What Does the Old Testament Law Mean for Us Today?
A popular trend in skeptical circles is to attack Christianity through pronouncements people would perceive as ridiculous or barbarous in its laws with today’s mores. Not surprisingly, most of these come from the Old Testament. Most delicious to them is the fact that the Church no longer observes most of these precepts. I remember seeing a blog post one time about “Ten Things the Bible Says Not to Do, But You Do Anyway,” or something to that effect. The favorites are usually about the laws for kosher food that nobody observes today outside of Judaism or the execution of the following: homosexuals, adulterers, lazy children, children who curse parents, blasphemers, etc. (basically anything they don’t personally think is a big deal).
It’s amazing how many problems a little consultation with the Westminster Standards will solve. (For those of you not familiar with these sublime documents, they were Parliament’s attempt to bridge the differences between Anglicanism and Presbyterianism during the English Civil War. Presbyterians like myself accept these as secondary standards- that is, our guide to beliefs wherever they are not in conflict with Scripture, which is the primary standard).
Well, what does the Confession have to say about laws like this, which for the most part 17th century Britain did not enforce either? Chapter XIX:
“God gave Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience (para. 1).”
“Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws […] All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the new testament (para. 3).”
“To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require (para. 4).”
So, for many of the unusual things in the Old Testament, we don’t observe them because God told us not to anymore. In the Mosaic law, you’ll find intertwined moral, ceremonial, and civil laws. The moral ones, yes, are as binding today as the day they were proclaimed on Mount Sinai. It’s still wrong to commit adultery or murder or to take God’s name in vain.
The ceremonial law, however, was fulfilled in Christ. It symbolized how Israel needed to be separated from the rest of the world and carefully kept from all semblance of death and disorder to be fit for the presence of God. The ceremonial laws regarding blood, leprosy, etc. represent wholeness of life or stability in distinction from morality, which God dealt with in other laws. God explicitly did away with the ceremonial law when He gave Peter a vision and told him to eat unclean things, symbolizing that Israel was no longer on its own and that the Gospel was for all nations now. Christ has cleansed us with His blood, so we don’t need to make sacrifices or take baths to make ourselves clean in God’s sight.
I’m not really familiar with any verse as explicit as Peter’s vision in Acts as far as getting rid of the civil law of Israel, but it’s pretty clear God doesn’t want the Church governed like Israel. Israel was prone enough to corruption from without, so God mandated a wide range of capital punishments for wicked Jews to keep the nation pure. Now, though, He wants the Gospel of reconciliation offered to sinners, not war waged on them. Nowhere does Jesus or an Apostle try to force Mosaic civil laws on Rome.
The moral ones, yes, are as binding today as the day they were proclaimed on Mount Sinai.
As for executing homosexuals, that was not the Apostle Paul’s practice although he was proudly Jewish. He told the Corinthians: “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 [the KJV is trying to delicately refer to passive and active homosexuals], nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (I Corinthians 6:9-11).
So, a few observations about homosexuality in this passage that are relevant today. Yes, it is still a sin under the New Covenant; Christ’s death did nothing to change that, only to save from it. Second, it appears that Paul extended his ministry to homosexuals (of which there were many in the cult of Apollo in Corinth) just as readily and lovingly as to any other sinner. Finally, it appears they repented and overcame this sin (though no one said it would be any easier than the drunkards overcoming an addiction). So, there’s something for people to learn here on both sides of the cultural contest over homosexuality.
A lot of the civil code of Israel rubs enlightened Westerners the wrong way, but Jesus made an important observation about it in Matthew 19. Some of the Pharisees thought that, because the civil code allowed for divorce, they could morally divorce their wives for any reason. Jesus tells them that provision about divorce was only because of the “hardness of your hearts.” In other words, God doesn’t normally approve of divorce, but it could lead to worse if He clamped down on it in His civil law. When you look at the Old Testament’s milieu, with slavery and different tiers of justice being universal practice, a lot of the Torah’s civil law appears a compromise between the crude legal codes Israel was familiar with in the Ancient Near East and the higher ideals taught by Christ and the Apostles. The moral law is at all times the great standard of conduct, but the civil law may not always measure up to it. That said, many times it is a thousand times more enlightened than what you’ll find in Babylonian or Assyrian law.
Nowhere does Jesus or an Apostle try to force Mosaic civil laws on Rome.
The one problematic thing remaining is when we don’t know if something was a ceremonial or civil law. Generally, if you can tie it back to a duty required by one of the Ten Commandments or a sin forbidden by them, it’s moral. But sometimes there’s room for argument. There are laws against tattooing, blending fabrics, mixing seeds, interbreeding different species, and transvestitism. (Actually, the law against transvestitism is a little more specific than that; the Hebrew literally prohibits women from “bearing the accouterments of a warrior.”) Some of these seem harmless and are possibly even beneficial, like interbreeding horses and donkeys to make mules. In fact, the Jews were perfectly willing to buy mules from Gentiles as long as they didn’t breed them themselves, and God makes reference to mules in the new heavens and new earth in Isaiah. I’m pretty sure from my own research into these issues that you’ll find a commentator on every one of those laws who links it back to one of the Ten Commandments. I really don’t know on some of these, and I advise caution. As R.C. Sproul pointed out, it’s better to treat a ceremonial law like a moral one than a moral one like a ceremonial one.