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What
principles should be used to decide which Old Testament laws should
be kept today? |
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The long
answer to this question would be a book discussing covenants, constitutions,
and codes, ancient agrarian societies contrasted with modern industrial
societies, and other issues. Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 when He
gave His short answer: “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
being, and with all your strength”
(author’s
translation). Jesus coupled this with Leviticus 19:18, which He
called the second commandment: “Love
your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus’ brother
James called this second commandment “the
royal law”
of love (James 2:8).
Judaism traditionally counts 613 laws in the Torah (Pentateuch).
Many can be observed only by subsistence farmers, others only in
the land of Israel itself. Fewer Jews or Christians today live in
agrarian societies, and never since A.D. 70
have most Jews or Christians lived in Israel.
The ancient sacrificial system is the subject of many of the laws.
The New Testament clearly teaches that Jesus fulfilled the promise
of that system. Fulfilled means completed. If
Christians endorsed the resumption of the old system, we would deny
the completeness of Jesus’
ultimate sacrifice on the Cross.
One quickly sees that not all the laws were intended to be timeless
or universal. The spirit of all of them, however, is included in
loving God and loving our neighbor. Many “difficult”
cases involving loving our neighbor become much easier if we apply
what we’ve
come to know as the Golden Rule: “What
would I want done to me in this situation?”—jec
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Unlike Jews, Christians
read the Old Testament through lenses of a faith that believes the
promised Messiah has already come. Jesus came not “to
abolish the Law and the Prophets . . . but to fulfill them”
(Matthew 5:17). He claimed that all the Law and the Prophets—the
most important parts of the Old Testament, according to Jewish religion—hung
on the command to love God with all one’s
heart, soul, and mind, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself
(Matthew 22:37-40).
That sheds much light on the question. We meet all of God’s
requirements when we keep the two greatest commandments, loving God
with our total being and our neighbors as ourselves. Wesley had this
kind of love in mind when he defined the holy life as “love
expelling sin.”
Old Testament laws that nurture that kind of love are helpful. While
the ceremonial laws are not useful today, Christians will keep the
moral law.
Ultimately, the question must be answered at the foot of the Cross,
where Jesus fulfilled the Law by giving himself in radical love to
God and to humanity. Concern about which Old Testament laws we should
keep will fade as we gaze steadily into the face of the Crucified
One. Such openness may not be easy. From the human standpoint it might
be easier just to keep all the Old Testament rules and regulations
as the Pharisees did. But Christians do not live from the human standpoint
alone. They live by grace, and it is by grace alone that we can keep
His great commandments.—rls |
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In essence, the question
asks, “We
affirm that the Old Testament is authoritative Scripture for Christians
and that Christ came to fulfill the Law (Matthew 5:17), so we want
to obey Scripture. But some of the laws are totally irrelevant today;
what do we do with them?”
For example, we clearly should observe the Ten Commandments, including
“You shall
not covet”
(Exodus 20:17). But the part of the verse concerning another’s
manservant or maidservant is hardly applicable today. How can we divide
a single command into some parts that we must obey and other parts
that we can ignore?
In the first place, we have no right to choose to follow some laws
but not others. To do so is to assume authority over Scripture. We
either must find a way to follow the whole counsel of God or admit
that not all of it is authoritative.
How, then, can we follow the whole Law? To begin, recognize that the
Old Testament laws emphasize that all of life is to be examined
in regard to our relationship with our God. Secondly, the laws of
the Pentateuch simply are not comprehensive. Not every life situation
appears; e.g., laws to govern modern traffic. Similarly, much of the
Pentateuch is time-bound; the words spoken to Israel hundreds of years
before Christ came were delivered to that real-life, contemporary
context. Yet even in the Old Testament period the contexts kept changing,
and so new applications had to be made. Compare, for example, Isaiah
58:1-12 with Leviticus 23:24-32.
So we, too, must look at the culture-bound laws in the Old Testament,
seek to grasp their importance within their contexts, and attempt
to apply the underlying principles to our own contexts. Those principles
will be, first, consistent with the Ten Commandments, and, second,
an expression of the great commandments—equally emphatic in
both the Old Testament and the New Testament—to love the Lord
with all our being and our neighbors as ourselves.—ds |
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This
month’s
Editor’s Forum: |
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jec—Joseph
E. Coleson
is professor
of Old Testament at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City.
rls—Rob
L. Staples
is professor of theology emeritus at Nazarene Theological Seminary
in Kansas City.
ds—Dwight
Swanson
lives in Manchester, England, where he lectures in biblical studies
at Nazarene Theological College
and is part of the ministry team at Longsight Church of
the Nazarene. |
To read other
recent questions and answers, click on
Archived
EF. |
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