Ethics, Preaching and Biblical Theology

by John M. Frame


At Westminster Seminary, one of the most exciting discoveries students
make is the history of redemption or biblical theology. When we come to see
Scripture as the history of redemption, we see far more clearly how all of
Scripture bears witness to Christ. And biblical theology opens up to us the
wonderful vision of the eschatology of redemption: that in Christ the last days are
here, and we are dwelling with him in the heavenly places. Redemption has been
accomplished already, and its blessings are ours. There is, of course, a “not yet”
as well as an “already.” The consummation has come, but it is still yet to come.
We live as those who are sanctified, but not perfected.

The tension between the already and the not-yet is the setting of New
Testament ethical reflection. God has justified us in Christ and has given us his
Spirit; yet sin remains and will not be completely destroyed until the final day.
Nevertheless, the “already,” the definitive accomplishment of redemption in Christ
is our motivation for obedience.

In our preaching and teaching, we should clearly set forth this framework
as the context of ethical decision making.

However, I believe that it is possible to go too far in our emphasis on the
history of redemption. Although the two-age structure of Pauline ethics is
important, it does not by any means exhaust the biblical teaching relevant to our
ethical decisions. There are pages and pages of Scripture devoted to the details
of God’s law, to proverbs about the practical life of the believer, to the heart
motivations of love and faith that should impel our passion for holiness.
Now some will point out that all these other elements of biblical ethics are
to be understood “in the context of” the two-age schema. True enough; but
contextual arguments work both ways. If the law and the proverbs are to be
understood in the context of the already and not-yet, the opposite is also true: the
semi-eschatological tension must be understood in terms of the law of God. It is
the law which defines the sinfulness from which Christ redeemed us. And God
saves us so that we may keep the law (Rom. 8:4). The law defines how we
should express our gratitude for Jesus’ redemption.

Should ethical preaching be redemptive-historical? Certainly; but it should
also expound God’s laws and the new inner motivations to which we are called. In
my terminology, redemptive history is the situational perspective, the situation in
which we make ethical decisions. The law is the normative, and the motive is the
existential. All three perspectives should be preached and taught, if Christians are
to gain a balanced perspective on Christian ethics.

Should every sermon have redemptive history as its principal subject? I
would say no. There is nothing in the Bible itself that requires us to restrict
preaching in this way. And there are many ethical passages in Scripture which do
not explicitly focus on the eschatological ethical tension — such as Proverbs and
some of the ethical passages of the New Testament. We should not demand that
a preacher emphasize something that is not emphasized in his text. If one argues
that these texts must be seen in the light of the broader biblical principles of
redemptive history, again I would reply that the reverse is also true.
Surely we cannot maintain that every relevant theological context be
brought into the exposition of every text. I believe that if a preacher emphasizes
grace in his overall ministry, including the proper relationship between grace and
works, it is not wrong for him occasionally to preach on a Proverb, a law, or a
norm, without devoting his central attention to the eschatological ethical tension.

There are some passages that are very confusing to modern congregations
unless we say something about their redemptive-historical setting. God told Israel
under Joshua to kill the Canaanites. Does he tell us to do the same? Certainly
not, because the command presupposes a redemptive-historical setting very
different from ours. The iniquity of the Canaanite is full; it is time for God’s
judgment against those nations and the fulfillment of His promise to Abraham.
Those conditions don’t exist in our relationships with non-Christian neighbors.
So every preacher must be aware of the redemptive-historical setting of his
text. But that doesn’t imply that the sermon must always be about that setting.
There is no biblical rule that such settings are the only proper subject-matter of
sermons.

And there are dangers in the practice of preaching exclusively on
redemptive-historical themes:

1. Much biblical truth can be left out or illegitimately de-emphasized. The
preacher does not feel free to dwell on the specifics, say, of Romans 12, because
he feels he must spend most of his time of the redemptive-historical setting of the
passage (i.e. Romans 1-11).

2. Some redemptive-historical preachers seem to have an antipathy to the
very idea of practical application. I don’t understand the argument very well.
James Dennison objects to the term “application,” because he believes it had bad
connotations in theologies like Schleiermacher’s and Bultmann’s. But criticizing
language on such grounds is an instance of genetic fallacy. And Dennison’s
proposed alternatives, “participation in the text,” “identification with the text,” have
also been used in non-Christian philosophies, particularly those of Plato and the
mystics. And the alternative “living in the text” is really too vague to denote a
purposeful ethical preaching thrust.

3. If the argument about application were merely a terminological dispute, it
would be of little importance. But I get the impression that some who stress
redemptive history really want to avoid “practical” application. They want the
whole sermon to focus on Christ, not on what works the believer should do. They
want it to focus on gospel, not on law. So they want the sermon to evoke praise of
Christ, not to demand concrete change in people’s behavior. In their mind,
Christocentricity excludes any sustained focus on specific practical matters.
I too think sermons should magnify Christ and evoke praise. But it is simply
wrongheaded to deny the importance of concrete, practical, ethical application.
Such application is the purpose of Scripture itself, according to 2 Timothy 3:16-
17. And since Scripture contains many practical “how tos,” our preaching should
include those too. To say that this emphasis detracts from Christocentricity is
unscriptural.Christ is central in Scripture as the Redeemer. But he is also the Word,
Wisdom, the Lawgiver, the Lord of the Covenant, the Lion of Judah, the Shepherd
who leads his people into the right paths. It is wrong to assume that an emphasis
on Christ as Redeemer (redemptive history) excludes an emphasis on Christ as
norm and motivator.

When a preacher avoids concrete ethical applications in his sermons, he is
not preaching the whole counsel of God, and he is not adequately edifying his
people.

The best redemptive-historical preachers understand this. Some of the
most powerful ethical preaching I have heard has come from Ed Clowney and Jim
Dennison.

4. Some redemptive-historical preachers develop a jargon-laden
vocabulary. One recent WTS graduate preached a sermon in chapel a year or so
ago in which he used the word “eschatological” about fifty times (at least it felt
like that), and a lot of other technical biblical-theological jargon. Maybe he
thought that was all right, or even an advantage, with an audience of seminarians.
My guess is that seminarians tend to tune out to such discourses — they have
heard all of that many times. But so facile was the young preacher with this
language, I feared that he preached this way in his own congregation. If he did, I
fear that anyone who visited the service would have been entirely bewildered.
In my view it is best to avoid jargon in preaching generally. And one can
make the relevant points about redemptive history without all the technical terms.
Most evangelical preachers emphasize: (a) that God forgives all the sins of
everyone who believes in Christ; (b) that we nevertheless need to continue
fighting the spiritual warfare (in our hearts and our society) until the return of
Jesus; and (c) that the redemptive work of Christ is what motivates us to pursue
holiness. I believe that those truths constitute the essence of the “already/not-yet,”
and this language communicates the truth far more effectively than does the
jargon.

5. Excess enthusiasm for redemptive history has sometimes produced
division in churches and presbyteries. Some pastors not only preach redemptive
history, but they condemn as moralistic anybody who fails to emphasize it as
much as they do. So “redemptive history” becomes a party label, and factions
battle over the concept. In my opinion, this partisanship is wrong.
Why is it, I wonder, that in our circles whenever anybody gets an
interesting idea, it produces a party that makes it a test of orthodoxy, leading to
another party that opposes it, and then to battles between these parties in the
churches? Why can’t those who think they have new insights quietly teach their
insights to others while embracing them as brothers and sisters in Christ? If some
don’t “get it,” why should that amount to heresy? Why not simply permit both
views to be taught until the Spirit convinces God’s people generally that one view
is Scriptural and the other is not?
In recent Reformed history, we have had these partisan battles over Van
Til’s apologetics (and now, different schools of Van Tillian apologetics), common
grace, the incomprehensibility of God, supra-/infralapsarianism, theonomy, the
relation between grace and law in the covenants, Shepherd’s view of justification,
nouthetic counseling, exclusive Psalmody, contemporary worship, means of
church growth, redemptive-historical preaching. None of these is resolved in our
Reformed confessions, but partisans act as if they were. They think their view
alone is orthodox, and their opponents are dangerous heretics. Can’t we just
lighten up a bit? Can we never admit our fallibility? Is there not a place, on some
issues, for teachability, even tolerance? Can’t we ever agree to disagree in peace
and love, working together on those matters where we agree?

The term “moralism” needs more examination. In my estimation, preachers
who stress points (a) through (c) above under #4 should not be called moralistic.
“Moralism” was a term associated particularly with the social gospel liberals of
the Ritschlian school of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They had no
gospel at all. To use that term of principled evangelicals of our own time, I
believe, is an injustice.

I think that a preacher is moralistic if in his ministry: (1) there is no
substantial emphasis on salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone; (2) there
is no substantial emphasis on the points mentioned above in 4 (a)-(c); or (3) his
sermons regularly err because of his failure to understand the redemptivehistorical
context of his texts. If any one of these characterizes his preaching, I
would call him moralistic.

As I said above, however, I don’t believe that every sermon must be about
redemptive history. If a congregation is well-informed about the biblical relation of
grace and works, I don’t see why the pastor might not occasionally focus on, say,
an ethical text, without dwelling at great length on the redemptive-historical
setting. To call a pastor moralistic because he preaches such sermons is wrong,
in my view. And to call a pastor moralistic because he does not use the jargon
of biblical theology is slanderous.

And I would reiterate that neglecting the redemptive-historical context
is in my view no worse a sin than neglecting the normative or existential
contexts of biblical ethics.

6. An exclusive emphasis on redemptive history can become repetitious
and tiresome, especially when it is jargon-laden.

7. For some reason, it seems to me that enthusiasts for redemptive history
are often poor logicians. In some sermons, presbytery speeches, student papers,
even some published treatises, I have often heard elaborate citations of
Scripture, “alreadys” and “not-yets,” Messianic this and Eschatological that, and
then at the end some conclusion (a doctrinal, ethical, or procedural point) that
doesn’t have much at all to do with the redemptive-historical argumentation.

8. Young preachers who try to preach redemptive-historical sermons often
spend so much time preparing the theology of their messages that they
completely neglect rhetorical considerations, i.e. communication. So, their
sermons come across as a lot of gobbledygook. The redemptive-historical
method of preaching typically takes much more preparation time than others. And
at its best it requires substantial intellectual and rhetorical gifts which few
seminarians and young pastors possess. When average preachers with busy
schedules try to prepare redemptive-historical sermons, the result is often
incomprehensible. Now, you can say what you like about the dangers of
neglecting redemptive history; but a sermon that does not communicate with the
people is not preaching at all.

So, all I ask of a young preacher is that he preach clearly the gospel of
grace, a proper relation between grace and works, and no major errors stemming
from redemptive-historical ignorance. These are simple goals, well within the
abilities of seminary trained young men whom God has called to the ministry.
When a preacher accomplishes these goals, he may not fairly be accused of
moralism. His preaching will be biblical and effective.

I think it is usually counter-productive for young preachers to try to emulate
the profundity of Clowney or Dennison. It is better in the early years of ministry to
recognize your own limitations and to seek what’s most important: clear
communication of the biblical gospel.



Good council from John Frame for young and old preachers.
It is so important to clearly communicate the gospel with people!

by His Grace alone,

Bill