THE NATURE AND ROLE OF LAW by Walter Henrichsen
Part 1 Introduction
Kinds of Law
Approach to the Study
Divisions of the Study
Approach to the Study
Conclusion
Religion and
Law
Pre-determinism
Modern Science
Conclusion
Immutability of
Law
Conclusion
Justice and
Sacrifice in the Old Testament
The Role of Forgiveness
Conclusion
Vindictiveness
Obeying Romans 13
Conclusion
The Two Purposes of Law
Legislating Morality
Lessons
Conclusions
The Need to
Know
Law, the Last Line of Defense
Seeking the Best for Others
Conclusion
Part 9
Law and Love
Who Told You Were Naked
Becoming an Elder
Women Covering Their Heads
Using the Family Auto
Hiding with Lying Lips
People both
Love and Hate Law
Jesus and the Sabbath
Origin of the Problem
Conclusion
The Various
Kinds of Law
Law and Life
Law and Conversion
Conclusion
Jerusalem
Council
Matthew 5:17-19
Conclusion
Sabbath
Conclusion
Finding
Fault
Conclusion
Part 15
Moral Law Not Rooted in Time
Non-Moral Law Dealing With Specifics Issues Rooted in
Time
Summary - The Nature and Role of Law
In
the series on eschatology I endeavored to show the strategic role it plays in
the Christian life. Most see
eschatology as the “caboose” of theology, when in reality it is the
“engine.” All of us are motivated
by hope. We have short,
intermediate, and long-range hopes.
Our long-range hope is an eternity with God in heaven. Eschatology is the biblical study of
what God says we can legitimately hope for on the other side of the grave.
One
of the many implications/applications of eschatology is the nature and role of
Law in the life of the believer.
For this reason, this study naturally follows the preceding one. What role, if any, does law play in the
life of the New Testament follower of Christ? Why does God establish laws? If it is true that “by law is the
knowledge of sin,”[1]
why do some Christians argue that the New Testament believer is not under
law? Does not law establish right
from wrong?
Adam and Eve, placed in
utopia, still craved autonomy. They
broke the only law God gave them.
We who inherit the nature of Adam are law-breakers. We need to understand the purpose of
law. The progeny of Adam view law
as restrictive; it destroys the ability to have fun. Conversely, a biblical world-view
understands that law is an asset in obtaining the abundant life.
Much of what people do in
their lives they do without understanding the reason behind it. For example, the child is fed nutritious
food without understanding its importance.
The soldier in war executes an order without understanding the strategy
behind it. People are expected to
drive at slower speeds than they deem necessary.
When people perform without
understanding the purpose, they are easily swayed to change. If they are forced to perform, they
easily rebel. Understanding the
purpose of law is essential in curbing rebellion and properly relating to
others. It is far easier to be
compliant when we understand the reason behind the law. Although it is true that God does not
promise us total understanding, especially in the specifics of why He asks us to
do certain things, we can and should understand the overall reason why living
under law is essential.
There are various kinds of
laws and various ways to express them.
In this presentation I will divide them as follows:
Scientific
Law: These
are the unalterable laws that govern the universe. They include the laws governing light,
thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, etc.
Moral Law: These are the laws of
revealed religion that govern the behavior of man. They fit into two categories: Timeless
moral laws that are part of the nature and character of God, (e.g., God’s
commands not to kill, commit idolatry, and steal); and moral laws that are
instituted by God, enforced for a period of time, but not part of His unchanging
nature, (e.g., dietary and ceremonial laws in the Old Testament, and those laws
proscribing the role of women in the New Testament).
Civil Law: These are laws enacted by
the legislature that are not moral in nature. They include the regulation of commerce,
taxation, and traffic.
In
our study we will look at natural and moral law and by and large omit civil
law. Scripture affirms civil law
when it does not violate Scripture.
The State is free to make any law that does not require the believer to
break the commandments of God. Such
law is relative and subject to change by the legislature. Thus we will discuss civil law only when
it touches on moral law.
I
will base my approach to this subject on logic and reason. I am not a historian or expert on other
religions, but I do understand, in part, the implications of religious
systems. Because a person’s
religion shapes his world-view, which influences everything in life that he
thinks or sees, theology is the pyramid of learning.
By
way of illustration, you cannot have law without a lawgiver who requires
accountability. You cannot have
revelation without a Transcendent God who speaks. You cannot have sin without a personal
God. You cannot have moral law
without a personal God who has the power to exercise authority over all
pretenders.
In
order for law to be absolute and for sin to be absolutely wrong, there can be no
multiplicity of gods. If there is
more than one god, to which is a person accountable? This is the reason people like the idea
of “many roads to heaven.” If there
is a multiplicity of ways to relate to God, or gods, then my way is as valid as
any other. Then I relate to “God”
on my terms and in the process maintain my autonomy. Truth is relative and I create the law
that governs my behavior from my reason.
All
of this describes our culture.
Personal autonomy is the highest good and tolerance the queen of
virtue. We are led to believe that
each person shapes his or her own morality. It may be possible to judge another’s
motives, as the politician often says, “He has no heart for the poor.” But woe to the individual who dares to
judge another’s behavior. That is
tantamount to imposing my morality on others. The Bible says we dare not judge
another’s motives,[2]
but are commanded to judge a fellow-believer’s behavior;[3]
the opposite of what is normative today.
Such is the age in which we live.
No
other religion in the history of man claims to worship a Transcendent God who
speaks; only the God of Scripture and those sects spawned by the Judeo-Christian
religion.
Mt.
Sinai is unique in history. God
gathered a nation at the foot of a mountain and spoke to them in a way that all
heard Him. All agreed that God did
speak, and all agreed what it was that He said. After hearing the Ten Commandments, the
people said to Moses, “Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God
speak with us, lest we die.”[4] The rest of the law was given by God to
Moses on Sinai and communicated by Moses to the people.
I
have divided this series into the following divisions:
Nature of
Law
Law and
Justice
Law and Man’s Inability to Govern
Himself
Law and Love
Law and Self-denial
Mosaic Covenant
It
seems to me that there are at least two reasons why people resist
law:
1 - Pride: People do not want anyone telling them what to do. Such people don’t argue that the law is
wrong; it is not an issue of right and wrong. Rather, they resent being told what to
do. I am sure you are like I am in
that you know people who rebel without a cause and destroy themselves in the
process.
2 - They do not believe the law is in their interest. For such people it is a problem of
perception. Reason determines the
validity of law. For example, God
has certain restrictions on how people are to satisfy their sexual
appetites. God says, “You may have
more than one wife, but have sex only with your wife.” The world says, “You may have sex with
as many people as you would like, but you may only have one wife.” Even among the followers of Christ,
people struggle with this. I am not
advocating polygamy, and they are not advocating promiscuity. Nevertheless, under certain
circumstances, it seems reasonable to modify God’s commands. If a person is in a truly unhappy
marriage, will not God understand that the person made a mistake and allow for
divorce and remarriage? Granted
that sex outside of marriage is wrong, but the couple will eventually
marry. If genuine commitment is
present, is pre-marital sex really that bad?
I
will discuss this in more detail as I develop the series, but note that
evangelical Christianity tolerates the breaking of all God’s commands. Although there are wonderful exceptions,
generally speaking, evangelicals allow, without discipline,[5]
the violation of all biblical commands.
Unfortunately, I cannot think of a single command that is an
exception. Culture rather than
Scripture determines what is normative in the life of the church.
No
society can exist without the presence of Law. A person may refute the existence of
absolute moral law, but society cannot exist without assuming the existence of
morality. For example, I may reason
philosophically that law is cultural and that our law does not apply in, say,
Irian Jaya. Law is relative and
must be changed to adapt to the existing culture. But the people of Irian Jaya cannot live
in community with the people of the United States without a common law. Furthermore, we cannot create a common
law without agreeing on what is morally right.
In
practice, the existence of society assumes that morality is absolute. We hear a great deal of discussion on
the relativity of truth. In
reality, no one believes that truth is relative. One of the most dogmatic and legalistic
environments is the university campus.
If a person is not politically correct, fighting agreed upon causes and
refraining from all language deemed inappropriate, then censorship and
ostracization results. If a person
practices homosexuality, divorces, lives in violation of biblical law, this is
tolerated. All agree that truth is
absolute. The question is who gets
to define the absolutes? Today
society debates the answer to this question.
I
will close this first issue and begin discussing the nature of law in the next
letter. The study on eschatology,
although practical, tended to be esoteric.
I hope that this series will be easier to follow and will generate
questions and opposition. I
encourage you to inter-act with me.
Paul says in Acts 17: 11:
“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received
the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether
those things were so.” I hope that
you will challenge what I write and return to Scripture to prove me wrong. This is an important component in the
strategy God uses to change our lives.
His
obedient servant,
For this reason, laws are fixed and invariable. If there is deviation, then it isn’t law. For example, we use to say that it was a law that what went up must come down. Now we know that this isn’t a law. Although we cannot break the law of gravity, precisely because it is a law, we can overcome the earth’s gravitational pull and send objects into space so that they will never return to earth.
Cultures spawned by the Judeo-Christian religion teaches that there is a personal God who stands above and over His creation. Psalm 33:6-9: “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. 7 He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. 9 For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.” God created the universe and it obeys His unchanging will.
As we saw in the eschatology series, the Bible views history as linear rather than cyclical. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created….” In the beginning of what? Most agree that this is the beginning of time. God created and transcends time. In time He created the universe. History describes the events of this time/space creation of God. Just as history had a beginning, it will also have an end. II Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” The world as we know it will cease to exist.
This biblical world-view teaches that there was a time when a person was not, but there will never be a time when he will not be. God created him an eternal being. In this, people differ from Jesus Christ, for God did not create Christ. There never was a time when He was not. This eternal dimension to man means that upon death he must give account to God for the way he lived his life. Just as immutable law governs the world God created, so also these same laws govern His people.
In this, the Judeo-Christian world-view (and those sects spawned by it) is unique. All other religions teach that there is no personal, transcendent God who relates to His creatures. He may be a force, but he has no law governing how man treats his fellow man. In the Hindu world-view, a person may disturb his karma or fate, and suffer the consequences in his next life on earth in what they call the transmigration of the soul. But neither he nor the created order live under the authority of immutable law and answer to a personal Creator for the way they respond to that law.
In such a world-view, history is cyclical rather than linear. Escape from the cycle of reincarnation, if such an escape exists, comes about by ceasing to exist. The world is god and god is the world. Trees, animals, humans, all have a bit of the divine. Nirvana, the closest thing to heaven in the Hindu system, consists in ceasing to exist as the person blends into the Oneness of the unified whole.
PRE-DETERMINISM
Thinking peoples everywhere and in every age believe in pre-determinism. As much as we would like to think we are in control, in reality we are not; being in control is a myth. As you know, you did not determine your parents, sex, color, gifts and abilities, country of birth, etc. Nor do you determine the flow the circumstances imposing themselves on your life, circumstances such as cancer, accidents, and the reaction of people towards you.
Solomon says in Ecclessiastes 3:1-2: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die.” Man is locked between the two limits of birth and death. He does not determine the day of his birth, and in all likelihood will not determine the day of his death.
If history is cyclical, then man is passive. Law does not govern him and there is no personal God shaping his destiny. He is the victim of “the fickled finger of fate.” If history is linear, then man is active. He must obey the laws of revealed religion, for after death he must give an account to his Creator for how he responded to that law. Furthermore, there is no second chance, no recycling into another temporal existence for another try.
The Bible teaches that you will live in eternity with the consequences of how you lived on earth. You may not be able to control much in your life, but you won’t be held accountable for what is beyond your control, only that for which you do exercise control. It is not how much you have or your circumstances that determine the quality of your eternity, but rather what you do with what you have and how you respond to your circumstances.
MODERN
SCIENCE
From the Judeo-Christian world-view came the birth of modern science built on the assumption that the laws of nature are fixed and invariable. Natural laws such as the speed of light and sound, thermo-dynamics, etc. are predictable and reliable because they flow from the creation of an immutable God.
For example, we built a rocket ship and launched it to the moon convinced that the laws governing its flight would not vary. The risk inherent in the project was not in the laws themselves, but in our ability to understand and obey them. Thus when the space shuttle “Challenger” blew apart on take-off, killing all on board, no one said the fault lay in whimsical laws that changed. All agreed that the fault was in the planning and execution of the mission.
We may modify our understanding of a law such as that governing the speed of sound. Ostensibly sound travels at 740 mph in air at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The density of the medium through which it travels and the elasticity of the medium influence that speed, but all of this is governed by exact, unchanging law. No one argues that the speed of sound changes.
A scientist in the field of medicine or quantum mechanics may argue that in his specialty nothing is certain; there exists only degrees of probability. But that same scientist operates on the foundation of a set of laws assumed to be absolute, predictable, and unchanging.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. No friend of Christianity, his writings did much to narrow the gap between philosophy and science. He said that because of a belief in the rationality of God, the early scientists had an “inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labors of scientists would be without hope.”
The Chinese discovered gunpowder, but did not develop it, simply because they did not see the world as defined by Whitehead. In their world-view the gods are arbitrary, and when the powder didn’t explode because it was wet, they assumed the fickle gods intervened. Western scientists had the world-view to apply it with devastating consequences.
CONCLUSION
Someone once said, “The God of the Bible commanded us to make use of those faculties in the general regulation of our behavior, in keeping with both reason and freewill, with which we are endowed.” That man is subject to the law of his Creator was assumed not only in the realm of science, but also in the moral realm governing the affairs of man. This was certainly the understanding of the Founders of our great republic. Thomas Jefferson penned in The Declaration of Independence, “We hold thee truths to be self-evident…”
This world-view freed man to pursue the wonders of nature, but bound him to the laws of God. God’s law is unchangeable and therefore predictable. The pagan gods are unpredictable, whimsical, and easily offended. Thus storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc., are the activities of angry gods. A biblical world-view gave us the security that when God’s law is applied to science the consequences are predictable. Natural disasters are evaluated from the perspective of law. For example, atmospheric conditions, water temperature and currents, winds, etc., create hurricanes. All are predictable to the degree that we understand them.
God’s law in the moral realm, however, carries with it the same force as natural law, along with the certainty of judgment when violated. This produced a bifurcation in man’s world-view: God’s natural law is absolute and unchanging, but His moral law is relative and changeable.
This bifurcation is between reason and faith. We arrive at natural law via reason, moral law via faith. Moral and natural law are equally normative, but moral law cannot be seen via reason. Conscience affirms moral law, but it does not make it law.
The certainty of His unchanging ways ensures success in the natural realm when His law is obeyed. But this personal, transcendent God, who speaks, has devoted His revelation to the moral realm, spelling out clearly His expectations in an inviolable set of laws. Observation and experimentation discover natural law, which exists because of an immutable God. Moral law, on the other hand, comes from this same immutable God via revelation.
If moral law revealed in Scripture is not normative, why conclude that natural law is normative? This bifurcation is irrational, but eagerly embraced for obvious reasons. The certainty of natural law combined with the refutation of moral law seems to offer man the autonomy he so passionately seeks.
Grateful for His Sovereignty,
THE NATURE AND ROLE OF
LAW
The intelligencia, who pride themselves on their objectivity, in reality, are inconsistent in at least two ways: First, they argue that truth is relative while adhering to a strict system of truth. They don’t really believe that truth is relative, no one does. Under the guise of arguing that truth is relative they insist on redefining truth. For example, they suggest that biblical commands dealing with such things as sexual purity are obsolete cultural mores no longer applicable to an enlightened society – while at the same time insisting that their standards dealing with such things as politically correct speech are absolute. They insist on tolerance dealing with issues such as homosexual preferences, divorce, and pre-marital sex, while practicing intolerance dealing with issues such as care of the environment, abortion, and women’s rights.
Second, they build their scientific method on the assumption that scientific law is inviolate, even though such a position can only be true if there exists a sovereign, personal, transcendent God who had revealed Himself in the Judeo-Christian Faith – while at the same time insisting that the revelation of God in moral matters cannot be verified using the scientific method, and are therefore non-binding.
Just as science cannot exist without the assumption that scientific laws are absolute, so too society cannot exist without assuming that there are absolute moral laws. The Judeo-Christian culture gave birth to the scientific method because it understood that the laws of God are inviolable. You do not need the gift of prophecy to predict that the culture that repudiates the assumptions of Scripture will eventually repudiate the scientific method. Skepticism breeds skepticism. Just as Einstein’s theory of relativity was applied to the moral realm, and Darwin’s theory of evolution contributed to the conclusion that man bears the image of an animal rather than the image of God, so too moral relativism begins to erode confidence in science.
Alan Bloom makes this point in his book Closing of the American Mind. He notes that the scientific method assumes the existence of absolutes. A relativistic society will destroy confidence in science, a reality that he suggests is already making its way through the universities in the United States. This results in the closing of the American mind. I could find nothing in the book suggesting that Dr. Bloom believed in absolutes; he simply concluded that they have to be assumed in order to continue growing and developing.
SOME LAWS ARE
COUNTER-INTUITIVE
In both the scientific and moral realm some laws are counter-intuitive. By this I mean that they do not appear reasonable to the human mind. For example, we are taught that space bends. The speed of light is constant in reference to an individual even when that individual is traveling at half the speed of light. So let’s say one person travels in a space ship at half the speed of light while his twin sibling remains on earth. Their relative ages would differ once the spacecraft returned to earth.
The student of Scripture discovers that the same is true in the moral realm. For example, Paul says in Romans 7:7: “I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” The conscience does not affirm that coveting is sin. For this reason, the church discusses the issue only infrequently, if at all. We call coveting, “getting ahead,” “having drive and ambition,” “pursuing the American dream.”
Again, you would think that you would be able to predict the consequences of sin. A cursory reading of the Old Testament reveals that this is an impossibility. In Numbers 15:32ff. a man is stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. In II Samuel 11 David commits murder and adultery. David’s son dies for the crime, but David is allowed to live, even though both acts were capital offences.
Again, Paul says in I Cor 6:18: “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.” Reason would suggest that the misuse of drugs and alcohol are more harmful to the body than sexual sins. Paul doesn’t qualify his assertion with the caveat, “You may acquire some form of venereal disease when you are promiscuous.” Most would argue that there are many sins more detrimental to the body than fornication.
The more deeply we delve into science, the more counter-intuitive things we discover. The same is true as we study Scripture.
THE IMMUTABILITY OF
LAW
The immutability of scientific law teaches the immutability of moral law. If, by definition, law is immutable, and there is such a thing as scientific law, then why wouldn’t there also be such a thing as moral law?
This bifurcation between moral and scientific law is illogical and inconsistent. It satisfies man’s pragmatic urge to be secure and autonomous; secure in the laws of science and autonomous in his own personal behavior.
The universe is accountable to God; His laws are unchangeable. We willed to believe this in science and willed to believe the opposite in regard to morals. As noted, the rationale for this was: Man can, through experimentation, discover the laws of science. He cannot discover such laws in the moral realm.
A problem presents itself with such an approach. Experimentation can only yield probability, not certainty. Doubt will fill the astronaut who is told, “The laws governing space travel, in reality are not laws; they are calculated guesses. We have never before traveled into space and we have no idea what to expect. Once you are launched there is an excellent chance we will never see you again.” Everything a person does involves risk, but scientific law is the difference between acceptable risk and stupidity.
If there is no God, then the forces of nature are not predictable. Everything is left to chance. For example, I cannot know that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. All I can offer is the degree of probability. It has risen in the east and set in the west every day I have observed it, but this does not mean that it will rise in the east tomorrow.
If scientific law does not exist and degrees of probability are all we have, then we should assume that the disruptions of “scientific law” are common. Those who believe in scientific law call such disruptions “miracles.” If all is relative, then what we call miracles should be commonplace. People should be able to readily walk on water; the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus a frequent occurrence, and people regularly raising themselves from the dead.
Actually, we should be skeptical and amazed when events become consistent. Anything that so much as resembles “law” would be held in suspect. All know that the opposite is true. The Bible is belittled precisely because it claims the existence of events not conforming to scientific law. Belief in the laws of science is to acknowledge Nature’s God. We are rendered without excuse.
CONCLUSION
People judge. People are incapable of not judging. No one can live in a community without saying to himself or others, “That is wrong, he should not have done it.” “That was mean and unnecessary.” Etc. Few people in life are as judgmental as the liberal, broadminded people that comprise academia. They forget that judging assumes the existence of moral absolutes.
When I judge your behavior I assume that there exists a standard of right and wrong. Not only do I believe that my standard is right for me, I insist that it is right for you as well. A set of moral absolutes stands over both of us, to which we are both amenable. There may or may not be a law covering the behavior legislated by society. It makes no difference. For the most part, people judge one another without reference to the law of the land, that is, they don’t say, “He was wrong because he broke the law.” Rather, “He was wrong because he violated my sense of right and wrong.”
Law deals with what a society deems right and wrong, good and evil. For example, we do not impose capital punishment because of irrelevancies. People are not executed because when hungry they steal a loaf of bread. There must be a sense of proportion; the penalty must match the crime. We deem crimes to be capital offenses when there exists a violation of what society believes true, necessary, and inviolable.
To state it another way, law is the expression and imposition of how society defines absolute moral truths.
For this reason, idolatry is better than skepticism when it comes to governing a nation. Religion, by its nature, is a restraining force in society. The gods watch the affairs of man and impose punishment for recalcitrant behavior.
Most people believe that they can beat the temporal system. For this reason people drive faster than the speed limit. Some are less than forthright when paying taxes. People lie, cheat, and steal, all within the parameters of what they deem to be acceptable risk. I am convinced that all that read this believe they can “beat the system.” If they did not, they would not sin.
So too, all agree that the eternal system, if it exists, cannot be beaten. Therefore, he who hates or ignores religion has no restraint other than his fellow man. He believes truth to be relative. Why shouldn’t he seek his own good at the expense of others? Montesquieu once said, “He who has no religion at all is like a terrible animal who perceives his liberty only when he tears in pieces and when he devours.”
Yours for the cause of Truth,
THE NATURE AND ROLE OF
LAW
If you approach life philosophically, certainty is either in the subject or object. For example, I think you are wonderful; therefore you are wonderful. Or I think you are evil; therefore you are evil. If I am the object and you are the subject, you think I am evil, and therefore I am evil. So too, you think I am nice and therefore I am nice. This is the only way people can know. In this we see that certainty is subjective.
We seek to obtain objectivity by polling the opinions of others. For example, in a beauty contest, the winner is chosen by a panel of judges that determines that one girl is more beautiful than another is. In matters of morals, as noted in earlier issues of this series, right and wrong are determined by public opinion. Thirty years ago there was a consensus that homosexuality was evil. Today that consensus has disappeared as more and more people view it as acceptable behavior.
The United States accused Japan of war crimes during World War II. Japan accused the United States of a terrible crime in dropping the atomic bomb. Who decides whether one, neither, or both are wrong? How can one know? How can one be certain? In the final analysis, your answer is subjective.
One dictator believes that man has intrinsic worth. As a result he builds hospitals, libraries, and institutions of education. He dies and another dictator replaces him who believes that man has no intrinsic worth. He exploits the people through a life of self-aggrandizement, building monuments to his own greatness. If the people voted, they would say the first dictator is a better ruler than the second. But apart from the opinion of the majority, much like the panel of judges in the beauty contest, who determines which opinion is correct? Your answer will be subjective.
The Judeo-Christian religion is a religion of revelation; the sovereign creator of the universe speaks. To Him all must give an account. He declares that people are eternal and therefore have intrinsic worth. Certainty is no longer in the subject or object, but in the God who speaks and subjectivism is replaced by objective Truth. This is the premise of the whole of the Bible in general and the Law on Mount Sinai in particular.
Cultures influenced by Christianity are prone to see law as absolute, much like our nation at its founding. They are more disposed to be directed by law due to their belief that God gave moral absolutes regulating how people are to treat each other.
For this reason, the Judeo-Christian religion tends to foster moderate government, while pagan religions tend to foster despotic government. Christian cultures may, on occasion, produce leaders who exploit the populace. Men such as Hitler arrive on the scene now and then, but such men are an aberration, and when gone the country reverts to a more moderated government – as long as the culture remains Christian.
In Asia during the Second World War and the Vietnam War our enemy understood this difference. They ignored terrible atrocities they committed while calling attention to atrocities that we committed. They knew that the people of the US would never tolerate what their own people accepted, namely that people do not have intrinsic worth.
Pagan cultures may produce benign governments, but it is contrary to their world-view, for nothing in their religious system ascribes to man intrinsic value. Laos and China merely serve as examples. It is interesting to watch countries like India, Japan, and China, which in varying degrees have all embraced socialistic systems. Socialism and communism were both spawned out of a Judeo-Christian culture; it is not accidental that both Marx and Engels were Jews. Both men (as well as Hitler) sought to establish the millennium with man rather than God on the throne. Whether these pagan countries that have embraced socio-economic systems that are the product of either socialism or communism can maintain them over a protracted period of time, remains to be seen. Also, it is too early to prove what will happen in countries where democracy has taken root, but where there is no world-view that accepts the intrinsic worth of the individual.
LAW AND JUSTICE
Let’s now move to the second section in our study on law: Defining and ensuring justice is a principle purpose of law. This surfaces a problem, namely, the difference between morality and legality.
I remember watching a film, “Criminal Law,” in which a young attorney successfully defends a man convicted of murder. After winning the case, the attorney discovers that the man, in point of fact, is guilty. As the plot develops, the murderer begins to play with his attorney in ways we need not relate here. The young attorney goes for counsel to his law professor.
The professor responds by calling attention to the statue of justice standing outside the US Supreme Court. On a bright sunny day the statue casts a shadow across the steps of the building. The shadow is an image of the statue, but is not the statue. The statue represents justice and the shadow represents law. The objective of the shadow/law is to reflect the image of the statue/justice. Law seeks to reflect justice, but it can never do so perfectly; this is why the legislature sits in session.
God’s Law is the exception. It defines justice perfectly. God made the world and the rules by which the world must live. Justice, by definition, is what the creator declares to be just. The world does not live ignorant of the expectations of God. He has revealed Himself and spoken. Christianity is a religion of revelation with an absolute moral code.
JUSTICE AND
SACRIFICE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Leviticus 16 records the most holy day in the Jewish year[6] – Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement.[7] We don’t have space to exegete this passage; I recommend that you read it. Briefly, on this one day each year the High Priest, properly dressed and cleansed, entered the most holy place twice. First he entered with the blood of a bull, which he sprinkled on the Mercy Seat to cover his own sins. He then made an exit, and returned with the blood of a goat, which he sprinkled on the Mercy Seat to cover the sins of the people.
God gives His people a sobering picture of how He deals with sin: The Mercy Seat sits on top of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, among other things, contains the tablets of Law given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Over the tabernacle rests the Presence of God, a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Between the Law and the Presence of God rests the Mercy Seat, covered with blood to expiate the sins of the people.
Note what God says in the chapters following Leviticus 16:
Leviticus 20:10-16: “And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 11 And the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 12 And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them. 13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 14 And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you. 15 And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast. 16 And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
After reading this portion I asked myself, “What happened to the Day of Atonement?” God forgives the sinner, but the state cannot forgive lest injustice reign. God treats people differently from how He expects the state to treat them. Joshua 7 affords an illustration of how this was applied.
After the conquest of Jericho, Joshua sends his army
against the insignificant city of Ai.
The army of Ai thoroughly defeats Israel. Joshua discovers that Achan took of the
spoils of Jericho, against the express command of God. “And Joshua said unto Achan, My son,
give, I pray thee, glory to the LORD God of Israel, and make confession unto
him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.” [8] In other words, Joshua said to him, “Ask
God to forgive you, for we will not.”
With that the people stoned Achan along with his family.
THE ROLE OF
FORGIVENESS
In the NT God charges the individual with the responsibility to forgive. Christ feels so strongly about this He gives a parable about a man who was forgiven debt so great that he could never pay it. The master, who was also the lender, forgave the man the whole debt. Later, a man comes to the one forgiven asking that an insignificant sum be forgiven him. Unwilling to forgive, he had the man cast into debtor’s prison. The master, upon hearing of it, casts the unforgiving servant into prison until the whole of his huge debt is paid. Jesus closes the parable with these words: “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”[9]
If God charges the individual with the responsibility to forgive, He charges the state with the task of ensuring justice. Paul clearly spells this out in his great epistle to the Romans:
“Let
every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God:
the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the
power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to
themselves damnation. 3 For rulers
are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of
the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 4 For he is the minister of God to thee
for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the
sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon
him that doeth evil. 5 Wherefore ye
must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience
sake.”[10]
Words like “mercy,” “pity,” and “forgiveness” are used interchangeably in Jesus’ parable in Matthew 18. Forgiveness is the setting aside of justice. Thus forgiveness and justice are mutually exclusive. Care must be taken in applying these two words in our interpersonal relationships.
For example, in raising our children, justice is never the goal; Christ paid the penalty for sin, satisfying God’s justice in the process. Discipline should never be judicial, but rather corrective. For this reason, if your spouse says to you as you begin to discipline your child, “Have mercy,” you know that someone is not thinking correctly. If correction rather than justice is the goal, then mercy is not an issue.
Our criminal system in the US affords another example. We cannot decide as a society if we wish to correct and thus rehabilitate criminals, or whether we seek justice in punishing them. Theoretically, we must punish criminals in order to maintain a just society. However, the US judicial system attempts to negotiate between mercy and justice exemplified by their titling institutions of justice as “penitentiaries,” and sometimes “institutions of correction.”
Biblically, the magistrate representing the State executes justice, penalizing the offender to ensure that citizens honor the law. The same magistrate, however, must forgive individuals that offend him in the normal intercourse of life.
His….Yours,
THE NATURE AND ROLE OF
LAW
In the last issue we saw that forgiveness means setting aside justice. You do not need to forgive a person unless he has violated the laws of justice. When the law is broken, God requires the state to execute justice. God instructs His people to forgive. In passages such as Matthew 18:21-35 (dealing with the individual forgiving another) and Romans 13:1-5 (dealing with the state executing justice), the difference between justice and forgiveness is quite clear.
The OT doesn’t give us quite the clarity between justice and forgiveness that we find in the NT. Throughout the OT God’s people clearly saw the need for God’s forgiveness,[11] but the distinction between forgiveness and justice is blurred. For example, God allocated six cities of refuge to which certain people could flee in order to avoid justice:
“Then the congregation shall judge between the
slayer and the revenger of blood according to these judgments: 25 And the
congregation shall deliver the slayer out of the hand of the revenger of blood,
and the congregation shall restore him to the city of his refuge, whither he was
fled: and he shall abide in it unto the death of the high priest, which was
anointed with the holy oil. 26 But if the slayer shall at any time come without
the border of the city of his refuge, whither he was fled; 27 And the revenger
of blood find him without the borders of the city of his refuge, and the
revenger of blood kill the slayer; he shall not be guilty of blood:”[12]
God distinguished
between murder and manslaughter in the law. Those committing murder were executed,
but those committing manslaughter could flee to one of the six cities of refuge
spread throughout Israel. To avoid
the vengeance of the offended family, the manslaughter had to remain in the city
of refuge until the death of the High Priest. If the offender was found outside the
city before the High Priest’s death, the avenging family could kill him without
guilt.
From this we see that
the people in OT Israel practiced vigilantism. The system was beautiful in its
simplicity. Justice was a corporate
responsibility. Possibly it is
analogous to the US Military Academies where those attending solemnly vow, “We
will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate any who do.”
The individual was
responsible for executing justice.
There were no magistrates or policemen designated by God in the law. People knew when the law was broken and
what punishment God expected. Moses
said, “At
the mouth of two witnesses, or three
witnesses, shall he that is worthy
of death be put to death; but at the
mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.”[13]
Justice was swift; the people stoned
the offender upon finding him guilty.
In such a system, all
are instructed. Solomon
warns,
“Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the
heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”[14]
This doesn’t mean that there is no
hint of the need to forgive in the OT.
However, God’s call for the people to express mercy is primarily found in
the later prophets. For example,
the prophet Micah said, “He
hath shewed thee, O man, what is
good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”[15]
In the OT law, God
warns that a person cannot hold a grudge,[16]
but as far as I can find, there is no reference to one person forgiving another
person in the first five books of the Bible. This may explain why, in so many of the
Psalms, King David prays that God will exact revenge on his enemies.
THE LAW OF THE HARVEST
In Galatians 6:7-8 we
find Paul’s famous words, “Be
not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but
he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life
everlasting.” They are commonly
summarized as “The Law of the Harvest;” a man reaps what he sows. This “law” is one of the foundation
stones of Scripture. You find it in
various forms throughout the Bible.
The heart of man
affirms “the law of the harvest” through his innate sense of fairness; a person
ought to reap what he sows. It does
not seem right that an innocent child should suffer or that a serial killer be
set free. Thus we feel frustrated
when our sense of justice is offended.
You would think that this basic principle would be void of ambiguity, but
such is not the case. Let’s briefly
trace it through the Bible:
When Moses comes to
the close of his life, he lays before the people “the law of the harvest.” Deuteronomy 27:9-26 gives specific
instructions to Israel when they enter the Promised Land. Half the tribes must stand on Mount
Gerizim to pronounce blessing as the reward for obedience, and half must stand
on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses on Israel if they disobey. Deuteronomy 28 spells out all the
blessings the nation can expect if they obey God with all their hearts, and
conversely the calamity that will befall them if they wander from God. This is “the law of the harvest”
promised in earthly, temporal terms.
Psalm 73, however,
calls attention to the opposite.
The Psalmist notes that the ungodly prosper and the righteous
suffers. The observation was
confusing and painful for the writer,
“until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.”[17]
This injustice will be rectified
after they die, when they meet God in judgment. Thus the Psalmist reasons that “the law
of the harvest” applies in the eternal, after death, but not in the temporal
before death.
You will remember that
“the law of the harvest” got the three friends of Job into trouble with
God. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar
applied “the law of the harvest” to Job’s plight. They reasoned, “A man reaps what he
sows. It is obvious, Job, that you
are reaping a bad harvest.
Therefore we must conclude that it is because you sowed iniquity at an
earlier time.” The debate between
Job and his friends remained heated until the end of the book when God rebukes
the friends and commends Job.[18]
“The law of the harvest” cannot be applied in the temporal.
The only corporate
entity to which God commits Himself is the nation of Israel. With her God made a covenant. God has made no covenant with any other
institution, including the church.
Having committed Himself to Israel, He invited the nations of the world
to observe what it is like to have God as King. In this context, God promised the nation
that if they were obedient they would prosper, and if not, they would experience
the rod of His wrath. In either
case, the nations would learn important lessons about God. For this reason, God promised that, for
the nation of Israel, “the law of the harvest” applied in the temporal.
Under no other
circumstance can “the law of the harvest” be applied to the temporal. This does not mean that there are no
temporal consequences for our behavior.
Rather, we are not promised that righteousness will be rewarded with
temporal blessings, and that sin will be rewarded with temporal loss. Galatians 6:7-8 may apply in the
temporal, but there is no guarantee from God that it will. He does promise that it will apply in
the eternal when we meet Him in judgment.
If “the law of the harvest” applied
universally and consistently in the temporal affairs of life, then it would be
possible to prove empirically that the moral laws of God are as absolute and
irrevocable as natural law. This in
turn would eliminate the need to walk by faith, and “without
faith, you cannot please God.”[19] Faith is essential in turning a man from a life
of independence to dependence upon God in Christ Jesus. God does not want you to be able to
prove that He exists or that His moral law is absolute.
CONCLUSION
Although “the law of
the harvest” cannot be consistently applied in the temporal, the setting aside
of justice when you forgive others does not eliminate consequences. For example, your 14-year-old child
steals the family car and destroys it.
He expresses great sorrow and repentance and begs your forgiveness. Understanding your biblical
responsibility to forgive, you grant him his request. He responds by saying, “Wonderful, then
I do not need to pay for the car.”
You take exception
with his conclusion and suggest that he, in fact, must pay for the destroyed
auto. He retorts, “If I must pay,
then what good does it do me to be forgiven by you? You taught me that Jesus forgives me and
separates my sin from Him as far as east is from west, never again to be
remembered. If Jesus does that for
you and me, why won’t you forgive like He forgives?” How would you answer your child?
You would correctly
point out that forgiveness does not eliminate consequences. The benefit derived from forgiveness is
the restoration of the relationship.
You love and accept your child unconditionally, but because you do love
him, you hold him accountable for his behavior. Your motive in requiring payment for the
destroyed auto is not punishment, but a desire to teach him “the law of the
harvest.” The temporal application
of this “law” seeks to teach the child that there are eternal consequences for
temporal behavior.
We are God’s
children. What was true in your
relationship with your child is also true in God’s relationship with us. “The law of the harvest” does not
necessarily apply in this life, but it will for sure in the life to come. When it does take place in this life,
when God does make us live with the consequences of our decisions, He graciously
teaches us that sin does not pay.
Forgiveness restores the broken relationship, but does not eliminate
eternal consequences. If it did,
truth would be relative and the Ten Commandments would be the Ten
Suggestions.
Many seek to
manipulate God by reasoning that justification eliminates consequences. Such people argue that obedience
following conversion indicates whether or not a person is converted, but that
God’s forgiveness eliminates any significant eternal consequences. Although it is true that God designed
the doctrine of assurance for the obedient, your assurance of salvation does not
negate the fact that God will hold you eternally accountable for your behavior
on earth.
The force of law is in
accountability. If there were no
eternal consequences for temporal behavior, then there would be no
accountability for violating God’s law, and we could consider His law
negotiable. For example, when the
State Highway Patrol goes on strike, people drive as fast as they want, not
because the speed laws are nullified, but rather because there is no
accountability.
Therefore we see that
God gives sufficient evidence to warn us that “the law of the harvest” is
inviolable without enough evidence to prove that moral law is absolute. We must walk by faith, but He graciously
demonstrates for those with eyes to see that grace does not eliminate
accountability and forgiveness does not eliminate consequences. I cannot prove to you that His laws are
absolute and that you will reap in eternity what you sow in this life, but I can
declare to you that this is the clear teaching of Scripture.
His and your
servant,
THE
NATURE AND ROLE OF LAW
Part 6
In the past two issues
we have looked at Law and
Justice. We have seen that
justice and legality are related but different. Law seeks to define justice, but always
does it imperfectly. The
legislature sits in session endeavoring to write just laws. God’s law is the exception; it defines
justice perfectly. For this reason,
God did not constitute Israel with a legislature.
When people forgive, they set aside justice. God charges the individual with the responsibility to forgive, the state with the task of executing justice. This difference is more clearly seen in the NT than in the OT, because under the Theocracy He did not constitute Israel with a judiciary. The system was beautiful in its simplicity; justice was a corporate responsibility.
Furthermore, by way of review, with “the law of the harvest” God promised the nation of Israel temporal accountability. Although there exists no specific teaching that “the law of the harvest” cannot be universally applied by the individual in the temporal, through lessons such as the Book of Job, we see that this is the case. God solemnly pledges, however, that this “law” does apply in the eternal.
God gives sufficient
evidence to warn us that “the law of the harvest” is inviolable while at the
same time withholding sufficient evidence to prove that moral law is
absolute. We must walk by faith,
but He graciously demonstrates for those with eyes to see that grace does not
eliminate accountability and forgiveness does not eliminate
consequences.
OLD TESTAMENT MIND-SET
In the OT God’s people
saw clearly the need to obtain forgiveness from God for their transgressions,
but did not practice this in their inter-personal relationships. Because the distinction between the
responsibilities of the state and individual was blurred, His people saw clearly
their need to execute justice. The
conflict between justice and forgiveness caused the OT saints to practice the
former at the expense of the latter.
In the United States
we are experiencing a reversal of this OT mind-set. Our society tends to be short on justice
and long on compassion. It destroys
the sense of security and well being in our communities. When we take God and His law from our
daily affairs we become confused regarding justice. First, we have a hard time defining
justice. All intuitively know that
there is such a thing as justice, but when God is removed from the equation
justice is impossible to define.
God, by definition is just.
All He does is good, just, and righteous. Without this foundation, you have no
ability to define justice.
Second, without God
and the hope of heaven, this life is all we have, and the only hope possible is
temporal. If I am cleaver enough to
avoid the consequences of my behavior in this life, then I can afford to be
unjust if I deem it to be in my interest.
This results in an erosion of morality.
Third, for those
altruistic individuals for whom God does not exist, if they wish to perfect
society, the state must be redemptive,.
When the state seeks to redeem society, it steps outside its God-given
charge to execute justice, and the people take the law into their own
hands. The state often reacts by
being harder on the vigilante than the criminal.
Fourth, we lose our
sense of proportion when we don’t take into account the eternal dimension. Our nation’s judicial system presupposed
that if a criminal escaped justice in this life, he would face the justice of
God in judgment. For this reason,
the defendant is given the benefit of the doubt; the burden of proof is on the
state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of the defendant. Without this “safety net” of eternal
justice, people become preoccupied with executing justice here and now, even if
their perception of the facts is fallacious.
VINDICTIVENESS
It is easy to confuse
being vindictive with being unjust.
Vindictiveness is wrong only because God told us to forgive. There is such a thing as being justly
vindictive. At the Judgment of The
Great White Throne[20]
God will be justly vindictive.
The Muslim world, in
many ways, seeks to replicate the OT Theocratic system. If you wonder what OT Israel was
supposed to look like, in significant respects the Muslim State is a
mirror. We are often appalled by
the vindictive nature of their society where people are vengeful and seek
retribution towards those who have committed a crime against them. Until later in OT history when God began
to place an emphasis on the need for the individual to forgive, being vindictive
was how God intended them to be.
For example in Genesis
34, when one of the sons of Shechem defiled Dinah, the daughter of Leah and
Jacob, her bothers slaughtered the men of Shechem’s, taking their women and
children as spoil. In verse 30
Jacob rebukes Simeon and Levi, but not because they sinned against God. Rather, because “ye
have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land…” Nothing in Scripture suggests that their
vindictiveness was a “stink” to God.
We find in II
Corinthians 5 the sequel to vigilantism in the OT. You will remember that Paul rebukes the
Corinthians for tolerating sin in the church. He gives two objectives in executing
discipline on the offender. First,
when people live in willful disobedience to God, their soul is placed in
peril. Therefore, the Corinthians
are required to excommunicate the sinner “that
his soul may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”[21] All
discipline must be redemptive, seeking the restoration of the unrepentant
sinner.
We find the second
objective in verses 6-8: to maintain the purity of the church. Unconfronted sin in the Body of Christ
dulls and desensitizes the conscience, alienates us from God, lends support to
other expressions of sin, and causes the moral climate of the believing
community to deteriorate.
No sense of
vindictiveness or vengeance appears in the NT teachings on discipline. Love, a redemptive spirit, and the quest
for purity, characterize NT discipline.
This emphasis was lacking, or at least oblique, in the OT.
OBEYING ROMANS 13
As noted earlier,
Romans 13:1-5 command believers to obey the state:
“Let
every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God:
the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the
power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to
themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the
evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou
shalt have praise of the same: 4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good.
But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in
vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject,
not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.”
Throughout the centuries, conscientious Christians have chaffed under these restrictions. The fact that Paul penned these words during one of the most abusive governments ever known by man, gives little comfort. When a man believes that the greatest pain the magistrate can inflict will end in a moment that begins his eternal happiness, then law can no longer restrain him.
Having used the Muslim religion as an earlier example, we all know that they engage themselves in acts of self-destruction for what they deem a holy cause. Their allegiance to a “higher” law gives them assurance that when they break the law of the state they gain eternal paradise. Such people, however, do not subscribe to Paul’s teaching in Romans 13.
The Reverend Paul Hill killed a physician that performed abortions. As a Christian, he ostensibly believes Romans 13. Yet, because the state allows the people to break God’s commandments, he believes he has a moral obligation to oppose the state. This is especially true in the case of such a heinous crime as murdering a fetus. It is easy to see how people feel that immoral laws must be opposed.
Most of Evangelical Christianity sought to distance itself from Rev. Hill when he committed this crime. Interestingly, however, these same evangelicals view Dietrich Bonhoffer, the well-known German Lutheran minister who involved himself in a plot to kill Hitler, as a model. I marvel at their use of logic as they endeavor to condemn the former and embrace the latter.
Scripture is quite clear on this subject. I disobey civil law only when such laws require my breaking God’s law. For example, the government does not command that my wife have an abortion. If it did, then I must respectfully disobey the state. God does not allow me to violate His commandments because I am under the authority of the state or some other individual or institution. Neither does He allow me to force the state into keeping His law. That in essence, is the purpose of Romans 13.
CONCLUSION
We all live spending the capital of earlier investments. Understanding this, our forefathers warned us to keep vigil over our freedoms. Financial planners urge us to properly prepare for the future. Every married person knows that he lives today off the investment made in his spouse years earlier.
This axiom holds true in the moral arena as well. Unfortunately, as a nation we have not lived as though we believe it. Like a farmer who eats his seed corn and has nothing to plant, we have lived off of the moral investment of happier times. As already noted, this principle is more easily demonstrated in tangible things such as economics than in morality.
Many argue that there is no relationship between violence on TV and violence on the street; that sex education does not promote promiscuity, it merely prepares youngsters for it. When we examine our conscience, however, we know that moral license will destroy the fabric of our republic. “The law of the harvest” is true: we reap what we sow.
Because of this, our emotions command that we confront society, demanding the implementation of God’s moral law as part of the law of the land. When such feelings emerge, we must filter then through Scripture. God does not call us to be confrontational, but redemptive in our relationships with non-Christians. We confront fellow believers when they sin, and evangelize those that do not know Christ. We cannot legislate morality, but God can. The moral climate of our country will only improve as people come to know Christ and follow His leadership.
Yours for the fulfilling of the Great Commission,
THE NATURE AND ROLE OF
LAW
Judgment is the fruit
of justice and law defines justice.
All of us loath the though of judgment; very rarely do we hear the
subject exposited in our churches.
Yet we all insist upon it when our rights are violated. Interestingly, we are one of the most
unforgiving and litigious societies in history, yet we avoid discussing personal
accountability. We want justice,
but we do not want to be just. More
accurately, we want to define justice without being consistent, irrespective of
what the law or anyone else says.
The US Supreme Court reflects this attitude in what we call “judicial
activism.” Rather than allowing the
Constitution to define justice, the Court, in a myriad of opinions, ignores the
Constitution, overriding the will of the people in the process.
We feel uncomfortable talking about the judgment of God, not because we
don’t believe in judgment, but because Scripture assures us that we cannot
define justice nor avoid judgment; both are under His authority. Justice ensures judgment.
Let’s now explore the
third major section in this study:
LAW
AND MAN’S INABILITY TO GOVERN HIMSELF
God does not want man
to govern himself; that would be a quick trip to hell. Man has an insatiable appetite for
autonomy; it was part of his nature before the Fall. If Adam had not wanted to govern his own
affairs he would not have been tempted to the Serpent’s suggestion that he eat
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “For God doth know that in the day ye
eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing
good and evil.”[22]
Even Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, wrestled with His submission to the
governance of God.[23] We will not govern ourselves in heaven,
and He does not want us to govern ourselves on earth.
From the time of the Tower of Babel, men have been chased
the dream of establishing utopia – a system of government without any reference
to God. This was the objective in
Plato’s The Republic,[24]
and philosophers and statesmen alike have been mesmerized by this dream ever
since. Because God is gracious and
merciful, He has frustrated man’s every attempt to accomplish this
objective.
Men dream of utopia
because they want to be independent from God. Dick Halverson, the late chaplain to the
US Senate, use to publish the “Perspective,” a one-page challenge to business
and professional men.
In one of his issues he noted that the problems of our country could be
easily solved. We could empty the
prisons, cut the police force, eliminate crime, curtail the crippling cost of
welfare, and pay off the national debt – simply by obeying the Ten
Commandments. But man will have
none of it; we will destroy ourselves before surrendering our dream of
autonomy.
Before we can be
reconciled to God we must understand that we are alienated from God. Before this alienation can end, we must
surrender our craving for autonomy and declare our dependence upon God.
TWO PURPOSES OF THE LAW
One of the purposes of
the Mosaic Law is to teach us our depravity and need for Christ. Another purpose of the Mosaic Law is to
define and ensure justice. If we
could ensure justice, we wouldn’t see our depravity.
Therefore we see that
two of the purposes of the Law - to define and ensure justice and to reveal our
depravity and need for Christ - are mutually exclusive. In short, God commands justice in the
Law, and ensures that we are unjust by preventing us from reaching the goal of
creating utopia. In this we see His
grace.
LEGISLATING MORALITY
In an earlier issue we
explored the difference between legality and morality. Legality seeks to define morality, even
though apart from the Bible it can never do it perfectly. The legislature struggles knowing that
it cannot legislate morality. All
good law is stated negatively. When
the state establishes positive laws such as those pertaining to affirmative
action, it overloads the judicial system with the need for interpretation. This, in part, creates the “imperial
court” where the judges impose
their will on the people without the consent of the governed.
Law is used in
interpersonal relationships for two reasons: First, because of immaturity. At our home I establish a law that my
little grandson cannot play in the street.
He is too young to understand the danger, and so I enforce the law to
keep him from harms way. As he
matures, I need to take time to
explain why children shouldn’t play in the street. When we make rules that seem
nonsensical, and we refuse to explain their rationale, we encourage
rebellion. The explanation,
“Because I said so,” is at best inadequate. It probably reflects laziness on my
part; I don’t want to take time to discuss the validity of his challenging my
rule.
Second, we use law in
interpersonal relationships because of willfulness. People need to be restrained from sin
and harming themselves. The state
establishes maximum speed limits to not only protect the driver, but also
innocent people who happen to be in his way. If we make no rules regarding children
going to school, truancy would abound and those same people would later become a
burden on the state. Laws and their
commensurate penalties keep people from stealing.
Having established
this, note that you cannot relate to others on the basis of law. Precisely because we all sin, living in
a sinful world, we need an eagerness to please others combined with an eagerness
to forgive, in order for relationships to exist. If either of these two is missing, the
relationship will disintegrate.
When you assume the responsibility of the state and seek to ensure
justice in your relationship with others, you will be unable to forgive; for
remember, justice and forgiveness are mutually exclusive.
Conversely, when the
state confuses its job of ensuring justice with the need to forgive, injustice
reigns. Crime without punishment
breeds anarchy. Today we fail to
punish crime with the excuse that criminal behavior is the fault of the
environment. People are victims
because of their minority position, race, socio-economic position, etc. The state has no business trying to be
redemptive; efforts are almost always at the expense of justice. You cannot relate to people on the basis
of justice. This is why God calls
upon us to forgive.
LESSONS
The following are
illustrative of the lessons we should learn from this:
1 – In government, we
allow evil to continue because we fear that the removal of it will create a
greater evil. For example, most
people agree that there is such a thing as pornography, and that it is
wrong. But we have two
problems. First, we cannot agree on
what constitutes pornography.
Second, we also want to maintain freedom of expression, and fear that if
we define pornography too generally, we will infringe on this freedom. So we tend to be more tolerant of
pornography than we would perhaps like, because we fear the consequence of being
too harsh in seeking to eradicate it.
2 – We are content
with a lesser good because we doubt that we can create a greater good. For example, one of the great debates in
society is over public education.
Most agree that our schools have failed in their task of properly
educating our youth. However, we
are reluctant to do way with public education, for we doubt that we can create a
better system.
3 – The presence of
law implies the presence of transgression.
By way of illustration, in the 18th century in this country we
did not have 65mph speed limits.
The reason is obvious: no one could travel that fast. The presence of law reveals the threat
of sin. In this we see the dilemma
of government. If there were no
laws there would be not be any transgressors. But if law and accountability did not
exist, men would not submit to authority.
We will develop this more fully later, but note in the Garden of Eden;
Adam violated the only law God gave him.
CONCLUSION
As we close this
section on “law and man’s inability to govern himself,” notice that the Book of
Joshua closes with Israel possessing the land. The Book of Judges consists of a series
of cameos showing the Theocracy in practice. A cursory reading of Judges forces us to
conclude that from the start, the Theocracy never worked. Each episode shows the miserable failure
of Israel against the backdrop of God’s patience and grace. In truth, Israel was more focused on God
and His will when in captivity than when free.
The judges were not
part of the law. God instituted
them for pragmatic reasons because of Israel’s failure to follow the law. So the people demanded and received a
monarchy. Some argue that during
the reigns of David and Solomon, the system worked. It is a dubious argument, but if made,
understand that it happened because man “improved” on God’s system and
instituted the monarchy.
In either case, the
rest of the period of kings was a disaster. During this period the ten northern
tribes of Israel practiced Baal worship to such an extent that God used the
Assyrians to disperse them among the other conquered people in her empire. Today they are referred to as “the ten
lost tribes of Israel.”
And why not? They had forsaken the worship of the
true God for gods that are no gods.
What loss was there in being moved to foreign lands, which produced as
good or better crops as Israel? It
was a lateral move!
Later, God sent the
southern tribes of Judah into captivity in Babylon. From that time to the present, the Jews
have never experienced both political and religious freedom, except possibly for
brief moments when they were in rebellion.
What do we learn from
this? In the sense of following God
and obeying the law, Israel has done a better job when deprived of her freedom
than at any time she was ostensibly a Theocracy. Man will not live under the rule of God
without pain and opposition. His
lust for autonomy is so great that he will, without fail, rebel.
A sense of desperation
is essential for man to maintain his focus on God. Only to the degree that he sees his
relationship with God as an absolute essential for survival in the midst of pain
and tribulation, will he willingly submit.
Man will not even submit to the good without a sense of dependence. Without pain he will not perceive the
good to be good.
Lord Jesus, come
quickly,
THE
NATURE AND ROLE OF LAW
During the
construction of the Tower of Babel, God said, “Now nothing will be restrained
from them, which they have imagined to do.”[25] If the Genesis analysis of man is
accurate, and if this reflects how God perceives the corporate efforts of man,
we can see why God frustrates man’s endeavors, as He did at Babel.
Other biblical
accounts of man seeking to conquer and gain control include Assyria, Babylon
(named after Babel), and Rome. Each
time God intervened to stop them from accomplishing their goals. Then too there exists a host of
illustrations not included in Scripture.
The vision of a one-world government under the auspices of something like
the United Nations captures the imagination of many philosophers and
statesmen.
If such an effort
proved successful, we would lose our hope in God and become eternally lost. In the last issue we noted that two
objectives of the Mosaic Law were to define and ensure justice and to reveal the
depravity of man. But the depravity
of man precludes justice ever being ensured. Thus these two purposes of the Law work
against each other. God intended it
that way, not because He wants man to fail in his attempt to be righteous, but
rather because He does not want unrighteous man to succeed in his rebellion
against God.
God does not want man
to govern his own affairs any more than He wanted man to be successful in
building the Tower of Babel. To the
degree that man can bring order, peace, and security to his environment, he will
be inoculated from sensing his need for salvation. Christianity is a religion of rescue; it
is designed for the desperate.
Let’s now move to the
next major section in this series:
LAW
AND REQUEST
What is the difference
between a law and a request? The
first and most obvious difference is, law is obligatory, and a request is
not. Let me suggest a couple of
other differences that may not appear quite as obvious.
First, most laws have
the recipient’s best interest at heart, while requests generally have the
requester’s interest in mind. I
will again use my grandson’s playing in the street as an example. At our home I have a law that, under no
circumstance, can he play in the street.
I want to keep him from harm as autos speed past the house. My law is designed to protect him.
Now my grandson and I
enter the house and I ask him to go to the bedroom and fetch me my
slippers. This is not a law, but a
request; he does not have to do it.
But my request seeks my interest, not his. For the most part, this difference
between law and request holds true.
To the degree that
this is true, you would think that people would rather obey law than
request. I would rather follow that
which serves my interest rather than that which seeks the interest of
another. But, alas, such is not the
case. This should alert us that
something is terribly wrong with how we approach life. Interestingly, the Bible claims that
God’s law has both His and our best interest as its motivation.
Second, laws have
consequences, while requests don’t necessarily have them. By way of example, my wife and I are
sitting at the breakfast table and she gets up to do something else. As she leaves the table, I ask her to
pour me another cup of coffee. Is
this a law or a request? It depends
upon how she and I view it.
If my wife answers me,
“Do I have to?” I have to make a decision.
I can view it as a request and respond by saying, “No, of course you
don’t have to. I will do it
myself.” Or I can view it as a law
and say, “Yes, you have to. I am
head of this home and you are biblically obligated to obey me. Stop this nonsense and get me the cup of
coffee!”
I would be foolish to
convert my request for another cup of coffee into a law. But more importantly, if my wife
responded to my request with the words, “Do I have to?” it would indicate that
there is something terribly wrong in our marriage. An eagerness to please forms the core of
any healthy relationship.
THE NEED TO KNOW
You need to know what
a person wants in order to give it to him.
I remember when Leette and I were first married we desperately wanted to
please each other. I would come
home tired from a hard day, and think, “My wife has been in the house all day,
maybe she would like to go out this evening,” even though I would rather stay
home. When I asked her if she would
like to go out, she would think, “He has had a hard day and probably wants to go
out this evening,” even though she wanted to stay home.
We both went out
seeking to please the other, while both of us wanted to stay home. We finally learned that we needed to
know what the other person wants in order to give it to them. An eagerness to please has to be
combined with honesty.
It seems to me that we
should view the commandments of God from this perspective. Because our Lord Jesus saved us, because
we are His obedient servants, and because He loves us and does all things for
our good, we should be eager to please Him. He knows what we want, but gently
reminds us that His commands should be viewed as requests, simply because He is
eager to please us!
This may be what David
had in mind in Psalm 19:7-11:
“The law of the
LORD is perfect,
converting the soul: the
testimony of the LORD is sure, making
wise the simple. 8 The statutes of
the LORD are right, rejoicing the
heart: the commandment of the LORD is
pure, enlightening the eyes. 9
The fear of the LORD is clean,
enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:
sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. 11 Moreover by them is thy servant
warned: and in keeping of them there
is great reward.”
Again, Psalm 119:97-104: “O how love I thy law! it is my
meditation all the day. 98 Thou
through thy
commandments hast made me wiser
than mine enemies: for they are ever with me. 99 I have more understanding than all
my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. 100 I understand more than the
ancients, because I keep thy precepts. 101 I have refrained my feet from every
evil way, that I might keep thy word. 102 I have not departed from thy
judgments: for thou hast taught me. 103 How sweet are thy words unto my
taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! 104 Through thy precepts I get
understanding: therefore I hate every false way.”
LAW, THE LAST LINE OF
DEFENSE
When you view the
commandments of God as a law obligating you to perform in a certain way, it
indicates a breakdown in the relationship, as surely as my wife’s response, “Do
I have to?” Law is the last line of
defense in a deteriorating relationship.
Forcing your will upon another through a law indicates that you are
working towards damage control. By
that I mean, when you have played the trump card of “law,” you have run out of
options. When the other person
breaks the law, you are forced to make them face the consequences. At that point the relationship is
fractured.
For example, if a
couple came to you for counseling before marriage, would you encourage them to
have a pre-nuptial agreement before becoming husband and wife? There is nothing biblically wrong with
such an agreement; I know of no command that prohibits it. But no same person enters marriage with
a list of laws. Rather, love
implies an eagerness to please. A
request is enough.
What do you do when a
person makes a request that you do not want to meet? In an earlier issue we noted that the
force of law is in accountability.
The absence of accountability may not void the law, but it does strip it
of all effectiveness. In a certain
sense, this is true for requests as well.
So when we are asked
to do what we don’t want to do, we either consciously or unconsciously ask
ourselves, “Is the request valid and reasonable, or am I lazy and selfish? Will saying no put the relationship in
jeopardy? Do I care, or should I
care, if I lose the relationship?
Do I view myself as his ‘servant for Jesus’ sake?’[26]” In the final analysis, you evaluate the
cost/result ratio of the decision.
SEEKING THE BEST FOR
OTHERS
Never make laws out of
your desire to see people seek their best.
I Corinthians 7 with Paul’s instruction on celibacy affords a good
illustration. In this passage Paul
says that single people have a better opportunity to seek the things of Christ
than those married do.[27]
But he leaves the decision with the individual believer saying, “it is better to
marry than to burn.”[28]
The Roman Catholic Church, understanding the validity of Paul’s argument, makes
celibacy a law for those entering the priesthood.
We can easily do this
with our children as we seek to provoke them to godliness. But we must constantly remind ourselves
that a thirst for holiness comes from within the heart. Law is external, ignoring the
heart.
Making laws is easier
than influencing thinking. More
often than not, however, exercising this option ends in being counter-productive
to the relationship without accomplishing the desired objective.
CONCLUSION
The difference between
a law and a request is attitude. Do
you delight to do the will of God as both Jesus and the Psalmist testified, or
do you view His commandments as intrusive and restrictive, and therefore seek
ways to ignore them? We will
explore this in greater depth in the next issue, but evaluating your attitude
toward biblical commands will instruct you on how you perceive God. You cannot have it both ways: You cannot
argue that our Lord’s commandments are created with an eager desire to please
you and help you in life, and that your relationship with Him is marked by an
eagerness to please Him, and then ignore His commands by saying they are
cultural or non-essential.
His for a life of
obedience,
THE
NATURE AND ROLE OF LAW
In the August 18, 1997
issue of Time Magazine, they reported in an article entitled, “The Ties That
Bind,” that our culture couldn’t make up its mind regarding divorce. “Should breaking up be harder to
do? The debate over easy divorce
rages on.” After taking polls,
running tests on the pros and cons of divorce, etc., the “evidence” was
inconclusive.
Ultimately, the
decision rests in the hands of the spin-masters and their ability to garner
enough votes from the masses to affirm their positions. No objective decision can be made
because they exclude from the debate how Scripture addresses the question.
In part 4 we noted
that philosophically, certainty is found in either the subject or object. I think you are wonderful, and therefore
you are wonderful, etc. The only
objectivity obtainable is the opinion of the majority; most people agree with me
that you are wonderful. The Time
Magazine article on divorce clearly demonstrates the limitations of this
approach. Morality is the
subjective opinion of the majority.
If we are consistent we must admit that the only reason Hitler was wrong
in his endeavor to exterminate the Jews was, we won the war and we said he was
wrong! There is no objective basis
for concluding that his actions were immoral.
LAW
AND LOVE
This is the next major
section in our study on the subject of the nature and role of law.
Jesus said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. On these two
commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”[29] Earlier in His ministry He said,
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is
the law and the prophets.”[30]
Love
and the Golden Rule make law unnecessary.
All the requirements of the law are satisfied; you are free to do what
you want. I believe Martin Luther
once said, “Love God and do as you please.” The point: if you love God you will love
doing as He pleases.
In
the last issue of this series we explored the difference between law and
request. People wish to move from
request to law because of rebellion.
For example, a man enters into a bad marriage and knows that it was a
mistake. He wants out, but the
Bible gives him no out. So he goes
to Scripture to see if he can find some kind of loophole in God’s prohibition
against divorce and remarriage. He
either examines the commands to see if he can justify his desire, or he argues
that he is no longer under the law and can therefore do as he pleases.
In
either case, he insists that he genuinely loves God and wants His will. I have a problem counseling such a
person, for I do not know his motives or his sincerity when he says he genuinely
wants to do God’s will; only God knows.
I do know, however, what the Bible teaches, so I seek to dissuade him,
exegeting the command with him for his sake. As I oppose him, he can obfuscate and
justify himself. I am not smart
enough to evaluate beyond what the Bible says. As I stand in his way, for his sake, he
views me as his enemy.
WHO
TOLD YOU YOU WERE NAKED?
This question, asked
by God in Genesis 3:11 after Adam and Eve sinned, draws attention to an
important truth. How they knew that
they were naked was more important to God than the fact that they were
naked. God wanted to know, “Who
made it an issue?” How did they
lose their innocence?
This
probing question to Adam and Eve reveals the core of the issue in the
relationship between love and law.
By way of explanation, let me give several
illustrations:
In I
Timothy 3 Paul outlines the requirements for elders. In verse 2 he says he must be “the
husband of one wife.” A literal
translation reads, “a one-woman man.”
At face value, Paul prohibits digamy of every kind for those seeking to
be elders, and historically this is how the church has understood it.
A
man challenges this last paragraph and with the question, “How do you know that
this was the intent of Paul in I Timothy 3:2?” A more important question needs to be
asked before responding: Why do you want to know? Who made it an issue? Almost always the question is raised on
behalf of a divorced man who wants to be an elder and perceives that this verse
stands in his way.
The
man pushes to justify himself, insisting on the letter of the law with any and
all possible points of ambiguity.
Does Paul mean that if a man’s wife dies and he remarries he is barred
from becoming an elder? Supposing a
man fornicated with other women before he married? In the strict sense of the word, can we
say that he is a “one-woman man?”
People
argue that Paul had in mind polygamy rather than divorce and remarriage. There is no way I can know the motives
and intent of such people’s hearts, but it is a convenient argument; the state
prohibits polygamy and allows divorce and remarriage. Each individual knows in his heart
whether he loves God will all his heart and eagerly desires to do His will, and
God will judge him in that great day of reckoning.
In I
Corinthians 11:1-16, Paul teaches that a woman should cover her head when she
prays or prophesies. For years your
wife and daughters go to church, pray and teach Sunday School, etc. and never
covered their heads. Not that they
were rebellious; they never thought about the issue, even though they read I
Corinthians many times.
After
church one morning, “Sue” comes to your wife and says, “I am glad to see that
you are not wearing a hat. I just
read I Corinthians 11 and Paul’s unreasonable insistence on women covering their
heads. I always suspected that Paul
was a male chauvinist, and now I am convinced. These medieval efforts to suppress women
must be resisted, and I am glad you agree with me!”
Your
family has just lost its innocence.
“Who told you you were naked?
Who made it an issue?” Once
it becomes an issue you are forced to deal with it. You must now decide whether you consider
God’s commands arcane and restrictive, or whether you really do love God with
all your heart and are eager to please him.
You
may resist me at this point, suggesting that these are not the only two options,
and I agree. But the command is
clear. Why wouldn’t you want to
obey so simple a command? Each of
us must answer to God who understands every thought and motive of the
heart.
One
of your children approaches you regarding the use of the family car. He wants you to make some rules
regarding its use because he doesn’t feel that he has been treated fairly. You respond by saying, “Son, we love
each other; let’s not try to relate to one another on the basis of a bunch of
rules. When do you want to use the
car? Just ask me, and if it is
available, you can have it.”
But
the boy is not satisfied. He does
not think that it is “available” to him often enough. So he wants laws established to defend
his rights. When he does this, he
communicates that trust is missing and that the relationship is strained. In brief, he wants law because he
perceives a lack of love.
The
prohibition against lying if found in ninth of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt
not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”[31] As you know, it does not address lying
per se, but rather that I do not falsify any man’s words. I think that it is safe to assume that
most, if not all, know what this means.
For
example, a man is caught in a lie; he deceives another person into believing
that he could pay for a product when he knew that he couldn't. So, seeking to justify himself, he
argues, “Didn’t God deceive Saul in I Samuel 16:2?[32] And what about the midwives in Exodus
1:18-20; didn’t God bless them for lying to Pharaoh? Wouldn’t you lie to protect your
family? Supposing your
five-year-old daughter comes dressed atrociously with her mothers clothes and
make-up, and asks, ‘Daddy, am I dressed beautifully?’ what would you
say?”
He
push you, seeking to force you into conceding what you are reluctant to concede.
He wants to justify himself in his lie.
But his point is well made; there are times when you feel justified in
lying. When God commanded that we
not lie, did He have in mind that we shouldn’t affirm our children in their
endeavor to please, or lie in order to hide people from the harm of others?
I
don’t think so, but each of us knows in our hearts whether when we lie we love
God with all our hearts, and our neighbor as ourselves. When we so love God and our neighbor,
the law is fulfilled, and it is on this basis that God will judge us.
Walking
by faith,
God’s commandments, by their
very nature, are objective in their meaning, but how a believer chooses to apply
these commands is frequently subjective.
For example, Paul says in I Timothy 2:12: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp
authority over the man, but to be in silence.” The command is clear, but how to apply
it is not. Can she teach male
children in Sunday School? Can she
teach her own sons? When does the
child cross the line between being a child and a man?
Some
applications of commands are more objectively determined than others. It is easier, for example to determine
whether a person has committed murder than to determine whether he has loved his
neighbor. Thus, applications of
negative commands are easier determined than positive commands, simply because
with positive commandments, intent must be taken into consideration. When an assassin plunges a knife into a
man’s chest it is murder, but when a surgeon does the same, it is life saving
surgery. However, if the surgeon
dislikes the patient and is less careful than otherwise, and the patient dies,
is it murder? Only God, who knows
the heart, can decide.
So
you may ask, “How can I subjectively decide what the application of the commands
looks like? I suggest that you ask
and answer three questions:
1 –
What does the command say? (Be
ruthlessly honest when you answer this.)
2 –
Am I in a state of perpetual brokenness and submission to God as I seek to apply
His commands? Do I want to please
Him? Do I view His commands as laws
or requests?
3 –
Does my application follow the Golden Rule? In other words, would I want people
applying other commands using the same logic that I have used in this
command?
We
have been discussing how love and the Golden Rule make law unnecessary. When a person seeks to apply the law
with brokenness and in accordance with the Golden Rule, the law is
fulfilled. Closely related to this
is an examination of the relationship between law and self-denial. Let’s therefore take a brief look at
this subject.
Some
people like to approach self-denial in the same way that they believe the law
should be followed. However, law
differs from self-denial in the following ways: Law is objective while
self-denial is subjective – subjective in the sense that each person decides for
himself what it looks like. Law is
external, given to us by our authority, while self-denial is internal,
originating from personal conviction.
Therefore we see that others determine law, while each individual for his
own life determines self-denial. If
I command my children to have a quiet time each morning before breakfast and
fast twice each week, I give them a law.
But if I determine these same standards for myself, without reference to
any outside authority, I practice self-denial.
People
practice legalism when they impose their standards, usually in reference to
positive laws, upon others.
However, when we insist that others in the Body of Christ obey God’s
commands, usually in reference to negative laws, this is not legalism, it is
church discipline. I cannot charge
another with legalism if he confronts me when I break a commandment of God. If I am wise, I will thank him for his
willingness to watch for my soul.
When
a man practices discipline in his own life, because he has convictions that
these disciplines will help him accomplish his goals, this is not legalism. A disciplined man becomes legalistic if
he makes laws for himself outside of the commandments of God set forth in
Scripture, and concludes that His relationship with God is determined by his
keeping them. But discipline is
different from legalism; the two should not be confused.
People have always had
a love-hate relationship with law; they love its clarity while hating its
limitations. So too, when it comes
to self-denial, there is a love-hate relationship. People love the fact that they get to
choose what the application of self-denial looks like, but on the other hand,
they hate the fact that they will need to answer to God about the kind of
application they have chosen.
As
noted earlier, all good law is stated negatively. However, God introduces positive law in
His expectations of us because positive law reveals the heart, and heart
attitude is exceedingly important to God.
Since God alone knows the human heart, we are best served making only
negative laws when seeking to govern the behavior of others.
Positive
law, like actions involving self-denial, is ambiguous in that each person must
decide for himself what its application looks like. Like self-denial, positive law cannot be
measured. Thus, if you wish to
observe if people want to relate to God on the basis of law rather than love,
look at how they relate to positive law.
As
you know, Jesus had difficulty with the Pharisees over the Sabbath. By way of illustration, read the
following discussion Jesus had with them:
“At
that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; his disciples were
hungry,
and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 But when the Pharisees saw
it,
they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on
the
sabbath.’
3 He said to them, ‘Have you not
read what David did, when he was hungry,
and
those who were with him: 4 how he
entered the house of God and ate the bread of the
Presence,
which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but
only
for the priests? 5 Or have you not
read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in
the
temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than
the
temple
is here. 7 And if you had known what
this means, `I desire mercy, and not
sacrifice,'
you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of man is lord of
the
Sabbath.’”[33]
In
this passage, Jesus raises the question, What does keeping the Fourth
Commandment look like? In essence,
the Pharisees argued, “He
keeps the law best who does the least work.” It
is ironic that after Jesus rebuked the people in Matthew 11:20-27 for their
failure to repent,[34]
the Pharisees rebuke the disciples for violating the Pharisees’ interpretation
on how the positive commandment pertaining to the Sabbath should be kept.
Jesus’
disciples ate grain while walking through the fields on the Sabbath. Were they wrong? In answer, Jesus tells two stories:
First, He tells how David, while fleeing Saul, ate the shewbread in the
Tabernacle. Jesus affirms David in
his breaking the Mosaic Law. (We
will discuss this more in the next section.)
Second,
Jesus calls attention to the priest’s caring for the Temple on the Sabbath. Granted, it is the Lord’s work, but they
nonetheless violate the Fourth Commandment when they do it. Are the priests wrong? Jesus concludes with the
admonition, “Mercy
is better than Sacrifice.” By
quoting from Hosea 6:6, Jesus means that God much prefers a heart of spiritual
softness to an external observance of the law.
Jesus
calls for repentance and mercy; the Pharisees call for the people to meet the
Pharisees’ expectations on how the positive laws are obeyed. How did the Pharisees arrive at this
unhappy state? To understand, we
need to look at the Babylonian Captivity.
God gave Judah into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar because of Judah’s
willful disregard for God’s law.
The sins of Judah were many, but the two primary ones were idolatry (a
negative command) and not honoring the Sabbath (a positive command). The Jews had no difficulty determining
how to keep the negative command, but application of the positive command
presented a bit of a problem.
To
rectify this failure to honor the Sabbath, the Jews established the Synagogue
and the order of Scribes while in captivity in Babylon. As far as I can tell, God makes no
reference to these solutions being His desire. However, the people took the initiative
and created them to avoid repeating the problem that got God angry with them in
the first place. To their credit,
the Jews never again repeated this problem.
But
in doing so, they sought to relate to God on the basis of law – i.e., they
viewed keeping the law as a necessity rather than a privilege. Thus the letter of the law replaced the
spirit of the law. With God, the
heart, and only God can know the heart, is more important than the act. We have earlier observed how an act,
such as the use of a knife in the hands of a surgeon or an assassin, is
differentiated by intent. For this
reason, God excuses ignorance, for with God you are innocent when ignorant, even
if your action is wrong – simply because He knows your heart. Governments on the other hand, insist
that “ignorance in no excuse,” because they cannot know your heart’s
intent.
I
suggest four lessons from this:
First,
if I have a heart to please God, loving others as myself, then when I oppose a
person who breaks a negative commandment, I have their best interest at
heart. Instead of judging the
application of the positive commandments, I will allow others to interpret for
themselves what such applications looks like.
Second,
we must all live with the tension of wanting both security and freedom. In life, we cannot have both because the
two are mutually exclusive.
Railroad tracks afford the train security, while at the same time
restricting its freedom. The forced retirement program of the US government,
Social Security, restricts our freedom to spend all our money the way we wish
while young, yet it provides security for our old age. Life abounds with many illustrations of
the balance between security and freedom, but it is best practiced in the
Christian life through self-denial.
Third,
don’t seek to relate to God on the basis of law. In your marriage, as well as in most
relationships, you don’t relate to one another on the basis of rules and
regulations. So also, we have noted
that the desire to please our loved ones blurs the distinction between a law and
a request. God’s commandments
afford you opportunity to learn how to please Him; they are not the basis upon
which the relationship is established or maintained.
Fourth,
never view God’s commandments as punitive.
When relating to others, restrictions are not necessarily punishment, and
with God they never are punishment.
He designed all restrictions for your good. If you succumb to the temptation of
concluding that His law is punitive, you are guaranteed an unsatisfactory
relationship with Him.
This
concludes the fifth of six parts on The Nature and Role of Law. With the next issue we will begin to
explore the last section, the Mosaic Covenant. What role, if any, does it play in the
believer’s life today?
In
His firm grip,
Each year I find
myself musing over Jeremiah 8:20 "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and
we are not saved." I am in the fall
of life and the spiritual needs of the world are so great. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the
harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Matthew
9:38).
The
Dear Co-laborer letter will be on the Internet at
www.leadershipfoundation.org.
MOSAIC LAW
The
Old Testament indicates at least five reasons for the Mosaic
Law:
1 – It reveals, in part, the nature and character of
God.
2 – It gave Israel the rules for living under the
Theocracy.
3 – It exposed sin, thus revealing the need for
Christ.
4 – It was Israel’s means of sanctification.
5 – It gave Israel her culture.
There are a number of ways
you can divide the Mosaic Law. One
of the most common is:
a) - Ceremonial – Those laws dealing with ritual instituted by God
on Sinai. Included are feast days,
various kinds of sacrifices, and rites of purification.
b) - Moral – Those laws dealing with absolute standards of right
and wrong. They are summarized in
the Ten Commandments, and elaborated in passages such as Leviticus
18-20.
c) - Civil – These are laws dealing with daily commerce in Israel,
not of a moral nature. Included are
regulations dealing with how people dress, the care of livestock, and
disease.
d) - Dietary – Laws dealing with clean and unclean food.
Another way you can divide
the Mosaic Law is:
1) - Laws that cover sins that result in the need for sacrifice, but more
commonly, banishment from the community or death. These range from violating the moral law
to willfully violating the dietary laws.
2) - Those laws which require sacrifice and rites of purification. These include touching dead or unclean
things, women having babies, and vessels coming into contact with leprosy.
3) - Laws God establishes that have nothing to do with sin, but restrict
the behavior of people – e.g., a blemished man cannot be High Priest, bastards
cannot enter the congregation of the Lord, and none but the Levites can function
as priests.
We
have no way of knowing why God established many of these laws that restrict
people or render them unacceptable for certain privileges. Our reason cannot give an adequate
rationale, and God does not explain Himself. But we must constantly remind ourselves
that God’s commandments restricting behavior are never punitive, and when we
begin to think that they are, we guarantee ourselves a relationship with God
that questions His goodness. “What
does God have against bastards that they cannot enter the congregation of the
Lord? It wasn’t their fault that
they were illegitimate.” New
Testament believers may be tempted to ask, “Why does God punish women by
insisting that they cannot teach or have authority over men? In many cases they certainly are more
competent than men.”
1 – God has expectations He insists His people meet, reflected in the Old Testament Law and in the New Testament commands.
2 – Breaking the commandments of God has dire consequences. In the Old Testament, the national
consequences had to be temporal; for individual believers in both Testaments,
they may be temporal, but they certainly are eternal.
3 – Neither Israel as a nation, nor any descendent of Adam can relate to
God by any kind of works, including the works of the Law.
4 – God’s gracious covenant with Abraham ensures both the nation of
Israel and the individual believer that sin will not lead to the ultimate
rejection of God. Any immediate
rejection is redemptive and temporary.
5 – God’s grace does not mean that His laws and commandments can be
neglected, altered or considered negotiable. Even in the New Covenant promised
through Jeremiah, God says, “I will put my law within
them, and I will write it upon their hearts.”[35] When God fulfills His promises to Israel
in the future, His Law will remain unchanged.
At the time when God gave Israel the Law, He also expanded the rules and regulations of sacrifices. Until Mount Sinai, each person was able to offer his own sacrifice whenever and wherever he desired. The Law decreed that from Sinai on, only a Levite from the house of Aaron could offer sacrifices. Even more importantly, the sacrifices could not absolve a person when he defiantly broke the Law.
“And
the priest shall make atonement before the Lord for the person who goes astray
when
he sins unintentionally, making atonement for him that he may be forgiven. You
shall
have one law for him who does anything unintentionally, for him who is native
among
the sons of Israel and for the alien who sojourns among them. But the person who
does
anything defiantly, whether he is native or an alien, that one is blaspheming
the
Lord;
and that person shall be cut off from among his people. Because he has despised
the
word of the Lord and has broken His commandment, that person shall be completely
cut
off; his guilt shall be on him."[36]
Even on the Day of
Atonement, the one time each year the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies
sprinkling the blood of a sacrifice on the Mercy Seat, it was only effective for
“sins committed in ignorance.”
“Now
when these things have been thus prepared, the priests are continually entering
the
outer
tabernacle, performing the divine worship, but into the second only the high
priest
enters,
once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the
sins
of
the people committed in ignorance.”[37]
There was no sacrifice
available for those who defiantly broke the Law. When King David committed murder and
adultery, he understood that nothing in the sacrificial arsenal could help
him. Thus, he prayed, “For
thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt
offering. The sacrifices of God are
a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”[38]
From this we learn that if
the people became too wicked, God judged them harshly. We also know that if they obeyed the
Law, God blessed them.[39] A question remains: How far from the Law
can the people stray and still be assured that they will not provoke the
judgment of God? There can be no
answer. One infraction, no matter
how minute, exposes the people to the possible retribution of the Lord.
On
a large scale, this is exemplified by the nation of Israel. After receiving the
Law on Mount Sinai, Israel, because of sin, wandered in the wilderness forty
years. When Moses died and Joshua
took his place as leader of the people, God brought them into the Promised
Land. The Book of Joshua records
Israel’s struggles and victories in taking possession of the land. The Book of Judges records the
experiences of Israel living under God’s Law, having established itself in the
land. Through the tenure of the
Judges, the pattern repeated itself: The people break the Law – God sends the
oppressor (the Philistines, Midianites, Moabites, etc.) – the people repent –
God sends a deliverer (the Judge) – the deliverer dies – the people sin -….
Because the Law defines sin,
and because a Holy God cannot cohabit with sin, every individual loses his
assurance the moment he violates the Law.
Remember God made no provision in the sacrificial system for willful sin,
only that committed in ignorance.
God required of Israel
a frequent remembrance of His deliverance from the slavery of Egypt to show
their dependence upon Him for that deliverance, in lieu of a personal conversion
experience. The Law gave God’s
standards and the people were expected to obey. Failure to comply meant either death or
banishment from the community.
People like King David were not executed because of God’s grace – a grace
made possible by the propitious death of Christ. Interestingly, nothing in the Mosaic Law
ensured people that if they broke God’s Law His grace would pardon them. David prays, “The
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God,
thou wilt not despise.”[40]
Scripture gives no indication where David got such a notion. We believe it came from God because we
believe the Psalms are Holy Writ.
God
never says the Law is impossible to keep.
If, in the Old Testament, God had called for conversion based on an
acknowledgment of sin, He would have had to tell the Jews that His Law was
impossible to keep – an intrinsic defect in the system He created. If, on the other hand, keeping the Law
was key to salvation, two things would be true: 1 – A person could be saved by
works, and 2 – God would have to make obedience to the Law relative, for no one
can keep the Law perfectly. In such
a case the death of Christ would have been superfluous.
Thus,
He assumed their ability to obey the Law, and, rather than calling for personal
conversion, asked them to acknowledge dependence and gratitude for His
deliverance and preservation:
“And
thou shalt speak (recite) and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to
perish
was
my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and
became
there a nation, great, mighty, and populous: And the Egyptians evil entreated
us,
and
afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage: And when we cried unto the Lord God
of
our
fathers, the Lord heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labour,
and
our
oppression: And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and
with
an
outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders:
And
he
hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that
floweth
with
milk and honey. And now, behold, I
have brought the firstfruits of the land, which
thou,
O Lord, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God, and
worship
before
the Lord thy God.”[41]
When the nation failed
to acknowledge dependence upon God, violating His commandments, He sent them
into captivity, either in their own country, or the country of their enemy. Crushed and humbled, they acknowledged
their dependence upon God for deliverance, repenting of their sin. Captivity reminded them of Egypt that
reminded them of their dependence upon God. At no time did God leave His people in
captivity, and He promises a future restoration of Israel.
There
was no call to personal conversion in the Old Testament, only a confessed
acknowledgement of dependence upon God based on past history. This deliverance, an act of God’s grace,
and Israel’s acknowledged dependence, became the basis by which people could
expect to be saved. Nevertheless,
only those regenerated by the Holy Spirit (like David) were able to understand,
as confirmed by the Apostle Paul: “For
they are not all Israel which are of Israel.”[42]
When reading the Torah I am
struck with the tediousness of God’s Law.
He not only outlines in meticulous fashion the details of what He wants
done, He also demands that these details be meticulously followed. There probably are many ways a person
registers his dependence upon God.
Under the New Covenant, we principally acknowledge this dependency by
recognizing our depravity and need of Christ’s salvation. In the OT, that dependence was, in part,
acknowledged by faithfully following the minutia of God’s regulations. Thus, we see that it is not the area in
which we acknowledge our dependence that ultimately matters, but the fact that
we do so. Again, as King David
confessed, “a
broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”[43]
In
Deuteronomy 28:1-44 God instructs His people to rehearse the blessings He will
bestow upon the nation if they obey, and the curses He will plague them with if
they disobey. We disobey God
because we think that we gain more in disobedience than obedience; “His Law
prohibits me from obtaining what I want, what I feel to be of value.” The blessings and curses of Deuteronomy
28 reveal that obedience is of greater value than disobedience. When I violate God’s Law to obtain what
I want, I lose more than what I gain.
This, in essence, is the lesson God teaches in Deuteronomy 28. Obedience is always more profitable than
disobedience. What we obtain,
however, is not salvation, but eternal blessing rather than eternal loss. For salvation is, and has always been,
apart from the works of the Law.
In
His bonds,
I
have saved for last possibly the most controversial aspect of “The Nature and
Role of Law,” the place (if any) that the Mosaic Law plays in the believer’s
life. The church is divided on this
issue. Is the New Testament people of God obligated to keep the Mosaic Law? Those who answer in the affirmative
argue that the believer is obligated to keep all Old Testament laws unless they
are repealed in the New
Testament.
For
example, Paul sets aside many of the ceremonial aspects of the Law with his
statement, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in
respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a
shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”[44] From this we can conclude that the
dietary laws, along with those pertaining to feast days, are no longer
obligatory for the New Testament believer.
Conversely, others argue that the Mosaic Law plays an important
role in the life of New Testament believers in the sense that they can observe
and be instructed by it,[45]
but not obligated to obey it.
People embracing this position argue that the New Testament believer is
not obligated to keep any of the Old Testament laws unless they are repeated in the New Testament.
For
example, all of the Ten Commandments are repeated in the New Testament with the
exception of the fourth: “Remember
the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all
thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou
shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor
thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore
the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”[46]
Those
arguing for the continuity of the Mosaic Covenant face the following problem: no
one actually believes that all Old Testament laws should apply in the New
Testament unless repealed in the New Testament. For example, Deuteronomy 23:2 says,
“A bastard shall not enter into the
congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into
the congregation of the Lord.”
I
know of no church that practices this, and this is merely one of many such
examples.
Acts
15 records a dispute that arose in the early church regarding the Law:
“And certain men which came down
from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the
manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.”[47] Although nobody in the early church
disputed that God’s grace demonstrated through the propitious death of Jesus
Christ was the basis of salvation,
Luke records that, according to some, circumcision (something required under the
Old Testament Law) was a condition
for salvation. Thus Luke
continues, “But there rose up
certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful
to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.”[48]
At
the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 the Apostles debated the question of whether
Gentile converts were obligated to keep the Mosaic Law and thus should be
circumcised, not whether circumcision saved a person. None can call themselves believers apart
from faith in Jesus Christ as the only way to the Father.[49]
By
way of illustration, Paul says, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not
inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters,
nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with
mankind.”[50] In this passage Paul is not arguing that
if you don’t practice these crimes you can go to heaven. Rather, he says that if you do violate
these commands you cannot go to heaven.
So too at the Jerusalem Council, the question wasn’t whether keeping the
Mosaic Law was sufficient to save, but rather whether Gentiles believers were
obligated to keep the Law.
The
Jerusalem Council concluded: “Therefore my judgment is that we should not
trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to
abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is
strangled and from blood. For from
early generations Moses has had in every city those who preach him, for he is
read every sabbath in the synagogues."[51] Gentile
converts to Christ need not keep the Law of Moses.
Those
arguing against the authority of Old Testament Law over the life of the New
Testament believer must overcome Jesus’ apparently contradictory statement from
the Sermon on the Mount:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or
the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven
and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till
all be fulfilled. Whosoever
therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so,
he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do
and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of
heaven.”
Here
is my analysis:
Jesus
uses two different words for the two times “fulfill” appears in this
passage. In v. 17 the word can
mean “To show it forth in its true
meaning,” or
“To complete, finish, bring to an
end.” The context or your theological bias
must decide. The other word for
“fulfill,” used in v. 18, takes up five and a half columns of meanings in the
Greek – English Lexicon, and can mean “until all has been fulfilled” or
“until all has
happened.”
Note
that Jesus gives a double condition: “Until heaven and earth pass” and
“Until all be fulfilled.” So
the passage can mean, “Until heaven
and earth pass into non-existence, every dot and comma of the law will
stand,” or
it can mean, “Until all of the law
is fulfilled, heaven and earth will not pass away.” The
context must decide.
If
the meaning is “Until heaven and
earth pass into non-existence, every dot and comma of the law will
stand,” how
do we reconcile Paul’s repeal of specific Old Testament commands? Is Paul the least in the Kingdom, for he
taught that the “least” of the commandments were abolished in Christ?[52] Reading the New Testament as a whole
encourages interpreting Jesus’ statement as meaning that the authority of the
Mosaic Law could now lapse because He had fulfilled it.
Jesus
fulfilled the Mosaic Law in at least two senses. First, He completely kept the Law, never
violating any part of it. This made
Him eligible to be our substitute on the cross. Second, He fulfilled what the Law
promised, namely that God would provide a way to pardon our sins while
maintaining His standard of justice.
Matthew 5:17-19 means that the entire divine purpose prophesied in the Law must take place; not one aspect will be annulled until all is fulfilled. It was fulfilled in the death of Christ on the cross, and thus Paul is not “least in the Kingdom.”
We
could argue all day about how the various passages in the New Testament
regarding the Law should be interpreted.
All of the Ten Commandments, with the exception of the Fourth, are
repeated in the New Testament. No
individual or group, of which I am aware, keeps the Old Testament Law in its
entirety, not even the Seventh Day Adventists. Who checks the genealogy of his
congregation to ensure that no bastard for the past ten generations attends his
church?
As
best I can understand, the reason people argue for the continuity of the Mosaic
Law centers around two objectives.
The first is the desire to mandate a Sabbath on which the body of Christ
is to gather. Ironically, although
the Mosaic Law requires that no work be done on the Sabbath, nowhere in either
the Old or New Testament exists a command to gather one day out of seven. Rest, not gathering, is the requirement
of the Fourth Commandment.
The
second, as discussed in the series on eschatology, is the desire of the
institutional church to replace the nation of Israel in the affections of
God. If this is your objective,
then you need a set of laws to govern the institution of the church, and these
are found in the Mosaic Covenant.
If this is not your objective, and the church is an organism and not an
institution, you have no need for carrying the Mosaic Law into to the New
Testament.
As
I said, as best I understand, these are the two principle reasons why people
feel it important to argue for the continuity of the Old Testament Law of
Moses. If you believe that the
church replaces Israel or that the Bible commands that believers meet one day
out of seven, note the following:
1 –
As already noted, the fourth commandment requires rest, not gathering. No commandment in either the Old or New
Testament mandates gathering one day a week.
2 –
I know of no tradition in the Christian church that seeks to obey all Old
Testament law unless repealed in the New Testament. Laws pertaining to bastards, wearing
clothes with various threads, and planting more than one crop in a field, are
merely illustrative.
3 –
As mentioned earlier in this issue, if you interpret Matthew 5:17-19 to mean
that the continuity of the Mosaic Covenant exists until “heaven and earth pass
away,” Paul must be judged “least in the kingdom of God,” for he violated the
“least” of the commandments and taught others to do the same as he himself says
in Colossians 2:16-17.
Although it is true that
this issue of the continuity of the Mosaic Law is much debated in the church, it
seems best to me to assume that this system of Law has been done away with in
Christ and that we are only obligated to obey those commands found in the New
Testament. This, of course, does
not mean that the believer is void of moral restraint. Quite the contrary; we are obligated to
keep all the commandments of the New Testament, which reiterate all Ten
Commandments with the exception of the one dealing with the Sabbath.
United by our commonality in
Christ,
As
is the case with all literature, there are certain rules that must be observed
when reading the Bible. For
example, you must interpret the meaning of words by the context in which they
are used. “Don’t be cross with me
as I pick up my cross and cross the street.” This sentence uses the word “cross”
three times in three different ways.
The context lets you know each of their meanings.
As
you study Scripture keep three rules in mind. First, the believer is free to do
whatever the Bible does not prohibit.
Of course, the Holy Spirit may prohibit you from doing something not
prohibited in the Bible, such as gambling, but you cannot make your convictions
normative for others.
Second, positive biblical
examples affirm personal practice, but they do not bind. For example, our Lord Jesus never
married. If I feel led to live a
life of celibacy, Jesus’ example affirms my right to do so. But I am not bound by His example to
never marry.
Third, biblical example
never negates a command. The Bible
says, concerning Samson, “Then his father and his
mother said unto him, Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy
brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the
uncircumcised Philistines? And Samson said unto his father, Get her for me; for
she pleaseth me well. But his
father and his mother knew not that it was of the Lord, that he sought an
occasion against the Philistines: for at that time the Philistines had dominion
over Israel.”[53] This, however, does not mean that the
believer can marry an unbeliever.
In
part 12 of this series we looked briefly at some Old Testament laws that are not
repealed in the New Testament and that most, if not all, New Testament believers
believe are no longer binding. Let
me elaborate on some of these commands:
“No
man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer
the offerings of the Lord made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come
nigh to offer the bread of his God.”[54] I remember communicating
with a brother who believes in the continuity of the Mosaic Law, and he said
this law applies to pastors in the New Testament, as affirmed by the Fathers of
the early church. Most churches and
denominations, however, do not disqualify a candidate for the ministry because
of a blemish on his body.
“You are to keep My
statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not
sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds
of material mixed together.”[55] In this passage we note three
prohibitions, not repealed in the New Testament, and considered by the all the
churches of which I am aware, to be no longer binding.
“A
bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth
generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord.”[56] Once again, I am confident that few, if
any, congregations check ten generations of the genealogy of their congregates
for illegitimacy, and nothing in the New Testament indicates that this law of
Moses is repealed.
“And ye shall keep my
statutes, and do them: I am the Lord which sanctify you. For every one that curseth his father or
his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his
mother; his blood shall be upon him.”[57] I know of no church (or group of
believers) that advocate keeping this law of Moses (although I am sure there are
some parents who are tempted).
Our
Savior kept all of the Mosaic Law; He was the bridge between the Old and New
Testaments. His fulfilling the Law
qualified Him to be the perfect substitute for our sin. The people who lived during the earthly
life of Christ were likewise obligated to keep the Law. Thus He says, “The scribes and the
Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe,
that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do
not.”[58] Jesus charged the Pharisees with
hypocrisy, not false teachings. He
tells the people to obey all the Pharisees taught from
Moses.
Even iff we ignore the
numerous references in the Apostle Paul’s writings to the effect that we are no
longer under the Law, we still have to conclude that none are consistent in
keeping those laws not repealed in the New Testament. Therefore if we argue for the continuity
of the Mosaic Law, we ought to be forthright in admitting that we don’t even try
to keep them; like the Pharisees, we do not practice what we
preach.
The
church is motivated to argue for the continuity of the Mosaic Law, if for no
other reason than to bring into the New Testament the Fourth Commandment:
“Remember the sabbath day,
to keep it holy. Six days shalt
thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord
thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter,
thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is
within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and
all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the
sabbath day, and hallowed it.”[59]
In
the Old Testament, the Sabbath was a day of rest, not of gathering. Israel gathered three times a year at
the Tabernacle: Passover, Weeks, and Ingathering.[60] On the Sabbath, they refrained from work
and travel.
During the Babylonian
captivity, the Hebrews instituted two systems to ensure that they would not
again become the objects of God’s chastisement. First they instituted the order of
Scribes. These were learned men
whose task it was to learn the Mosaic Law and teach it to the people. We don’t know for sure, but Ezra may
have been the first scribe. Second,
they instituted the synagogue and required the people to attend on the Sabbath
to listen to the scribe teach the Law.
Jesus, during His earthly
ministry, attended the synagogue “as was His custom.”[61] But He never commented on the importance
of synagogue attendance. There is
no command in either Testament to the effect that God’s people are to gather one
day out of seven; it is a tradition (and a good one) instituted by man in his
endeavor to please God.[62]
The
author of Hebrews says, “There remains therefore a
Sabbath rest for the people of God.”[63] The word used for “Sabbath
rest” was coined by the author of Hebrews and is used only here in the New
Testament. It is the only time
“Sabbath” appears in Hebrews, and “Sabbath” done not appear in any New Testament
literature after Acts, except Colossians 2:16 were Paul uses the word in a
negative sense.
Gathering as the people of
God on the Lord’s Day is a wonderful tradition, one that I believe should be
encouraged. But we cannot compel
believers to meet on Sunday simply because there is no command to that effect in
the Bible.
In
the Gospels our Lord rebuked the religious leaders:
“Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.”[64]
Jesus charged these
religious leaders with two wrongs.
First, they made the traditions of men equal in importance with the
commandments of God, such as washing of hands. Second, they ignored the commandments of
God. Generally, when you find a
person doing one of these wrongs, they are guilty of both. The following are merely illustrative of
this phenomenon.
Some Christian groups have a
policy that its members cannot participate in the charismatic movement while at
the same time allowing divorced men in positions of
leadership.
The
church sends women missionaries who on the mission field teach men while
prohibiting polygamy.
We
insist on regular church attendance while allowing our members to involve
themselves in litigation with fellow Christians.
Women elders with short hair
and uncovered heads serve grape juice for communion.
Let
us resolve to be the obedient servants of Christ, keeping the commands of the
New Testament rather than the traditions of men.
Yours for a life of
obedience,
THE NATURE AND ROLE OF
LAW
Luke tells us in Acts that
“Saul,
still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to
the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that
if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to
Jerusalem.”[65] It was on his trip to
Damascus that Saul of Tarsus encountered the Lord Jesus. When
Jesus accused Saul of opposing Him, He did not indict Saul with violating His
Law. Saul had done no
wrong.
Later in his life,
Saul (now Paul) testified before Agrippa that Jesus said to him on the Damascus
road,
“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.”[66] Evidently the Holy Spirit had been working in
Paul’s life prior to his conversion.
This may have included a sense of discomfort and guilt when he witnessed
the stoning of the martyr Stephen.
We cannot tell. But whatever
the nature of the “goading” by God, Paul had no reason to believe he had in any
way transgressed God’s commandments.
His mission to Damascus was, from an Old Testament perspective, a noble
one; he sought to keep the True religion pure.
When writing to the
church at Philippi, he boasts in his pedigree saying, “Concerning zeal, persecuting the
church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”[67] From Paul’s perspective, he kept the Law
– a remarkable statement from a man who later calls himself “the chief of sinners.”[68] The point, however, is that when Paul
met Jesus en route to Damascus he viewed himself as circumspect in his
relationship with God and blameless in keeping the Law. And yet, God called him His enemy.
I cannot imagine the
trauma experienced by Saul when he pondered the implications of Jesus’
accusation. How would you feel if
you had given your life in dedication to what you believed to be the will of
God, only to discover that your life was in opposition to the will of God? Luke records, “And Saul got up from the
ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by
the hand, they brought him into Damascus.
And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.”[69] We
cannot know what raced through the mind of Saul as he waited in the room in
Damascus for the healing touch of Ananias, but with a bit of sanctified
imagination, we can see him wrestling with how such a thing could have
happened. How could he be
“touching the
righteousness, which is in the law, blameless,” while at the same time the enemy of
God?
IMPOTENCE OF THE LAW
This may very well
have been the moment that Paul understood the impotence of the Law in man’s
ability to find favor with God.
During his ministry, he constantly called attention to the Law’s
inadequacy.
To the church at Rome
he wrote: “You are
not under the law, but under grace.”[70]
“Likewise,
my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you
may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we
may bear fruit for God.”[71]
To the Corinthians
Paul wrote: “To the
Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law I became as
one under the law -- though not being myself under the law -- that I might win
those under the law. To those
outside the law I became as one outside the law -- not being without law toward
God but under the law of Christ -- that I might win those outside the
law.”[72] Note that Paul says, “I became as a Jew.”
When he came to Christ he became a citizen of Heaven, and ceased, in his
own eyes, being a Jew. In the same
way he practiced the Law when with those for whom the Law was important, but
Paul felt no obligation to keep the Mosaic Law, only the commandments of
Christ.
In II Corinthians,
Paul addresses the influence of Judiazers in the life of the church. Even though they call themselves
ministers of Christ,[73]
Paul refers to them as “false apostles, deceitful
workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ,”[74]
for they taught that the Corinthian believers had to practice the Mosaic Law in
order to please Christ. These
antagonists of Paul argued for the continuity of the Mosaic Covenant. When you live under the Law you tend to
measure your worth before God by the degree to which you keep the Law. Performance influences your position in
eternity, but it has nothing to do with your relationship with Christ. When you live under Law, you are forced
to think of external behavior, the keeping of the Law. When you live under grace, you are
forced to think of internal behavior, i.e. - that which pleases the indwelt
Christ. In a moment we will see the
critical importance of this difference.
When writing to the
churches in Galatia, Paul says: “Wherefore the law was our
schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no
longer under a schoolmaster.”[75]
Paul warns the Corinthians:
“For we must all appear before the
judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to
what he has done in the body.”[76] When you stand in the presence of God,
giving account for your life, imagine your response to God when He asks you the
following:
“How was your prayer
life?” You respond by pointing out
that you daily came before Him in prayer, registering your dependence upon
Him. He points out that your prayer
life was lacking, for you were to “pray without ceasing.”[77]
You
ask Him if He would change the subject, and He asks, “How was your time in the
Word of God?” After you comment on
your Bible reading program, etc., He reminds you that you were to allow the
“Word
of Christ (to) dwell in you
richly,”[78]
suggesting that you failed in this area of your life.
Next
He calls upon you to give account for your evangelism. Embarrassed, you ask again if He would
change the subject. So He asks you
to explain your keeping His command to love your wife. Feeling a bit better about this, you
point out that you in fact did love her.
He retorts, “As Christ loved
the Church?”[79]
It
becomes immediately apparent to you that the Savior can find fault with you in
any area of your life that He pleases.
Paul discovered this regarding his own life while on the road to
Damascus. The Law is impotent in
its ability to help you to be “blameless”
simply because much of the Law (as well as the commandments of Christ in the New
Testament) defies specific application in your life. What do adequate prayer, evangelism, and
love look like?
God
is absolutely consistent, but He is not predictable. You can no more predict how God will
evaluate you on the Day of Judgment than Paul when He met Jesus en route to
Damascus. If you think you can, you
have an inadequate understanding of God.
From
this, what should we learn? Let me
suggest the following:
First, if God does fault you
on the Day of Judgment, as He most probably will, your best response is that of
King David when God charged him with sin: “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin
is ever before me. Against thee,
thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be
justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.”[80] Your relationship with Him was
established by grace, and if grace fails you at your Reckoning, then all is
lost. Freely admit to Him that your
ability to please Him rests solely on His willingness to find favor with
you.
Second,
remember that God does not want you to be able to predict how He will respond in
these and other areas of your life.
If you are confident that He will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant,”[81]
you will cease being dependent upon Him.
His unpredictability keeps you broken and humble before Him, which is the
only safe posture to maintain with God.
Third,
although this may appear contradictory, your relationship with God had nothing
to do with your performance; it was His performance on the Cross that
established the relationship. You
must carefully maintain a distinction between God holding you accountable for
all you do, on the one hand, while remembering that your relationship with Him
rests in His grace alone. Grace
does not eliminate accountability, just as forgiveness does not eliminate
consequences. (If, in a moment of
despair, you jump from a tall building, God will forgive you, but He will not
eliminate the consequences.) Grace
simply ensures that your relationship with God has nothing to do with your
performance.
By
His sovereign grace,
You
find two kinds of law in the Old Testament:
Moral Law not rooted in
time. These laws deal with the
nature and character of God. They
encompass the Ten Commandments and possibly those Laws requiring the death
penalty when violated. For
example:
“And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the
Lord which sanctify you. For every
one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath
cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him. And the man that committeth adultery
with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's
wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. And the man that lieth with his father's
wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to
death; their blood shall be upon them.
And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be
put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them. If a man also lie with mankind, as he
lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall
surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. And if a man take a wife and her mother,
it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be
no wickedness among you. And if a
man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the
beast. And if a woman approach unto
any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they
shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”[82]
Non-Moral Law dealing with
specific issues rooted in time. These are not part of God’s nature. These laws include ceremonial and
dietary considerations. Note what
God says through His prophet Isaiah:
“Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give
ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your
sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams,
and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of
lambs, or of he goats. When ye come
to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my
courts? Bring no more vain
oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the
calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn
meeting. Your new moons and your
appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear
them. And when ye spread forth your
hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will
not hear: your hands are full of blood.
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before
mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the
oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.”[83]
I
use Isaiah because he discourages the people from keeping these commands because
of the hardness of their hearts. It
is interesting to note that God does not say this about the Moral Commands; He
does not say, “Because of your hard hearts, go ahead, steal, murder, and
fornicate.” God wants His Moral Laws obeyed irrespective of our hearts.
Some of the non-moral laws
of God are found in the Old Testament but not the New Testament, such as those
dealing with sacrifices and feast days.
Likewise, some are found in the New Testament that are not found in the
Old Testament, such as head covering and the role of women in the church.
Non-moral laws are no less
authoritative and absolute than moral laws; God wants all of His laws
obeyed. A non-moral law is as
binding as a moral law.
Furthermore, you cannot predict how God will react to the violation of
His law. For example, Moses struck
the rock[84]
and was unable to enter the Promised Land (a non-moral law), while his brother
Aaron made a golden calf (a moral law) and there is no record of God holding him
accountable.[85] The only solution to the
unpredictability of God’s responds to the breaking of His commands is
obedience. A life of obedience is
the only safe way to relate to God.
This concludes our study of
the nature and role of law. The
following is a summary of its suggested importance:
1 –
Absolute law is attested by judging.
All people everywhere believe in absolute law by virtue of the fact that
they judge. No one is capable of
not judging. The debate centers
around who gets to define the absolutes.
2 -
The scientific method was founded on the belief that a sovereign God reigns over
and transcends creation, and that He established inviolable laws governing the
universe. With the erosion of this
belief in the God of Scripture, certainty that such laws exist begins to
wane. University professors despair
because they see in their students the fruit of secularism: a profound
skepticism of anything absolute.
They worry that this skepticism undermines the scientific method, for
agnosticism questions the foundation upon which the scientific method
exists.
3 –
Philosophically, certainty can be found in either the subject or object. “I think you are wonderful and therefore
you are,” or “You think I am wonderful and therefore I am.” Because there is no objective way of
determining this, our certainty is subjective. For example, we say that a certain
length equals a meter, but the standard was arbitrarily set in the first
place. True objectivity can only
come from the sovereign of the universe who controls all and determines the
standards.
4 –
Morality and legality differ in that legality seeks to define morality. Morality is absolute, but can only be
defined by the Supreme Court of the universe to whom all must give account. The force of law is in
accountability. Governments form
legislatures that sit in session seeking to attain morality by defining
legality. Thus, their laws are
relative, for the legislature of one country may establish laws contrary to
those established by the legislature in another country. The laws of God are absolute and
therefore in the Old Testament there was no need for a legislature; God spoke at
Sinai and His law is absolute.
5 –
Forgiveness is the setting aside of justice. Just people don’t need forgiveness. For this reason people cannot relate to
one another on the basis of law.
God requires the state to execute justice lest oppression and injustice
reign. He requires the individual
to forgive.
6 –
Grace and forgiveness do not eliminate consequences. You see this when you forgive your child
while requiring him to live with the consequences of his decisions. We are incapable of autonomy without the
elimination of consequences. For
this reason, you will be tempted to conclude that grace and forgiveness in
Christ eliminates eternal consequences.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
7 –
The Law of the Harvest, while a law, must be applied only in the eternal. Although it is true that people often
reap what they sow in the temporal, this is not always the case. A law, by definition, can have no
exceptions. (This is why we call
the breaking of scientific law a miracle.)
When you apply the Law of the Harvest to the temporal, like Job’s three
friends, you distort and confuse God’s promise of justice.
8 –
A purpose of Law is to teach us our depravity and need for Christ. Law must define and ensure justice. Therefore we see that these two purposes
of the Law are mutually exclusive.
When God imputed the sin of Adam to the human race, He ensured that we
would be unjust, while commanding that we be just. In this we see His grace.
9 –
Man will not live under the Law of God without opposition; his lust for autonomy
is so great that, without fail, he will rebel. Therefore God brings pain into the lives
of those He loves to help them sense their dependence and need for Him.
10
– Jesus said that love fulfills the Law; if you properly love you will keep the
Law. People want to move from love
to law because of rebellion. We
test the limits of our liberty with the exactitude of law because we perceive
pleasing God out of love keeps us from doing what we want and therefore is not
in our interest. Leveraging with
law is the last line of defense in a deteriorating relationship.
11
– The commandments of God are objective; their application is subjective. God says, “I will not allow a woman to
teach or have authority over a man.”
The command is clear and objective, but how you apply it will be
subjective, e.g., when does a boy become a man? Some commands are more objective than
others are. You will find it easier
to determine what murder looks like than what loving your wife looks like.
12
– You must decide if Scripture requires New Testament believers to keep the
Mosaic Law in those cases in which it is neither repeated nor repealed in the
New Testament. Weigh this carefully
and be consistent, for how you live the Christian life will, in large manner, be
influenced by it.
13
– The distinction between moral and non-moral law in Scripture does not warrant
you considering one more authoritative and absolute than the other. You are obligated to keep all the
commandments in the New Testament, moral or otherwise.
14
– It is impossible to predict God’s response to the violation of His
commands. You are most safe by
being His obedient servant.
Lord-willing, in the next
issue I will begin a study on SIN.
Since sin is something common to all of us, there ought to be ample
application. Meanwhile let us
continue to pray for the quick return of Christ. Then the question of sin will be
moot.
His….Yours,
[1] Cf. Romans 3:20
[2] Cf. I Corinthians 4:1-5
[3] Cf. I Corinthians 5
[4] Cf. Exodus 20:19
[5] Cf. Matthew 18:15-18; I Corinthians 5
[6] Cf. also Hebrew 9:1-5.
[7] Yom is Hebrew of “day;” Kippur for “covering.” The Day of Atonement is the Day of Covering.
[8] Joshua 7:19
[9] Matthew 18:21-35.
[10] Romans 13:1-5.
[11] Cf., e.g., Exodus 20:5-6, 34:6-7, Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 32:35,43, Psalm 94:1. These references deal with God holding man accountable for sin and thus in the need of forgiveness.
[12] Numbers 35:24-27.
[13] Deuteronomy 17:6.
[14] Ecclesiastes 8:11.
[15] Micah 6:8.
[16] Cf. Leviticus 19:18.
[17] Psalm 73:17.
[18] Cf. Job 42:7-10.
[19] Hebrews 11:6.
[20] Cf. Revelation 20:11-15.
[21] Cf. I Corinthians 5:5.
[22] Genesis 3:5.
[23] Cf. Matthew 26:39-46.
[24] Plato was a Greek philosopher who lived 427-347 BC. In The Republic, Socrates, using the didactic method, sought to teach the people how to establish the perfect republic.
[25] Cf. Genesis 11:6.
[26] Cf. II Cor 4:5.
[27] Cf. vv. 32-35.
[28] Cf. v. 9.
[29] Matthew 22:37-40.
[30] Matthew 7:12.
[31] Exodus 20:16.
[32] 1 Samuel 16:2: “And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the LORD said, Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the LORD.”
[33] Matthew 12:1-8.
[34] Cf. esp. v. 25: “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, ecause thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes."
[35] Jeremiah 13:33
[36] Numbers 15:28-31
[37] Hebrews 9:6-7
[38] Psalm 51:16-17
[39] Cf., e.g., Exodus 19:5
[40] Psalm 51:17
[41] Deuteronomy 26:5-10
[42] Romans 9:6
[43] Psalm 51:17
[44] Colossians 2:16-17
[45] Cf. Romans 15:5 and I Corinthians 10:11
[46] Exodus 20:8-11
[47] Acts 15:1
[48] Acts 15:5
[49] Cf. John 14:6
[50] I Corinthians 6:9
[51] Acts 15:19-21
[52] Cf. Colossians 2:16-17
[53] Judges 14:3-4
[54] Leviticus 21:21
[55] Leviticus 19:19
[56] Deuteronomy 23:2
[57] Leviticus 20:8-9
[58] Matthew 23:2-3
[59] Exodus 20:8-11
[60] Cf. Deuteronomy 16:16ff.
[61] Cf. Luke 4:16
[62] Hebrews 10:25 admonishes, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” It is the only command in the New Testament, of which I am aware, to the effect that the people of God should gather. But no reference is made as to how often or where or under what conditions.
[63] Hebrews 4:9
[64] Mark 7:5-9
[65] Acts 9:1-2
[66] Acts 26:14
[67] Philippians 3:6
[68] Cf. I Timothy 1:15
[69] Acts 9:8-9
[70] Romans 6:14
[71] Romans 7:4
[72] I Corinthians 9:20-21
[73] Cf. II Corinthians 10:7, 11:23
[74] II Corinthians 11:13
[75] Galatians 3:24-25
[76] II Corinthians 5:10
[77] Cf. I Thessalonians 5:17
[78] Colossians 3:16
[79] Ephesians 5:25
[80] Psalm 51:3-4
[81] Matthew 25:21
[82] Leviticus 20:8-16
[83] Isaiah 1:10-17
[84] Numbers 20:8-12
[85] Exodus 32:2-6, 21-30