Rightly Dividing

"Rightly Dividing" (2 Tim. 2:15) is an important topic that keeps coming up, so I wanted to have a good resource available for personal study and sharing.

I am a firm believer in rightly dividing the word of truth (classical/traditional/historical/orthodox dispensationalism, imho), but have major reservations about Mid- and Post-Acts dispensationalism (aka "hyper-dispensationalism") because it causes significant Scriptural issues and contradictions that can undercut the faith of many, chief among which is the concept of different plans of salvation in different dispensations.  Dispensationalism as a doctrine is absolutely true when accurately applied, pertaining to different administrations, prophetic programs, and entity focuses in different eons.  It is fundamentally flawed when it proposes that the means of salvation change from eon to eon.  God's progressive plan marches forward and history changes, but God and His nature and character never change.  National Israel and the Church are distinct entities with distinct purposes, but everyone in both groups will be saved through the same means (the propitious sacrifice of God's Son).


Resources:

Rightly Dividing The Word Of Truth

The Law

Rightly Dividing Wrongly


Rightly Dividing (Again)

I wanted to do a full follow-up on Stephanie's excellent article on "Rightly Dividing," but as the time came to write it I instead felt a different conviction: not just to argue a side, but to discuss the Christian community's need to exemplify brotherly love and faithful devotion.

Is this topic important? Yes, if the gospel itself is called into question, but No, if all sides can properly define the gospel. For the most part (outside of the Hebrew Roots Movement within the prophecy community) both sides seem to be in agreement:


1. Christ died for our sins.

2. He rose again.

3. If we have genuine faith in Him, even without works, we will be saved.


We need, above all else, to love one another and extend fellowship even when views don't perfectly align. If we can't do that then what good is our faith? How will the world know who we are?

- John 13:35


No one is converted by wise words, perfect doctrine, or persuasive speech. People are moved to faith when they see Christians living lovingly and authentically, testifying openly of their brokenness, and pursuing the lost with humility.

But on the topic at hand, I do want to express a few thoughts and concerns I have with some of those who have sided with Mid- or Post-Acts dispensationalism with militancy against their brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree:


1. Both sides desire to "rightly divide," which is why labels can do more harm than good. It isn't that those who disagree with E.W. Bullinger's unique views on dispensationalism want to muddy the waters and not rightly divide. Rather, we believe he wrongly divided in some particular ways, so we believe "rightly dividing" necessarily leads to traditional or classical dispensationalism. And a key division we make that differs from ultra-dispensationalism is that the Church began on Pentecost, not Mid- or Post-Acts.


2. Works were never the basis for salvation in a previous dispensation nor will they be the basis in the future. This is a major point I want to raise. You can argue both ways until you are blue in the face, but sola fide is a central theme found in Genesis all the way through Revelation. From Abraham whose faith was counted as righteousness, to David who broke the Law and did not pay its due penalty (death)—the multiple death-deserving lawbreaker whom God established an everlasting covenant with!; from righteous Abel who brought an acceptable blood sacrifice, to the High Priest Joshua whom God clothed in His own righteousness in Zechariah 3; and from the prostitute Rahab and the Gentile Namaan to the Prophet Habakkuk whose declaration "the just shall live by his faith" formed the very basis of Paul's explanation of salvation through faith alone in Romans.

Why was the Law given and why the focus on works in the Old Testament and the gospels? Here is the answer:


- Romans 3:19–20

• The Law only speaks to those under it. It is holy and good and true, but we are not under it (Rom. 3:31; 6:14).
  

• It makes the whole world accountable to God, because its stringent requirements are such that not even one person will be declared righteous by obeying it.
  

• The Law makes us conscious of our sin.
  

To say that works are the basis of salvation in a previous dispensation or in a future dispensation is in effect to state that only Church Age Christians will be saved, because the Bible is repeatedly and emphatically clear that no one has or ever will be justified by works. All are fallen. None are good. No one does right. No one seeks God.

To say that those in the Old Testament (or those in the Tribulation or in the Millennial Kingdom) will be saved by works is to say that their situation is entirely, completely, unalterably hopeless. It's shutting the door of salvation in their face. No! Salvation has only ever been on the basis of grace via the atoning sacrifice of God's Son. See the gospel in Genesis 3–4 and Isaiah 53 in particular.




The gospel was declared to Adam and Eve beforehand in Genesis 3:15–16. A blood sacrifice—the first death in creation—provided a sufficient covering for our first parents (Gen. 3:21). This was the declaration of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world:

- Revelation 13:8


Why does Christ appear as a Lamb-as-if-slain in Revelation? Because He was the Lamb slain in Genesis. And in Genesis Adam and Eve lost their access to the Tree of Life, but in Revelation 22 we regain it. And right in the middle of this Genesis to Revelation story is the incarnate Christ on the cross, who bore all of our sins in His body on the tree (1 Pt. 2:24; there's a little Peter for you, fyi!).

I'm saved because Christ died and rose again.

You're saved because Christ died and rose again.

And Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Rahab and Namaan; King Darius and King Nebuchadnezzar; all of these, if any, will be saved only because Christ died and rose again.

Again, why was the Law given?

- Isaiah 53:6


After the Fall in the Garden, no one would seek God. No one would listen. Everyone turned to his own way and in the end, our ways can only ever lead to death. So the Law was given to condemn us. Yes, you heard that correctly. It finally made us realize that we are each accountable to God for our thoughts and behaviors and if we approach Him with labor He will accept nothing less than perfection. It finally made us see that we need Him and this life and what our eyes see are not all there is. We must turn back, repent (metanoia; which means to change your mind, convert), and place our faith in Him. And only then can imperfect creatures such as we are become acceptable to a perfect God.

So regarding the Law: believe it, obey it, teach it. It's true. But do not, under any circumstances, look to it as the path to salvation. That's not what it is and that's not why it was given.

Side note: I've touched on this many times before, but for those who argue that Acts 2 was not the initiation of the Church because of Peter's call to repentance, I would say that you misunderstand what repentance is. The biblical word behind "repent" is contextual-based and has nothing to do with turning from sin or stopping sin. God can repent (as the LXX Old Testament repeatedly shows us!). Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin. To repent is simply to change your mind. In other words, convert from unbelief to belief. And when you repent unto Christ your sins are forgiven. See here.


3. One of the consequences of Bullingerism for some is that it closes their eyes to the fact that the Old Testament is Messianic in nature (i.e. Christ-centric) and even prophetic of Christ's body, the Church, in places. It also closes us off from many of the key points Christ made in the gospels and the lessons of grace in the synoptics and John.

Part of the problem is in how some ultra-dispensationalists understand musterion, that is, the mysteries of God. For Paul declares both the gospel and the rapture to be newly-revealed mysteries, but that does not mean they were absent from God's word only until Paul wrote his epistles. To the contrary, a musterion is a secret, mystic, or hidden thing, akin to something from a vision that is fleshed out or fully revealed later—to first century ears, "secret knowledge" that those with special spiritual insight could grasp. Paul shows that mysteries first described in the Scriptures he used (i.e. the Old Testament) were now fully revealed in Christ.

For instance, you may have heard that because 1 Corinthians 15 reveals the rapture as a mystery, that it must necessarily have never been written about before. That means no rapture in Isaiah 26 or 66 or Zephaniah 2. No rapture anywhere in the gospels, etc. But that couldn't be further from the truth.

Paul used the word musterion 21 times in his epistles and many of these usages refer to Christ, the gospel, salvation for the Gentiles, etc. Each of these things were clearly referred to in the Old Testament. The prophecies were clear. Yet without the Holy Spirit to illuminate hearts and minds, men and women could never see the forest for the trees.

The Ethiopian eunuch was a perfect example. He was reading Isaiah 53 for crying out loud, but it was a total mystery to him. That is until Holy Spirit-indwelt Philip shows up to tell him what just went down in Jerusalem: "The Man you're reading about there in Isaiah, yeah, well, He just died and rose again not too long ago and I know a bunch of His buddies. That's what Isaiah was talking about."

Yes, Christ and the gospel and the Church and the rapture were all mysteries at the onset of the Church Age, but they were mysteries previously described. The prophets spoke of them. But now that Christ has sent the Holy Spirit, these mysteries are fully revealed and we can understand them and more readily see in the Old Testament (and the gospels) where God was speaking about them.

I highly recommend this article on the topic of Jesus' message of sola fide found in the gospels, especially under the subsection "The Gospel According To Jesus."


4. Another major issue with Bullingerism is that it inevitably leads to a two-gospel view, in which the gospel to the Jews ("the gospel of the Kingdom") was a different path to salvation than the gospel of salvation or "the gospel of grace" that we know today. I could write a whole article on this issue alone, but Stephanie addressed it well. I simply want to point out that sometimes we attach meaning to a word that isn't there. "Gospel," which comes from the Greek euangélion, is derived from Old English, and a more accurate modern translation would be akin to "good message" or "good news." It is a generic term that can apply to many things, so there is no basis to assume that every "gospel" in Scripture is a different path to salvation. Far be it from God. Our gracious God never changes.

If I told you I had good news to share with you, would you automatically assume I was about to tell you how to make it to Heaven? If not, why do many people assume a first century Greek-speaking audience would be any different? The Bible mentions many "gospels" and only one of those gospels pertains to salvation: the gospel. The good news of Christ's atoning sacrifice and resurrection.

It was gospel when Moses delivered a message to the Israelites that God had heard their cry. It was gospel when King Hezekiah heard that God would deliver Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib. It was gospel when the sick were told the Son of David was healing their countrymen in Galilee. And it is gospel that God's Kingdom is to be imminently established on earth. Glory to God! But none of those gospels are the gospel—the good news of eternal salvation for sinners made possible by Christ's atoning death and resurrection.

The good news of the Kingdom isn't a different path to salvation. It's simply the good news that God's Kingdom is coming to earth. But the good news of salvation is that God is saving sinners from their sins through faith in Yeshua. And this gospel of salvation that Paul preached, though it was prophesied in the Old Testament, was concealed for ages. Yet though it was concealed, God's saving power through it applies to every believer in every age. The good news is for us Gentiles, but also for the Jews. There is no distinction.


5. Dispensationalism is true in the sense that God has operated in different administrative capacities in different eons and His focuses have changed (from our perspective) from age to age. It is also true in the sense that the Church—which is composed of Jews and Gentiles (even today), not just Gentiles—has not and will not replace ethnic and national Israel. But dispensationalism goes too far (and becomes what some call ultra- or hyper-dispensationalism) when it begins to teach that the underlying basis of salvation (Christ's atoning sacrifice and resurrection) changes with each age or that the Church is an exclusively Gentile entity. Scripture is properly divided/handled in terms of dispensationalism when we recognize it is a theory that helps us understand God's seemingly different motives and administrative focuses from one age to the next; but Scripture is wrongly divided when dispensationalism teaches that God Himself changes from one age to the next. God never changes. And that's great news for everyone from Adam on. Yahweh Himself is salvation! Trust in Him and you can be saved!

Furthermore, dispensationalism is also true in that it teaches that the Church is a unique entity that will serve a unique eternal purpose. It will be the first group of those who partake of the first resurrection to experience total redemption. Jeff has an excellent series on this called Church of the Firstborn (read Part I, Part II, and Part III).


6. We all (myself included) need to be weary of intellectual legalism. For all of my writing on the gospel and opposition to works-righteousness (behavior legalism, if you will), God has humbled me in regard to the gospel.

We all know exactly what the gospel is according to 1 Corinthians 15:

For our sins

Was buried

Rose again

Appeared to many 

The gospel is the gospel. It happened. And it's the actual means through which God saves (regardless of the dispensation). But there can be a sense in which, because of the full revelation of the gospel to the Church, we pride ourselves in our knowledge and ability to perfectly recite it. And then we demand of others the same. Sometimes we even add demands to it: A formal declaration of allegiance to sola fide, OSAS, TULIP, etc. Each of those teachings are true (though I might differ slightly with the 'L' in TULIP), but to demand of others a perfect belief in everything pertaining to the gospel is to miss the point—the gospel is about what God has already done, not what we need to do. God has been saving men and women through faith via Christ's atoning sacrifice and resurrection long before Luther and Calvin and will continue long after their works are forgotten.

Biblical faith is something of substance and conviction. It's in the heart as much as the mind. It isn't just something recited or memorized, but is rather something deeply believed that changes your outlook and values. If you have that convicting faith, then even without any works you will be saved. And there will be some like that (1 Cor. 3; Rom. 4:5). But a convicting faith normatively shows some form of evidence, however paltry or hidden, thus James 2.

Let's never forget the simplicity of the gospel. It's so simple a toddler can understand and believe it (my three year old son does!), yet so profound that it confounds the wisdom of those who are wise in their own eyes. And this most simple of truths, that God loves us and has saved us, is a saving message to all who truly believe.

And this then is a segway into my final point...


7. While salvation has always been and will always be because of what our Lord Jesus did on the cross, we need to realize that some of the dispensational mechanics do change:

• The Church is uniquely gifted with the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit via the invisible spiritual baptism we undergo when we believe.
  

• This gift was not given before Pentecost in the previous eons and doesn't appear to be given during the Tribulation.
  

• For this reason, Tribulation Saints will only be saved by the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:14), but their faith in His blood cannot be maintained by the indwelling Spirit. Their faith must endure. This is why two apparent works are added to faith in Revelation for those living through the Tribulation: 1. you must not worship the beast or its image, or 2. take its mark. Will the mark of the beast be a form of mind control or DNA alteration that prevents faith? Who knows, but one thing is clear, no one who takes the mark will repent (Rev. 9:20; 16:9, 11), which is why the principle of sola fide is not broken here. Those who take the mark or worship the beast will not have faith (and if they think they do it certainly will not be the kind of convictional faith that saves).
  

• In previous dispensations when the gospel wasn't yet fully revealed, God demanded genuine faith in Him, but not a perfect articulation of what the Church now understands. What saves was still very much what Christ did on the cross, but faith in that cross could not yet be realized. So circumstances changed (Abraham believed in God's promise of offspring - Gen. 15:6; Job believed God would send a redeemer for him - Job 19:25–27; Rahab believed in the God of Israel - Josh. 2:8–11; David believed in God's forgiveness of sins - Ps. 32). Thus those in the Old Testament with genuine faith were ultimately saved regardless of their trespasses of the Law, but all of those with unbelief were cut off and their sins were counted.
  

What then of those judged by deeds in Revelation 21? This is the whole point. Don't be judged by deeds because your ways only lead to death. If it were even possible, you could only pass that final judgment without faith if you kept all of God's laws perfectly and perpetually. Aside from our Lord Jesus Christ, exactly zero people qualify. The first resurrection is good and the second, bad. The first is unto life and the second unto death. The first occurs before the second, obviously, but happens in stages (Christ, then the Church, then Old Testament and Tribulation Saints, and then, presumably Millennial Saints at some point during the Millennial Kingdom; see here).