Christ and the law

By Bénédicte Bahjejian

http://www.gotquestions.org/

Question: "Do Christians have to obey the Old Testament law?"

Answer: The key to understanding this issue is knowing that the Old Testament law was given to the nation of Israel, not to Christians. Some of the laws were to reveal to the Israelites how to obey and please God (the Ten Commandments, for example). Some of the laws were to show the Israelites how to worship God and atone for sin (the sacrificial system). Some of the laws were intended to make the Israelites distinct from other nations (the food and clothing rules). None of the Old Testament law is binding on us today. When Jesus died on the cross, He put an end to the Old Testament law (Romans 10:4; Galatians 3:23-25; Ephesians 2:15).

In place of the Old Testament law, we are under the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2), which is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…and to love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39). If we obey those two commands, we will be fulfilling all that Christ requires of us: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:40). Now, this does not mean the Old Testament law is irrelevant today. Many of the commands in the Old Testament law fall into the categories of “loving God” and “loving your neighbor.” The Old Testament law can be a good guidepost for knowing how to love God and knowing what goes into loving your neighbor. At the same time, to say that the Old Testament law applies to Christians today is incorrect. The Old Testament law is a unit (James 2:10). Either all of it applies, or none of it applies. If Christ fulfilled some it, such as the sacrificial system, He fulfilled all of it.

“This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). The Ten Commandments were essentially a summary of the entire Old Testament law. Nine of the Ten Commandments are clearly repeated in the New Testament (all except the command to observe the Sabbath day). Obviously, if we are loving God, we will not be worshipping false gods or bowing down before idols. If we are loving our neighbors, we will not be murdering them, lying to them, committing adultery against them, or coveting what belongs to them. The purpose of the Old Testament law is to convict people of our inability to keep the law and point us to our need for Jesus Christ as Savior (Romans 7:7-9; Galatians 3:24). The Old Testament law was never intended by God to be the universal law for all people for all of time. We are to love God and love our neighbors. If we obey those two commands faithfully, we will be upholding all that God requires of us.

Question: "What does it mean that Jesus fulfilled the law, but did not abolish it?"

http://www.ucebi.it/en/med/jesus_law.pdf.

Jesus and the Law- Mt 5, 17-20.

Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it, that is, to complete and perfect it in his teachings and most of all to put it into practice in his own life. In fact, in his life and teaching, through his passion, death and resurrection Jesus has truly fulfilled the law and the prophets, that is, all the Old Testament. Jesus has fulfilled the prophets because in his own person he has fulfilled all the prophetic promises concerning the Messiah and the Kingdom of God; he is the Messiah and we are not to expect another; in him the Kingdom of God is made present and accessible to all. Jesus has fulfilled not only the Prophets but also the Law. Here we refer not only to the Ten Commandments but to the whole Law as it is contained in the first five books of the Bible, a huge amount of rules and prescriptions which governed every area of life of the Hebrews and which the rabbis had condensed into 613 precepts. Jesus was referring precisely to this huge amount of precepts when he said that he had come “not to abolish but to fulfil” the law. This he has done through his obedience.

However, the way Jesus obeyed the law was radically opposed to the way in which the Scribes and Pharisees obeyed the same law. The Scribes and the Pharisees obeyed the law to the letter while Jesus preferred to move from the letter to the spirit of the law, rejecting a legalistic obedience in favour of an obedience which took each concrete situation into account. Jesus’ attitude towards the law sometimes appears extremely liberal and other times extremely
radical according to the situation and the importance of the law in question. He reprimanded the Pharisees, for example, because they insisted on observing the minuscule commandments while ignoring the most important ones. The Pharisees, on the other hand, reprimanded Jesus for violating the Sabbath laws in order to heal the sick. While the Pharisees considered Jesus a transgressor of the law, Jesus considered the Pharisees hypocrites.
The conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees was rooted in the opposite views they held about the law and its observance. For Jesus observance of the law meant something completely different from what it meant for the Pharisees. The goal for both of them, however, was the same: obedience of the Mosaic law. In order to simplify things we can divide this mountain of precepts into two parts: laws concerning ritual and moral laws. On the whole we can say that Jesus was extremely liberal as far as the ritual laws were concerned and extremely radical
about the moral laws. In both cases Jesus aimed not to abolish the law but to fulfil it; not to violate the law but to keep it.

As far as the ritual laws (regarding religious ceremonies, sacrifices and (purification rituals) are concerned, Jesus continues to fulfil a prophetic tradition which had already begun to contest a purely formal observance of such laws. In the book of the prophet Amos, the Lord says to his people:
“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and your cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream”(Amos 5,21-24)

Again, in the book of Hosea the Lord says:
“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6,6)

The same protest appears once more in Isaiah in no uncertain terms:
“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? Says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs or of he-goats. When you come to appear before me, who requires you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of assemblies – I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me and I am weary of bearing them. When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Was yourselves, make yourselves clean remove the evil of your doings before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for
the widow.” (Is 1,11-17).

Jesus’ preaching follows on from this long prophetic tradition and when the Pharisees criticize him because he does not obey the purity laws but eats with sinners and allows his disciples to gather leaves of corn on the Sabbath, Jesus replies by citing the prophets:
“Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’ For I came not to call the righteous but sinners”(Mt 9,13;12,7).
Jesus raises the oppressed, does justice to the orphan, defends the cause of the widow, preaches the good news to the poor, gives sight to the blind and pardons sinners.
In his merciful behaviour towards the people, he thus fulfils all the ritual laws. The justice of the scribes and the Pharisees, on the other hand, gets stuck on the ritual laws and is unable to go beyond them. Jesus’ justice is far superior to the Pharisees’ as it is based on the mercy required by God and not on ceremonies and sacrifices which, in light of faith in Christ, represent the shadow of the true justice which Jesus has come to fulfil. Thus the apostle Paul writes to the Colossians:
“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in question of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what
is to come but the substance belongs to Christ”(Col 2,16-17)

Jesus has fulfilled the law by showing that every precept was not an end in itself but a way to educate the people to become merciful. Being merciful towards one’s neighbour is the spirit behind the law. It is for this purpose that the Lord gave the law to his people: so that they would learn to be merciful to each other, just as the Lord had been merciful to them bringing them out of Egypt. In Jesus’ time the scribes and Pharisees had forgotten that the purpose of the law was to learn how to show mercy. What happens when we do something without remembering its true purpose? Our actions are useless and no longer have any meaning. This is the reason why the scribes and the Pharisees although they made a real effort to obey all the minute instructions of the law in the long run didn’t get anywhere and all their efforts were useless. Paradoxically, they observed each and every precept without having obeyed the law at all because their obedience did not spring from a merciful attitude towards their neighbour but from a desire to increase their importance and seem more just than others. Jesus, though, could disobey this or that law and, paradoxically observe the law precisely through his transgressing. For him the important thing was that whether he obeyed or transgressed the law he showed mercy towards his neighbour.
Nowadays more than ever we need to learn from Jesus how to obey God’s commandments and society’s laws. Among Christians there is a deep division about how laws should be obeyed. On the one hand, there are legalistic believers who use the Bible as a legal code to discriminate people with, dividing saints from sinners. On the other hand, other Christians react to such legalism assuming a relativistic attitude: anything goes as we are all sinners! If legalism is to be
condemned so is relativism. Jesus never opposed the legalism of the Pharisees by adopting a form of relativism as he did not come to abolish the law but to really fulfil it. Jesus always condemned sin calling it by name. Jesus always called sinners to repent but, at the same time, he showed mercy towards them offering everybody god’s forgiveness. Legalists of all ages condemn the sin and the sinner; relativists of all ages justify sin and the sinner. Jesus condemns sin but justifies the sinner.

Jesus fulfils the law by condemning sin and showing mercy towards the sinner. His justice is greater than the strict and discriminating justice of the legalists, on the one hand, and than the condescending and easy going justice of the relativists. Jesus said to his disciples:
“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”(Mt 5,20)

Nowadays, God would say to us: “if your righteousness is not greater than the legalists and the relativists you are not part of the Kingdom of God but of the kingdom of this world divided between one extreme and another. Legalists condemn everything and see sin everywhere. They set themselves up as judges and are ready to cast stones at everything and everybody. They
believe that this world is abominable and deserves to be destroyed. Relativists forgive everything and do not see sin anywhere. In the end, for them everything is permissible because God forgives everything. Christ’s disciples, however, are called to overcome both the intolerant righteousness of the legalists which condemns everything and the indulgent righteousness of the relativists which excuses everything. We are able to overcome the righteousness of the legalists and of the relativists only through Christ’s righteousness, based on mercy which
condemns every sin but is immediately ready to justify every sinner who repents.
The Lord Jesus was never a relativist who abolished the law nor a legalist, using the law to condemn sinners. Rather, the Lord Jesus has brought the law to fulfilment, being merciful and thus showing us that the purpose of the law is to teach us to be merciful towards our neighbour.

Conclusion

• Christ is the end of the law od Moses and we do not have to obey it anymore, because if we obey one commandment, we should obey them all. We are not bound to the letter anymore.

• After Christ has come, we are under the law of Christ, which is “to love God with all our heart, all our mind and all our strength and our neighbour as ourself”.

• The old testament law was written to show us that we can’t keep it all and that we need a Saviour. And this law points us to Christ.

• The Pharisees in the New Testament wanted to keep every commandment, but forgot to practice the most important one: to be merciful. So there were not obeying the law of God.

• When Christ broke a commandment, it was to show mercy and it is what counts most in God’s eyes.

• We should not fall into the extremes:
- to be legalistic- trying to keep the law and condemning those who do not keep it
- to be relativist- ‘it doesn’t matter if I sin, God will forgive me’

• If we show mercy to others, we do what pleases God and thus we fulfil the law of Christ.