Myth #1: The Old Testament is Irrelevant Because We Don’t Follow Most Of Its Laws.

When Dan Savage, a popular speaker, addressed a group of high school students a number of weeks ago with a profanity riddled tirade, at least part of his argument was this (these are my words, not his, because I refuse to honor his vulgarity, though I am taking pains to represent his words fairly): We need to ignore the Bible when it’s wrong about homosexuality; we already ignore it about shellfish, slavery, dinner, farming, etc . . . So then, you could summarize the argument like this: We already agree to ignore many Old Testament laws, and this should demonstrate that the rest of its laws are irrelevant as well.

And he is not alone in his argument: you find many people, both young and old, professed Christians and non-christians, employing it. And, essentially, it is an argument based on ignorance – ignorance both of the PURPOSE of Old Testament law, and of the PRINCIPLES of how to rightly apply it. I will use an analogy to demonstrate, before we get into the heart of the thing: I have a friend (we will call him ‘Frank’) who fought in WWII, who is fond of getting out his wallet, and pulling out a photograph featuring him and a buddy posing in front of a Nazi building. Now suppose that decades from now, when Frank will not be able for himself to provide an explanation, a person who has learned of the evils of the Nazi regime should happen to come across that photograph. And this person says something like “Hey! If that is a Nazi building, why are we keeping the photo? To even keep a picture like this only perpetuates remembrance of Nazis.” Such a person demonstrates ignorance of both the PURPOSE of the photo (Frank’s commemoration of the downfall of Hitler, and his own role in the war effort) and the PRINCIPLES we use in applying its lessons (we commemorate and display photos of the Nazis not to celebrate them, but so that we will remember the lessons of history, and honor the sacrifice and bravery of the men and women who fought in the war.)

So, then, our goal here will be to look first at the PURPOSE of Old Testament law, and then at the right PRINCIPLES for its application today. This will not be an exhaustive review of every law. Instead, hopefully, it will be a tool for you to use, so that you may be equipped to understand it better for yourself

Purpose

In determining the purpose of Old Testament law, it is important to know from the start that there are a number of purposes, because there are different categories of Old Testament law. The titles we give these categories are not taken from the Bible, but I think you will see that the categories themselves are not an invention, and may be legitimately seen.

Let’s look first at probably the most famous laws in the whole of the Bible; the 10 commandments. For those of you who do not know them, here’s the quickie version (Don’t have other gods. Don’t make idols. Don’t take God’s name in vain. Remember to keep the Sabbath Day holy. Honor your parents. Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t covet.) What purpose did they serve? Their purpose was very profound in that they communicated a summary of God’s own values for the purpose of urging His people to emulate them. You can see that they are a summary; the commands themselves contain very little specific contextual reference for when they are to be kept (there is simply a timeless “You shall not” or “You shall”). In other words, here was God saying “Here’s what I value, now take it to heart and value it, too.” Such commands, we call MORAL LAW. In its historical context, it was used as the moral standard upon which any other law was built.

Another category of law, which we will call CIVIL LAW was introduced immediately after the 10 commandments. In the historical context, God’s people had been delivered from slavery in Egypt, and were in the early stages of being organized as a nation. As in our own nation, these people needed some specific case laws to govern day to day life in order to quickly and easily resolve or prevent civil unrest. And God began giving them immediately after the 10 commandments. Thus rules like “When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28) As we look at this type of law closely, it becomes clear that it is pretty typically an expounding of one or more of the 10 commandments into case law. For example, the moral principles that inform the ox law above are “you shall not steal” and “you shall not murder” (Neither a retaliation for the human death, nor the otherwise inevitable squabbling over what to do with the ox were good). The purpose of the civil law, then, was to provide societal stability, for God’s people in the context of their existence as a theocratic nation by giving day-to-day case laws that applied the 10 commandments to their particular circumstances.

And yet another type of law is common to the Old Testament. For our purposes we will call it CEREMONIAL LAW. Such laws governed a number of different areas of life for the Jew. Ceremonial law governed religious ceremonies; for example, Leviticus 23:39 calls the people to celebrate the festival of “booths”, which was a remembrance of the deliverance from Egypt; the command to celebrate Passover is another good example. Ceremonial law governed sacrifices that God required to be made: in Exodus 29:38 and following, God requires that daily two lambs (for the nation, not per person) be sacrificed to him – one in the morning and one at twilight. Ceremonial law dictated what food the people were to eat: some food was to considered clean and other food unclean; for example, Leviticus 11:9-11 pronounces scaled fish as clean and shellfish (among others) as unclean. And Ceremonial laws also governed other actions that would make one clean or unclean: Leviticus 19:19 says that people weren’t to cross breed their cattle with other types of cattle, plant two types of seed in the same field, or wear a garment made of two different types of cloth. This type of law is the most difficult for the modern mind to understand because we just don’t have any cultural equivalent. To our ears, such laws sound at best arbitrary, and at worst barbaric. So what purpose did these laws serve? They served two different, yet very related purposes. One purpose they served (particularly the laws regarding sacrifice) was a reminder to the people that they had guilt before the Lord for breaking His moral law – guilt which required an appeasement of His wrath. And here, we should note that the very existence of such laws is evidence of God’s desire to show mercy even as he points out guilt. That was part of their purpose. And a related purpose for the ceremonial laws was to be a reminder to the people that their lives were to be holy. Holy means devoted to God. In other words, these laws, put reminders constantly in front of the people (and also in front of the world) that they belonged to God. Were such laws arbitrary? They looked that way sometimes, although we have to admit we would have trouble distinguishing between an arbitrary reason on God’s part and a perfectly benevolent reason that we just didn’t comprehend! But either way, the rules served the same purpose: they caused people to be deliberate about setting themselves apart for God.

PRINCIPLES for application of OT law today.

Understanding the historical purpose of Old Testament laws is a very different thing altogether from understanding how, if at all, they have any application for me today. And, quite honestly, there are people from every spectrum – from full blown theonomists, who would dearly love to see all the OT laws enacted today, to people who say “Chuck it all, I’ll follow the New Testament.” The trouble here, you see, is that such an approach leaves application relative to the disposition of the individual, and is, in this respect both unhelpful to us and, in some cases, dishonoring to God himself. So then, might I suggest we take a different approach? I would suggest that we apply Old Testament law the way the Bible itself does? The Bible actually does give us examples we can follow for each category of law. By the days of the New Testament, we see that the former nation of Israel no longer exists as it had. The people have been exiled and then returned to their land. But they are no longer a self -governing nation: God’s people were under subjection to the national leaders, and to the domestic/civil laws, of Rome. The New Testament, then, provides us good examples of the appropriate application of God’s law in a society removed from the political context of those laws.

MORAL LAW. In Matthew 19, a rich young ruler comes to Jesus to ask him how he ought to live in order to gain eternal life. Now Jesus understands that the man needs to see that he needs redemption, and so he tells him to live right (knowing the man already believes he IS living right). But Jesus’ application for him here is very telling. He says “‘keep the commandments.’ He said to him ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.” (Matthew 19:17-19) You will have noticed that the commands Jesus lists are among the 10 commandments. The final command on Jesus’ list (love your neighbor as yourself) is a summary of our duties toward others that Jesus has borrowed from Leviticus 19:18. Elsewhere Jesus uses this summary, along with ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength,’ as an entire summary of the Law. Which law? The Moral Law. In other words, Jesus still sees the 10 commandments as the backbone of morality. So should we. Although, let it be said, the Christian obeys the moral law, when he obeys it well, using Jesus’ love model -out of love for God and for others- not out of a sense of fear nor PRIMARILY out of a sense of duty. Therefore, when we consider the 10 commandments, we ought to strive to conform to them.

CIVIL LAW. As we would expect, by the time the New Testament comes around, most people are not living out the civil law, because God’s people are no longer living under a theocracy; they are subjects under a foreign empire. Israel no longer has a king nor its own army. And as the drama of salvation unfolds, suddenly people who aren’t Jewish are officially adopted into God’s people (although truth be told, it was MEANT by God to be that way even in the OT, but His people made nationality an issue.) And so this means, that many of God’s people don’t even live in the boundaries of the former nation of Israel, and, additionally, don’t have the heritage of Israel’s civil law. So then, what becomes of civil law? Paul gives us a great example of what to do. In writing to the church of Corinth (a Greek city), Paul is trying to demonstrate his sincerity toward them, since he is not insisting on their financial support, though he deserves it, makes this application of the law “Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the Law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle the ox when it treads out the grain.’ Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not speak entirely for our sake? . . . If others share this claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right . . .” So Paul takes an Old Testament civil law, recognizes the moral principle behind it (do not steal), and applies it to the present situation, although not as a rule, but as a principle (“You ought to recognize that your pastor deserves to be supported”). Therefore, when we hear an Old Testament civil law, we can know: I am not bound by its specific regulations. And yet, it is wise to consider the moral law upon which that civil law was based, and see how that moral law applies to our circumstances.

CEREMONIAL LAW. The new testament unequivocally sees the ceremonial law as having foreshadowed both the sacrifice of Christ for our sins, and the holiness that sacrifice imparts to us. And it declares the ceremonial law fulfilled in Christ. For example, in Acts 10, Peter is praying on a rooftop, when suddenly he has a vision of a large blanket being lowered from heaven, filled with unclean animals. In the vision, God tells him to take and eat. Peter is appalled; as a Jew, he has, all his life, lived out the holiness laws, and has not eaten unclean food. God tells him not to call anything unclean that He has called clean. And we come to recognize from the passage, that in addition to the formerly unclean food, Peter recognizes that God is calling him not to regard Gentiles as unclean. Why not? Because Jesus was perfectly holy, and he made the perfect sacrifice for sin, and when we believe, God calls us holy and begins to make us holy. He changes our character by putting his Spirit into our heart and causing us to desire to live for him. The Lord, speaking through Jeremiah, puts it this way “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”(Jeremiah 31:33-34) So God, by his Spirit, writes His moral law on our hearts, and forgives us our sins because of Christ. And therefore, we no longer need holiness laws to make us set our hearts on Him, because it is God who is making us holy.

So then, how should a Christian live? He should live in light of Christ’s sacrifice, first and foremost, thankful, and trusting that God has made him holy, and will help him to love. But in that respect, in his learning to love, the Christian’s mind must be informed by God’s moral law, since it is God’s own chosen way of expounding HOW we ought to love him and our neighbor. In other words, we aren’t to say “Well, I’m saved and God calls me holy, so it doesn’t matter if I steal from my brother, or commit adultery, or disrespect my parents, etc . . .” God is working in us, but He works by His spirit, conforming us to His moral law. We look more like the 10 commandments, not irrespective of them.

So it is an ignorant myth that Christian’s pick and choose which laws to obey: we do not – God has done it for us; we are bound only to His moral law, and that, by His Spirit. It is an uninformed myth that the Old Testament is irrelevant and may be disregarded just because of its laws which seem foreign: we are meant to be intelligent readers- to read the Old Testament, and to recognize there God’s moral law expressed in that particular context; and we are meant now, by His Spirit to conform ourselves to His moral law in the context of our own society.