For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. (1 Cor. 9:19–21)
Introduction
In 1641, the first legal code in New England was compiled by Nathaniel Ward and adopted by the Massachusetts General Court. It was titled the Massachusetts Body of Liberties. While that legal code incorporated much of English Common Law, there were several portions that drew directly from the Mosaic Law, including the punishment of false witnesses and the prohibition of adultery. In fact, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties adopted the same punishment for adultery as was required in the Old Testament – death.
In case one might be tempted to say that the people of Massachusetts were only adopting the Moral Law (i.e. the Ten Commandments) and not the Civil Law of Israel, I would like to add that the Massachusetts Body of Liberties also adopted the Mosaic requirement that any servant who lost a tooth or an eye due to the severity of a master would immediately be set free. Again, if one were to say that this too is nothing more than an aspect of the Ten Commandments, I would ask the following questions: Are there any Mosaic laws that are not in some way connected to one of the Ten Commandments? If so, how do we identify them? If not, then should not every civil law be retained due to its connection to one of the Ten Commandments? In either case, picking and choosing based on our personal preferences should not be an option.
Rightly Handling the Word
When addressing the concept of biblical ethics, morality, and law, debating about what to keep or not keep from the Mosaic Law is actually not the best way to approach the issue. Remember, the Mosaic Law is a series of case studies, or examples, that demonstrate how to apply the Ten Commandments. Let us consider the Eighth Commandment’s prohibition against theft. This prohibition is an almost universal moral principle. All cultures, apart from the rarest of exceptions, recognize the existence of private property in some way. And yet they differ on how they protect property and punish thieves. Does this mean that there is no right way to deal with theft? Are we to adopt a form of moral relativism in which no system of crime and punishment is better than another? If we are Bible-believing Christians, I do not think that is an option. Rather, we should look to God’s law if we want to find justice.
For example, under Sharia Law it is considered just and proper to cut the hands off of thieves. In fact, this is expressly commanded by Allah in the Qur’an.
“As for male and female thieves, cut off their hands for what they have done—a deterrent from Allah. And Allah is Almighty, All-Wise.” (Qur’an 5:38)
Is this punishment for theft just and righteous? If not, why not? We need to be able to answer those questions and present a better, or more just, way of dealing with thieves. Of course, some might argue that we do not need the Mosaic Law to know that amputation for theft is wicked, cruel, and barbaric. They might even claim that Western civilization solved that problem without needing God’s law. Yet history, it seems, would say otherwise.
For while Islamic nations were cutting off the hands of thieves, on the other side of the world the Christian commonwealth of England was doing something far worse. The Twelve-Pence Law, which began in the medieval period and lasted several hundred years, applied the death penalty for anyone caught stealing something worth more than twelve pence. This reached a peak level in the 17th Century under what was called the “Bloody Code,” in which numerous additional offences became punishable by death. In fact, things became so bad that the Puritan Oliver Cromwell – who many would deem to be a tyrant – lamented the existence of things such as the Twelve-Pence Law and pushed hard to reform it.
There are wicked and abominable laws, which ’twere in your books to be altered. To hang a man for six-and-eight-pence, and I know not what; to hang for a trifle, and acquit murder, is in the ministration of the law, through the ill-framing of it. I have known in my experience abominable murders acquitted, and men lose their lives for petty matters: this is a thing that God will reckon for. (Oliver Cromwell, 1656)
Compared to the Twelve-Pence Law, one could argue that Sharia Law is less cruel and more righteous in dealing with thieves. As a matter of fact, the primary reason why England reformed its centuries-old law was through the efforts of Christians who recognized that there is a better way – God’s way. Now the example I gave concerning theft is just one of many. The point is that we need to look at all of the Mosaic Law, including the Civil Law and its penalties, to know how to apply the Ten Commandments and what to do when those commandments are broken.
But doing this correctly – rightly handling the Mosaic Law – requires that we approach the law as Christians. That is, we need to consider how Christ has fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:19) and what it means for us that the law is fulfilled. Jesus was clear when he said that he came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it. And so, whatever ‘fulfill’ means, it cannot mean ‘abolish’.
Thankfully, Scripture gives us a pattern for how to do this. While I have already covered some of this in previous articles, I will simply point out that the law against muzzling an ox is applied by the Apostle Paul to the paying of pastors in 1 Corinthians 9. I would also like to point out that since that specific Mosaic Law had no punishment associated with it in the Old Testament (besides God’s judgment), there is equally no punishment today (besides God’s judgment) for those churches that fail to pay their pastors. That is, the lack of civil penalty for muzzling an ox means that there is to be no civil penalty for churches not paying their pastors.
On the other hand, in 1 Corinthians 5 we see that the Apostle Paul calls for the excommunication of the man who was having sexual relations with his father’s wife. The phrase “purge the evil person from among you” originally referred to the death penalty in the Mosaic Law but is used by Paul in that passage to describe excommunication. Why is this? Well, the complete cutting off of someone from the covenant people in the Old Testament involved capital punishment. Under the New Covenant, cutting someone off from the visible people of God (i.e., the Church) involves excommunication. But what about the physical execution as prescribed by the Mosaic Law? Should the Church also physically execute the person? No, because the power of the sword – the power to enact capital punishment – resides with the civil magistrate, not the Church. And so, if someone were to engage in this type of sexual immorality (i.e. incest), not only would that person be subject to excommunication – if he were a member of a church – but he would also be subject to civil penalties. Paul’s in-depth discussion of excommunication does not mean that he thinks that civil penalties no longer apply. He is simply talking about how to judge matters “inside the church.”[1]
Having seen how the New Testament handles what are typically categorized as either Moral or Civil Laws, let us shift to what is generally understood to be one of the Ceremonial Laws. In Mark 7:19, we are explicitly told that Jesus “declared all foods clean.” This is a stark contrast to the Mosaic food laws. At first glance, we might say that those food laws have been clearly abrogated. Yet we must remember the purpose of those food laws – cleanliness. That is, the requirement to be clean before a holy God has not changed. We must be clean, but the method of becoming clean has changed. Rather than us maintaining cleanliness by not eating or touching certain things, we are now made clean by the shed blood of Christ applied to us. As a result, Christ fulfills the requirement for cleanliness. This means that we are free to eat any number of different foods. But this freedom is always to be used to honor Christ and to love our fellow Christians. That is why the Apostle Paul describes certain situations that might require us to refrain from eating or drinking, especially if that action is directly connected to idolatry that would result in wounding the conscience of another believer.[2] In this way, food laws still remain, but they exist under what Paul describes as “the law of Christ.”[3]
Christonomy
In considering the above examples, the method of applying the Mosaic Law within a New Testament context could be labeled as Christonomy (i.e., the law of Christ). That is, it simply involves applying the Mosaic Law in light of Christ’s birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Christonomy seeks to avoid confusion and clunkiness by not jumping too quickly to conclusions regarding a law’s so-called category (e.g. Moral, Ceremonial, or Civil) and relevance. And while Christonomy will often arrive at similar conclusions as those models that hold to the three-fold categorization, it is important that we are able to consistently show our work. For if we get the right answer but are not able to explain how we got there, we run the risk of misapplying God’s law in the future or being unable to answer the accusation that we are cherry-picking from the Bible.
Now, to be fair to the traditional three-category view, both the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession of Faith assert that the civil, or judicial, laws of Israel remain binding in their “general equity.” Given that both confessions actually cite Paul’s use of the law against muzzling an ox in 1 Corinthians 9, it is possible that the phrase “general equity” could refer to the very same process described by Christonomy. The reason why I hesitate to affirm this is because general equity historically refers to the underlying moral principle of a particular law. And while Christonomy also affirms the underlying moral principle within a law, it also looks at the existence of a penalty, if present, and how that penalty was enforced. Under the general equity model, there is disagreement among Reformed theologians as to whether penalties should continue, if they should remain the same, or if new penalties should be added. Simply put, the concept of general equity is so broad and obscure that it leaves too much room for man’s word to displace God’s word.
For example, John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, holds to the three-fold categorization of the Mosaic Law and also affirms that the civil government is to enforce the Ten Commandments. Yet, in response to those Christians who would advocate for applying the Mosaic Law, including the Civil Law, Calvin gives firm disagreement. He argues that only the Moral Law is to be “the aim, the rule, and the end of all laws.” Interestingly, he considers the example of theft.
The law of God forbids to steal. The punishment appointed for theft in the civil polity of the Jews may be seen in Exodus 22. Very ancient laws of other nations punished theft by exacting the double of what was stolen, while subsequent laws made a distinction between theft manifest and not manifest. Other laws went the length of punishing with exile, or with branding, while others made the punishment capital. (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, Chapter 20)
Calvin then goes on to say that despite this diversity of laws among the nations concerning theft, “they all tend to the same end.” He argues that there is no need for different societies to agree on the mode of punishment, since “there may be an age requiring that the severity of punishments should be increased.” With all due respect to Calvin, I would have to disagree with his reasoning here. Rather than use the general equity model, as Calvin does, the Christonomy model treats the existence and severity of punishments as essential to understanding and defining justice. That is, loving our neighbor includes knowing what to do with him when he steals. And hanging him or cutting off his hand is neither just nor loving, regardless of which society we are talking about.
The Law Fulfilled
At this point, we must now look at how to use the Christonomy model to interpret and apply all of the Mosaic laws. As I briefly mentioned in previous articles, the first step involves understanding the law in its original context. We need to consider the historical/cultural context, the theological/covenantal context, the underlying moral principle, and the associated punishment.
The second step requires us to consider how that law has been fulfilled in Christ. Keep in mind that the key word here is ‘fulfilled’. Christ has not erased or abolished the Mosaic law, as if that law is to be treated as nothing more than a historical artifact. Of course, applying the Christonomy model to each Old Testament law will take some work. But one way to begin is to look at a particular Mosaic law and ask the following:
What is the law trying to deter or encourage among the people of Israel? Which of the Ten Commandments does this law seem to be connected with?
Is there any penalty associated with that law and, if so, what is it and who administers it? Is this a required penalty at all times or is it a maximum penalty?
How does the birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus fulfill that law? How does Jesus satisfy the demands of that law in his roles as prophet, priest, and king?
Is that law referenced or addressed in the New Testament? If so, what do the New Testament writers say about it and how do they apply it?
As individuals united to Christ, how does that law instruct us in how to love God and love our neighbor? What does it teach us about how we should live and act within our homes, workplaces, schools, and local communities?
As members of the body of Christ, how does that law instruct the Church in the performance of its duty in ministering to others and proclaiming the gospel? What does it teach us about when and how to implement church discipline?
As members of a civil covenant (i.e. a nation), how does that law instruct our civil government in how to punish evil and praise good? What does it teach us about justice, righteousness, and how to love our neighbors within the greater society?
Conclusion
In this seven-part series on God’s law, I have tried to show the importance of taking God’s law seriously and not being ashamed or embarrassed by it. But we know that we live in a fallen world, and so we must not be surprised when the world makes fun of God’s law. In fact, the nation of Israel itself did this very thing during the time of the prophets. In Ezekiel 18, the people of Israel argued that sons should be punished for the sins of their fathers, and vice versa. Yet, when the Lord states that individuals are to be punished for their own sins, the people of Israel respond by declaring, “The way of the Lord is not just.” The Lord, speaking through Ezekiel, counters by saying, “Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?”[4]
As Christians, we must not join in with the world (or with ancient Israel) in saying that the ways of the Lord are not just. And we also must not ignore God’s word and look for justice in other places. For, as 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Righteousness not only speaks to how we relate to God, but also how we relate to our neighbors. In other words, righteousness and justice walk hand-in-hand.
In the end, if we reject God’s law, we are not going to get a better law as a result. In fact, in Ezekiel 20:25-26 God points out how Israel rejected his law. As a result, God not only gave them over to their idolatry, but he also “gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life.” In other words, when Israel rejected God’s law, they received laws that hurt them. For to reject the law of the one true and living God results in receiving the law of a false god. And the law of an idol will not lead to life and human flourishing, but to misery and devastation.
We must keep in mind that the warnings in the Old Testament are not always just applicable to the people of Israel. There is often application to all nations. Consider this passage from Jeremiah:
If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. (Jeremiah 18:7-10)
It is important to note here that when God speaks about a nation not listening to his voice, he is referring to his word. And not just part of his word, but all of it, including his law. But if Christians, God’s covenant people under the New Covenant, reject the voice of God in his law, how can we expect the nations to listen to it? That is why we need to be the ones who set the example by showing the world what it means to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.[5] Let us, therefore, be those who love and embrace God’s law because we desire to love God and to love our neighbors.
[1] 1 Corinthians 5:12.
[2] 1 Corinthians 10:23-32.
[3] 1 Corinthians 9:21.
[4] Ezekiel 18:25.
[5] Micah 6:8.