Criticism of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Part II

From the first two lines of Edwards' celebrated sermon:

"Their foot shall slide in due time. Deuteronomy 32:35

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God's visible people, and who lived under the means of grace;"

From the outset, Edwards errs.

The Israelites were not under grace, having boasted in their own strength that they could keep God's law:

"And all the people answered together, and said, All that the LORD hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the LORD." (Exodus 19: 8)

Paul later writes that the law was not given to make us righteous. The law as given through Moses was not designed to make man holy:

"Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

"Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." (Romans 3: 19-20)

Later on, Paul writes to his successor in the faith, Timothy:

"Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient," (1 Timothy 1: 9)

So, even in their attempts to keep the law, the Israelites could only end up sinning.

If we read the entire verse which Edwards quotes at the beginning, we read the following:

"To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste."

Another element manifesting this ruthless justice on the part of God the Father appears in Jeremiah:

"Thus saith the LORD unto this people, Thus have they loved to wander, they have not refrained their feet, therefore the LORD doth not accept them; he will now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins." (Jeremiah 14: 10)

Yet the same prophet records elements of the New Covenant that will take place in the world, manifested first among the Jews, then released to the whole world:

"But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

"And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. " (Jeremiah 31: 33-34)

Like many preachers of the time, Jonathan Edwards did not rightly divide the Word of God, failing to articulate that there was an old covenant, one in which the law served as a schoolmaster, a period of guardianship (Galatians 3: 23-24), but under the New Covenant, the Covenant of Grace imparted to the world by the death, resurrection, and glory of Jesus Christ.
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