About Jesus Steve Sweetman

About Jesus Steve Sweetman

The Law Of Moses

Reformation theology, that is Christian thinking that basis its roots in the Reformation of the 1500's speaks a lot about Law and Grace. They say that you cannot understand or appreciate God’s Grace until you begin to understand what God’s Law is all about, and how it applies to us in New Testament times. Thus we come to the next topic of discussion.

In Paul’s writings the topic of the Law takes up a lot of space. This topic is very important for us to understand, but from my experience, I don’t think it is well understood by many in the Christian population in general.

First of all, what is the Law? The Law is the Ten Commandments. Yet it is more than just the Ten Commandments. It is the whole system of rules and regulations that were given to the Jews in the Old Testament by God. These rules are found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These regulations were constantly being broken. The Law therefore provided a process of sacrifices that would be made for these broken commands. In short, the Law was a major document to live by, which included many do’s and don’t, and a way to amend yourself for doing wrong before God Almighty.

One of the most misunderstood Biblical topics is the place of the Law in New Testament times. So let me try to explain it to you.

Jesus said that He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them. (Matthew 5:17-20) So the emphasis is on fulfilling the Law, not doing away with it. We will see though, that by fulfilling the Law it has been abolished. By Jesus saying these words it tells me something about the Law. It tells me that the Law, like the Prophets, is prophetic in nature. The Law is more than a list of rules. It is just as prophetic as the book of Jeremiah. For example, the blood sacrifices were prophetic. They foretold the sacrifice that Jesus would make on the cross for our sin.

In respect to what Jesus said, the question should then be asked. When was the Law fulfilled, or is it still to be fulfilled? Look at Colossians 2:13 and 14 and think about what Paul is saying. "…God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, … He took it away, nailing it to the cross." (NIV) This verse tells us that when Jesus died on the cross, the Law died as well. Paul clearly states that the written code, or the Law was taken away and nailed to the cross.

Look also at Hebrews 8:13, "by calling this covenant new, He has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear". The writer of the book of Hebrews is calling the Old Covenant obsolete. Obsolete means outdated. The Old Covenant is outdated and has been replaced by the New Covenant, that is our acceptance with God is based on faith in God’s grace and the provision He made for us in the cross of Jesus.

If these two verses are not enough, read what Paul says in Romans 10:4, "for Christ is the end of the Law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes". That makes it pretty clear. When Jesus was on the cross, and when He said, "it is finished", (John 19:30) He meant that everything was finished to provide Salvation for all who would believe. When Jesus died on the cross the Law was fulfilled for the purpose of our salvation, the Law became obsolete, and was abolished. Christ truly was the end of the Law. As Christians we now follow Jesus, not the written Law. So you can clearly see that the Law that was given to the Jews in the Old Testament does not apply to us today. It was given to the Jews for specific reasons and for a certain period of time. We can benefit from the Law, we do not live under its dominance.

Then there is Galatians 3, especially verse 19 which says, “the Law was added … until the Seed (Jesus) .. had come”. Also in verse 25, “now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the Law”. Once again, it is very clear. We are not under the supervision of the Old Testament Law. Therefore as well, if we are not under the Law that God instituted, then we are not under any man made religious law that has been instituted for purposes of Salvation. We may have certain rules to make life work better for us, but there is no rule that can save us. Salvation comes by trusting Jesus alone. Has any rule ever died on a cross for you?

Now that we see the Law does not apply to us today, we need to understand what relationship we have with the Law. Paul has a lot to say about this as well.

Look at Galatians 3 again. In verse 19 he asks, “what then is the purpose of the Law?” He goes on to say, “it was added because of transgressions…” You see, before the Law came people sinned, that is they transgressed, as Paul puts it here in Galatians 3. Because man was sinning, they needed to know with clarity that what they were doing was wrong. So God gave the Law so they could clearly understand the things they were doing were wrong. He also made provision in that Law to temporarily excuse them from the penalty due them because of their wrong doing. The Law said that if you do what is written therein, you will be blessed, but if you don’t, you will be cursed. (Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28:2 + 45)

We also read in Romans 3:19, “we know that whatever the Law says, it says to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world held accountable unto God”. Here is another reason for the Law. It shuts our mouths in the sense that we have no excuse. We have no defense. What we are doing is clearly stated as wrong, and therefore we will have to give account to God for our actions.

Romans 5:20 also gives another reason for the Law. It says, “the Law was added so the trespass might increase”. You may think that this is a strange verse. Think of it this way. If you tell a three year old not to touch those cookies, there will be something within him that drives him straight to the cookie jar. The same with us and sin. If we are told not to sin, there is something within us that wants to sin even more.

Paul goes on to say, “but where sin increased, grace increased all the more”. Sin cannot outdo God’s grace. The more sin there is, the more chance there is for God to demonstrate His grace. Thus the Law was added not merely to show us our sin, but it made it possible for our sinful nature to seize the occasion and sin even more. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 7:8 when he says, “but sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the command, produced in me every kind of covetous desire”. The Greek word “aphorme” is the word translated here as seize. It is a military word meaning, “to mount an attack”. The picture looks like this. Sin within us is told not to sin. Because of this command It rebels and mounts an attack against us and causes us to sin more than ever. Sin is like an enemy of war. At just the right time, the enemy mounts its attack, and gets ready for the capture and the spoils.

So the Law had a purpose for Israel and it has a purpose for us today. The purpose for us is to show us our sin. Paul says it clearly once again in Romans 7:7. “I would not have known what sin was except through the Law”. We now know what sin is and as a result, we sin even more. As Paul again says, “once I was alive apart from the Law, alive because I did not know what was right or wrong. I enjoyed my life living in my sin, but when the command came, sin sprang to life, and I died. We die because sin produces death in us and we are no longer happy in our sin because we know it’s wrong. Besides, sin separates us from the God that we were created to love. We thus feel miserable about our state,”… for sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death”. (Romans 7:9-11) This is why Paul called the Law our school master, the one who leads us to Christ, because once knowing sin, and sinning even more and feeling miserable because of our depraved state, we will want to come to Jesus to escape our condition and the resulting penalty.

So there we have the Law, what it is, why it is there, and why it does not apply to us any longer. The Law tells us what we are doing is wrong. This is the only relevance the Law has for us as New Testament Christians. We need to preach the Law, not as a means to Salvation, but as a means to help people understand the depraved condition they are in. This is why good Reformation churches still believe that each and every Sunday they should incorporate both Law and Gospel into their worship service. They believe that we should be reminded of our sinful condition without Christ. They also believe that once we are so reminded, we will be more thankful for God’s mercy that He has extended towards us in the cross of Christ.

A detailed and open minded study of the book of Galatians will go a long way to help understand the Law of Moses and how it relates to us as New Testament Christians. You can find both a written and spoken commentary on Galatians on my web site.

The Blood Sacrifice That Replaced The Law

The question can now be asked, “why and how did Jesus replace the Law”?

Remember in Genesis 2, after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, they clothed themselves with leaves. Did you ever wonder why they had to clothe themselves? Obviously, before they ate of the tree being naked was not a problem. Yet after eating of the fruit, they felt shame in their nakedness. So in order to take away the shame they clothed themselves with fabric made of leaves. Upon eating of the forbidden fruit embarrassment entered their lives for the first time. You see, before they ate of the fruit of the tree called “the knowledge of good and evil” they had no idea what was right or what was wrong. Therefore their nakedness did not produce any shame.

Their attempt to cover their nakedness and their embarrassment with leaves did not sit well with God. Therefore He made them clothes made out of animal skins. (Genesis 2:21) This meant that an animal had to die in order to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness and shame. This event, in the earliest days of human history, is the first incident where blood was shed because of man’s sin.

The blood is the life of our body. Without blood we can not live. When Adam and Eve sinned they died spiritually and socially. They did not die physically right away, but they eventually did. Most likely the Spirit of God left them at the moment of their betrayal. The Spirit of God in a spiritual sense is like blood in a physical sense. By this I mean, just as blood gives us physical life, so the Spirit gives us spiritual life.

The point to be made about blood is this. Blood has to be pumped through man’s body in order for him to live. Because of man’s sin, man had to die physically. Death, extreme as it was is the result of sin. If blood gives life to man, then the blood flow had to end, producing death. The physical death of man was not the punishment for sin. It is only the natural result of sin. God needed to punish man for his sin. So instead of killing every man for their sin, He would kill His own Son instead. His pure and sinless blood would be shed on the behalf of everyone. Before actually doing this He instituted the Law with its rituals of sacrifices. The animal sacrifice would foretell the real sacrifice that would later come, that is the sacrifice of Jesus.

Thus the shedding of blood became important in fixing man’s problems resulting from his sin. Man died when he sinned, therefore someone else had to die to fix the problem. An animal would do, at least for the time being.

These animal sacrifices that existed from the time God sacrificed an animal in the Garden of Eden were codified in the Law God gave to Moses. This means that the sacrifices, along with other practices that were being performed all along were written down in a legal document for all to see and understand. Animal sacrifices became part of the Law. The Law became the centerpiece for Jewish culture. Obeying the Law would determine the fate and health of the Jewish people.

Although God instituted the Law, which included animal sacrifices, it was not His ultimate plan. He always had something better in mind. These animal sacrifices still left man in his sinful and depraved state. Man was still continuing to do wrong. In Acts 17:30 it says, “… in the past God overlooked such ignorance…” God turned His back on man’s sin and did not do anything about it, but He could not do that forever, being the just God that He is. Paul makes a similar statement in Romans 3:25, “…in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished…” You see, all through the Old Testament times man continued to sin, and God turned His back and did not punish man for his sin. God could not turn His back on sin forever. He is just, and an animal sacrifice was far from being sufficient to make things right. In His justice, some person had to die, not merely an animal.

When we say that God is just, we are saying that He is more than fair. He is ultimate in rightness. If something is good, He more than acknowledges it. He rewards those for being good. If something is wrong, He sooner or later needs to deal with it. He will punish the wrong doer. He will also find a way to fix the problem that causes man to sin in the first place.

God’s justice and mercy came together when Jesus, God’s son, became a sacrifice for our sin. In reality we should have been the ones to be killed. We were the ones in the wrong. The first sin we committed should have resulted in punishment by death immediately. Why so extreme? Because God’s judgment is perfect and ultimate. Yet God loved us, even in the midst of our sin, (Romans 5:8) so instead of punishing us for our sin, He punished Jesus instead. This punishment took the form of an execution. Therefore God’s justice was satisfied and His love was demonstrated towards us, all in one event, all in one moment of time. This is why I say, justice and mercy met together at the cross.

The blood sacrifice of Jesus would satisfy God forever. This was the greatest of all sacrifices. Everything God does is ultimate and beyond our thinking. His provision for our sin is no exception. God could now look on man without being angry at him because of his sin. He no longer had to turn His back on sinful man, because someone paid the penalty for man’s sin. He could look on us and not see our sin. His desire to punish us was gone. The punishment for sin was completed on the cross.

There is no other sacrifice to be made now. This sacrifice is a one time event. Anyone who rejects this act of mercy made by God will experience His wrath in its totality at the end of the age. If God was so angry that He executed His own Son, how much more angry will He be if we reject such a great act of love. Therefore we won’t burn in the Lake of Fire for our sin. We will burn in the Lake of Fire for rejecting Jesus and His once in a life time sacrifice.

All sin was punished on the cross, therefore all sins are forgiven. There is one sin that was not punished for and therefore can not be forgiven. This sin is the sin of unbelief, or rejecting Jesus’ act of mercy that He demonstrated on the cross. If God had punished Jesus for our unbelief then there would be no need for any future judgment, because even if we do reject Jesus, God has already forgiven us for this rejection. But that did not happen. That could not happen. God is logical, and to forgive unbelief is far from logical. If Jesus would have been punished for our sin of unbelief, there would not have been any reason for Jesus to go to the cross in the first place. God could have simply pronounced all men forgiven, and we all would end up in Heaven. This is why I say that there will be a great and terrible day ahead for those who reject Jesus. The rejection of Jesus, or our not trusting Him was not punished for on the cross. Therefore, if God took such drastic measures to forgive sin, how much more drastic will his punishment be against those who reject His perfect plan for the forgiveness of sin.

So this is it. Forgiveness and being made right with God does not depend any longer on God’s Law, animal sacrifices, or anything man can possibly do. Jesus, and trusting in Him alone and what He has done for us has replaced the Law and all its sacrifices. No law could ever outdo what Jesus did on the cross.

Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice. If someone tells you that you can’t be a Christian unless you do certain things, ask that person, “did these things die for me”? Not likely. Jesus was the only one who died and was punished in our place. If we add anything to what He has done, we are telling Jesus what He did on the cross is not good enough. We are telling Him that we need to improve on His work of grace by adding some of our own elements. How arrogant! This kind of thinking is one major sin in itself. In conclusions, Jesus and His blood sacrifice did replace the Law as a means of salvation.

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