Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them (Matt 5:17).Cool! But ... what does that mean?
Remember first and foremost that the Bible is, perhaps uniquely, "History" -- the story of Christ. The entire focus of all of Scripture is Christ. Christ in His prior existence, Christ in His Incarnation, Christ in His death and resurrection, Christ in His glory, Christ in our future, the Alpha (beginning) and the Omega (end). He is the point. All of history is His story.
In the Scriptures we have the Law and the Prophets. (Remember that when Jesus said "Scriptures" the New Testament wasn't written. He referred to our Old Testament.) The Prophets all speak to God's transcendence and immanence, His overarching majesty and His very real presence. The Law speaks of, for the largest bulk of it, what it takes to be right with God, and in a smaller sense how we can reflect His character. (Remember, we are "predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom 8:29).) The first part is constructed of two aspects: the Ceremonial Laws and the Sacrificial Laws. The second part is called the "Moral Law". A large part of the Old Testament Law with a capital "L" is that first part. It describes how the tabernacle was to be built and maintained, how a large variety of sacrifices were to be done, the priestly system, and so on. It also describes how God's people were to approach that sacrificial system. It included rules on cleanliness, eating, farming, and all sorts of ways that God's elect were to stand out from the rest of the world as pure and different than the rest of the world as they approached and enjoyed this unique sacrificial system whereby they could ceremonially be made right with God. The latter part, the Moral Law, describes God's character and how those who are God's people ought to live in order to reflect that character.
And we have Jesus telling us that He came not to abolish these things, "but to fulfill them."
That's what He did. Jesus became the Lamb of God. He became the scapegoat. He became the Sacrifice that God demanded. He embodied purity and a separation from the rest of the world. In His death on the Cross He fulfilled God's every demand of justice and in His Resurrection He completed everything necessary for us to be made right with God. Nothing remains but to trust Him for that. Beyond that, He lived the perfect moral life and provided us an example of His character and affirmed that the Moral Law reflects that character as a blueprint for how those who follow Him should live.
So what does that mean to us? How many times have you heard, "You Christians are so inconsistent! You claim to believe the Bible and try to argue that homosexuality is a sin but you don't care about eating shrimp or touching pigskin!" or something like it? The objection is first based on the demand to discard all right of God on our lives and most pressingly a failure to comprehend the nature of "the Law and the Prophets". You see, if we seek to return to a shadow of the truth, the Ceremonial and Sacrificial Laws, we would be dishonoring at the core our Lord and Savior who came to fulfill those. They are fulfilled -- filled full. Our task as Christ-followers is to emulate Him in His character as outlined in Scripture, but trying to live up to a picture offered prior to His arrival and fulfillment of that image would be inconsistent and insulting. Either He did accomplish what He came for -- the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets in providing us with the genuine means of being right with God and offering us an example of moral purity -- or He didn't. If He did, then we must follow the moral laws of the Old Testament and not the ceremonial or sacrificial laws. It is the only reasonable thing to do. It is the only consistent way to live in view of the entirety of Scripture as Christ-centered. We enjoy the ceremonial and sacrificial fulfillment in Christ and live out the moral life in gratitude. That's not inconsistent. That's rational and reasonable.
No comments:
Post a Comment