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[Over the Moon]

Which commandments from the Old Testament still apply to Christians today? And why do any of them not apply today?

[jimwalton]

The law codes of the Old Testament are not lists of God’s mandatory moral commands, nor are they lists of rules to be obeyed. They are not legislation. Because they are not comprehensive, and because of the literary context they are in, they are better viewed as legal wisdom—the means of communicating wisdom with regard to this area.

Therefore they are not intended to be read as rules, but rather to circumscribe the bounds of civil, legal, and ritual order. They are hypothetical examples to illustrate underlying principles (much as we use word problems to teach math). The purpose is not to teach about trains, buildings, running, or apples, but to learn trigonometry.

But the underlying principles are not moral commands either. It is wisdom to guide, not a list to identify a moral code. When fans read the baseball rulebook, it’s not to follow them but to understand what is happening as they watch the game. We don’t expect a referee to show up at the house to penalize spectators; we also should not expect God to show up handing out judgments on individuals or institutions because they have not behaved according to the principles that were set down for Israel. This legal wisdom was to shape Israelite society, not to provide a set of instructions by which anyone in any place or time can construct God’s ideal society.

The "laws" were written for Israelite theocracy. Civil law (the capital crimes) was intended for Israel as a theocratic state. When Israel/Judah fell (586 BC), the civil law became defunct with it. The civil law was not intended to be carried out by every government in history. It is no longer something secular governments are responsible to carry out.

The NT doesn't have the job of either affirming or disaffirming the information from the OT. The NT is there to reveal Christ, and therefore it’s not a criterion for determining OT law. The more pertinent question is "What is the nature of the OT law?" First of all, it's pertinent to ancient law. Secondly, it's situated in the old covenant, and pertains to that covenant. It's telling how Israel should act based on the culture of the day. Third, it pertains to sacred space. We can't extract the law from those contexts. Just because it's in the OT doesn't mean it's a law for all time. It doesn't legislate for us.

The Law was given as a temporary tutor (1) to show people that none were righteous and (2) to lead people to Jesus. While it was a temporary tutor, it was still an eternal dictum. Jesus came to fulfill it, meaning that he would actually do what the law was calling for: complete godliness in both attitudes and actions. He did that, so now our lives are governed by conformity to the person of Jesus rather than conformity to the dictates of the law. But since Jesus conformed to the dictates of the law, they are still there, but in effect in a different way, like a smaller volcano that gets swallowed up when the new, bigger volcano erupts. Jesus abolished in his flesh the barriers that the law created, the salvation by works that the law was misinterpreted as, and any privilege for the Jews that the law was misinterpreted to give. Salvation was by grace through faith, as it had always been. The Law still stands as God's covenant with his people, and will always be instructive to us as it helps us define holiness. It's not going away, but it has been subsumed under the person of Jesus, as it was always pointing to anyway. But because we now live by grace rather than by law, no one should interpret that as meaning the chains of the law are off and we can do as we please. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount (as well as other places), let us know that living in Christ by the Spirit was actually a more demanding way live, and holiness was even sharper than had been imagined under the law. The Law, Jesus, and Paul can be summarized by the "two greatest commands": Love God with everything you've got and love your neighbor as yourself. Those are not the complete extent of the law, which encompasses a wider circle of personal holiness, but those two provide a great platform of understanding.

The law that Christ fulfilled was the law in general—not just one part of it. He “fulfilled” it in that He did what the law failed to do: showed people how to live.The law was a temporary measure—God wanted to tell His people that they should have certain attitudes. He did that by commanding actions (the law) with the idea that they would see the attitudes behind them. They failed. Christ, on the other hand, preached the attitudes (Matthew 5) but more importantly lived an example of the proper attitudes (Philippians 2.5-8) as well as the proper actions (John 8.46), thus accomplishing what the law failed to accomplish. So the rule of thumb now is to follow Christ’s example. We can, in that sense, ignore the law, because if we follow Christ’s example, we’ll get the actions of the law and the attitudes of the heart. Since the law was supposed to reflect the right attitudes, starting with the right attitudes will more often than not bring about actions that are in keeping with the law. But we don’t do them because of the law; we do them because that is what godly attitudes bring about. So all of the law was fulfilled in Christ and our behavior now is not based at all on the law but on Jesus’s example (cf. Romans 13.8-10). The coinciding with many points of the law is to be expected, but we are not living by even that section of law.

So which ones apply to us? None of them; we now follow Jesus. The law was for theocratic Israel. But since Jesus was a follower of the law, we still follow the principles the law established. Now we look toward what the laws were about and what they were teaching, rather than follow them because they are laws to be followed.