Taking Law Seriously

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Christians learn early that love, not law, distinguishes a true follower of Jesus Christ. They eagerly embrace the liberating gospel message of salvation from sin to escape from rules too easily broken in the first place. They rejoice in the merciful gift of God’s grace, in contrast to fear of God’s justice and punishment for sin. But facile contrasts of justice and mercy, law and gospel, commandment and love obscure the real message of the Bible in a way that serves the selfish interests of an age obsessed with freedom and rights. Too often stereotypes of law join with stereotypes of Jews to produce anti-Semitism.

In the New Testament Paul wrote the most explicit and complex theology of biblical law. Faced with the reasonable expectation that non-Jewish followers of Jesus would, like Jesus and all other Jews, observe the biblical laws and live a Jewish way of life, Paul surprisingly affirmed that his gentile converts, who believed intensely in God and in Jesus as son of God, did not have to obey all God’s laws in the Bible. Paul’s sometimes confusing arguments try to establish gentile freedom from the law without rejecting the authority of the Bible as revelation and without invalidating all biblical commandments. Paul and all Christian teachers have demanded that gentile as well as Jewish followers of Jesus observe the Ten Commandments, the commandments to love God and neighbor, and laws requiring just behavior toward others, respect toward God and compassion toward the needy and helpless in society. In fact, though many Christians affirm that they are free from the law, they qualify that slogan so that they are bound by a strict code of moral behavior.

It is true that no document in the New Testament stands for straightforward observance of all of Mosaic law. In comparison, many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as the Temple Scroll, the Halakhic Letter (known as MMT), the Community Rule and the Damascus Covenant, systematically interpret and adapt biblical laws to the life of Jewish communities during the Second Temple period. Even more elaborately the Mishnah, a collection of laws, disputes and legal arguments codified by the rabbis in the second century C.E., works out the implications of biblical laws with austere and exhaustive logic. And yet, in its own way, the New Testament interprets biblical laws in a variety of ways, according to its understanding of Jesus’ teaching and Christian life.

Similarly Christian communities have adopted and adapted biblical laws to their own situations. All Christians acknowledge the biblical practice of dedicating every seventh day to God. In many eras Christians refrained from work on their sabbath, as Jews did on theirs. Teachers and preachers have for centuries explained the meaning of Jesus’ death using sacrificial terms, ideas and images derived from the Temple regulations in the Hebrew Bible. The festivals of Passover and Weeks (Pentecost) have been incorporated into the Christian liturgical calendar. Laws forbidding marriage with close relatives have been derived from the Bible, as have the principles that govern economic and social relations within society. The tithes brought to the Temple were transformed into gifts to the Christian community. In addition, the three traditional Jewish practices—fasting, prayer and almsgiving—were adopted by Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jews and Christians have also evaded biblical law. Under Greco-Roman influence they began using images in their buildings, including synagogues and churches, despite the second commandment. Polygamy, allowed by the Hebrew Bible, became very uncommon among Jews and was forbidden by Christians in the Greco-Roman world. Many biblical laws concerned with the Temple became inoperative with its destruction in 70 C.E., though the study of these laws continued to flourish in some Jewish communities. Laws for an agricultural society were adapted to more urban Christian and Jewish communities. Biblical dietary laws forbidding certain animals, birds and sea creatures were ignored by gentile Christians, as were purity laws concerning the resumption of sexual intercourse after menstruation. By contrast, rabbinic Judaism studied these laws intensely and eagerly worked out their implications in a new environment.

The New Testament documents articulated laws based on the teachings of Jesus, though not all of them became standard Christian practice. Jesus in Matthew (5:33–37) and the author of the Epistle of James (5:12) forbid oaths, but most Christian communities have allowed or insisted on them. Again, Jesus in Matthew (5:31–32; 19:1–9; see also Luke 16:18; Mark 10:1–12) and Paul, speaking in the Lord’s name (1 Corinthians 7), forbid divorce and remarriage, though many mitigations of this rule have operated throughout Christian history.

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The authors of the New Testament documents regularly teach norms for behavior found in or adapted from biblical law. Contrary to later Christian polemics, the New Testament does not speak of legalism or of law as decadent or contrary to Christianity. Christian authors, reflecting on the teachings of Jesus and of the Hebrew Bible, interpreted, adapted and taught the commandments of God as an authentic and necessary expression of biblical and Christian faith.

Christians learn early that love, not law, distinguishes a true follower of Jesus Christ. They eagerly embrace the liberating gospel message of salvation from sin to escape from rules too easily broken in the first place. They rejoice in the merciful gift of God’s grace, in contrast to fear of God’s justice and punishment for sin. But facile contrasts of justice and mercy, law and gospel, commandment and love obscure the real message of the Bible in a way that serves the selfish interests of an age obsessed with freedom and rights. Too often stereotypes of law join with […]