July 4

July 4

TREKKING WITH ABRAHAM

“What then was the purpose of the Law?”
Galatians 3:19

 

The reason most people get upset about the way we are explaining the purpose of the Law, is that they get confused as to why and how such a huge chunk of scripture, that teaches us so much, and has so many types, analogies, lessons and insights, can now simply be labelled, “obsolete.”  I am referring to the five books of Moses. It is a good point asserted by quite a few readers, and raises a relevant question. Answering the question should feed our faith.

 

Let me explain that even though Paul made this remark about the Old Covenant being, “obsolete”, he nowhere suggests that Moses was wrong, or that the first five books should not be in the sacred canon of scripture. By no means. I would suggest that if anybody in the history of the body of Christ worldwide had negated the Pentateuch in that way, they would not be received at all, simply because it is simply not true. The books of Moses are precious gifts from God that require much study and attention. There is much to learn from them.

 

My answer to the question as to how and why Paul suggests that the Law has passed into obsolescence, is partly wrapped around the issue of what theologians call “Progressive Revelation”. As it is with the Bible, throughout the ages of its formulation and writing, so it is in the lives and hearts of people. We learn bit by bit. God reveals Himself revelation by revelation.  We learn, “line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept”.

So let us draw a quaint analogy. A man grows up without any religious teaching, or biblical ideas. Sunday was only a special day because he could stay in bed longer than any other (at least, that was true of myself).  Then this imaginary person comes to faith in Christ. New to the faith, this person reads the Bible, starts at Genesis, and ploughs through. He reads about the Sabbath. So a light switches on in his mind, “I need to keep the Sabbath. After all, the Sabbath is the Sunday isn’t it?” So our hypothetical man, while pursuing Christ, becomes a super Sabbath keeper on Sundays, believing he is being an obedient Christian. Because the man is acting with his understanding, and by faith, God receives his obedience. He is living what he knows and practising what he believes. But life goes on for our man. Later he reads that Jesus was free on the Sabbath, and contradicted the Pharisees, not by saying that he wasn’t breaking the Sabbath, but by saying that by the Spirit of God, there are things that need to be done that are consistent with God’s will and guidance that seemingly, on the surface, break Moses’ Sabbath Law. So from Revelation number One that led him to keep a strict Sabbath, his personal revelation and understanding leaves him now free to honour God on the Sabbath by actions that are not legalistic. But the story is still not over. He then receives revelation that Jesus rose from the dead the day after the Sabbath, on “the first day of the week”. So now, he understands that Sabbath keeping is utterly irrelevant, and everyday is the same. In fact, he can now understand that his whole life, in Christ, is for the “rest of faith” and is therefore a lifelong Sabbath. He sees that his original understanding of the Sabbath, from the reading of Moses is“obsolete”. 

 

But the scripture from which he first learned about the Sabbath is still precious to him, and he gains much, and grows in faith, as he continues to read those scriptures that talk about the Sabbath Law. His present understanding of freedom, and life being a Sabbath rest in Christ, would never have been arrived at if he had not had the original revelation of how the Saturday-Sabbath was so important to Moses’ teaching.

 

By applying the significance of my little story here to the huge issue of Paul, claiming that the Law is now obsolete, we can understand, I hope, how something that is now “obsolete” can still be an aid to faith, growth and New Testament teaching. It is for this reason (amongst others) that I have laboured the issue over the last few days that the Law was three things; An Addition, an Insertion, and also a Schoolteacher to lead us to Christ.

 

Progressive revelation suggests that the more light we have on any subject, retrospection will show us some lines of thought that are more important than others, as well as there being some lines of thought that are seen as less important – and some, even, that may even be seen as utterly  trivial, yet at the time it came to our attention it seemed huge. The point is that in our linear existence our personal revelation and understanding must be in a permanent state of expansion. As it is with the personal human experience, so it is with the development of the Bible. The New Testament revelation, of course, is a huge leap forward from the Old.

 

Christ coming to earth as a man, His life and teaching, His death, burial and resurrection, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the birth of the church, is God’s ultimate revelation. The Bible says so. “But as it is written, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him”. But God hath revealed them to us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searches all things, yes, and the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). What Paul is saying here, is that the Old Testament prophet said that people of his day had absolutely no idea at all concerning the wonderful, glorious and marvellous things God had in mind for humankind in that prophet’s future. But that all those wonders have now been revealed by the Spirit of God. We have it all.

Bear with me when I interject here to say that it SHOULD mean that all Christians are filled, and continually in a state of being filled with the Spirit of God to learn more of Him and His ways. But God has arranged the universe where it is up to us to write the cheque. You can go as far, or as short, as a believer wants to do with God. Christianity is life in the Spirit, not life in books, sermons and Colleges. Hear me correctly. Nothing wrong with books, sermons and colleges. But those are the railway lines for the locomotive of the Christian life to run on. The Christian locomotive is the power of a man or woman, walking full of the Spirit, full of the Word, listening to God’s voice and growing in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. As a person lives like that, learning and revelation flows in the heart and fills the mind. But even that is a progression. That is why we believe in progressive revelation. And that is why the Law is obsolete.


WHAT IS THE POINT? Keep growing and changing and learning. What is vital now, might be obsolete later, but without it you would not have attained what you will attain.