There are three facets of the Old Testament law: the moral, the civil, and the ceremonial.
The moral facet is what we could refer to as “the spirit” of the law. “Do not murder” is a moral command with moral implications. The moral law of God is absolute and perpetually binding – all men must have this standard met or perish. This is part and parcel of the covenant of creation with Adam, which pre-existed national Israel and the giving of the Decalogue. The works of the moral law are written on all men’s hearts in that they know right from wrong.
The civil facet is the application of the moral law. As such it is necessarily related; the civil stems from the moral. Although levitical civil laws were intended specifically for the good direction of the people of Israel – for their separation and preservation as a peculiar nation in a world of pagans, it is understood that the civil punishments are still righteous in their “general equity.” We’ll come back to this.
Finally, the ceremonial facet was a specific reminder to the people of Israel of their sin and salvation by a holy God. It is because of the standard set by the moral law that the ceremonial law was required. The elements of the ceremonial law were specific to Old Testament Israel and are now superfluous due to the work of Christ on the cross.
To those who would hold God to his own law, we must assume that they intend to discuss the moral law (for the civil is grounded in the moral, and the ceremonial would just be silly – requiring God to sprinkle lamb’s blood on an alter in homage to himself). Theology proper is key here, for to say this is to say that God is like us rather than a transcendent being. To quote a friend of mine:
FWIW, a helpful metaphor for me … is the idea of God as author. It’s not immoral for an author to create immoral characters and even to “kill” off good characters because of the eminence of the author in regard to the characters…The immoral characters are immoral because they commit acts against morality, but the author is not immoral (per se) for creating the tales of these fictitious scoundrels. He may outrage certain fans when he does this, but other than that, he’s not committing any crimes by killing that which only exists as an outcropping of his imagination.
Another helpful example might be that of a father and child. It may seem hypocritical at first to subject others to a law that one doesn’t keep, but there are certain roles of supremacy that I think we all fundamentally recognize as good and necessary. I can set a curfew for my children that I don’t keep because they are growing and need more rest than I do…; I can forbid my children from playing with the grill, iron, lawnmower, scissors, etc. even though I’m free to use such tools because I have certain knowledge and ability that they do not; I may forbid my children from talking to strangers, because they have a certain vulnerability and naïveté; etc. God can forbid us from doing certain things that He himself is free to do, not because He is a tyrannical hypocrite, but because He is in a position of authority to know how best to direct us.
This is not to say that God is not holy or just or righteous. On the contrary, the law of God reveals these very attributes of God. But to be clear, to say that the law shows the character of God is a very different thing than to say that God is beholden to obey the law he has given man.
In the new covenant, we have Christ.
Christ upholds the moral law. He even strengthens these commands from the legalistic code it had become to show the scope of the law to extend to the deepest recesses of man’s heart and mind.
Christ fulfills the ceremonial law. Hebrews 9:11-10:18 tells us that Christ is both the perfect high priest as well as the perfect sacrifice for sins. With this, animal sacrifices and offerings are no longer necessary.
Christ redeems the civil law. Government is a natural part of humanity. People establish rules by which their societies will live (even if the rule is to have no rules). A society of redeemed people will choose to form their society after the rules of God. (Indeed, even societies not composed of Christians may find Christian civil laws to be of benefit, and may submit to them.) With this, we establish an ideal – the most Godly rule of civil law for any given society.
Those who would assert that Christians wink at portions of their own scriptures misunderstand several things. The moral facet of the law is in no way diminished, which is why Christians continually war with their surrounding culture over the morays and laws of the land. The ceremonial facet has been fulfilled through Christ. It is the civil aspect of the law were the difficulty lies.
OT Israel was a church-state, with levitical ministers holding magistrates accountable to the law of God. The same is true today, with modern Christians preaching to the surrounding culture. It is clear that New Testament writers instructed Christians to submit to the authority of the state inasmuch as they were able to do so without being required to sin. However, the state is also called to an ideal in that they are to honor the law of God by enforcing it in the civic sphere. There is debate over whether specific civil punishments are necessarily married to specific moral laws, but it is clear that the moral is to inform the civil, and that the state is to enforce civil in a manner reflecting the moral with equity (the punishments fitting the crime).
In any case, with our modern sensibilities, we may look back at the civil code of theocratic Israel and find particular laws heinous and appalling. However, in any such assessment, we diminish the holiness of God and the seriousness of sin that is tied to this societal governance. To critique such a system in this fashion is to critique the underpinnings and axioms of Christianity itself – a lawgiving God reaching down to a sinful world. If one chooses this route, one must then give an adequate basis for any alternate legal system one would propose. Most instances of such propositions simply boil down to moral relativism, which is another argument altogether. If one follows the Christian’s logic from the ground up (from “God exists” onward), one must acknowledge that there is a godly way for societies as well as individuals.
July 16th, 2010 | Tags: Christian Culture, The Law | Category: Musings, Theological | Leave a comment
