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OT LAW SEMINAR
All Souls, 6 Nov 2005
To hear the audio MP3 of this
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Law.
Introduction
Jonathan Edwards, the
great Puritan theologian of America addressed the subject of a Christian
understanding of Old Testament law:
‘There is perhaps no part of divinity attended with so much
intricacy, and wherein orthodox divines do so much differ as stating the
precise agreement and difference between the two dispensations of Moses
and Christ.’ (Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758)
That’s quite a good
assessment, because what Edwards is saying is that there are a real
variety of views among ‘orthodox divines’ – that is, ‘among
right-thinking Bible-believing Christians’. There are a lot of doctrines where we may have bigger
battles – we may want to fight against all sorts of non-orthodox views about
the authority of the Scriptures, about the Person of Christ, about the
reality of judgement or whatever.
But those issues are issues on which Bible-believing Christians
are pretty much agreed. This
issue – the issue of how to regard Old Testament Law – has many differing
views, yet it is an in-house debate, among brothers and sisters who are
seeking the mind of Christ in the Scriptures. That’s important to say – there are differing views, but
this is an in-house discussion among brothers and sisters.
However, having said
that, we’re not committed to saying ‘Lots of godly people disagree on
this – they must all be right.’
The fact of the matter is – they can’t all be right, even though
they are godly brothers and sisters.
And we can’t be content to leave the issue of Old Testament Law to
one side as an un-answerable issue for two big reasons. One is: this issue goes to the heart
of ‘what is the Gospel?’
What is God’s good
news declared to humanity? What is His offer of forgiveness and new
life? How you view the Law will be
intricately linked to how you view the Gospel – and we’ll see that
tonight, hopefully.
The second massive
reason why we need to think clearly on this issue is the question ‘how
should I live?’ What does God
actually want from me? And how do I go about responding to the God who
gives us His Gospel but has also given a Mosaic law?
Woolly thinking on Old
Testament Law will compromise your view of the Gospel and of the
Christian life. So let’s work
hard to get a right, Biblical perspective on this.
What we’re going to
do, is we’re going to get a bird’s eye perspective on Law, then we’re
going to swoop down into the Law itself and see that the bird’s eye
perspective was in fact the right one.
Ok, so first the bird’s eye perspective: Let’s turn to Galatians
for that.
Bird’s
Eye View of Law
Galatians will show us
the sharpest end of the problem about how to relate Law and Gospel. In chapter 2, Paul has to confront the
Apostle Peter (talk about an in-house disagreement – the Apostles go head
to head) but Paul rightly challenges Peter (v14) to live in line with the
truth of the Gospel. Peter had
been separating himself from the Gentiles – he had been living in line
with the Law by maintaining a Jew-Gentile distinction. He had not been living in line with
the Gospel which declares that we are one in Christ without
distinction. Verse 15 – Paul just
gets the issue back to its Gospel foundation.
15 "We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' 16 know that a man is not
justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too,
have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in
Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one
will be justified.’
A person is justified – declared to be right
in God’s sight – without any regard for the law whatsoever. That’s Paul’s radical claim. A person is 100% holy, pure and
blameless before the flaming eyes of the Righteous Judge simply by
trusting in Jesus and without demonstrating even the meagrest adherence
to the law. A person is
unshakeably and unimprovably righteous before God simply by trusting in
Jesus. ‘And therefore Peter… a
person is unshakeably and unimprovably a Christian simply
by trusting in Jesus and not by observing the law.’ Peter had not been living in line with
the Gospel because he was not accepting fellow Christians on the basis of
the Gospel but instead he was making divisions on the basis of the Law.
But that can’t be right because ‘no-one is
justified – no-one is constituted as a Christian – by obeying the law.’
Well, I wonder what the Galatians thought as
this letter was being read out in their congregation? Perhaps they were thinking – Paul is
crazy. He’s arguing against the
whole history of God’s people.
God had given a law. This
law defined the people of God.
And God demanded obedience to this law. That is the history of God’s dealings with humanity. Are you setting aside the whole
history of Israel? Are you
setting aside the entire Old Testament Paul? Perhaps those are the sorts
of things Galatian Christians were thinking by the end of chapter 2.
If we could graph the theology of the
Galatians, it might look something like this.
There had been a history of God with His
people – and yes, Christ’s coming and dying was very important – we must
realize that these Galatians were not denying the centrality of Christ or
His cross. But, they thought, surely the law comes first – the law is
foundational.
The default way in which God relates to His people has surely been law. From the garden of Eden, surely – He
commands and we are to obey.
That’s the Creator-creature dynamic. And when Moses went up Mount Sinai surely he was given THE
law of laws – He was given the very commands of God, written by His
finger on stone. Surely these
words, being God’s words, express His eternal will for the people of
God. Bottom line – there is a
law, law is to be obeyed. Now, in
this scheme, the cross is important, and Jesus’ dying is central because
we need His sacrificial death for all our failures at law-keeping. So there is an understanding of Gospel
here.
The Gospel comes and helps us out when we
fail to live up to the law. But,
basically, it is the Law that is foundational and the demand for legal
obedience is at the heart of the Christian life.
Now this view of history was the problem with
the Galatian church. Because
they thought like this, when preachers came and told them that they needed
to obey the law of circumcision to be a proper Christian, they fell for
it. (Why?) Because, they have
gospel and law running along together in their minds and hearts. They have faith in Jesus AND legal
obedience in their thinking about what makes someone a Christian.
So if Paul’s going to over-turn the heresies
being preached in the Galatian church, he’s going to have to over-turn
this telling of history. And
that’s what he does in chapter 3, beginning at v6.
First thing he does is he under-cuts
Moses. Paul goes back in Israel’s
history and leap-frogs over Moses and says ‘think about Abraham. Think
about when there was no Mosaic law to be obeyed, not even the covenant of
circumcision, think about the life of the people of God before there were
any commandments at all. What
made Abraham justified?
Answer: "He believed
God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." 7 Understand, then, that
those who believe are children of Abraham.
In verse 8 Paul describes this faith as faith
in the Gospel. We are children of
Abraham when we trust the Gospel, because that’s what Abraham
trusted.
So the history of the people of God does not
begin with law at all, it begins with Gospel
The Gospel promises spoken to Abraham were
about the Seed (v16) and that Seed, that promised offspring, was
Christ. That’s why I’ve got the
Gospel stretching right back to the time of Adam because the Seed who was
promised to Abraham was first promised to Adam and Eve in Genesis
3:15. Do you know that Gospel
promise? There in the garden of
Eden, the first couple had trusted Satan before they’d trusted the LORD,
but nonetheless the LORD comes and promises His own birth into the human
race. His birth as the Seed of a
woman. When He was born as the
Seed of a woman He would crush Satan’s head but at great cost to Himself. This is the Gospel of Christ’s
incarnation, death and resurrection and it formed the heart of the Gospel
faith of all of God’s people from the beginning.
So this Gospel is the underlying principle of
all God’s ways with the people.
But if that’s true – why did the law ever come in? Well Paul addresses that in v17:
7 What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not
set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away
with the promise. 18
For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a
promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise. 19 What, then, was the
purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed
to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect
through angels by a mediator. 20
A mediator, however, does not represent just one party; but God is
one. 21 Is the law,
therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law
had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly
have come by the law. 22
But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so
that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might
be given to those who believe. 23
Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up
until faith should be revealed. 24
So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be
justified by faith. 25
Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the
law. 26 You are all
sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
So where does the law come? Well it fits between v17 and v19. The Law fits in 430 years after
Abraham (v17) and it lasts until (v19) the Seed had come. That’s where the Law fits.
But you might think, ‘Isn’t it weird to have
this law thing added when you’ve got the Gospel all along?’ Well Paul tells us a couple of things
that the Law does that actually serve the Gospel: First, (v19) the Law
was added because of transgressions. So the law comes and it maps the
contours of sin and defines them and counts them up and it constitutes
them as concrete transgressions.
And that serves the Gospel greatly – for one thing it makes
concrete the sins for which Jesus dies, and it makes concrete the sins
for which I need forgiveness. So
the Law coming to define sin helps the Gospel in that way, but then
Secondly (v21), the Law that’s added is in no way a contradictory way of
relating to the LORD. The law is not opposed to the promise at all – it
testifies to the promise and it positively leads people to trust in the
promise. The law points away from
itself and towards the promised Messiah.
So do you see the difference between the
Galatian heresy and the true history of God’s salvation? In the Galatian heresy, the
fundamental relationship between God and humanity is one of Divine
obligation and legal obedience.
If you have this view of law and gospel, you will lose the
gospel of faith alone and begin to trust in extra works.
But in the true history of God’s salvation,
trusting in Christ has always been THE fundamental and all-sufficient way
of salvation. In this sense, the
new covenant is much older than the old covenant. The new covenant is the most ancient
covenant of faith in Christ, the old covenant (a name we give to the
Mosaic law) came much later. But
from the garden, to the new creation, the Father has had one (new
covenant) desire for His people – that they renounce themselves and trust
in His Son. That is, was and ever
shall be the bottom line, and nothing is required in addition to this. The law of Moses fits into the scheme
of things only as a temporary set of commands to a specific people, with
a definite sell-by date:- until Christ should come as the Seed. The law was added to highlight sin and
to foster faith in the coming Seed.
It makes no sense for the Mosaic law to be observed after Christ’s
finished work.
The law points forward to the incarnate work
of Christ – it is entirely inappropriate to carry on as though Christ’s
work still needed doing. The
law’s job was as a school-teacher to lead the people of God to Christ. It has done its job – it now goes into
honourable retirement.
Looking at the Law up close
Now for the second half of this seminar I
just want to show from the Old Testament that this is in fact how the law
understands itself. We’ve had the
bird’s eye view – now let’s swoop down into the Law itself, and I think
we’ll find that the Law has always been a witness to the
underlying Gospel covenant with Abraham.
So let’s turn back to Exodus chapter 20.
Here is the introduction to the Mosaic Law
given at Mount Sinai: It is of course, the Ten Commandments. But let’s have a look through the Ten
Commandments and see if we can pick up any clues as to how the Law
understands itself.
Read with me from chapter 20 verses 1 and 2:
And
God spoke all these words: 2
"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the
land of slavery.
The first thing we’re told about the law is
that God’s commandments flow out of God’s salvation.
They do not lead to God’s salvation. The law is given to a people who have
already been made His people by His sovereign redemptive act. The LORD does not say – if you want to
be my people, this is how you should act. He says you are already my people, and here is a
description of what it looks like to be the LORD’s people, waiting
for the Messiah in the promised land.
A foundational point: the Law is never presented as a way
of salvation. Instead it is a
gift to the saved people of the LORD.
Let’s read what these commandments are, from
v3:
3 "You shall have no other gods before me. 4 "You shall not make
for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the
earth beneath or in the waters below.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for
I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the
sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate
me, 6 but showing love
to a thousand generations of
those who love me and keep my commandments.
The point I want to make here is that the
law is a reflection of the character of the LORD.
The LORD gives us reasons within Himself for
why He gives us the commands He does.
He doesn’t give us arbitrary hoops to jump through to prove we are
obedient in some abstract sense.
In giving us the Law, the LORD is expressing His holiness, His
righteous character. If you read
through Leviticus you’ll come across scores of commands but nestled in
among them is the repeated phrase ‘I am the LORD.’ He tells us ‘I am the
LORD who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy,
because I am holy.’ (Lev 11:44-45). So the Law reflects the LORD’s
character.
Let’s read on from v7:
7 "You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the
LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. 8 "Remember the Sabbath
day by keeping it holy. 9
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD
your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or
daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the
alien within your gates. 11
For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all
that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD
blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Here we see that the Law witnesses to
underlying gospel truth.
Not only are there reasons in the LORD’s
character for why the commands are as they are, there are underlying
theological and historical gospel truths that are being witnessed to and
upheld by the Law.
Let’s read on from verse 12 (the fifth
commandment):
12 "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live
long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
Here we see, the Law is expressly given in
the context of the promised land.
As you read Exodus and Leviticus and
especially Deuteronomy you cannot escape the truth given again and again
that the Law is to be carried out in the land. Deuteronomy – an extended teaching of the law by Moses – uses
the word ‘land’ over 200 times.
So, just as verse 2 gave us a specific
audience for the Law – the Israelites – so v12 (and countless verses like
it) give us a specific place for the Law – the promised land.
Taking the first four points together, we get
a picture of Law that looks something like this: the Law is given to a people who are
already saved and it expresses the very character of the LORD and of His
Gospel. Yet the Law is given in a
specific context – to a certain people in a certain time and place. So there is a tension in the Law – on
one hand it is inherently authoritative because its author is the
LORD. On the other hand, it is by
its own admission specific and temporary. We feel that tension today as we look back on the Mosaic
Law. We see that, while these
words are authoritative, they don’t have any claim on us since we
are not the one’s addressed in them. More on that later, but lets look at
the final point I want to make from Exodus 20.
Let’s read the last five commandments from
v13:
13 "You shall not murder. 14
"You shall not commit adultery.
15 "You shall not steal. 16 "You shall not give false testimony
against your neighbor. 17
"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your
neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or
anything that belongs to your neighbor."
Do we have any language students here? In what mood are the commandments
given here? It’s not
imperative. I’m not just making a
point from the English, it’s true in the original Hebrew. There is an imperative mood in Hebrew.
The LORD could have said ‘You must not murder.’ But instead He says ‘You will not murder.’ Now that carries with it a powerful
imperative force doesn’t it? If
the LORD God says you will not do something, then by golly you’d better
not do it. But it carries with it
other nuances as well. Can we not
see in these words aspects of promise?
‘You won’t murder, you won’t commit adultery, you won’t steal?’
I’ve been trying to think of an illustration
to capture this, but this is the best I can come up with. Imagine the phrase ‘There will be
peace in this house.’ Now that
phrase can mean different things in different contexts. If a mother says this to two rowdy
boys it is most definitely a command isn’t it? ‘There will be peace in this house.’ But if a prince says it to his
kingdom, it’s a promise isn’t it: ‘There will be peace in this
house.’ And what about if there
was a person whose name was Peace, who embodied Peace itself – what would
those words mean then: ‘There will be Peace in this house’? I think there are shades of all those
meanings when we look at the Law
So the Law is not only command but also
promise.
The Law not only commands the Israelites it
also points beyond itself to a Kingdom and to a King where perfect righteousness
exists. So when Jesus summarizes
the Law as ‘Love God and love neighbour’, He is not just summarizing the
Law, He is summarizing Himself.
He is the One who supremely loves God with all His heart, soul,
mind and strength. And He is the
One who supremely loves His neighbour as Himself.
So when I look at the Law I don’t
see an arbitrary list of commands to obey. Instead I see a description of righteousness which
confronts me and forces me to say ‘That Law does not describe me. Not even my best efforts bring me
close to being the Person described in that Law. But, I know a Person who it
does describe. It describes the
LORD.
And
once the Law has convicted me of that truth, I immediately have to ask –
how can I be a member of the LORD’s people when I am like this – and He
is like that? There is a massive
problem here. I am called to be
at one with God but how can I be at one with a God who is clearly very
different to me?
Well, having delivered the first batch of Law
to the people – the LORD sets about dealing with this, most fundamental
issue. How can sinners be brought
near to God?
Well the solution that is unfolded from
Exodus chapter 25 begins with the building of the tabernacle.
The Tabernacle
In the tabernacle (which was a tent that
would later become the Temple), under certain circumstances and given
certain criteria unholy people can meet with a holy God. So here, in the tabernacle the great
problem of our relationship with God is solved – in the tabernacle we can
be at one after all.
Now, don’t for a moment think that anyone in
Israel believed that this tabernacle was actually doing the job of
reconciling us to God. Rather,
Moses writes repeatedly that he is making this tabernacle, ‘according to
the pattern’ which God shows him on mount Sinai. He says that in the last verse of
Exodus 25(:40); and again in 26:30 and again in 27:8. This is explicitly done as a copy of
something that is way above and beyond this little tent. Moses and the priests who worked in
the tabernacle were consciously play-acting in a drama that spoke volumes
about the work of the coming Messiah.
Let’s think about the furniture first: Your NIV headings are quite helpful here,
you’ll see that the first thing Moses was to build was the ark of the
covenant, the table of the bread of the presence and the seven-fold
lampstand.
Before anything else was – there was the
Three. Then, 26:1 – according to
the pattern on the mountain, Moses is to make the tabernacle.
There’s plenty of great stuff about what the
tabernacle is to be made of which we can’t go into but the next thing we
notice is that in 26:31 a curtain is to be made which cordons off one
section of the tabernacle from another.
And this curtain is inlaid with
cherubim. The last place we saw
cherubim was at the end of Genesis 3, blocking humanity off from
re-entering the presence of God.
Here this curtain cordons off the ark of the covenant. And so 26:33; this divides the
tabernacle into the Most Holy Place and the Holy Place.
Now, what do these things mean? Well
perhaps we should start with the Table of the Bread of the Presence.
Jesus is known as God’s Presence among
the people (see Ex 33:14; Isaiah 63:9) and He is the Bread of life (John
6). He is represented by the
Table.
The seven-fold lampstand is equated
with the Holy Spirit in Zechariah and Revelation. (See for e.g. Zech
4:1-6; Rev 1:4).
So we have, Christ, we have the Spirit
– what about the ark – placed in the Most Holy Place?
Well Hebrews 9 (v24) tells us that the
Most Holy Place represents the throne-room of heaven so we can safely
assume that the ark of the covenant represents the Father, and the
curtain of the temple is the division that has occurred between God and
humanity through the fall.
Since the problem is our estrangement
from God, no wonder that the very next thing on the tabernacle-building
agenda is the altar (ch27:1).
Only through sacrifice is the way back to the Father opened up.
(See Mark 15:38).
We don’t have time to look at all the
specifications for the sacrificial system and the priesthood which are
detailed through chapters 27-29, but in chapter 30:1 we see one last
piece of furniture: the altar of incense.
This was placed before
the curtain into the Most Holy Place and between the Table and the
Lampstand. In the bible this
represents the praying saints (Psalm 141:2; Revelation 5:8).
So through the
sacrificial provision of the LORD, the Church is enabled to come into the
communion of the Three Persons.
And here in the
tabernacle which was the absolute axis upon which everything in the life
of Israel turned – here we see a vivid presentation of the Gospel. The Law itself is centred on Gospel
proclamation, that’s the point I want to make here.
But let’s see the
Tabernacle in action. Let’s turn
to Leviticus 16 and we’ll see the most amazing Gospel proclamation which
was made on the Day of Atonement. (The day of at-one-ment)
The Day
of Atonement
Leviticus 16 is introduced
with a solemn warning, v2:
2 The LORD said to Moses: "Tell your brother Aaron not to come
whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front
of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear
in the cloud over the atonement cover.
3 "This is how Aaron is to enter the sanctuary
area:
And then the LORD
spells out the requirements for the day of atonement. You see, Aaron’s sons had been
careless with these Gospel symbols.
They had waltzed into the Most Holy Place as though it was a small
thing for sinful humanity to enter God’s presence. The LORD would show His people that it
is no small thing for us to be made at one with God.
There are three main
sacrifices on the day of atonement – you can see in verses 6 and 7 what
they were. Verse 6 tells us that
Aaron, the high priest, had to sacrifice a bull to atone for his own
sins. Again this highlights that
what we see in the tabernacle with the priests and sacrifices, it’s
really just play acting. Aaron is
not the kind of sinless mediator we need – he is as much in need of
atonement as everybody else. But
v7 tells us about the sacrifices required for the people: two goats. And, v8, these two goats will perform
different roles as they prophesy of the LORD’s sacrifice. One goat is, v8, ‘for the LORD’. The other is ‘for the scapegoat’. Now, if the sense of the word ‘for’ is
the same in each case then basically what we’re saying is one goat stands
for the LORD and the other goat stands for the scapegoat. So one goat is representing the LORD,
and what happens to it? Verse 9 – it is slain. An amazing Gospel proclamation. And yet, the other goat also represents an aspect of the
LORD’s sacrifice. What happens to
the scape-goat?
Verse 21:
Aaron, [the high priest] is to lay both
hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness
and rebellion of the Israelites - all their sins - and put them on the
goat's head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a
man appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins
to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert. (Leviticus 16:21-22)
So the two goats are teaching us two aspects of the LORD’s
sacrifice – one, the LORD Himself will be slain as a substitute to make
atonement for our sins, and two, His death will be a sin-bearing
death. By dying, the LORD Jesus
will carry our sins away.
There’s so much more to say about the Day of Atonement but there’s
some very broad brush-strokes.
Do you see how the Law itself (and the tabernacle and the day of
atonement couldn’t be more central to the Law) is a vast multi-media
presentation of the Gospel of the coming Messiah. It is a school-teacher that guides
Israel to put their faith not in themselves, not in the sacrifices or the
priests, or the Temple and certainly not in their own righteousness – it
teaches them to put their faith in the LORD, for the LORD will make
atonement for them.
And armed with the Law’s presentation of what atonement actually
means – the cross of Jesus Christ is seen in its true perspective. If you want a true picture of what
happened at the cross imagine this:
Imagine in the Most Holy Place of the Temple – there the LORD
Almighty sits on His throne.
Imagine that He orders all the priests and all the sacrifices out
of the Temple. They leave and He
comes down off His throne, through the curtain and into the Holy
Place. Yet He keeps on descending
and in His strength He goes out to the altar of sacrifice and He lays
down. At this point all the
people come to lay their hands on His head and confess their sin over
Him. Then, carrying the sins of
the whole world, the LORD God Almighty is slain.
That is what happened at the cross. The LORD God Almighty was slain for you like a sacrificial
animal. And in that death, your
sins are carried away.
That is the Gospel as
proclaimed by the Law.
So you see the Law is
not opposed to the Gospel promise.
Though the Law is not the Gospel itself, though it has no power of
its own to save, yet it proclaims the Gospel. It convicts us of our need of Christ through its
regulations and then it shows us His sacrificial solution.
So when you read
Leviticus, you are not reading about another religion. You’re not reading about a strange
cult whose beliefs and mind-set are different to yours. You’re not reading about a God who
relates to His people in some totally different way. You are reading about your spiritual
brothers and sisters who trusted and knew the same Messiah, who loved and
lived the same Gospel. The lessons they needed to learn – you need to
learn. The dangers surrounding
them – will surround you. The
faith they demonstrated – you ought to demonstrate. Their life-style was different to
yours. They were under an intensive discipleship programme that
encompassed every aspect of their existence from sunrise to sunset. They were surrounded, minute-by-minute
with Gospel proclamations – the very fabric of their culture and religion
and economy and politics was a Gospel fabric which pointed them to faith
in the Messiah.
Leviticus
23
If you flick on to
Leviticus 23 you’ll see a wonderful example of how the nation of Israel
revolved around a Gospel presentation…
The lives of every
Israelite revolved around this calendar which begins with Passover, moves
through Firstfruits and the festival of Weeks before seeing consummation
in the festivals of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement and the festival of
Booths. Yet as we consider the
Scriptures concerning these signs we see how they point to the great
Gospel events of history that still lay ahead for Israel. Just as every week moved to
consummation in Sabbath rest (see the eschatological significance: Heb
3:7 – 4:11) so the whole year told a Gospel story moving towards
consummation. Even the years themselves added up to a time of freedom –
i.e. the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25), which proclaimed the year of the
LORD’s favour – the time of liberation and rest. (Luke 4:18-21). All of Israel’s history witnessed to
the underlying Gospel promises which remained the hope of the people.
Today, we live on the
other side of Christ’s work, which accomplished that to which these signs
pointed. So we, today, do not
have such an all-encompassing discipleship programme like the
Israelites. But we shouldn’t for
that reason look down on them as inferior or scorn the lessons they can
bring us.
Conclusion
The Mosaic Law was a specific,
land-bound, nation-bound, time-bound expression of the Gospel
covenant. It is forever authoritative
for anyone who calls themselves a Christian, because these are the very
words of God and they express His character and Gospel. We can learn so much in studying the
Law. Yet we approach it not as
Law but as Scripture. As
Scripture, I see the Old Testament Law confronting the Israelites with
such important issues as sin, death, atonement, devotion to the LORD,
holiness, charity, the new creation.
And these issues are absolutely crucial ones for me as I seek to
live out my faith in the Messiah today. But all those specific ways of
living under the Law are within a specific situation that does not apply
to me today. The Law has no direct
claim on the Christian – we are not to ‘observe’ the Law as given to
Moses.
Yet when Christ came
(in accordance with the Law’s promise!) He did not abolish the Law, He
fulfilled it (Matt 5:17ff). Jesus
comes as the One spoken of by Moses (John 1:45; 5:46) and as such
He ‘fills full’ both the righteous requirements of the Law and the
sacrificial system. He is the
Blessed One, fulfilling all that
the Law requires for blessing (e.g. Deut 28:1-14) yet on the cross
He also becomes the Cursed One, filling up in Himself all the curses of
the Law (e.g. Deut 28:15-68; Gal 3:13).
Jesus does not abolish the Law but fulfils it – and so He hands
the Law to us not as an empty Law for us to fill, but as a Law filled
full by His perfect obedience. We
receive the Law (not from Moses) but from Jesus as a Law which is already
accomplished in Him. To the
Christian then, the commands of Jesus are the true interpretation of
Moses’ original intention. And
the Christian receives these commands not so much as demand but as gift.
To illustrate: Imagine we go to the pub and I stand
at the bar with you and you hand me a pint glass. That could mean one of two things
depending on whether the glass was full or not. If you hand me an empty glass then I know that’s a demand,
it must be my round, I have to pay to fill up your glass. If you hand me a full glass, then
that’s a gift for me to enjoy, to take within myself and enjoy its
benefits. It’s the same with
Law. We have received a Law from
Jesus brim-full of His finished work.
To us then, it is a gift of righteous living which we receive by
faith, which is inwardly written on our hearts (Jer 31:33). Jesus in His Law described the
righteous life of the Kingdom to which we already belong by union with
the King. All of the commands of
the Kingdom are therefore descriptors of the righteousness we have
already been given in Christ. The
Christian life is all about, by faith in our new status and an
appreciation of its reality in Christ, living up to what we already are.
(cf Phil 3:16; Col 3:12 and countless more!)
Because, Jesus is the
True Fulfiller of the Law, He is also its True Interpreter. This is why Matthew 5 continues with
Jesus expounding the Law according to the striking phrase ‘…but I tell
you.’ (5:22, 27, 32, 34, 39, 44).
He sees perfectly the underlying Gospel reasons for the Old
Covenant stipulations. And so He
hands to us a Law that is in perfect continuity with Moses (cf Matt 5:17;
Gal 3:21) yet the specific terms of that Law have been altered forever by
His coming and filling out of the Law.
Jesus commands that we teach and practice the Old Testament
Law (Matt 5:18,19) yet the terms of our ‘practicing’ will be different
now that the substance of the Old Testament shadows has come (Col 2:17).
So how do we understand and
practice the law today? We
must understand the Gospel rationale underlying the commands of
Moses. Only once we’ve discerned
the new covenant thrust can we seek to apply an old covenant
principle. This seems to be the
New Testament’s way of applying the law.
So in 1 Corinthians 9:9, Paul quotes Deuteronomy 25:4 – a law
about the muzzling of oxen. Yet
Paul says ‘Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for
us, doesn't he? Yes, this was written for us.’ And so Paul’s application of this Old
Testament law about oxen is to endorse the proper payment of gospel
workers. Do you see how the new covenant principle has been discerned and
so an old covenant command has been applied by altering the terms
significantly. Paul does a
similar thing in 1 Corinthians 5:8.
There he entreats us to keep the Old Testament festival of
unleavened bread. But we are not
to keep it in the same way, rather we keep it by being sincere and
truthful in our congregational life. In all these cases the law is treated
as authoritative. Yet the terms of its application are very different.
The New Covenant thrust is discerned
in the Old Covenant ordinance and then applied to the believer. This
pattern will by no means answer all our questions about specific laws and
their relevance today, but I believe it is the way modelled for us in the
Scriptures.
All of this forces us
to have a very deep understanding of Moses’ law and the life of Israel.
We must read with ‘spiritual eyes’ to discern more and more the substance
of these OT shadows. As Colossians 2(v17) says: the Law is a shadow, the
substance belongs to Christ. We must become better at reading the law in
the way it’s supposed to be read – with Jesus Christ at the very centre.
Other Papers on Law and the OT:
Is there a threefold
division of OT law?
Ten words and Four
common questions about Law
The God proclaimed by
Moses
More papers…
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