on the importance of the law and its ministry in the age of grace (New York: Oxford, 1967), 3, 1254.
A Look at the Issues
Dr. Chafer was an early and articulate spokesman for dispensationalism, and his teachings helped chart the course for much of the movement. He was a brilliant man, gifted with both a keen analytical mind and the ability to communicate clearly. The systematic methodology of traditional dispensationalism is in part his legacy.
There is a tendency, however, for dispensationalists to get carried away with compartmentalizing truth to the point that they make unbiblical differentiations. An almost obsessive desire to categorize and contrast related truths has carried various dispensationalist interpreters far beyond the legitimate distinction between Israel and the church. Many would also draw hard lines between salvation and discipleship, the church and the kingdom, Christ's preaching and the apostolic message, faith and repentance, and the age of law and the age of grace.
The age-of-law/age-of-grace division in particular has wreaked havoc on dispensationalist theology and contributed to confusion about the doctrine of salvation. Of course, there is an important distinction to be made between law and grace. But it is wrong to conclude, as Chafer apparently did, that law and grace are mutually exclusive in the program of God for any age.9 Actually, elements of both law and grace are part of the program of God in every dispensation. Most critical is this truth: Salvation has always been by grace through faith, not by the works of the law (Gal. 2:16). Clearly, even Old Testament saints who preceded or were under the Mosaic law were saved by grace through faith (Rom. 4:3, 6 – 8, 16). Just as clearly, New Testament saints have a law to fulfill (Gal. 6:2; 1 Cor. 7:19; 9:21). That is not "careless co-mingling"10 of law and grace, as Chafer implied. It is basic biblical truth.
Chafer's view of all Scripture was colored by his desire to maintain a stark distinction between the age of "pure grace" (the church age) and the two ages of "pure law" (the Mosaic era and the millennial kingdom) he saw sandwiching it.11 He wrote, for example, that the Sermon on the Mount was part of "the Gospel
9. Chafer wrote:
In respect to the character of divine government, both the age before the cross and the age following the return of Christ represent the exercise of pure law; while the period between the two ages represents the exercise of pure grace. It is imperative, therefore, that there shall be no careless co-mingling of these great age-characterizing elements, else the preservation of the most important distinctions in the various relationships between God and man are lost, and the recognition of the true force of the death of Christ and His coming again is obscured (Lewis Sperry Chafer, Grace, 1922 [reprint, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965], 124).
10. Ibid. It is noteworthy that Th e New Scofi eld Reference Bible places far more weight than Chafer did on the importance of the law and its ministry in the age of grace (New York: Oxford, 1967), 3, 1254.
11. Chafer, Grace, 124.