The Spirit of the Lord, §10.5: Forensicism

Fifth, the vision of the New Jerusalem is forensic. The eschatological vision of the New Jerusalem is not only one of peace and wisdom, but also one of justice. The word of the Lord not only teaches; it also judges and arbitrates. As I have already indicated, the basis for true justice is the judgment of God, and the prophecy in Micah makes this point particularly evident. Nations on their own are incapable of beating their swords into plowshares; they require the sovereign will of God to realize this otherwise impossible reality. God alone determines the world to be a place of peace and justice for all people, and this divine determination does not override human freedom but rather establishes it. As a result of God’s gracious will for all nations, “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” The word of grace comes down from the mountain of Zion to all people in order to actualize the reality which each nation desires but cannot realize on its own. The nations of the world are thus wholly dependent upon the justifying judgment of God for their being-in-communion with Creator and creation.

The forensic framework of Micah’s vision testifies to the centrality of the law. Word and law are correlative concepts: the word of the Lord is a covenantal word of law, and the law given by God is a law which encounters humanity in the event of the word. From one perspective, the law is the internal basis for the word, while the word is the external basis for the law. Correspondingly, the covenant is the internal basis for creation, while creation is the external basis for the covenant. The law confirms the gracious will of God toward humanity, establishes the covenantal relation between God and humanity, and will one day be written on the hearts of all people (Jer. 31:33); the word of the Lord, in turn, declares, teaches, and actualizes the law of the covenant, but in the eschatological kingdom such words of instruction will no longer be necessary “for they shall all know me” (Jer. 31:34).

From another perspective, however, the word is the internal basis for the law, while the law is the external basis for the word. The word of the Lord calls creation into existence (Gen. 1:3, Jn. 1:3, Heb. 1:2); comes to Abraham as confirmation of the covenant prior to the giving of circumcision (Gen. 15:1); goes out from the mouth of the Lord and “shall not return to me empty” because it accomplishes the divine purpose (Isa. 55:11); was “secret and hidden” though declared by God “before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7); was made known by God in the giving of the divine name as the basis for God’s faithfulness to the covenant (Exod. 3:14-15); was definitively revealed in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, as eternal life in fellowship with God for all people (Jn. 1:1, 1 Jn. 1:2-3); and finally will never pass away though heaven and earth may pass away (Matt. 24:35, Mk. 13:31, Lk. 21:33). The law, therefore, is the concrete form that the word of God took in relation to the covenant people of God. The law is not the basis for this covenantal relation but rather originates in the primal divine word that calls the cosmos and the covenant into existence.

In the end, the word of the Lord is the internal basis of the law because Jesus Christ and he alone is the Word of the Lord, and as the eternal Logos of God he is the Lord of the law, the fulfillment of the law (Matt. 5:17), and the telos of the law (Rom. 8:1-4). Jesus teaches the law as one who has authority over the law (Matt. 7:29); moreover, “all authority in heaven and on earth” has been given to him as the Lord of all life (Matt. 28:18), as the one who commissions disciples to be his messengers to the ends of the earth. The incarnate Word of God is the one who “sustains all things by his powerful word,” including the law and the covenant, along with all creation (Heb. 1:1-3). As a result, the law depends upon the word, not the word upon the law: “In the beginning was the Word.” Most importantly, Jesus Christ as the incarnate Verbum Domini is the internal basis for the law because the law points to him rather than the other way around. The law is a proleptic manifestation of the eschatological reconciliation which Jesus Christ actualized in his life, death, and resurrection as the incarnate Word. The law is “only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities” that Christ brought into existence (Heb. 10:1), because only Jesus Christ “offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins,” and by this sacrifice “he has perfected for all time those who were sanctified” (Heb. 10:12, 14). Christ’s sacrifice is not an external addition to the law, but is rather the internal basis for the law. Jesus Christ’s person and work is both the eternal foundation and eschatological realization of the “covenant of peace” (Isa. 54:10) which the law anticipated but could not actualize: “for what the law was powerless to do” God the Father accomplished by sending the Son on the divine mission of reconciliation “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us” (Rom. 8:3-4). Because he alone “made purification for sins” as the “mediator of a better covenant” (Heb. 1:3, 8:6), Jesus Christ fulfilled what the covenantal law could only await in hopeful anticipation—viz. the reconciliation of the world (2 Cor. 5:19), the justification of the ungodly (Rom. 5:6-8), the defeat of sin and death (1 Cor. 15:24-26), and the establishment of the kingdom of God in which “God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).

The judgment of God is a life-bestowing judgment. According to the prophets, the judgment that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord is one that rectifies the systemic disorder and oppression perpetuated by the power-structures of sin and death (Isa. 62; Jer. 23:1-7). Because of God’s rectifying judgment, the poor are welcomed to the banquet table, the foreigners are brought home, the defenseless are given safe shelter, and the widows and orphans are adopted into a new family. The judgment of God destroys the old world of static actualities and establishes a new world of endless possibilities. Against the hegemonic reign of sin and death, God calls into being the reign of love through the liberating agency of Word and Spirit. As the objective and subjective dimensions of divine judgment, respectively, Word and Spirit inaugurate the irruption of the New Jerusalem into the existing nexus of antiquated relations, thereby identifying the old world as definitively and eternally old and establishing the new world as definitively and eternally new. Instead of social and economic inequities, divine judgment establishes universal equality before the throne of grace; instead of violent factions, divine judgment brings peace to the world; instead of a humanity artificially divided by borders, cultures, and creeds, divine judgment unites all around the mountain of the Lord; and instead of the cyclical hopelessness of human history, divine judgment initiates the only truly new event: the event of the messiah, the event of Jesus Christ—the incarnate Word of God, the life-giving judgment of God made flesh.

This is the promise of divine judgment: where God speaks through Word and Spirit, life flourishes anew and peace reigns among the peoples of the earth. According to Isaiah, when the Spirit of the Lord is “poured out on us,” the barren desert becomes a fecund forest and the city that once oppressed the needy becomes a pasture for the grazing of God’s flock (Isa. 32:14-15). The Spirit of the Lord is thus the Spirit of divine rectification, the Spirit who comes bearing the life-giving judgment of the Lord. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Word. The Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of God’s Yes—or rather the Spirit of God’s No to sin and death in service of God’s Yes to righteousness and life. Where the Spirit of the Lord blows, the stump becomes the branch (Isa. 6:13, 11:1), the wilderness becomes a fruitful field (Isa. 32:15), and the heap becomes the city of Zion (Isa. 44:26). The Spirit concretizes the creative judgment of God; the Spirit manifests the new world here and now by actualizing, in the eternal moment of divine revelation, an existential encounter with the eschatological Word. In other words, the Spirit of the Lord concretizes the New Jerusalem, subjectivizes the objective res of the verbum Domini, and existentially realizes in the moment of revelation the divine rectification accomplished in the messianic mission of the triune God.

We must remember that the actualizing work of the Spirit is not a second work in distinction from the work of the Word. The divine agents of Word and Spirit together constitute one work—viz. the missio Dei. The entire witness of the New Testament makes it clear that there are not two missions but only one: the mission of reconciling the world to God, the mission of new creation (2 Cor. 5:17-19). The Spirit is sent by the Father as the Spirit of Christ, as “the Spirit of the Son of God” (Gal. 4:6). The Spirit is not sent on a second mission by the Father, nor is the Spirit necessary in order to complete what the Son began. On the contrary, there is one mission of reconciliation and adoption, and the Spirit is the Spirit of the living Jesus Christ who already accomplished that mission in his faithful obedience to the point of death on a cross. Consequently, the Spirit does not complete or augment the salvific faith of Christ; rather the Spirit subjectively confirms what was objectively fulfilled by Christ’s faith. The Spirit, we might say, is the existential realization of Christ’s historical actualization of adoption. The Spirit confirms the work of Christ by moving within the hearts of those who received adoption, awakening them to the reality of the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ. By crying, “Abba! Father!” the Spirit existentially awakens the adoptee to her identity as the child and heir of God (4:7). As Paul clarifies in Rom. 8:15b-16, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” The Abba-cry of the Spirit subjectively confirms or bears witness that we have indeed been objectively adopted as children of God through Jesus Christ.

The fructifying Spirit of Christ is the awakening and empowering agent of the community’s existence-in-faith. The missional Spirit of God existentializes and concretizes the objective reality of Jesus Christ’s mission of redemption and adoption. The Spirit calls the community’s faith into existence by actualizing the existential encounter with the Word that reconciles, adopts, and perfects humanity. According to Barth, faith “consists in the subjectivization of an objective res,” in which this objective other—viz. Jesus Christ—remains “independent of and superior to” the human subject of this faith (CD IV/1, 742). Concordantly, “faith does not realize anything new,” since faith does not realize a new object, nor does not it even realize a new relation to that object; faith is simply “following its object,” an object which, as divine subject, has already established the irrevocable ontological relation to the human subject in the covenant of grace. The Spirit, therefore, existentializes the ontological reality of the new creation through the Spirit’s fructifying presence in the community. Our new existence-in-faith is one in which “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20), yet at the same time we “live by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25). Thus, the objective reality of Jesus Christ is our new life, but it is a life made possible through the empowerment of the Spirit as the one who existentializes and concretizes the history of Jesus Christ.

As the rectifying event of Word and Spirit, the eschatological reign of God destroys the bonds of oppression and establishes a covenantal community of righteousness. In such a community, true freedom is found in obedience to the verbum Domini, true peace is found in the just arbitration of the Lord, and true justice is found in the righteous judgments of God. Justice is not determined by an abstract theoretical ethic but is rather concretely embodied in the Suffering Servant who “will bring forth justice to the nations” because the Spirit of the Lord is “upon him” (Isa. 42:1). The messianic servant “will faithfully bring forth justice” and “will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth” (Isa. 42:3-4). In him, the justice-establishing judgment of the Lord is incarnate; in him, the universal reign of God is actualized. He is “a covenant to the people, a light to the nations” (Isa. 42:6), and in him the covenantal community becomes a witness to the light and a concrete embodiment of God’s covenant of grace. In him, God has delivered the justifying judgment upon the people of the world which alone realizes the eschatological hope of true righteousness and peace: “Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places” (Isa. 32:16-18). The hope of justice, righteousness, and peace rests wholly upon the Promised One, the messiah, the servant who comes to suffer on behalf of others and establish God’s eternal reign. He comes “to open the eyes that are blind” and “to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon”; he comes to liberate and redeem, to reconcile and restore. In the righteous reign of God that the messiah brings forth into the world, all things are made new (cf. Rev. 21:5). Instead of despair, God’s reign brings comfort; instead of hunger, “a feast of rich food” (Isa. 25:6); instead of tears, the joy of the Lord (Isa. 25:8); instead of barrenness, children beyond number (Isa. 54:1-5); instead of namelessness, a new name (Isa. 62:2); instead of forsakenness and desolation, delight and fertility (Isa. 62:4); instead of the shroud of death, a song of new life (Isa. 25:7); instead of silence, the judgment of the Lord (Isa. 65:6); instead of darkness, “salvation like a burning torch” (Isa. 62:1).

The confession of the covenantal community is that this divine judgment has indeed taken place in Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Suffering Servant who is the incarnation of God’s eternal will to reconcile and redeem creation. In him, the rectifying declaration of God was delivered once and for all; in him, the Spirit of the Lord was manifest as the Spirit of God’s eternal, electing Yes to all people. The inauguration of God’s righteous reign is now a complete but not yet consummate reality; it is established but not yet revealed to all. Christ is the one who comes bearing the judgment of life, for the Father “granted the Son also to have life in himself” as well as the “authority to execute judgment” (Jn. 5:26-27). As a result, “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (Jn. 5:25). Christ thus comes as the divine Judge whose judgments raise the dead to new life by the power of the Spirit. According to the prophets, he is the one on whom the Spirit rests in fullness of power, whose voice calms the waves and heals the sick, and whose coming establishes God’s reign. He is the one who turns the wilderness into the forest and brings the branch out of the stump. In fact, according to the prophet Isaiah, he is the branch: he is the subversive seed that grows new vines of righteousness in the midst of the oppressive briars of sin and death; he is the promised seed who comes as the tree of life within the desolate land east of Eden to rectify a world spiraling into the abyss. He is the Promised One, the Coming One, the Judge of the world who is judged in our place, and the Word of the Lord who speaks God’s justifying Yes in accordance with the Spirit of life.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. (Isa. 11:1-6)

Jesus Christ came to “judge the peoples” (Isa. 3:13) in order to establish equity (“for the meek of the earth”), peace (“wolf shall live with the lamb”), and covenant faithfulness between God and the people of the earth. Christ is the incarnation of God’s faithfulness to the covenant, and consequently God calls the community of the covenant to respond with similar faithfulness by living in correspondence to the equity, peace, and justice realized in the mission of the messiah. The justifying missio Dei liberates humanity for the responsibility of living in correspondence to the divine mission of reconciliation. The result of the missio Dei is that the covenant is now written upon our hearts (Jer. 31:31-34); we are now equipped by the power of the Spirit to live in faithful obedience to the covenant of grace. In the absence of such faithfulness, however, the prophets unequivocally declare that the Lord encounters us with a definitive No: “The LORD enters into judgment with the elders and princes of the people” who have taken advantage of the poor and amassed their wealth by exploiting the needy (Isa. 3:14). God denounces those “join house to house” and “field to field,” taking land for themselves “until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land” (Isa. 5:8). These people live isolated in their “large and beautiful houses,” but these homes will soon “be desolate” (Isa. 5:9), for death is the natural consequence of living in opposition to one’s neighbors: “for the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).

God’s No, however, is not the end: “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” According to the prophet, “The LORD of hosts is exalted by justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy by righteousness” (Isa. 5:16). In the face of a human race marked by injustice and unrighteousness, God takes up the cause of justice and righteousness in humanity’s stead. In the midst of a world defined by death, God submits to death in Jesus Christ in order that we might receive the gift of eternal life—a life that concerns our very being here and now. Despite the fact that we continue to merit the divine No in the way we say No to each other, God chooses instead to say Yes by submitting to our human No of suffering, oppression, and death in order to conquer the No from within. God negates the negation of sin and paradoxically establishes the positive reality of resurrection. God thus exalts Godself by accomplishing the work of divine justice; God shows Godself to be holy by reigning victorious in righteousness over all human unrighteousness. As Luther understood, God is righteous in that God makes others righteous. God’s holiness and righteousness are creative: they seek out ungodliness and unrighteousness in order to make the ungodly holy and the unrighteous righteous. God is just in establishing true justice. God accomplished this work objectively in the event of the cross and subjectively in the awakening power of the Spirit. This is the essence of the missio Dei: to create by Word and Spirit a community of righteousness that will live in accordance with the eternal life given in Christ Jesus; to create a community that says Yes and Amen to God’s Yes and Amen to us in Jesus Christ; to create a community that loves the neighbor in correspondence to Christ’s love of humanity: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. . . . Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” (1 Jn. 3:16, 4:11).

We thus find the repeated prophetic declaration that God does not desire cultic obedience but rather love for others. The “fast” which the Lord chooses is in fact “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke” (Isa. 58:6). The prophet continues to describe the proper form of worship as feeding the hungry, offering hospitality to the homeless poor, clothing the naked, and (perhaps most difficult of all) caring for one’s own relatives (Isa. 58:7). When the community’s worship takes the form of social justice, then God promises the glorious presence of the Lord (vv. 8-9), the guidance of the Spirit (v. 11), a rootedness in tradition (v. 14), and an endless delight in the ways of God (v. 14). The community of love and justice is the community where God dwells. God’s Spirit is not bound to us because we preach from the Bible or because we happen to be structurally related to past Christian communities. We must continually be conformed to Christ (conformitas Christi) by the Spirit; we must allow the God of peace and justice to shape us into a community of peace and justice. Only then will we live in correspondence to our actual identity in Jesus Christ. If we preach the right words but fail to embody love of the neighbor, we remain a community in contradiction; instead of being a community of God’s Yes, we become a community of God’s No. As a result, the word of the Lord to us today and always is this: “Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another” (Zech. 7:9-10).

Other passages could also serve as the word of the Lord to the church regarding the law of God and the justice which God demands of the church. According to God’s word to Israel: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD (Lev. 19:18). According to James: You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Jas. 2:8). According to John: Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us (1 Jn. 4:7-12). According to Paul: Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law (Rom. 13:8-10). According to Paul again: For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:13-14). Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). And according to our Lord: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:43-45). He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:37-40; cf. Mk. 12:28-34; Lk. 10:25-28). In all of these passages the law is defined by love of God and love of neighbor, which are not two different loves but rather one and the same love, for the love of God must also be love of neighbor and love of neighbor is dependent upon the love of God. The connection between love and the law is brought out perfectly by Paul’s important phrase, “the law of Christ.” Paul does not reject the law altogether but instead recasts it in christological terms. Christ determines the law, for he came as its foundation and fulfillment.