The Law – Part Four – The New Testament Law
January 6, 2009
In the last post, we discussed how a proper understanding of God’s law affects our evangelism and saw that our evangelism is a strong indicator of our theology and also has serious implications for the future vitality of the church itself. As we have discussed the New Testament law in this series, we have made a few observations. One is that Jesus extended the reach of the law by pressing it past man’s outward behavior into the thoughts and intents of the heart. We have also noted that Jesus came to complete God’s law that it might accomplish the thing that He gave it to accomplish.
In addition, the point has been made repeatedly that it is critical that we live in light of the fact that we are still under a divine law and in light of that, we must acknowledge that God continues to have the right to place demands upon on. While we have examined these characteristics of the New Testament Law, we have not examined what the declarations of the New Testament law are. We have seen clearly that the scope of the law extends to all things, and we have seen that the depth of the law presses it deep in the heart of man, but is there a clear list of the directives of this law? Well, though it receives little attention, Jesus clearly details for us the requirements of the New Testament law.
The Definition of the Law
In a very real sense, the Sermon on the Mount could be seen as a law giving moment. Just as Moses ascended a hill and descended with the written requirements of God, so to Jesus ascended the hillside and clearly spoke forth the code and law He came to bring. In that sense, we should see the Sermon on the Mount, not just as a nostalgic ideal, but as the present requirement of God. God does not simply give us instructions and values that we might then live “under grace” in the commonly understood meaning of the term. We can never discount grace, and we will address it in the final post, but God desires that grace become something that empowers us to live within that which He demands. To understand the New Testament law, the Sermon on the Mount then is the proper starting place so long as we can begin to see it as Jesus’ parallel to Moses’ directives given from Sinai and not just as an idyllic sermon that is not actually binding on every day life.
While the Sermon on the Mount is perhaps the foundational passage for the New Testament law, there are a few other passages we should examine. These passages are all familiar, but we have not considered these passages to be as weighty as they truly are. Consider Jesus’ answer to one seeking salvation:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. These two commandments sum up and upon them depend all the Law and the Prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40 (AMP)
Notice that just before the cross, Jesus affirms this requirement to His disciples:
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love and live on in it, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commandments and live on in His love…This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than to lay down his own life for his friends…You are My friends if you keep on doing the things which I command you to do…This is what I command you: that you love one another. – John 15:10, 12-14, 17 (AMP)
Again, we are familiar with these Scriptures, but we must ask ourselves if we see these passages as Jesus’ requirements for His people or do we see them as cute phrases and New Testament ideals? I fear that because of a misunderstanding of grace that we do not consider the full weight of these passages. In these passages, Jesus is putting a requirement on us and defining the way that He expects His people to live.
No one would deny that believers often fail to experience the full materialization of the promises recorded in Scripture, but could is be that we fail to obtain some of the benefits of the gospel because we have not esteemed the requirements of the gospel as such? Perhaps if we saw these commands as just as binding upon us as Moses’ Law was on the nation gathered around Sinai, we might become a radically different people.
The Weight of the Law
We began by pointing out that Jesus filled up the law and turned its requirements inward that He might deal with the very root of sin rather than merely prescribe good behavior. That consideration alone has the power to greatly alter our understanding of Jesus’ statements. After coming into that understanding, we have now considered some of the direct commands that Jesus gave to believers.
Now, we must ask an honest question which is who can fulfill such a law? While we are rightfully grateful that Jesus freed us from the outward bondage of Moses’ law, we fail to consider with much gravity the requirements of the law Jesus instituted. While Moses’ law was full of outward obligations that one might follow in some measure, Jesus law completely supersedes all outward observances and leaves men under greater condemnation than before.
If we honestly examine what He required, we must say, “who can fulfill such things?” for Jesus’ law is all encompassing. Can we not honestly say that every mode of life comes under the requirement to love God with all that we have and then extend love to others just the same as we would love ourselves? Beloved, this is a weighty requirement indeed. Moses’ law at least had specific requirements and limited scope, but Jesus’ law decrees that every thought, every desire, and every action are to be with regard to the supreme love of God and love of one another.
Can anyone among us have the audacity to declare that they could fulfill such a law? Can you see now that when the Spirit gives unction to preach such a law that there is no man who can stand in smug, self-righteousness? Saints we need to pray that God puts power on us again for the proclamation of this gospel. We have awkwardly proclaimed, at the same time, both the conviction of the Mosaic Law and the freedom from it, but we have not pressed men with the Law of Christ.
The reality is that God has not changed His demands upon man; He has only now intensified them in the revelation of Jesus. In the revelation of Jesus, He reveals what he created man for all along. You see, God does not intend to have a people that can merely follow a few moral axioms or fulfill religions ceremonies, He desires a people that are a physical display on earth of Himself. This is what it means that man is made in the image of God.
We are made in His image and so He presses upon us the same law that He Himself demonstrates in all that He does. He makes a requirement on us that no man can possibly fulfill, and yet He has every right to demand it because He made us in His own image that we might live as a physical demonstration of Himself and spread the knowledge of God by our very living. This requirement should crush all our righteousness and drive us to Christ both for forgiveness and for transformation to live in this manner, but tragically our gospel proclamation seems to have lost the weightiness of both of these values in its rush to declare us free from Moses’ prescribed diet and ceremonies!
Because we have lost these values, our evangelism is weak and anemic and our proclamation to the saints is hollow. We are content to gaze horizontally at our own righteousness and not gaze upwardly that we might demonstrate Him; the very thing to which we are called! We are content to demonstrate something a little better than other men rather than putting on display the glory of God and that is the fundamental issue.
Outward vs. Inward Law
Can you see now why Jesus superseded Moses’ law? What place can a ceremonial law have for people when God has declared something much higher and deeper? If we are to live under the law that Jesus proclaimed, then we will naturally fulfill every value of the more primitive law given under Moses. As His law now judges every intent of the heart, there is no longer any use for laws governing outward behavior.
In considering the New Testament law, we see how the incarnation of God in Jesus is the defining foundation of our covenant with God. God’s people lived under an outward law so long as their experience of God was outward. The children of Israel related to God as a physical, outward entity. They observed Him as a pillar of fire, but did not, and were not, able to receive Him as the pillar of fire in their own hearts. As their experience of God was outward and physical, so God gave them an outward and physical law.
In the incarnation, God revealed His ultimate plan to come and participate in the flesh of man. He became one of us that we might have eternal union with Him. From that moment henceforth our relationship with Him was to be in the inward parts of man. This is what the New Testament law ultimately demonstrates. When God injected Himself into humanity and took on flesh, He naturally brought His requirements to bear upon, not just our behavior, but upon our very nature as well. Now that He was man, He could do nothing less that require man to be a demonstration of His character. When His nature became intermingled with man’s, this was the necessary result.
Saints, the incarnation is the great mystery of the ages. When God became man, man came into a requirement for a new way of living after the nature of God Himself. In Adam, man was made in God’s image outwardly at creation. All the angels gasped to see a picture of God in the flesh. In the incarnation, man was made after God’s nature. The inner man was formed in the likeness of God in the person of Jesus.
When God took on flesh that flesh now more than ever must conform, not just to the physical image, but also to the very nature of God. An outward and physical law is no longer valid because God no longer has an outward, physical relationship with man. God pressed His nature into the very essence of man and so now there is an inward requirement made upon man. God has demonstrated His perfection in man and so man is now beholden to demonstrate that perfection, as God’s image on the earth, to creation.
Can we not see what a glorious thing it is then that God makes these demands of men? For every other creature God defines a law and creates them to live within certain limits. God is completely external to them, so He makes no demands on the inward natures of the other earthly creatures. He merely gives them instincts and physical limits. But with man, it is altogether different. Because God now dwells inside of man in the person of Jesus, He relates to us in inward requirements. Every demand of God is now aimed at the inward nature of man.
Who can fulfill such a law? Can you not see the depth of this law? Consider in your daily interactions whether every action taken is done so in the supreme love of God and then a love for others as yourself. God gives us no rules and not requirements to follow but a burning love for Him that expresses itself both towards Him and towards others. This is how Jesus can rebuke the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2 after recounting all their incredible accomplishments with the stinging words, “But I have this against you: that you have left the love that you had at first. Remember then from what heights you have fallen.” (Revelation 2:4-5)
Saints, if we are honest most believers are trying to accomplish the very things Ephesus was praised for in a belief that God’s favor will be secured in these accomplishments. The error is that this is an Old Covenant way of living that shows our own ignorance of the nature of the New Covenant. The fundamental issue and requirement is the passionate love of God continuing on into the love of one another. The love of God causes us to value and esteem all that He is and in that esteem we will necessarily desire to be an imitation and reflection of Him to all creation. In doing this, all the law will be fulfilled.
Filed in: New Testament Law Series, church, evangelism, holiness, kingdom, salvation, theology
One Response to “The Law – Part Four – The New Testament Law”
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“No one would deny that believers often fail to experience the full materialization of the promises recorded in Scripture, but could is be that we fail to obtain some of the benefits of the gospel because we have not esteemed the requirements of the gospel as such? Perhaps if we saw these commands as just as binding upon us as Moses’ Law was on the nation gathered around Sinai, we might become a radically different people.”
I think this is a noteworthy thought, deserving of further consideration and the necessary response- in grace- to the light that it brings.
