Law
As Christians, we must come to terms with the idea of law within the Christian faith. Especially since the rise of Protestantism, various Christians have come to different conclusions about the role that the Old Testament law is meant to play in the life of a believer. Christian faith has always said that followers of Christ are not bound to absolutely every law stated in the Torah. For example, ever since the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), Christians have not been compelled to be circumcised. However, when believers come to the conclusion, especially after reading some particularly forceful passages in Galatians, that the law no longer has anything to say to a Christian, problems break out and Christ becomes a minister of sin (Galatians 2:17).
Martin Luther took a very dismal view of the law. In fact, for him, the law was only good for two things. First, it was useful for showing us just how sinful we really are. Anyone who looks at the laws of God will very quickly see that they are not up to the task of following them (especially after Christ amplifies them in Matthew 5). The law is meant to drive us to despair of ourselves and cling to Christ for our salvation. The second function the law can have is to restrain human beings from committing sin. Often, we will do something immoral, but we will think twice if it is illegal, because the law can punish us. This study is being written during the severe recession at the end of 2009 and early 2010, which serves as a wonderful object lesson. The current recession was caused (in large part) by men and women engaging in business practices that were not illegal, but were desperately immoral. Pure moral obligation does not restrain sin in human beings, but the law does a little better because it comes with punishment.
John Calvin had a much more dynamic view of the law. While he agreed that these first two uses of the law were legitimate, he also affirmed that the law could serve as a guide for Christian behavior. That is, the command not to commit adultery not only shows us that we are adulterous by nature and restrains us from acting on our adulterous desires, but it also encourages us that Christians are called to be free from adultery and that our lives will be better if we allow Christ to overcome those sinful, natural desires.
In the end, we have to come to some kind of conclusion about the law. We cannot affirm New Testament teaching if we insist on rigid adherence to every point of the ancient Jewish law, but we cannot pretend that it has no significance whatsoever. Somehow, we need to find a way to guide our use of the law that helps us to know which points to affirm, and which may be cast aside.
John Wesley made a distinction between the ceremonial law and the moral law in the Old Testament. This was helpful and easy to apply to daily life because anyone could easily look at the law in question and see that, if it had a moral application (like the Ten Commandments), it is still in force for Christians while if it does not (like circumcision or table laws), they can go by the wayside. Wesley may not be far from the truth with this division and we cannot say that it is not an easy to follow distinction, but we must question its authority because we do not find such a distinction in the scriptures.
Some have thrown out all the law. This often leads to a pseudo-Marcionite view (Marcion was a heretic in the early church who claimed that the God of the Old Testament was not the same as the God of the New Testament, and so eliminated the Old Testament from his Bible) , where the entirety of God’s interaction with Israel is not only reinterpreted in light of Christ but is radically set aside. Even if it is not taken to the extreme (claiming one God is responsible for the Old Testament and a different one is responsible for the New), any tendency to utterly cut the ancient law of God from Christian faith will tend to not take the Old Testament seriously, which will lead to deficient Christology (understanding of Christ).
On the other hand, some have taken the law so seriously and absolutely that they follow even the dietary laws without question. One writer/dietitian advocated that Christians not eat pork, not just for dietary reasons but because God said so, “and that should be enough.” Any move like this is likely to prioritize the activity of God in the Old Testament above what God has done in Christ. This view, of course, will take the Old Testament writings seriously when looking at Christ, but, if it does not allow the second Person of the Trinity to challenge and reinterpret their reading of those texts, it denies the central and controlling impact of Christ.
If we allow the reality of the Incarnation to shape the way we understand the law and its function, we quickly begin to see what is important and why. There were some laws, like circumcision, rigid seventh day Sabbath keeping, and kosher table laws that, in addition to whatever theological purpose they may have served, also had the very real purpose of keeping the Jews separate. This was very important, as noted above, so that the culture could be adequately formed by God to prepare for Christ without the corrupting influence of the pagan nations. Once these ideas were taken up by Christ, reinterpreted and set in a new form (such as baptism, a changed date for the Sabbath and the throwing open of the gospel for all people), the specific form could fall away, though their purpose is not any less important.
In practice, the law still serves as a guide for Christian behavior, but we must interpret that, not in terms of the priority of the law, but in terms of the person of Christ. The laws have no intrinsic value apart from Christ. The moral laws in particular are authoritative because they accurately point to aspects of Christ and how Christians ought to live as those who follow Christ with all their lives. The laws can serve a teaching function, but they must never usurp the primacy of Christ.
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