The law is not a fun ride.
As the disciples of old concluded, it was actually quite impossible to keep. The nation of Israel had tried ... and tried ... and tried ... but never hard enough, and never with success for very long. No wonder the disciples reduced their expectations on the new Gentile converts. You might say that law-keeping had really turned out to be a failed project. Badly failed.
So, you might be forgiven if, today, with the prospect of keeping all the commandments in the Bible, Christians pull back and halt. It was bad enough when the Old Testament commandments were tried. How much worse is it to think of all the additional commandments added in the New? Fatigue sets in, even when we think of a task like that.
The law wears us out.
But, if I can, I want to offer you some relief from that thought today. I want to offer you a new way to think about the wealth of commandments and instructions that the Lord has left us for the life he intends us to have. It’s nowhere near as bad as you think. It’s also more than you think. What I want to suggest is that we get much more out of scripture when we understand such things as indicative, not merely exhaustive.
Defining Terms
Let’s sort out the difference:
- If something is exhaustive, it says everything you need to know.
- If it is indicative, it points beyond itself to other things you’ll need to know.
A recipe for baking a cake or a manual for fixing your lawn mower have to be exhaustive: they have to tell you every step you need for your success.
But your employer’s wish that you put the customer first or a yield sign at an intersection are indicative: they don’t tell you what specific things to do for each customer or how much to slow your car down, but rather point to an attitude or outcome not fully laid out in the instructions.
The Question
Now, the key question: are the commandments of the word of God exhaustive, or are they indicative?
The Pharisees thought they were exhaustive. There were the 10 Commandments, of course, and also the rest of the 613 commandments they numbered in the Old Testament. See how they thought? They had an exact number. Do all of those things, every individual one, and you please God and get to heaven. At least, that’s how they reckoned.
The rich young ruler reckoned that way, too. Remember that he said, “All these things I have kept from my youth”? He was sure he had checked off the entire list of commandments, but somehow he was still not sure of heaven.
God does not reckon that way. Remember the Sermon on the Mount? “You have heard it said,” the Lord says repeatedly, and then, “but I tell you ...” In each case, he goes beyond the law to the spirit or attitude the law was supposed to indicate. You might think you’ve done enough if you don’t commit adultery, “but I tell you” that you’d better not look after a woman to lust after her. You might think you’ve done enough when you love your friends and hate your enemies, “but I tell you” that you must learn to love your enemies and pray for them. The law pointed in the right direction, alright, but it was never enough to fulfill what God really intended, the full character he expects of those who love and serve him.
No wonder, then, that the Lord said to the rich young ruler, “One thing you lack.” He had failed to see beyond the commandments to the deeper attitude to which they were intended to point. Thus, he had not actually done all that being righteous actually requires.
Exhausted
That’s the problem. When we mistake the indicative for the merely exhaustive, we are likely to stop well short of what we should be doing, and fail to grasp the deeper attitude to which the Lord’s instructions were always intended to point us. We become effective legalists, maybe, but we don’t become genuinely Christian. Christians are people who have entered into a whole new way of life that not only keeps the explicit commands of Christ, but also partakes in the total way of life to which those commandments were intended to point us. The Christian always goes beyond.
The Principle
Is that a shocking thing to say? Do we worry that it might mean the commandments of God are not enough, are incomplete? I submit to you that that is exactly what it means. But our worry comes from the brain-shift we’re having to do when we depart the comfortable Pharisaic ground of thinking commandments are enough, and start to open our hearts to the dizzying possibility that God requires more of us than we ever imagined before.
The law of God is not faulty. But it was never supposed to be an end in itself. Its purpose was first, to alert us to our sinfulness, so we could repent and be saved; it was our “schoolmaster to lead [us] to Christ”. But then the law was our instruction book to indicate to us how to experience metanoia (repentance, literally “change of mind”) to proceed on our road of faith of obedience as believers, so as to be totally transformed into the image of Christ. The 613 commandments that Jews reckon in the Old Testament and the 1,050 that some commentators have found in the New are simply not enough detail to describe the fullness of this transformation. More is needed. We must go beyond the view that takes them as exhaustive, and embrace the whole new round of life of which they are indicative.
Go beyond. That’s the message.
Other Cases
But what about other lists of commandment-like things in scripture? For instance, what about the list of the spiritual gifts available to Christians? Are those lists exhaustive or indicative? It’s hard to say. It’s by no means clear. There are four such lists — possibly a fifth in 1 Peter, too. They aren’t all the same. Some overlap, and some contain items that are not found in others. Or how about the requirements of elders in 1 Timothy and Titus? They aren’t exactly the same, either. Are they supposed to be exhaustive or indicative? Are they supposed to exhaust the things that elders are supposed to do, or are they intended to indicate the kind of character all elders should always exhibit?
I’m not saying we should ignore any of them. I’m saying that if all we do is follow the specifics, it’s quite possible we miss the larger picture the specifics were supposed to create for us. We need to do more, not less. We need to adopt a whole new way of life that includes all these criteria, not merely check off each item in the list and think that’s enough. In fact, is there anything in the required list for eldership that should not also come to characterize every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ?
What about other lists in scripture? Take the list of duties assigned to husbands, wives, children and servants at the end of Ephesians: do they comprise everything each ought to do to fulfill the spirit of those instructions? Or are they better understood as a set of indicators — by no means exhaustive — of the kinds of attitudes and dispositions that all Christians should adopt? I think the latter. What do you think?
I would even suggest that the Big 10 are indicative, not exhaustive. Their purpose, I believe, was to teach the nation of Israel the kinds of behaviors and attitudes required of people aspiring to fellowship with a holy God. They revealed God’s own character through indicators like “You shall not steal.” Why? Because God is your provider. And “You shall not commit adultery.” Why? Because God is faithful. And “You shall keep the Sabbath”, because God is your rest. And “You shall have no other gods,” because the Lord is the totality of your good. What the commandments indicate is far, far more important than anything they can explicitly say.
Beyond the Exhaustive to the Indicative
There are just too many things to say. If the Bible’s 1500 or so commands can’t cover everything, should we be surprised? Life is complex and long. There are many ways these things find new applications in every Christian’s life. The crucial matter is that we should not stop short at the literalities of the commandments, but rather rocket forward to the attitudes those commandments are pointing us to, and become people fit for eternal fellowship with God.
My worry is not that we ask too much of ourselves ... it’s that we don’t ask enough. Like the rich young ruler, we rest in the specifics of the law because in a certain way it seems reassuring: we have done all we were commanded.
Yet, if we do only what we were commanded, will we be “unworthy servants”? Shouldn’t we press beyond, to participate in the life of Christ, in which all commandments are absorbed into a single, pure and devoted lifestyle, the product of a transformed mind and a truly repentant heart?
Take another look at those lists of things you’ve always thought of as commandments. Are they exhaustive, or are they indicative? Do they look new to you? Do they invite you to thoughts and convictions you perhaps never entertained before? Do you not feel the freedom of Christ blow through them, too … his invitation into a whole round of life to which the law, great as it is, has never been more than an indicator?
There is both more to do and less to fear in a life that embraces the spirit of the law, and is not snagged on scrupulous, Pharisaical particularity. For the transformation of the life comes not from the law but through the dynamic work of the Spirit of Christ, followed out in an obedience that does all the law requires, but is also able to do far more than we could ask or think.
The law never transforms. The life of Christ truly does.
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