God's Law Eternal-2

 

Credit must go to appreciatively to Pastor Jim Staley for providing many of the insights that will be passed along to you in this chapter. This is a discussion of Christ’s grace the concept of which requires familiarity with Old Testament writings & Mosaic Law. More specifically, it requires an understanding of God's divorce from the northern 10 tribes along with the legal ramifications of that event.  

 

And I saw,

when for all the causes

whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery

I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce;

yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not,

but went and played the harlot also.

Jeremiah 3:8

 

This is the biblical law regarding divorce as spoken by Moses:

 

When a man hath taken a wife, and married her,

and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes,

because he hath found some uncleanness in her:

then let him write her a bill of divorcement,

and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.

2 And when she is departed out of his house,

she may go and be another man's wife.

3 And if the latter husband hate her,

and write her a bill of divorcement,

and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house;

or if the latter husband die,

which took her to be his wife;

4 Her former husband, which sent her away,

may NOT take her again to be his wife,

after that she is defiled;

for that is abomination before the Lord:

and thou shalt not cause the land to sin,

which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

Deuteronomy 24:1-4

 

In spite of the stipulation that re-marriage is not possible, God made the following promise to Israel:

 

They say,

If a man put away his wife,

and she go from him,

and become another man's,

shall he return unto her again?

shall not that land be greatly polluted?

but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers;

yet return again to me, saith the Lord.

Jeremiah 3:1

 

For centuries the question remained unresolved as to just how it was possible for this promise to be fulfilled given the fact that God would never break the conditions of divine law.  Yet, neither does He break His promises.  Upon divorce from God, Israel was branded a sinful, cursed adultress.  How could God remarry her while continuing to observe the stipulations of Mosaic law?  Paul explained the caveat:

 

The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth;

but if her husband be dead,

she is at liberty to be married to whom she will;

only in the Lord.

1Corinthians 7:39

 

The husband must die for the wife to no longer be classified an adultress & to be at liberty to remarry ‘whomever she will’.  This was in fact a significant reason Christ sacrificed his life, to allow Israel to once again be restored to her position as the bride of Christ. 

 

According to Mosaic law, marriage unites twain into one flesh.  Therefore, imperfect Israel could now acquire justification before God on the basis of her husband's perfect record.  Throughout his writings Paul consistently referred to the resolution of this great legal quandary as the 'mystery solved'.  This also explains why Christ instructed his disciples to seek out the lost children of Israel-to give them the good news that through his sacrifice they were finally granted the opportunity to become justified before God once again.  THIS is the grace of Christ. 

 

Clearly, no amount of law-keeping could have purchased the redemption of the house of Israel, only the love of the Messiah.  As you can see, it simply does not logically follow that the grace of Christ brought Mosaic law into obsolescence.
 

Those who claim that Christ’s first mission granted us freedom from God’s Old Testament laws base their doctrinal reasoning on scriptures taken from letters of the apostle Paul.  However, the reality is that Paul himself never meant to suggest that Mosaic Law had lost its relevance following the crucifixion. What Pastor Staley teaches is that the source of confusion can be traced to the fact that many of the Jews to whom Paul was in correspondence were observing another set of rules known as the 'Oral Laws'.  These were a set of ordinances that had been developed over a period of many years throughout the period of the diaspora & were compensatory to the Mosaic statutes. 

 

When Assyria dispersed the people of Samaria &, later, when Babylon dispersed the Judeans throughout foreign territories, believing Israelites could no longer properly observe Mosaic rituals & holy days.  The Judean priesthood responded to this predicament by establishing their own set of compensatory regulations.  Over time these man-made regulations were characteristically inconsistent with, if not wholly antithetical to, Mosaic law.  The dispensers of this brand of law at the time of Christ were of course the Edomic Pharisees.  Today they are called Rabbinic Jews & the rabbinic laws themselves are documented in their Talmud. 

 

When Christ expressed anger that the 'traditions of men' had replaced the commandments of God he was in fact saying that the oral contrivances had usurped preeminence over Mosaic law.  The oral law in Christ's assessment was not merely inferior to God's vision, but placed unnecessary 'grievous' & fear-provoking burdens on the people that tried to observe them. The ‘heart’ of God to teach mercy & compassion & to transform the human spirit through law was wholly omitted in the petty & burdensome compensatory requirements of Pharisaic teachings.  When discussing God's law, this is what Paul had to say:

 

For we know that the law is spiritual....

Romans 7:14

 

In Psalms we read:

 

The law of the LORD is perfect,

converting the soul:

the testimony of the LORD is sure,

making wise the simple.

Psalm 19:7

 

Many of our institutions interpret the writings of Paul, & sometimes even the words of Christ, as suggesting that Mosaic law had outlived its usefulness because of the sacrifice Christ made. They commonly cite the fact that legal observance alone could never reconcile Israel to God. While it is unequivocally correct that dead works cannot evoke justification, it simply does not logically follow that Mosaic law has no viable function outside of the justification process.  I'm going to try to explain several commonly quoted passages from the Word that have often been misrepresented to support the view that Mosaic law no longer serves as a necessary plumbline to elucidate this point.

 

For the law was given by Moses,

but grace & truth came by Jesus Christ.

John 1:17

 

This scripture is often used to make the claim that Christ's gift was the replacement of the law.  Allow me to switch out a couple of nouns here to illustrate that this just isn't so:

 

For the coffee was given by Jane,

but the cake & cookies came by her sister Sara. 

 

Does this help you to understand that possibly John was suggesting a completion of the salvation scenario as opposed to the replacement of one of its aspects for another?  Let's move on.

 

19-Now we know that what things soever the law saith,

it saith to them who are under the law:

that every mouth may be stopped,

and all the world may become guilty before God.
20-Therefore by the deeds of the law

there shall no flesh be justified in his sight:

for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Romans 3:19-20

 

What Paul was stating here about law is very limited in scope & we can all be in agreement about it--the fact that try as we might, we are not capable of fulfilling the law perfectly & therefore we can never be justified before God through our legal observances.

 

What it does NOT say is that the law has no role to play in the salvation process.  It simply says that we can never be justified through the law alone.   How can we know that Paul did not abandon all functional application of Mosaic law.  Well for one thing, he said it!

 

30 Seeing it is one God,

which shall justify the circumcision by faith,

and uncircumcision through faith.

31 Do we then make void the law through faith?

God forbid : yea, we establish the law.

Romans 3:30-31

 

The reality is that Paul 'established the law' consistently throughout his writings.  How?  Through his extensive discussions on sin.  Whenever Paul was speaking about sin, he was applying God's legal plumbline to determine what was sinful & what was not. 

 

What shall we say then?

Is the law sin?

God forbid.

Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law:

for I had not known lust,

except the law had said,

Thou shalt not covet.

Romans 7:7