Salvation and Law
It is a fascinating study to compare the main messages of various biblical books. It would surprise many moderns to learn that Jesus was a Jew and not a Christian. It would surprise them even more to search for any modern version of Christianity among the gospels.
Although the synoptic gospels are strikingly similar, even they each reveal things that the others do not. Although all the gospels have a strong emphasis on the crucifixion, Mark especially presents the long-awaited advent of the Messiah as a revealing of the mystery that he would somehow accomplish all the messianic prophecies by suffering and dying. We have to really try to put ourselves in the minds of first century Jews and their messianic hopes in order to fully grasp how ridiculous such a claim must have seemed on its face. Even Paul freely admits that the gospel was foolishness to the world. [1] And Mark was the only gospel to possibly hint that anything in the law of Moses might be removed (see below). Matthew presents Jesus as preaching in the tradition of the rabbis, except with more authority, and is the only gospel where Jesus claims he is only sent to the Jews; the disciples will only be sent to the Gentiles at the end of the book, after Jesus’ resurrection, with no mention of the law not being applicable to them (as Acts specifically addresses); in fact, in Matthew the law is to continue “until heaven and earth pass away.”[2] Matthew is also the only gospel which mentions the “church”. Luke does not mention that Jesus’ death is any sort of atonement, but actually fits his death into the tradition of suffering and martyrdom of the prophets and of their followers, a theme which is carried into the book of Acts.
The gospel of John is radically different from the other gospels in so many ways. As will be examined more below, there are at least some pretty substantial differences in its Christology, even if maybe sometimes overstated by scholars. But one of the most striking differences is that John focuses on what Jesus says about himself, who he is, rather than the moral and wisdom teachings found in the other gospels. And many of the most fundamental statements used to understand who Jesus was are only found in John, not the synoptics.
Maybe Paul felt that the testimonies that would become the gospels did all the work of telling their tales so that he need not repeat hardly any of that information.[3] He says almost nothing about Jesus’s life or the nature of the kingdom, one of Jesus’ favorite subjects in Matthew especially. Nor does he repeat hardly any of their teachings, such as Jesus’ admonitions not to worry about tomorrow, the unblessed will be blessed, or that the first will be last. You can ask of the synoptics “what” did Jesus teach, but to get the best answer, you should ask “who” did Paul teach. Paul’s main focus was faith in Jesus Christ. Dale Martin states it as “the proclaimer became the proclaimed.”[4] Paula Fredriksen says that the messenger became the message.[5]
Comparing the themes of the rest of the books of the New Testament, while fascinating, is less instructive about what the author believed to be the core tenets of the Way taught by Jesus and the apostles: books like James or the letters of Peter or John are simply too short to conclude that they presented anything approaching a holistic explanation of their views, and the book of Hebrews, though lengthy, is a sermon on a fairly narrow topic. That does not mean that we cannot glean much from them regarding their view on what law governs the lives of followers of YHVH, but we should be cautious not to make too many conclusions based on what they omit, which seems to be an error committed often in modern scholarship.
But perhaps one of the most productive investigations we can make regarding what Jesus and the authors of the New Testament would consider their core teachings can be found by comparing what the books of the New Testament say about law.
What of the Law of Moses?
New Covenant
Perhaps one of the most intriguing debates in Christendom is what happened to the Mosaic law? Was it superseded by a New Law, as many Christians (but not all) have argued for hundreds of years?
Before we wade into that topic, we first should observe that Torah actually means “instruction”, not “law”, as the Septuagint called it. The New Testament voices are pretty unanimous on using the Torah and the rest of the prophets as instruction. Even Galatians 3 and Hebrews, some of the most popular books used to support Supersessionism,[6] say that the law was a sort of instructor, or a guardian that guided the people, and the law contained symbols that point to the real, spiritual reality of eternal truths. The Torah and even the other prophetic works of the Hebrew Bible only contained some laws, but were primarily about the story of God’s descent to dwell with man, and his covenanting with him. This story is the amazing revolutionary message that the Bible brought to the world to conquer it, not just a list of rules. (That is not to say that the rules found in the Bible were not important.)
This shallow view of the Bible as merely a system of rules has led to many misunderstandings in the debate about what covenant still stands. I once heard a man argue that the gospels belonged to the Old Testament, a view with which many in my area would agree. His argument hinged on the idea that the two “Testaments”[7] should be separated based on when which system of law was in effect. His view was that a new dispensational period began at Pentecost in Acts 2, not even at the cross, which I’ll come back to below. But regardless of what, if any, dispensationalism you believe in, the New Testament writers viewed their revelation of the “good news” as beginning to be unveiled with the gospels, but already couched in the Hebrew Bible itself! Nor will you find a systemized code of laws anywhere in the New Testament.
Another misconception based on a misunderstanding of the covenants of the Bible relates to interpretation. Many times I’ve seen a passage cited in the Hebrew Bible by a Christian to prove a theological point, and the counter argument will be “but that’s in the Old Testament!” In other words, the Christian objecting sees the Hebrew Bible as more of a law that’s been superseded than as instruction that still instructs. I’ve seen this taken to such an extreme that the person’s logic would have even kept the New Testament from being written, for its foundational doctrines, not to mentions hundreds of quotes, were in fact based on the Hebrew Bible.[8] How does someone become so at odds with the holy book they claim to revere as the very word of God?
But the Hebrew Bible did in fact contain some law collections, even if it was not primarily comprised of them, and they were very important to anyone who wanted to please YHVH. Below, we’ll try to consider what, if anything, happened to those laws when the New Testament writers came along. But before we do that, we should at least briefly mention what the Hebrew Bible authors said they were expecting.
Jeremiah is perhaps the most quoted by Christians as indicating that a new covenant will be made.
“The days are certainly coming, declares YHVH, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares YHVH. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares YHVH: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be my people. And no longer will each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know YHVH’, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares YHVH. For I will forgive their iniquity and will remember their sin no more.”
—Jeremiah 31:31-34
Before we consider the way Christians, or even the New Testament writers, would interpret this, I think it’s instructive to consider its interpretation in the first half a millennium after it was written. Jeremiah was a witness of the destruction of the of Jerusalem and the Temple. The prophets, including Jeremiah, had warned the people what would happen if the people broke the covenant of God and failed to serve him, serving instead pagan deities. Sure enough, God used Babylon to destroy the kingdom of Judah and his Temple, and carry off a surviving remnant into a generation of captivity. Once they had been sufficiently humbled and taught to fear him, a remnant of that remnant would return to rebuild.
It is at this point that the prophets said that the people would finally keep covenant with God, and give up idolatry.[9] And history largely bears this out. There does seem to be a shift in Israel after the captivity, in which they would faithfully follow YHVH and reject idolatry, consistently for hundreds of years. There was even a problem on some occasions with them losing battles against their enemies because they would not even fight on the Sabbath, although the Hasmoneans would reverse this one scruple.
In this light, there was a need for a renewal of the covenant that God had made with Israel, since they had so severely broken it, like a wife who has been unfaithful to her husband, who is willing to take her back. And the view of the latter prophets like Ezekiel and Jeremiah was that it was a restorative covenant, in which God’s laws would finally be kept. And not only would Israel again offer sacrifice where God caused his name to dwell, at his holy Temple, but so would the nations.[10] This renewal of the covenant was such an important prophecy that at that time He would actually never again abandon them, and his presence would again reside in the Temple, perpetually![11]
But did calling it a new covenant necessarily entail a superseding of Moses’ law with a new one? I’m guessing most Jews in the post-exilic period would have considered that a misinterpretation of the prophets. God had made multiple covenants with men, from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David. None were a removal of the old, but were woven from the former ones. Noah’s brought only a few laws, then Abraham’s brought the new law of circumcision, and Moses’ brought extensive new laws. But none seem to “repeal” any previous laws. But the New Testament’s message was very radical, so we’ll consider below some facets regarding whether its writers saw the change in the law as part of the gospel’s mystery.
It is interesting that Matthew portrays Jesus bringing up the covenant at the last supper when he gives them the fruit of the vine as the blood of the covenant.[12] Paul’s version of this event adds the word “new” to the covenant, a fairly obvious application to the Jeremiah 31 prophecy that there would be a New Covenant.[13] Paul also quotes Isaiah 27:9 to explain what the covenant does: it takes away sins.[14] By looking at such passages, we understand how they saw the New Covenant. Note that so far we have not needed to explain it as a change in the law. Whether there is a change in the law seems to come into question, though, when we see how 2 Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 7-12 speak of the covenant.
Everlasting Mosaic Law?
Many Christians whom I’ve encountered believe that the “law of Moses” is still applicable even till today, but only to the Jews; after all, Moses did give it to them and their children as an everlasting covenant. This view actually has myriad biblical prooftexts to argue from, even before Luke. Many times in the Hebrew Bible, God told the people of Israel that his law or some aspect of it would continue, forevermore, or at least “perpetually”.[15] Proponents for supersession of the Mosaic covenant/testament argue that the Hebrew term owlam can mean “perpetual” and not necessarily “everlasting”,[16] which is true, but does it in fact merely mean perpetual and not everlasting in passages like Leviticus 16:34 and Exodus 40:15?
Just reading part of Leviticus 16, we see how important the owlam is, as it is written in a significant three-fold repetition, in respect to the law of the day of atonement.
This will be a statue to you forever: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble yourselves and will do no work, neither the native-born nor the alien who resides among you. For on this day atonement will be made for you to cleanse you; from all your sins you will be clean before YHVH. It is a Sabbath of complete rest for you, and you will humble yourselves; it is a statute forever…. And this shall be a statute forever for you, that atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all their sins.” And Aaron did as the Lord commanded Moses.
—Leviticus 16:29-34
But as we’ve seen in previous chapters, this law was not kept for significantly lengthy and multiple periods of Israel’s history, according to her own sacred histories. Nor could it be kept at the place where God would ostensibly everlastingly cause his name to dwell, at the Temple in Jerusalem, at any time since the last destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. After that time, Christians would provide answers for how God’s covenant with his people could be everlasting, but so also would the Jews, with the predominant form of Judaism that would survive being born from the typically more rural Pharisaic[17] version of the synagogue.
And as we’ve noted in previous sections, passages like Ezekiel 37 suggest that when the nations are finally brought into Yahweh’s fold, they will follow that same, Mosaic, eternal law. To see how moderns misinterpret what Jesus actually said about the law in the gospels, see the next article here.
[1] 1 Corinthians 1:18-27.
[2] Or at least until all was “accomplished,” 5:18.
[3] I say it this way because most if not all four of the gospels were probably not written by the time Paul died. This naturally begs the question regarding what they had recorded in writing, not just oral teachings, before the gospels were completed. Paul clearly relies on the main message of the gospels, even if his main focus was faith in their main character and in the historical fact of their conclusion, the crucifixion.
[4] New Testament History and Literature, ch. 14
[5] From Jesus to Christ, introduction
[6] The idea that a new covenant displaced the law of Moses, which is therefore no longer in effect; this concept is also called replacement theology.
[7] For the origin of this concept, see passages such as Hebrews 9:16-28, 2 Corinthians 3:6, 1 Corinthians 11:25, etc. Hebrews is playing off of a word that could mean both “covenant” and the legal document of a will.
[8] A similar view was espoused as one of the earliest anti-proto-orthodox teaches after Christ, taught by an influential man named Marcion (c. 85- 160 CE), who rejected not only the Hebrew Bible and its god, but also much of the New Testament, which he (whatever of it he had access to) viewed as relying erroneously on those ancient Scriptures. He also, interestingly enough, gives us our most ancient canon list, which as you might guess is much shorter than the modern ones. See Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, ch. 5, by Bart Ehrman.
[9] E.g., Zechariah 13:2
[10] E.g., Isaiah 56:6, 7
[11] E.g., Ezekiel 43:6-9
[12] Matthew 26:28; also Mark 14:24.
[13] 1 Corinthians 11:25
[14] Romans 11:27
[15] E.g., Psalm 119:151-152, 160; Leviticus 16:34; Exodus 40:15; 31:16. Strong’s 5769.
[16] E.g., for a person’s lifetime in Exodus 14:13; 21:6; Leviticus 35:46; Deuteronomy 15:17, etc.
[17] This term should not be taken to be synonymous with hypocrisy, as it is most often used in modern English; though this is one of the broad brushstrokes that the gospels and subsequent history paint the Pharisees. They were also scrupulous keepers of the law, as the New Testament also bears out. And even Jesus says that they sat in Moses’ seat (Matthew 23:1-3). And Paul does not say that he was a Pharisee, but spoke in the present tense (Philippians 3:5). Being a Pharisee is not explicitly depicted by the New Testament writers as wrong per se; it was, rather, their rejection of Jesus, as well as some legalisms with which they struggled and neglected the greater commands. It could even be argued that such weaknesses are more a result of human psychology, and are more of an issue with a group that “know” they have the correct law, rather than those who do not.