Mission Impossible

It is hard to forget the memorable beginning to one of the favorite TV series of my childhood. After receiving instructions from a tape cassette, Jim Phelps was told: "This tape will self destruct in 5 seconds." This was accompanied, a few seconds after, by a hiss, pop, and cloud of smoke, as the recording blew up. The show, of course, was the now-legendary "Mission Impossible."

In-Built Self-Destruct

That, in some ways, is a little what the Law of Moses was like - Torah was never meant to be a complete, permanent, entity or end in itself (which is how many Jews at the time of Jesus, and later Judaizers in the early church, mistakenly took it). The Mosaic legislation was introduced within the framework of the next stage administration of the Covenant of Grace in order to to regulate theocratic light, stress the need for saving faith, and direct sinning-souls to Christ. It had a messianic sell-by date, and an in-built self-destruct device.

Some Rather Obvious Proofs

There are many texts or passages that could be cited to prove that this was the case, and that salvation was never by obedience to the Law - on the contrary, salvation was only and ever through justifying faith in the coming Messiah, who has now been disclosed as the Lord Jesus Christ, God-manifest-in-Flesh.

First, Saved by Seed

The answer for the failure of the one-time perfect, strong, wise, holy, unpolluted, Adam was not another attempt to pass probation and obtain reward of glory, by the pathway of obedience, by a weak, inglorious, foolish, defiled, child - that route was blocked by cherub swords at Eden's gate: until the veil was rent by the Cross of the Seed that would crush the Serpent's Head, all future hope lay in the suffering and obedience of a far-better-than-Adam Lord, an untainted God-Man who would arise to bear adamic guilt. No hope whatsoever was held out to human merit, effort or works.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." (Gen. 3:15)

Second, Universality of Sin

There was no relief or hoped-for amelioration for the earliests sons of Adam - despite cultural progress there was spiritual regress, and a downward spiral into human crime and vice. With the exception of Noah, who received regenerating grace, Moses makes clear that antediluvian humanity was hopelessly lost, dead and subsequently judged and buried.

It would take the apostle Paul to unmask the twisted face, and stop the protesting mouth, of the depravity of the race, with a black-pearl-string of prooftexts, in Romans 3:9-20. Yet, the head-to-heel vice that Isaiah denounced, and the incurably sick heart which Jeremiah lamented, had already reared its ugly head before the days of mingling-intermarriage preceding the Flood. Self-justification by obedience, quite obviously, was not a valid option.

5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. (Gen. 6:5-8)

Third, Dependence on Abraham

Happily, dark clouds of godly Noah's drunkenness, and a horror show-and-tell of Ham, were arrested by the LORD, who proved the Babel Tower "all talk". Abram was called, in faith obeyed, and having believed the Gospel promise, was acquitted of guilt by grace.

1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." 2 But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir." 4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: "This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir." 5 And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." 6 And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness. (Gen. 15:1-6)

From that point on, the way of salvation by gratuitous justification, apart from human input, ought to have been cleared up. Frequent later lapses of Abraham should have removed doubt - though sinful in himself, the patriarch was reckoned a status of saint by God. Again we are reminded, that DIY heaven-by-works is out! All that was needed to clear the matter up, in the mind of later Israelites, was a linking of the Law to the Gospel that went before. This is what Moses labored to stress from the Exodus Gospel Get-Go:

23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel– and God knew. (Exod. 2:23-25)

With flanks pressed against two walls, with Egyptian death-squads in pursuit, and bewildered Israelites staring blankly at the sea, the sovereign rod of Yahweh parted waters with His breath, for the power of salvation is nothing of man, but belongs exclusively to God.

1 Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, "I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. 2 The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him. 3 The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name. (Exod. 15:1-3)

In this matter of salvation, it was holy passivity that Moses was keen to stress from the outset on the West Bank:

13 And Moses said to the people, "Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent." (Exod. 14:13-14)

The tragedy is, that, disconnecting Law from Promise, and Moses from Abraham's Gospel, the Old Covenant people turned aside to a system of merit and works, with a thin veneer of the vocabulary of grace.

Fourth, Law brings Death

The truth is, that the radical depravity of the fallen condition of mankind, meant that the perfect legal standard was impossible to keep and far beyond the reach of the strictest, most self-disciplined, naturally rigorous religionist: since the Law is an integrated whole, a tiny breach in one part is to transgress the divine rule and attract the threatened curse. The threat is implicit, and oft-cited by apostles, in the levitical legislation.

You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD. (Lev. 18:5)

Ridderbos, cited by Guy Prentiss Waters (Covenant Theology, Page 95), helps us grasp the matter more fully:

That there is also a life in the law lived out of the grace of God's Covenant (Ps. 119) is, of course, not denied by [Paul]. Hence there is no conflict between Hab. 2 and Lev. 18 either, so long as the root of life is sought in the grace of God and thus in faith. If, however, one wants to live out of the works of the law, it is the utterances of the law itself that prove the impossibility of it.

The very fact is that, after all the commands of the Deuteronomic law were issued by Moses in the plains of Moab, his lengthy paraenesis was drawn to a conclusion with a liturgical articulation of blessing and curse, and devastating hints of judgment on the nation that would terminate in exile - the death threat was loud and clear, and when the community consented to the terms, it became a death wish.

45 "All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. 46 They shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever. 47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, 48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. 49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young. 51 It shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed; it also shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, the increase of your herds or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish ...64 And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. 65 And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul. 66 Your life shall hang in doubt before you. Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life. 67 In the morning you shall say, 'If only it were evening!' and at evening you shall say, 'If only it were morning!' because of the dread that your heart shall feel, and the sights that your eyes shall see. 68 And the LORD will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer." (Deut. 28:45-51, 64-68)

It was only a matter of time, not a mere 5 seconds, but about 800 years in fact, before Israel faced Torah-obedience-failure self-destruct. What was needed was a man on a Cross, suspended between heaven and earth, to provide the blessed, hard-earned, fix, as the Law itself provided for:

22 "And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance. (Deut. 21:22-23)

Is it any wonder, that the moment the Law was given, before Tent of Meeting Worship was instituted, that instructions were given for a caste of mediating, levitical, priests, to bring blood sacrifice, to propitiate God's wrath, and to point to Christ? The whole of the Tabernacle, and later Temple, systems and shadows were directed to Christ, the end or goal or target-telos, typified in the Law of Moses.

Fifth, Tent Worship Types

The final answer, in ultimate sacrifice of Messiah, is clearly taught in the pop-up, picture-book, worship manual of Leviticus - referencing this, the apostle points out the fullest, final, atonement to which all legal rites, priests, beasts, bells and smells point:

1 For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. 5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; 6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. 7 Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.'" 8 When he said above, "You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings" (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, "Behold, I have come to do your will." He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. 15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, 16 "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds," 17 then he adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." 18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. 19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (Heb. 10:1-22)

The same point is basically made by an earlier passage, which is helpfully quoted below:

1 Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, 2 a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. 3 For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. 4 Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. 5 They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, "See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain." 6 But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. (Heb. 8:1-6)

In other words, Paul never meant, for a moment, to suggest that any person could be, or ever was, justified by works - the Law itself was transparent: works, works, works, means death, death, death, for all the children of man, except in the case of Christ.

Conclusion

Salvation by works of the Law is "Mission Impossible" which leads to self-destruct for all the natural descendants and sinful heirs of Adam. It is for this very reason that God must have sent His Only Son, the sole exception to the otherwise universal rule, to whom Adam's racial guilt was not imputed.

Our Lord was miraculously overshadowed and preserved in conception, as the Holy Spirit had eternally sworn in the pactum salutis, from any stain or blemish: it was the unspotted Holy Last Adam and Son of God who worked on the Cross to suffer death in our place and purchase life for us, as the wages of His work. To be saved by grace, pardoned by God, and welcomed into paradise by the Lord - all is pure gift, through faith in Christ, by which God freely and assuredly acquits.

Happily, for believers, Adam's "Mission Impossible" is now Last Adam's "Mission Accomplished," Applied and Adored. This is God's "Final Reckoning!"