplies, and in which we must daily and hourly receive and accept and pray for the free grace that God is our Friend and not our worst enemy. To believe is to consider the assault that God Himself will immediately and necessarily mount against us if even for a moment or by a hair's breadth we seek our security elsewhere. To believe is to defy our own unfaithfulness with the recollection of God's faithfulness, running through the mist to meet it in the recognition that it is we ourselves who create the mist, who bring the assault on us, who make God the enemy He must always be to those who alienate themselves from Him, but will not be if only they will accept life in correspondence to Hisjudgment, and therefore life in repentance, as is fitting. Faith is this life in repentance to the extent that this is not something odd but our true and natural life at the very deepest level. All transformation or renewal of our life has its basis and mysterious essence in the fact that our life is ready to be lived in this true and natural surrender to the death of all self-centred dignity and power-true and natural to the extent that we always come from the judgment of God, and on the basis of this judgment are always given up to this death in order that we may really live beyond this death. As our being and action, which are sinful in themselves, are placed in this repentance, they are directed to the work of obedience, to good works which are pleasing to God. Good works are always works of repentance, works in which our sin is recognised, works in which we pray for the divine mercy, works in which we are helped because they are not the works of self-help, but a sighing-and finally and inwardly a happy sighing-for the help of God. There can be no question of any other goodness of our being and activity than this. But this goodness of the lost people of those who can see no hope apart from the divine mercy is always and very definitely ascribed to our works. And these good works of the lost sinner are the purpose of the divine judgment. In view of this purposealready fulfilled, already actualised by God-we can enter with confidence each new hour or day with its own particular problems and cares-"But is a certain strength and stay."

253

[770]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[771J

2. Yet it is only of sin which is recognised as such that we know that it is forgiven. Without the knowledge of sin man himself may ignore or forget it as a defect or error or vice. But God does not ignore or forget. God knows. Ignoring and forgetting do not create the order which has always to be set up. Only the forgiveness of God can do this-of the God who knows about our sin. We therefore evade and escape the forgiveness of God if we for our part try to avoid a recognition of our sin. Where God's pardon is heard, the condemnation of God is always heard as well. Thus it is only where the condemnation of God is heard that God's pardon is also heard. That our transgression is forgiven cannot, therefore, mean that the command of God is no longer set before us. It means, rather, that it is genuinely set before us. Those who are justified by God are those who are awakened from the sleep of the opinion that the corruption of their being and action can be accepted, that it rests on a final necessity, against which nothing can prevail. Has not God set up His right against man? Has He not put man himself in the right by justifying him without any merit of his own? Was not his justification in the judgment a divine defiance of that presumed necessity? In this conclusive word of His judgment, has He not explained that our transgression is not necessary, and that its supposed invincible claim is in every respect a lie? Is it a real knowledge of sin that tries to appeal to the fact that in the sphere of our self-knowledge we know absolutely nothing of its overcoming, that we undoubtedly find that we are those who, in fact, will what we should not will, thus giving new force to that denied necessity? Is it denied or not according to what we have heard in God's judgment? Has God affirmed or negated our sin, accepted or rejected it, as He forgives us? The question is not what power or weakness we are able to know in ourselves, but what God has said and decided about us in this matter in all our power or weakness. Was God right or wrong to acquit us of our sin? Is this pardon valid or not? If we really bow under the verdict passed on us in the divine judgment-under the final and decisive word of this verdict-we obviously bow (and this is the fruitful knowledge of sin demanded of us) under the truth that the good will of God is effective against it and has a superior validity even for our life, that there is allotted to it the power to rule over us, and to us the weakness in which we let ourselves be ruled by it. The justification of a man in God's judgment means the establishment of the lordship of God over this man, fulfilled in majestic defiance of the supposed necessity of our sin and in irresistible contradiction of the claim that we can and must continue in it. If my sin is forgiven, this means that I am subjected to the lordship of God, and concretely that I am recognised and acknowledged by God to be one whom he reckons as His and who is therefore actually and objectively free to do His will. It is a curious repentance if I do not follow God in this recognition and acknowledgment, but oppose His better knowledge of myself on the basis of my own self-knowledge, reserving for myself, as it were, the claim that as a sinner I am not in any position to do His will. This kind of assertion has very little relevance now that I have been told in the divine judgment that my sin is

254

3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment forgiven, that God knows me very differently from what I know myself, and much better, that He has taken me seriously in this hidden quality which is quite inaccessible to my own self-knowledge, ranging Himself at my side, taking up my cause and calling and liberating me in consequence. The knowledge of sin demanded of me is that I should grant that He is right in His Word. IfI will not do this, I despise and reject the proffered forgiveness. In myapparent truthfulness I am then quite untruthful. For the truthfulness required of me is that I should accept the Word of God, His Yes, as it is spoken to me, even though I find myself quite powerless to pronounce this Yesof myself. It is that I should not try to rise above the wisdom in which God has recognised and acknowledged me, although I cannot achieve this knowledge of myself. When it is accomplished in this truthfulness, the repentance of faith necessarily leads to conversion. From this standpoint faith is conversion-in the freedom in which we are placed by God's pardon. To believe is to turn from every opinion and conviction which we may have in our own strength about good and evil to the truth in which we stand before God according to the divine verdict. To believe is to turn from the obedience of our own works in the cleverness and power with which we might invest our being and action, to the obedience in which the same works can be done under the lordship of God. To believe is to turn from the sloth which allows the sinfulness of our own works to remain as though it were an eternal necessity, to the joy and readiness which derive from the knowledge that God's good will alone has eternal necessity, and therefore wills to be honoured in our work, too. To believe is to turn to the place which belongs to those who know mercy. Thus faith is the birth and life of the new man who can and will do what is good and well pleasing to God. For faith is the apprehension and affirmation of the divine justification. It is the truthfulness in which we accept this as something that has really taken place. If we do accept it, the new man is born who as such can only do good works, to whom the desire and love for the will of God are fitting and natural, who as he breathes and eats and drinks and sleeps will definitely do what God approves and this alone, both in the secret recesses of the heart and in every relationship to his neighbour both in Church and state, at every stage and in every situation of life. This new man and his work are the purpose of the divine judgment. We must know that with every step we take into each new time, if we come from the divine judgment, we stand under this purpose; and that it is always fulfilled and realised already. To believe-to believe in true repentance-is to affirm in practice that God's purpose is fulfilled and realised already as we are those who are judged by Him. The morning has already come. We have only to live as we ought to live in this new day. The purpose of God in His judgment is the sanctification of man, i.e., his direction, preparation and exercise for the eternal life ordained and promised. Eternal life is a life which, ascribed to man in his creatureliness, is invested with God's own glory, i.e., as an object of the openly revealed love of God in which God has turned to him and in possession of the openly revealed

255

[772]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[773]

[774]

freedom which He has granted to him in fellowship with Himself. It is man's indissoluble, indestructible, unceasing and unlimited life with God, his life in the clarity which is proper to God, in which God sees Himself, in which He has always seen man too, and still sees him, but in which here and now man is so far unable to see either God or himself. It is man's life in the participation in the joy of God which corresponds to this clarity, which was always the purpose of his life, which already waits and is ready for him here and now, but in which here and now he cannot rejoice, or can do so only in the profound disjointedness of human life and its doubtful and transitory joy. Eternal life is man's life in harmony with the life of God and all His angels, but also with that of all the restof the elect, and, indeed, of all creation: in the harmony in which God saw and willed him when, before the foundation of the world, He knew and willed him in His Word, which is the beginning of all His ways and works; in the harmony in which He sees and wills him here and now, but in which here and now he is so utterly hidden from himself. It is man's perfect entry into the service of the glorifying of God to which God has drawn him by determining him for His own image, and which here and now is the task, but here and now only the set and unsolved task of his life, to be revealed one day in its perfect solution as the reality of his life. That man should have this eternal life "of him and through him and to him" (Rom. 1 1 36) is the purpose of God in the covenant in which He has bound Himself to man, in the command by which He has bound man to Himself, and especially in the judgment to which He subjects man by giving him His command. Everything that takes place in the history and fulfilment of this covenant, including the establishment of the command, and the judgment which is passed on man in and with the command, is a preliminary t~mporal stage, or provisional form, of the gift of eternal life. The divine purpose in the command, already fulfilled and realised, is that man, as one who is judged by it, may always enter a new hour and a new day, living actually and literally in the morning glow of eternity. In faith-to the extent that this is an affirmation of this judgment, the acceptance of its outcome-it is actually and literally a matter of grasping and having eternal life in its temporal form. In the twofold sense already described, as a dying of the old man and birth of the new, and to the extent that it consists simply in our acknowledgment of the state of affairs created by the judgment of the divine command, faith is actually and literally our temporal orientation, preparation and exercise, and therefore our sanctification for eternal life. Except in this concealment eternal life is not yet present. But in this concealment, in our sanctification by the command, in God's judgment and the faith which assents to it, our eternal life is present. The revelation of our real status before God, and therefore of our real existence, although it has not yet taken place, has been indicated and is in force. Eternal life is the real secret of this temporal life. We do not yet live eternal life here and now. But we are here and now made free for eternal life. Each act of divine judgment from which we come is the offer and work of this freedom. And each act of faith in which we give ourselves to

3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment live as those who are judged by God is the acceptance of this offer, the consequence of this work, our real entry into this freedom, a provisional form of the great final step into eternal glory and clarity and harmony, into the eternal service for which we are selected. Each part of life in the light and in face of that morning glow is as such a part of the promise which is already fulfilled if still concealed in its fulfilment-the promise under which our whole life stands, and which always waits to be recognised and grasped by us as such. We have to remember both when we come afresh into the judgment of God and when we leave it that it is the God who has this purpose for us that commands us and demands us. He does not rule for the sake of ruling, or command for the sake of commanding, or judge for the sake of judging. He has this definite purpose. He sanctifies us for eternal life as He sanctifies us for Himself. He wills the best for us as He seeks His own glory. He is Himself our hope as He is our Lord. He saves us from eternal death, and nourishes us to eternal life, as He causes us daily and hourly to die, and beseeches, allows and commands us to accept this in faith, in the perfect repentance of faith. But we must now be clear as to the true and only possible basis of this knowledge and therefore its true and essential meaning. We have spoken far too rashly and categorically and confidently about the purpose of the divine judgmen t if this purpose does not speak for itself like the presupposition and execution of this judgment, if our witness on this matter is not grounded in and cannot be related to the fact that first and last the matter has witnessed and will witness to itself. We have described the sanctification of man, his existence as that of one of those who are judged by God, as a fact which is already completed, which has been factually and objectively created. We have understood faith only as the answer of man demanded by this fact and corresponding to it. We have understood this fact itself as man's temporal liberation and capacitation for eternal life. But is not everything in the air when we investigate this fact? For where is this man who is directed by God, who is convicted as a sinner and pronounced free and righteous in spite of his sin, who is called as such to repentance, who stands as such in that morning glow in which man can enter each new day with resolution and each new hour with the confidence that in this way and as this man I have come from God'sjudgment, that I have really set out, and can and should actually live, according to the law of this event? Can I in some sense believe in myself, in my status as one of those who are judged by God? But who am I to see myself called of myself to repentance and brought of myself to the death of the old man and life of the new? And who am I to be to myself the promise of eternal life? Am I not giving way to the worst of hallucinations if I count on this fact in relation to myself and try of myself to live by it? We have only to put this question and we have the answer. As we spoke of our sanctification as the fulfilled and realised purpose of God, we spoke of ourselves, but only in a very definite relationship. To try to abstract from this relationship is to give way to one long hallucination. And everything is then left in

257

[775]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[776]

the air. To be sure, the purpose of God has to do with us and our life. To be sure, this purpose is not futile, but is fulfilled and realised in us and for us. But we have to remember that as God's purpose it is fulfilled and realised in God's judgment. Therefore, if we are to understand it properly, we have to let it speak to us as God's purpose in God's judgment. We have to let it speak for itself. It is as such that it obtains and is valid. It is as such that it is the truth in contrast to all the hallucinations which we might oppose to it or with which we might try to evade it. And, it is as such, and therefore as it speaks for itself, that it must be revealed to us. There can thus be no question of seeking this fact in our own life, among the inner and outer data and conditions and relationships of our existence as we know them. What we live here and now cannot as suchdivorced from this one relationship-be our sanctified life, the life which is liberated for eternal life, the life which comes from God's judgment. And therefore that which we live and experience and know in our own sphere, and sphere of observation, cannot as such be this life which is judged, and liberated by judgment. We never see ourselves as those we are before God; and of and by ourselves we never are those that God Himself has chosen us to be. In all the heights and depths of our life, even our Christian life, we look in vain for our true sanctification for God as it is already impregnably and irrevocably accomplished. What we see in our own life are all kinds of attempts and fragments, all kinds of unfulfilled and therefore very doubtful beginnings, all kinds of half-lights which may equally well be those of sunset or sunrise, which vouch less for our sanctification than for the fact that we have never come from the judgment of God according to the divine purpose, which testify just as much, and even more, against the factuality of our sanctification by God's command. When and where is not that which we know of our sanctification in ourselves merely an attempt at our self-sanctification which as such is again that which is forbidden us-a part of our conflict against the divine command? When and where have we so fulfilled that repentance of faith that this fact is so evident in what we have lived and experienced or done that we are summoned by it to new faith? When and where are we such believers of ourselves that we can believe on the basis of our own witness, the witness of our own inner or outer works? Those who trust in these things, in their conversion and new birth as such, in their walk before God as an element of biography, ascribing credibility and the force of witness to a supposed "pneumatic actuality" in the sphere of experience, and thus trying to live in faith in themselves, building their house upon the sand, are only involved in a feat of juggling in which they may achieve a sensational but very dangerous interchange of supreme rapture and the most profound disillusionment, but will know nothing of the death of the old man and the life of the new, and therefore of man's direction, preparation and exercise for eternal life. It is not in this way that we can and shall taste and see how good the Lord is. In this way we do not even ask concerning Him. We do not allow the purpose of His judgment to speak for itself. We do not, therefore, understand it. And we are not justified. We do not live in a way

3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment which corresponds to the day, the hour, the time, that follows God'sjudgment and is determined by it. We still live in an "as if'-as if it were not by the purpose of God in the divine judgment that our time is determined, but by a good human purpose in a human judgment passed by ourselves on ourselves. It is also the case that we cannot and must not investigate the fact of our sanctification by which our time is determined as if it were a fact which has first to be proved, which needs our acceptance and acknowledgment to be a fact and to be significant as such. Our acceptance and acknowledgment can only do justice to this fact because it is a fact, and is significant and powerful as such, and reveals itself as such. How else can our sanctification be a divine fact, and therefore one which is credible in itself and able to attest itself? We have first to consider creaturely facts-either in themselves or from some other standpoint-before we can be convinced that they are real facts and significant and powerful as such. But we need not and cannot consider divine facts in this way. Factuality, significance and force cannot be conceded to them. We misunderstand and deny them if we treat them in this way.They are there, and they are in force, and we have to acknowledge and accept them and their power as such. But it is with a fact of this kind-or, more precisely, with the divine fact, which as such speaks for itself-that we have to do in our sanctification by the command of God. And this fact is beyond any inward or outward discoveries that we may make of ourselves. Where this fact does not speak for itself, or we do not listen to it, we can speak about the purpose of the divine judgment only in surmises and opinions and expectations. We shall then be forced to admit that we do not really know it. At bottom, we shall be in the dark as concerns God's will for us. Even the actual execution of the divine judgment will be doubtful and its presupposition uncertain. For knowledge and certainty in these matters depend upon our certainty that we are those who are judged by God. Again, we shall be in the dark as to the command of God, its claim on us and decision concerning us, if we do not finally have a certainty at this point, and cannot, therefore, speak as boldly and confidently as we have actually done. For at this point it is a matter of seeing and saying who we ourselves really are in the light of the claim, under the decision and in retrospect of the actual work of the divine command. Nor are we left in the lurch at this point, for the divine command does, in fact, speak for itself here with particular force and distinctness. We do not need to seek the fact of our sanctification. It is the ground on which we stand, the horizon by which we are bounded, the atmosphere in which we breathe. It is the life of our life. It is inaccessible and concealed just because it is so real-with a divine reality over which we have no control, but which controls us with a force with which none of the known and accessible elements of our life can even remotely compete. It is not in the sphere of our knowledge because it is wisdom itself, without whose light our knowledge would not be possible even in its limitation. We have no power over it because

259

[777]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[778]

it is omnipotence, by which all our power is created, and without which it would be impotence. It does not exist as one of the facts which we seek and can discover because it is we who are searched and discovered in our existence by it. It cannot be grounded because it is itself the basis which is our starting-point for all our demonstrations. The sanctification of man by God's command takes place in the relationship by which his life is constituted, which gives it its reality and essence and continuance. This is how it attests and explains itself. It speaks to us before anything else speaks, even before we can speak to ourselves. It speaks always as the voice from above. That is why we wait in vain for it to speak in any voice from below, even that of our own best and most secret self, even that of our own most genuine Christian experience. That is also why it speaks with a force and penetration incomparably greater than those of any other voice: with force even though it seems to be quiet and easily missed compared with others; and with penetration even though it seems to come so completely from the far distance compared with others. It is the voice of the Good Shepherd which speaks to us in this unique way. "I know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father" Un. 1014£.) .Jesus Christ is the completed fact of our sanctification, the fulfilled and realised purpose of God in God'sjudgment,just as He is also its presupposition and its execution. We now come for the last time to this basic strand in the whole doctrine of God's command which is also that of the doctrine of the divine election of grace, and of the whole Christian doctrine of God. Ethics as the doctrine of God's command, and therefore as the doctrine of the sanctification given to man by God, is grounded in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. It can be attained and developed only as the knowledge ofJesus Christ. At each point we have been able to present the claim and decision and judgmen t of the divine command only in such a way that we have been brought back again and again to the point that the command of God is revealed and true and actual and valid as the command which is established and fulfilled inJesus Christ. For-this was our starting-point-He,Jesus Christ is the holy God and sanctified man in one. In His person God orders and man obeys. In His person, as we have now seen in detail, the command of God becomes the judgment of God; the claim of God on man, as it is raised in His command, becomes His right; and His determination of man, as it is implicit in His command, becomes its goal. In His person God's gracious Yes to man, which is the meaning and content of His command, coincides with man's grateful Yes to God;. the command of God with the obedience of man. In His person in which the sin of man is condemned but sinful man justified, in His death and resurrection, God sanctifies man and man is sanctified by God, being liberated and capacitated for eternal life. In His person this hidden thing is already revealed. He lives already the life to which we are directed and for which we are prepared and exercised by sanctification-eternal life in the glory of the Father. But this Jesus Christ is not one person amongst others, so that our sanctification is a new problem as compared with that which He

3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment achieves. His person, the person of the Son of God and therefore of God Himself, is by God's gracious and righteous will the human person, our common Head and Representative. In Him God has seen each human person from all eternity. As He judges Him, and He isjudged by God,judgment is executed on every human person. He is the Word that was in the beginning with God. He is, therefore, the Word that is true of every man. He is our sanctification for God and eternal life as it is unshakeably and irrevocably accomplished. The fact of our sanctification speaks so incontestably, from so great a height and yet so intimately, because it is His sanctification. It is for this reason that it has the character of a divinely present and wise and omnipotent reality as distinct from all other facts. This is why it is the prius of our existence, to deny which is at once to deny our existence, the fall of which involves our own destruction. jesus Christ is our sanctification because we are what we are only in relation to Him, because we owe the reality and essence and continuance of our human life to Him, because He is the life of our life. That this is the case is something that we can only confirm by our faith in jesus Christ. We cannot create it or even complete it. Our faith in Him can add nothing to the fact that He is our sanctification, that it is fulfilled in Him. It can only confirm and accept the fact that it is so. That this should happen, that we accept this, that we agree to participate in His sanctification without which we are nothing, that we live as those we are, i.e., as His, in that repentance as the death of the old man and birth of the new-this is what is demanded of us by this fact which is self-grounded and speaks for itself, by the voice of the Good Shepherd. For an understanding of this demand it is vital that we should know and discern that it is He who demands. His voice by which we are summoned to repentance. It is not the voice of a creature, or a man. It is not our own voice. No other voice ever can or will call us to repentance. No other voice ever can or will make us able and willing to believe. No other voice ever can or will transpose us from a state of disobedience to one of obedience. No other voice ever can or will win our hearts. And in God's command it is a matter of accepting from the heart the sanctification which has taken place for us. The voice of jesus Christ is the voice of God Himself, who wills to have us for Himself, to make us free and ready for eternal life. But as the voice of jesus Christ it is not just the voice of a God who commands and promises, and who therefore confronts us from afar. How could we hear a voice like this? How could we be led by it from an alternation between doubt and despair on the one side and rash certainty on the other? As the voice of the holy God it is also the voice of sanctified man-of the man who was sanctified in our place, for us, as our Head and Representative, who can as such really speak to us in our own name, whom we can hear when we speak to ourselves in His name. This voice demands our faith and calls us to repentance. It is with this authority, from this height, but also in this proximity, that we are here addressed. It is with this overwhelming force that obedience is here required of us and obedience is made so natural and self-evident. It is in this radical way that we are here called

[779]

~ 39. The Command as theJudgment of God

[780]

to decision, and it is made quite impossible for us to choose disobedience and reject faith and repentance. For in the decision in which we are here placed by the word spoken we have no choice. The demand issued by this fact, the demand of Jesus Christ, is such that every other choice but obedience is cut off. Ifwe hear it, this is definitely the case. Only as we listen to other voices can we think that we can choose between good and evil. If we know and discern that He and no other calls us, we definitely have no choice between obedience and disobedience. The decision has been made even as we are confronted by it. There is absolutely no place for disobedience, unbelief and impenitence. Evil becomes for us the absolutely excluded possibility that it is for God Himself. It is the shame that we can only leave under us and behind us. When we obey we do the only thing that we are free to do; the thing that we can do only in real freedom. We can be disobedient only as we are not free. Disobedience is not a choice, but the incapacity of the man who is no longer or not yet able to choose in real freedom. So majestic and penetrative is the call of Jesus Christ that when it is heard as such, when we know and discern that it is He who calls us, it is irresistible, i.e., it calls us to faith which cannot possibly be unbelief, repentance which cannot possibly be renounced, to faith which is indestructible and quite incapable of changing into its opposite. This faith and its repentance-the faith which is irresistibly awakened and therefore continues indestructibly-is the genuine faith which confirms and accepts the fact of our sanctification. In this faith we are holy; we are sanctified for God and eternal life. In this faith we live the life of those who are judged by God-that life which is the purpose of the divine judgment. In this faithJesus Christ Himself lives in us-the Head in His members, the "author of faith" in His followers. We spoke of this faith when we described repentance as the life of the man whose sin is recognised but also forgiven, who is therefore humbled but finally established. We can never speak too boldly or positively or confidently of this faith, of its assurance on both sides, of the goodness of its works, of the pleasure that God finds in it. It is the faith which gives the glory only to its object, to Jesus Christ as man's sanctification; which wills to live only as an echo of His call, but to live a full life by His call. It is only in relation to Jesus Christ that this true faith-which is irresistibly awakened and therefore continues indestructibly-is either conceivable or possible. We necessarily look away fromJesus Christ, and speak of faith without true faith, if we describe it in any other way than as the confidence in which we who have every reason to fear have no one and nothing to fear. AsJesus Christ calls us and is heard by us He gives us His Holy Spirit in order that His own relationship to His Father may be repeated in us. He then knows us, and we know Him, as the Father knows Him and He the Father. Those who live in this repetition live in the Holy Spirit. The gift and work of the Holy Spirit in us is thatJesus Christ should live in us by faith, that He should be in solidarity and unity with us and we with Him, and therefore that our obedience should be necessary and our disobedience excluded. And life in the faith

3. The Purpose of the Divine Judgment irresistibly awakened and indestructibly granted by the call of jesus Christ is as such life in the Holy Spirit; life in possession of the divine "seal," and therefore in the certainty of the resurrection and eternal life; life in which we are directed to eternal life and prepared and adapted for it. From this standpoint, too, we cannot speak any less boldly or positively or confidently of the purpose of the divine judgment than we have actually done. Since the life of repentance is life in the Holy Spirit, we shall take care not to confuse it with our own spiritual life, putting our trust in things-our own experiences or acts-which do not merit it and cannot justify. We shall be all the more joyfully prepared to live our spiritual life humbly but courageously as those who have the witness of the Spirit that they are the children of God, having received from the one Son of God the status and authority of His brothers in relation to His Father. From this standpoint, too, there can be no possible limitation of the factuality of our sanctification. From this standpoint we can better understand that in jesus Christ we are accepted as holy by God-only accepted, but really accepted. From this standpoint we can only realise afresh that the required life in repentance, and therefore in conversion, consists in prayer. We are converted when we hear the call of God and respond to it, calling upon it in thankfulness and worship and intercession. It is in this way that we confirm that we are accepted and therefore sanctified. It is in this way that we make use of the filial right that we are given, and at the same time fulfil the filial duty that is laid upon us. It is in this way that we confirm and accept the fact that we are placed before the divine fait accompli, EN6 acting as those for whom the dawn has come and who have a new day before them. In all its petitions the prayer that is set in our hearts and on our lips injesus Christ is the prayer of those who come from this fait accompliEN7, the prayer which is prayed by "the communion of saints." And when wejoin in this prayer in this communion, the One who teaches us to pray in this way Himself intercedes with the Father for us in His Spirit. He Himself is the pledge that we do not pray in vain. The Father who hears and answers His own Son must and will-in Him and for His sake-hear and answer us. There can be no reservation in the magnifying of His grace or the serious acceptance of the factuality of our sanctification. We cannot think or speak too realistically in this matter, or too greatly magnify the grace of God. All threatened boasting in the flesh-the pious flesh-will always be put to shame by the fact that in the prayer which is the Lord's prayer we cannot tire of praying constantly for the grace of prayer itself, and of sighing continually but joyfully, as those who have received the Spirit: veni Creator SpiritusEN8!

given given ENH Come, Creator Spirit ENt>

EN7

[781]