Saved by Grace - Aaron Eby’s Boundary Stones, Part 1

Last week I promised to review a book that I now consider one of the most important books for Christians to read, Aaron Eby’s Boundary Stones. It’s a simple, short book detailing why the Law is important for Christians, and why Christians should consider keeping the Law.

Before we start, I must confess something to you, dear blog reader. As a Messianic Jewish believer in Messiah, I have trouble relating some of these passages to you because Eby deliberately uses Christian terminology and Church-speak, language that now feels foreign and even sometimes cliché to me, phrases that have been used against me when talking about God’s Law. But I figure I can swallow my discomfort in using this same terminology if only to relate to you things of a greater and more important nature.

The opening chapter addresses a subject very dear to Christians: saved by grace through faith alone. (Saved by grace means that you’re saved from sin because of God’s forgiveness, not by good works or other human acts.)

Throughout the book, Aaron Eby works diligently to find common ground between Messianics and Christians; the idea that one is saved by God through faith, rather than through human works, is one such piece of common ground.

I’m glad Eby addressed this issue right off the bat! If there is one recurring argument from Christians against keeping the Law it is this: “You’re not saved by works!”

As a Law-keeper, I quickly retort, “I agree!”

And then everybody walks away in confusion.

Towards resolution, Aaron starts off addressing an issue many Christians are confused about, the idea that the Law’s purpose was to bring about salvation, thus making one saved by the Law, saved by works. Eby addresses this misconception,

People received forgiveness by faith in the Messiah even before He came. Nonetheless, these people faithfully and lovingly continued to observe God’s revealed Law. The Law never served as a means of gaining salvation, but as an eternal guide to a life of faith.

The Law never served as a means of gaining salvation. The purpose of the Law was, and remains, something entirely different.

Eby asks a follow-up question some Christians find difficult,

What about people who died before Jesus came? Have they all gone to hell because their sins were not yet paid for on the cross? Think about the great heroes of the past: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Elijah. None of these great men obeyed every written commandment, yet in some ways, they must have been forgiven of their faults, even before Jesus’ sacrifice.

What is your response, fine blog reader? Obviously, these men didn’t go to hell. So how did they get to heaven, since Christ hadn’t arrived yet?

A common response from some Christians is that these great men of the past gained forgiveness through animal sacrifices in the Tabernacle and obedience to commandments in the Law. However, this argument is faulty because the book of Hebrews in the New Testament confirms that sacrifices could never make the worshipper clean. The intent of sacrifices was not to take away the sin of the worshipper. The heroes of the faith didn’t obey every commandment, nor were they able to take away their sin through sacrifices.

Think about it for a moment: surely David, Abraham, Moses were all saved by faith, not through keeping the Law, right? The Law never served as a way to save you, otherwise Christ died for no reason. Nor did sacrifices serve to take away sin, otherwise Christ’s sacrifice was pointless. The purpose of the Law is something different entirely.

Eby quotes from Romans, Galatians, and other letters from Paul to support this: righteousness is received by grace through faith. Even the great heroes of the past received their heavenly reward through this same faith, not by doing the works in the Law.

So what’s the point of the Law?

We know what isn’t the point of the Law: it isn’t to take away sin. And it isn’t to save you. So then, why would anyone ever care about doing all these works in the Law? Aaron Eby writes,

In some ways, addressing how pre-Jesus saints were saved raises more questions than it answers. For example, if Moses received grace through faith, why did he also receive the Law on Mt. Sinai?

And if grace was already around in Abraham’s day, why did God dole out all the commandments hundreds of years later?

And if Paul was correct in saying that King David understood forgiveness by grace, why does David write the longest chapter in the Bible as an ode to God’s Law?

This form of questioning to bring about truth…music to my ears!

Eby puts our own theologies aside for a moment and, through asking these honest questions, causes us to dig for understanding. Reading through these questions, I found myself jumping up, demanding an answer, “Yeah! Why *did* David write that whole big ode to the Law; he was already saved by grace! And why did God give Moses the Law in the first place if Moses was already saved by faith? Hey, we’re onto something here!”

Eby proposes an answer:

Perhaps we have misunderstood the reason for the Law. I propose the Law was not given to help people become perfect, nor to merit eternal salvation. The ancient people of Israel obeyed the commandments not as a means to earn right standing before God. They knew they could not keep the commandments perfectly, so they turned to Him in repentance, trusting God for forgiveness. They began to obey the Law in faith because it’s God’s revealed will. They kept the Law because they loved God, and because it’s what God asked of them.

Eby tenderly plants the seed: Do you have a heart of faith? Then keeping God’s holy, good, and righteous Law is a natural result of such a heart, a heart that trusts God to know what’s best for us, what kind of life we should live. A person that loves Christ should keep God’s commandments, not out of a misguided attempt to become righteous or be saved by them, but instead he should keep God’s Law simply because he loves God, and because God asks His people to do so.

Conclusions

As Eby reached his conclusions in the first chapter, I was overflowing with joy at this point: happy to hear such a beautiful, simple explanation of something deep inside of me that, for so long, I’ve been unable to articulate. I was overflowing with positive emotion because of this new understanding that is so simple and yet so empirically true: the Law wasn’t meant to save, wasn’t meant to take away sin. We keep God’s Law because we love Him!

Eby summarizes it succinctly, joining Scriptures from Hebrews to prove it: What saved the heroes of the faith long ago saves us still today. Those heroes sinned – failing to keep the Law perfectly – and they needed forgiveness of that sin, just as we do today. Neither observance of commandments nor sacrifices could save them; it was only through faith in the future redemption and the promise of Messiah that God granted them forgiveness. Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David: all of these men were saved by grace, not through keeping the Law.

God didn’t give the Law as a way to earn salvation. Instead, the Law was meant to be a guide for living a life of faith. People kept God’s Law because they loved Him and desired to obey Him.

As the chapter concludes, Eby emphatically suggests action given this new understanding: we as believers in Messiah can learn from these same heroes, this “great cloud of witnesses that has gone before us”. They lived out lives of faith, putting their love for God into practice as they followed the commandments in God’s Law. They were saved by grace through faith. They kept God’s Law.

Whew.

Saved by grace and keeping God’s Law.

I can’t help but think back to Revelation 12, where the people who overcome are those who hold to the testimony of Christ and keep God’s commandments. It makes sense, doesn’t it? That’s how it’s been all along. All the heroes of the faith were saved by grace and kept the commandments.

In the next chapter, Eby tackles another doozie: the New Testament states that sin is defined by the Law. While many Christians have no issues with this statement, its implications are vast and shaking and life-changing. We’ll discuss this in a future post.