This post is a very rough sketch of ideas and may include unfinished, incomplete, or erroneous ideas that will later be corrected. This post will be part of a series that will form the basis of a new book I’m writing following on the themes of my last book, Thoughts From Reconstruction. All of these themes center around the New Covenant. You can find everything published so far in this series on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section.
Introduction
This is going to get uncomfortable. There are existential ramifications coming into the fullness of the New Covenant.
If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. -John 8:31
Speaking to Jewish converts, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31). These Jewish converts were still struggling to let go of the idea that they needed the Old Covenant Law to live rightly before God.
Jesus was telling them they had no permanent place in the Family under the Law, “everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34-36). Where the Law had given them hard and fast rules for living, they had felt confident, held firmly in place, and they were comfortable in those rules. But Jesus was offering a ‘righteousness apart from the Law’ (Romans 3:21), where hard and fast rules for living were transcended by higher ideals that conflicted with their understanding of the Law. They were unmoored and they were afloat in moral space.
But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. -Romans 3:21-22
What were they to do with the Law? Where would they start? What would happen to the Ten Commandments? They already knew they couldn’t uphold the Law perfectly, they had an annual sacrifice for the sins of the nation to account for that. How were the new Jewish converts to understand the new Law, the Greatest Law?
Jesus had already told them the greatest of the commandments, to love God, and then He added one to it, to love your neighbour as yourself. Finally, Jesus said He had come to fulfill the Law. Just as the Jewish people tried to uphold the Law, imperfectly, and needed an annual sacrifice, so they would come to realize that they would now practice the Greatest Law, imperfectly, but this time Jesus would be their perfect, permanent sacrifice for sins, once, for all time.
The Jews assumed they would continue to try to uphold the Law they were given, the Old Covenant of the Ten Commandments and the Law and the Prophets, but Gentiles were not party to the Old Covenant. The Jews were free, in terms of righteousness, from the Old Covenant, but it was not wrong, either, to try to keep to it because it was good and moral. The fault was in believing the Law, itself, could make you righteous. As Paul would later explain, the Law was given to expose unrighteousness.
Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of the child who was promised. -Galatians 3:19a
Strange Space
For the Gentiles, however, they were in a strange space. They were familiar with the Jewish Law but not, themselves, Jewish. What was their requirements? Some tried to tell them they had to practice Jewish Law. Finally, at a meeting of the Church in Jerusalem, for the sake of not making it unduly difficult to Gentiles and for the sake of peace between practicing Jews and Gentiles, Peter concluded…
So why are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear? We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus. -Acts 15:10-11
Note two things. First, Peter admits that “neither we [Jews] nor our ancestors were able to bear” the burden of the Law. Second, that salvation for all is only by the grace of Jesus.
James, after reminding the Church about the prophecies of Gentiles being converted, continues…
And so my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from eating food offered to idols, from sexual immorality, from eating the meat of strangled animals, and from consuming blood. For these laws of Moses have been preached in Jewish synagogues in every city on every Sabbath for many generations.” –Acts 15:19-21
The last sentence, about laws being preached in synagogues for many generations, is the key that explains that these rules are not the old Law, and they’re not a new Law, either, but they’re a way to make peace between Jews and Gentiles so neither are offended by the practices of the other.
The instructions are simplified, justified, and explained in the final drafting of the letter to the Gentile churches…
It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. -Acts 15:28-29
It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you… You will do well to avoid these things. This is the language of permission not restriction, grace not guilt, abundance not deprivation. The Gentiles ought joyfully to make these small ritual sacrifices so that they fulfilled loving their neighbours, the Jews. And the Christian Jews, likewise, ought joyfully to make small ritual sacrifices in tolerating the Christian Gentiles, who did not practice the Old Covenant Law as they did, so that they might fulfill loving their neighbours, the Gentiles.
Grace in Chaos
We see then that all are free of the Law and Prophets by fulfilling them through grace in Jesus by following the Greatest Law, Love God and Neighbour. As demonstrated in the letter to the Gentile churches, following the Greatest Law does mean the Old Covenant Law is not Good but simply that righteousness is now given “by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus”.
But you knew what this was leading to. You kept it to the back of your mind. Sometimes we find it necessary, moral even, to break the Law in order to fulfill the Greatest Commandment, love God and Neighbour, and that’s okay, because Jesus fulfills the Law and the Prophets. But, is this a door we’ve opened that we can’t close? Is everything on the table now?
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? -Romans 6:1-2
We have dealt in other places with lying, stealing, or killing but, in some ways, these are relatively easy to deal with. It’s the “big sins”, the sins that are uncomfortable to engage, because of how we feel about them and because we say, “well, they’re almost always wrong, anyway.” Almost. Some of the rules we’ve adopted aren’t so easy to firmly plant ourselves on one side of the other on.
But that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to deal with the New Covenant when the chaos of the complexity of life threatens to undo us.
This series will continue. Please check back from time to time, if you’re interested in reading new parts as they become available. The entire series will be made available on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section as each part is published.