9. The New Testament and Old Testament Law

 Thus far:

1. The Memory Verse Approach

2. Adventures in Interpretation

3. Adventures in Jewelry
4. Beginnings of Context

5. Adventures in Hair, Part I
6. What was 1 Corinthians 11 really about?

7. Keeping the Sabbath
8. The Sabbath as Conviction
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11. This is where we step back and talk about hermeneutics. In the pre-modern, unreflective interpretation of my childhood, the entire Bible pretty much was flattened out in its meaning. Instruction in Deuteronomy might apply directly to today just as much as a verse from Philippians. There was sometimes little distinction between the "old" covenant and the "new" covenant. 

Our tradition did process some verses differently. We could eat pork chops without a thought, for example (Lev. 11:7-8). But a family member once suggested a mustache was inappropriate because of Leviticus 19:27: "Do not mar the corners of your beard." 

Why was one binding and the other not? I don't think the reasons were very well thought out. We were just following our traditions which made sense to us because we grew up with them.

Someone might say, "The prohibition on pork was part of the ceremonial law, which Jesus did away with. We are not under law but under grace" (Rom. 6:14). But then my mother might say, "Jesus said that he did not come to destroy the law. Not one jot or tittle will pass from the law" (Matt. 5:17-18). 

I needed a consistent hermeneutic. How can we tell what still applies directly to us and what doesn't? What is "all time," and what is "that time"?

Sacrifices
12. I have resonated with something that G. B. Caird of Oxford used to teach. Start with what seems clear and then move toward what is unclear. So let's start with sacrifices: Leviticus 1-5. The way for a Christian to apply these chapters to today seems very clear.

I don't know of any Christian groups today that offer sacrifices (although never say never). There are no Jewish groups that offer sacrifices today -- only the Samaritans, who still exist as a people group. I have it on eyewitness accounts that some Jews have accrued some red heifers for a time when the temple is re-constructed. But let's establish with clarity before it happens that there is NO PLACE for reconstituted sacrifices from a Christian biblical perspective.

Why? Because of the book of Hebrews clearly says so. "With one sacrifice, Christ has perfected forever those who are being sanctified" (Heb. 10:14). The chapter begins by saying that the Levitical sacrifices never were able to perfect those who offered them (10:1). If they could have, they would have stopped being offered (10:2). 10:4 goes one step further: "It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins."

Let that sink in. Hebrews implies that not a single Old Testament sacrifice was actually effective in itself to take away sins! They were rather foreshadowings of the one effective sacrifice of Christ. Without us, none of the people of Israel were able to be perfected -- not even Moses (Heb. 11:40). Similarly, Hebrews 7:19 says, "the Law perfected nothing."

Let's be very clear here in case some kooky Christian group should pop up saying the contrary. To say that sacrifices are still needed or could be valid in some way today would be an affront to Christ. Hebrews is definitive. No other sacrifice was EVER effective in itself to take away sins. NOT A SINGLE animal sacrifice was ever anything but a pointer to Christ. Anything else would be blasphemy because it would negate the sacrificial work of Christ.

13. This issue is pretty easy for Christians, including for those who see a strong continuity between the Old Testament and today. Old Testament sacrifices were symbols of the sacrifice of Christ. They foreshadowed his one offering. They were calls for a raincheck. They were promises, and Christ was the fulfillment. 

In this way, the sacrifices of Leviticus were fully valid, but they were not meant to be permanent. We do not have to literally offer them today because their true meaning was found in Jesus' death on the cross. We "keep" them by trusting in the atoning death of Christ.

However, let me be clear about something else. No one in the Old Testament understood this plan. In fact, I doubt many of the earliest Christians understood Christ's death to be a full replacement of the temple sacrificial system. Paul offers a sacrifice in Acts 21:26. I have argued that it was not until after the temple was destroyed that the scope of Christ's sacrifice really began to sink in. 

I know an Old Testament professor who once suggested that, if you had told the author of Leviticus about Jesus, he would have said, "Of course, that's what these sacrifices were about." Let me say that I cannot imagine that would be the case in the slightest. In fact, the thought seems ludicrous to me. 

Sacrifices were pervasive in the ancient world. While some prophets rightly indicted those who used them as an excuse for unrighteousness (e.g., 1 Sam. 15:22-23; Isa. 1:11-17; Jer. 7:21-23; Hos. 6:6; Amos 5:21-24; Mic. 6:6-8), it's hard to imagine that any of these prophets imagined sacrifices would ever go away.

It makes sense to us that they are no longer necessary because we grew up with this understanding. No one questions it in the church today and not even Jews offer sacrifices. It is an "easy issue" because it isn't debated in our traditions today. But it was not an easy issue in the first century, and it wouldn't have been at all in Old Testament times. However, given Hebrews, it should be an easy issue for biblical Christians.

It does illustrate a fundamental hermeneutical principle. From a Christian perspective, the New Testament provides more final answers and more precise understandings than the Old Testament. In this case, Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament instruction, and we no longer need to offer animal sacrifices.

Israel-Specific Law
14. Many Christians make a distinction between the "ceremonial law" and the "moral law" of the Old Testament. Bible scholars regularly point out that this is an anachronistic distinction. Jews did not consider circumcision or the food laws to be "ceremonial." Jews kept the whole Law because it was all part of God's covenant with Israel.

How then can we differentiate the parts of the Old Testament that Paul seems to consider less binding from the parts he considers fully binding? Suffice it to say, there are countless scholarly books written on this subject. I was present at a multi-day colloquium once that tried to solve the question of "Paul and the Law." They failed to come to a consensus.

Here's how I have come to parse Paul on the Law. Paul himself tells us that "to the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain Jews. To those under the Law I became as someone under the Law (though I am not under the Law) in order that I might gain those under the Law" (1 Cor. 9:20). Similarly he says, "to those without the Law I became as one without the Law (although I am not without the law of God but I am under the law of Christ) in order that I might gain those without the Law" (9:21).

We have to be careful because Paul's words are almost always "vectored," by which I mean he presents his positions to move his audiences in particular directions. He is a good rhetorician. He puts things in a certain way to try to have a certain effect. For example, I suspect that Paul largely observed the Jewish Law himself (cf. Acts 21:24, also vectored in the opposite direction).

But the key is this. For Paul, the mission to the Gentiles had complexified the question of the Law. He was furious at Antioch when Peter wouldn't eat with Gentiles over fears they would defile him (Gal. 2:11-14). These experiences were formative. As long as they weren't sexually immoral, Paul had no time for those Jewish believers who wouldn't associate with Gentile believers. To him, someone who had kept the Law so scrupulously as a Pharisee, they were hypocrites.

The distinction was not between the ceremonial and the moral for him. It was between aspects of the Law that applied to both Jew and Gentile and those commands that got in the way of the Gentile mission. I call the latter "Israel-specific law." Circumcision? It got in the way. It was Israel-specific. Gentiles were justified by faith and didn't need to be circumcised. In fact, he told the Gentile Galatians they would fall from grace if they did it (Gal. 5:4).

I suspect that what Paul was doing was more or less giving full status to those Gentile God-fearers who had faith in Christ. God-fearers didn't need to be circumcised. God-fearers did not need to observe the Jewish food laws. When Paul determined they could be justified by faith, they did not need to do anything more than they had done before as God-fearers. Meanwhile, for Paul, Jews who kept those particulars did not have any greater status before God because faith was the standard.

This became the normative position for Gentile Christianity. Mark 7:19 is a parenthetical remark from Mark that reflects this perspective of the Pauline mission toward Gentiles ("all foods are clean"). (Matthew, by the way, did not include that parenthetical remark if it was in the copy of Mark he used.) Gentiles were not expected to keep the Jewish food laws.

Christ's Law
15. Although Paul does not systematize his thinking, there are clearly parts of the Jewish Law that he considered binding on Gentile Christians. For example, there isn't a sexual prohibition from Leviticus 18 that Paul mentions that he did not consider to be binding on the Gentile church. What makes the difference? He doesn't explain. It may seem obvious to us, but it probably seemed a little arbitrary to some first-century Christians that he would consider the sexual commands binding but the Sabbath commands not.

Paul did see the love command as the essence of all Christian ethics (Rom. 13:10), as did Jesus (Matt. 22:37-40). Perhaps that is what he means by "Christ's law" in 1 Cor. 9: 21. I suspect something of this sort is what he means in Romans 2:14 when he talks about Gentiles who keep the Law even though they don't have the Law by nature like Jews do. They weren't circumcised so by definition they didn't keep the Law, so Paul must have some essence of the Law in view rather than the full Law.

The bottom line is that he does expect all believers to keep a certain core of the Law. He not only considers this core universal, but you will not make it to the kingdom if you persist in not keeping these key elements (cf. 1 Cor. 6:9-10). Most if not all of this core correlates to the love command for him.

16. So what do we make of Matthew 5:17: "Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill." If you read 5:17-20 in isolation from the rest of the chapter, you might come away with the way many have read these verses, namely, that God requires us to keep all the commandments of the Old Testament.

But the rest of the chapter explains what Jesus means. For example, simply not killing doesn't fulfill the commandment. If you hate, you've violated it. Similarly, not doing the act of adultery (or getting together with another woman by divorce) does not fulfill the commandment if you lust in your heart or discard your wife legally because you want another woman.

This is not simply a matter of keeping each commandment even harder. With regard to keeping vows, Jesus says not even to make them. This is not a deepening of the third commandment. It removes the very making of vows in the first place. It changes the assumptions of the command. 

Even further, Jesus contradicts instruction to Israel to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Deut. 19:21). While Deuteronomy tells Israel to show no pity, Jesus tells individuals to turn the other cheek. He contrasts his teaching with the commandment.

It seems clear to me that fulfilling the Law in Matthew 5 doesn't mean keeping every "least" commandment in the Law (like not trimming beards, not eating pork, circumcising). It seems to mean loving your neighbor (and enemy) down to the least matter (Matt. 5:43-48). Once again, the New Testament gives the definitive verdict on how to keep the Old Testament Law.

17. Let me sum up the two big hermeneutical principles that were developing as I processed the Bible in my final years of college. The first is that every word of the Bible was first written to ancient audiences. The first meanings were meanings from their world in their languages and in their contexts and situations. Not a word of the Bible was originally written to me.

That means that I am always forced to process the distance between that time and my time. Doing what they did isn't doing what they did if it has a different meaning today than it did them. Simply applying the words to today blindly can result in everything from the bizarre (veil head coverings) to that which is contrary to the trajectory of the kingdom (slavery).

The second principle is that, from a Christian perspective, the New Testament provides a key lens on the Old Testament, although thus far was have only talked about the Law. This fact suggests that we cannot securely apply the Old Testament directly to today until we have taken the New Testament into account. 

The application of the Bible to today must first "integrate" the biblical material itself into a biblical theology. The application of Scripture should come from "What does the Bible as a whole say?" far more than "What does this individual verse say?"

These insights took time to develop. No doubt as I return to my personal narrative you will see some of the process that led to these fuller hermeneutical conclusions. Let me return now to a key event that took place in my final semester of college.