A Bit Too Easy

Some proposed solutions to theological problems are a bit too easy. They hold up only so long as you don’t examine them too carefully.

In yesterday’s Anonymous Asks post, I talked about the value of the Law of Moses to Christians. I made the argument that Christian standards come from the apostles and writers of NT scripture, not from the Law of Moses (except, of course, indirectly in many cases). When the Lord Jesus fulfilled the law, he made obsolete the Old Covenant under which Israel had received its law from God.

That fact often confuses Christians. If some parts of the Law of Moses are now obsolete, how can we tell which ones we are no longer to practice and which remain valid?

1/ Obvious Things to Do

The New Testament has plenty of instruction for believers from the apostles and other writers of scripture on subjects like baptism, the Lord’s Supper, headship and so on. These are obvious requirements for anyone in the Church Age who seeks to please the Lord, and they are not our subject today. Lived out as the Lord intended, they are God’s love in us expressing itself in obedience, not law-keeping or box-checking. Christians do not have the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. It should not feel that way.

2/ Divine Preferences Expressed Prior to Law

a. Commands

Divine preferences expressed prior to the Law of Moses remain binding on anyone who wants to honor God. Some things are right and some things are wrong in any age. Statements like “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed”, came in the form of commands. Some commands were specific to particular individuals and are obviously not binding on all men, such as the command to Abraham to leave Mesopotamia and go to Canaan. Others, like those above, are generally applicable. The fact that they precede Sinai shows they apply to Gentiles as well as Israel.

b. Editorial Observations

In this second category we should include editorial observations like “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” even where they are not explicitly commanded. The Lord Jesus taught the “one flesh” principle still applies to those who married in the first century, and therefore to those who marry today.

c. Judgment

We should also include studiously avoiding any sin God judged in the Old Testament prior to the Law of Moses. Obviously, God’s judgment demonstrates his preferences about human behavior.

We approach everything in the second category in the same spirit as the first: we obey as an act of love.

How Do We Decide?

All these things a Christian ought to observe, but they are not our subject today. We want to look specifically at the Law of Moses. How do we know what remains binding and what doesn’t? What’s our metric? God forbid that we should end up like the Israelites in the book of Judges, wholly dependent on our own preferences: you observe this and I observe that. Surely, we must be able to articulate some objective standard acceptable to renewed minds across the board.

One Possible Metric: The Threefold Division

The neat solution frequently proposed is that we ought to keep the parts of the Law of Moses related to morality, and discard the parts related to religious ceremony (because these are fulfilled in Christ) and civic law (because these belong to Israel, not the nations).

However, as we suggested at the beginning of this post, some proposed solutions to theological problems are a bit too easy. The Law of Moses does not neatly arrange itself under three headings. The categories overlap in ways that complicate matters considerably.

Civic Law and Morality

For example, civic laws were given to Israel not just to ensure an orderly society but also to ensure a moral society.

“You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark,” says Israel’s “civic law”. Why not? Because it’s wrong. It’s a form of land theft. Christians who live in rented apartments may see no obvious application in such a law for themselves, but the principle behind the law should characterize all our interactions with others. It would be unloving not to apply it where we are able.

Again, “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it” is technically part of the “civic law”, yet it has a very evident moral component. That excess was food for Israel’s poor and for Gentile sojourners. A Christian may tuck his offering into a basket or bag at church every week for the rest of his life and never once fulfill the moral principle behind this law. It speaks to a larger social obligation. Failing to consider that obligation is a form of unintentional injustice.

One more: the command not to muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain. Most people would call it civic, but it embodies a transcendent moral principle. It transcends racial boundaries. Would you advise a Gentile Christian farmer to starve his oxen when they work because Christ fulfilled the Law of Moses? Of course not. It’s unfair. That’s moral. Further, it transcends the original example, as Paul tells Corinthian believers, some of whom were once under the law and some who never were. He writes, “Is it for oxen that God is concerned?” He means that the principle applies to people who work for the Lord, and probably in other ways as well.

Ceremonial Law and Morality

If you’ve ever looked at a list of quotations from the OT in the NT, you may have remarked on the absence of quotations from the ceremonial law. I can’t find one. Yet even ceremonial law in Israel was not without its moral component. It has well been said that the bells and pomegranates on the hem of the priestly garments symbolized the need for a man’s actions to back up the things he says. Testimony without fruit does not please God. We need both. That’s a moral lesson, not just technical instruction for a seamstress.

Again, Paul teaches that the meats, drinks, washings, sacrifices and ordinances under the Old Covenant are fulfilled and eclipsed in Christ, and thus are no longer obligatory for believers in the present age. Nevertheless, they are full of moral lessons. Critics may argue that the writers of the New Testament covered their bases by restating in a more explicit form every important Old Testament principle. Surely the New Testament commands are enough for us, no?

Perhaps they are right. Still, I would be surprised to find the ceremonial law entirely useless to the Christian. We do not practice it literally, but we can still learn from it as an allegory.

So Then

First, we should practice OT laws that the NT restates. For example, the New Testament writers restate nine of the Ten Commandments. Each of these nine is a timeless moral law applicable in every age of human existence. When Christians follow these, they are not putting themselves back under the Law of Moses. Rather, they respecting the authority of apostolic teaching for the Church Age. The solitary exception within the Big Ten is the keeping of a literal Sabbath, which the NT does not restate. In fact, Paul expressly calls the Sabbath “a shadow of things to come”, the substance being Christ. Christians who practice a modified version of the Sabbath on Sundays are putting themselves back under law.

Second, we should learn what we may from Israel’s civic and ceremonial laws. In themselves, they are not technically binding. Yet they embody principles that teach us behaviors pleasing to God even in our present age.