The Old Testament Law and the Christian

What follows is a slightly longer post than normal.  This is due to ample quotations from Scripture.  Most of these quotations can be skipped without losing the argument.

The Old Testament Law and the Christian

            What should we Christians do with the Old Testament Laws?  Do we keep them all?  Do we say they do not apply to us at all?  Or do we figure out a way to understand which of these laws still apply to us?  If you try to keep all the Laws of the Old Testament, then throw away your cotton polyester blended clothing and stop eating pork, and the list goes on.  These are all part of the Law, but throwing the whole Old Testament Law out does not make much sense because Jesus and the Apostles did not throw the Law out even when they say that keeping the Law does not make one justified.  Jesus himself says that he did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill the Law in Matthew 5:17.  If Jesus has not abolished the Law, then there must be something yet in the Law that remains for us as followers of Jesus.

            One way to understand the Law is to divide the Law into Moral Law, Ceremonial Law, and Civil Law.  This works conceptually until we read passages Like Leviticus 21 where the reason for the ceremonial laws rest upon the statement “For I am the Lord”.  Likewise civil laws regarding leaving some of your fields unharvested for the poor to come and harvest from them are supported by “For I am the Lord”.  This then makes the reasons for Ceremonial, Moral, and Civil the same.  Therefore this makes all of the laws in one sense moral because they all rest upon the nature and person of God.  However, if we carefully read through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, we will see a pattern to some laws and not with other laws. 

            There is a key phrase/term that we need to pay attention to and that is the stranger/alien/sojourner.  This is a non-Israelite who would have come to live with the Israelites.  And very important for us is the fact that not all the laws were intended for the stranger who chooses to sojourn among Israel to keep.  All the laws in the Pentateuch/Torah are clearly (if subtly) aimed at two different groups.  There are the Laws that are addressed to the Israelites as being “for you and for your children.”  This type of phrasing demonstrates that these laws were intended to be kept by all Jewish people as part of their covenant with God.  By number, the majority of laws fall into this first category.  There are fewer laws that are given as regarding both the ethnic Jews and those Gentiles who choose to live among the children of Israel.

            This second group of laws that are for the Gentiles and the Jews is limited to a few categories.  I have listed them out with a few Scriptural references for the sake of clarity.

The first command that is for the Jew and the Gentile, who lives among the Jews, is to keep the Sabbath day.

Exodus 20:10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

Leviticus 16:29 And it shall be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves and shall do no work, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you.

Deuteronomy 5:14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

The second command is not to eat blood.

Leviticus 17:10 "If any one of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people.

Leviticus 17:12 Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, No person among you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger who sojourns among you eat blood.

The third command is tacked on at the end of a long (but not comprehensive list) of whom and what you should not engage in sexual intercourse along with not having child sacrifice in Leviticus 18.

 Leviticus 18:26 But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you. 

Child sacrifice to other gods is also prohibited for both the Jew and the Gentile who sojourns among them. 

Leviticus 20:2 "Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death.  The people of the land shall stone him with stones.

Blasphemy is also prohibited to both groups.

Leviticus 24:16 Whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death.  All the congregation shall stone him. The sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.

Everyone is expected to worship God at the place that God chooses.

Deuteronomy 16:11 And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your towns, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are among you, at the place that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell there.

Those Gentiles who keep the Passover must first be circumcised.

Exodus 12:48   If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it.

The Gentile and the Jews are to be treated the same as regards bringing sacrifices.

Numbers 15:14-15 And if a stranger is sojourning with you, or anyone is living permanently among you, and he wishes to offer a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the LORD, he shall do as you do.  For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the LORD.

A New Testament Vision for the Law

            In chapter 15 of the Acts of the Apostles, there was a council called in Jerusalem to address the issue of whether or not Gentiles ought to be circumcised to become Christians.  James offered this judgement upon the topic stating, “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 things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood” (Acts 15:19-20).  This view carried the day, and this first recorded Church Council composed a letter and sent it out to the churches.  The most important portion of the letter for our topic is as follows:

            

“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell” (Acts 15:28-29).[1]

This is a summary and application of several of the Old Testament passages previously listed. 

The command to abstain from eating blood is included (Leviticus 17:10, Leviticus 17:12) and the prohibition of sexual immorality is a nice summary of Leviticus 18.

            The command to “abstain from things offered to idols” is not explicitly stated in the Old Testament laws.  I suspect this is an application of the interpretive practice of greater to lesser.  Jesus did this in 6:25-26 of Matthew’s Gospel when He argued that we should be anxious about our lives because God takes care of the sparrows and we are of more value than them.  This same method of interpretation could be behind the command to abstain from things offered to idols.  If the worship of idols is prohibited in the prohibition against child sacrifice (Leviticus 20:2),[2] then the argument would be just as one cannot offer children to idols so one ought not to receive things from idols.

            There are a couple of commands that simply do not appear to have been necessary to mention to those gentiles who were becoming Christians.  The commands against blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16) and worshipping God in his chosen place (Deuteronomy 16:11) would naturally not be an issue for those who were seeking to become Christians.

            There are also some commands that the Apostles understood and ostensibly applied in non-literal fashion.  The command for the Jew and the Gentile, who lives among the Jews, to keep the Sabbath day (Exodus 20:10, Leviticus 16:29, Deuteronomy 5:14) is altered in the New Testament.  The books of Hebrews argues that the commands and promises of Sabbath were intended to be understood as referring to a spiritual reality, which we enter through obedience (Hebrews 4).

            In much a similar way circumcision, which was the heart of the matter before the council in Jerusalem, is not applied literally.  Indeed, Saint Paul states that those who have been baptized have received circumcision.

            “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, ¹² having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11-12).

This is an important point because it connects directly to the sacramental life of the Church.  In the Old Testament law, those Gentiles who wished to take part of Passover first had to be circumcised (Exodus 12:48 and Numbers 15:14-15).  Jesus’ passion is intimately connected with Passover and indeed, the Eucharist stands squarely atop Passover as its fulfillment.  Again, to quote from Paul,

            “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).

Thus, the need for Baptism to proceed partaking of the Eucharist is rooted in the Old Testament types (prefigurements) of these present realities.  In this way, Christians keep some of the Old Testament laws they were intended to keep perhaps without even being aware of it.

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[1] The Jerusalem Council spoke with the authority of the Holy Spirit and gave this letter as a command and not a suggestion.

[2] Some patristic commentators viewed this command not as a reference to human sacrifice, but as a dedication of a child to the service of an idol (for an example, see Theodoret of Cyrus Quaestiones in Octateuchem, 25).