Faithful Allegiance and the Law of the Christ

I am currently working my way through Matthew Bates’ brand new book, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Baker Academic, 2017). So far it is proving to be excellent, and I will write a full-scale review of the book soon. Until then, here is a quote from Bates’ discussion of how understanding the Greek word pistis as “allegiance” (a concept that “welds mental agreement, professed fealty, and embodied loyalty”) instead of simply “faith” helps us to make better sense of how the New Testament authors hold two seemingly opposed concepts such as justification by faith and obedience to the Law of Christ:

But if “faith in the Christ” is above all “allegiance to Jesus the king,” then it immediately becomes obvious why early Christians would have spoken of the ‘law of the Christ’ with esteem rather than with law-hating suspicion. Far from being at loggerheads, the rendering of pistis (and its accompanying release from the power of sin) and submission to the law of the Christ amount to nearly the same thing—to give pistis means to enact allegiance to the king by obeying his law. This is not an attempt to establish self-righteousness but a posture of servant-minded loyalty. The “law of the Christ” (and the like) is spoken of in a positive fashion because pistis is not fundamentally opposed to all law but involves enacted obedience to the wise rule that Jesus the king both embodies and institutes. (p. 87)