Jesus Christ as “Fulfiller” and “Ender” of the Mosaic Law?

A Reconsideration of the Law of Moses, the Law of Christ, Legalism, Antinomianism, Mosaic Covenant, New Covenant, and more

by Christopher Travis Haun (cthaun[at]hotmail[dot]com) for http://rethinker.net

Unfinished first draft

nailed_to_cross.jpg jesus image by cutiepie419_bucket

The questions revolving around the Law given through Moses to Israel and its relevance for the Church today are very controversial. I’m trying to reconsider several dissimilar viewpoints here: Classic Dispensational, Messianic Christian, traditional Lutheran, traditional Calvinistic-Reformed-Covenantal, and NPP (New Perspectives on Paul). At face value in English, the debate seems very simple and it becomes just a matter of which verses one side chooses to quote/emphasize and minimize/ignore and which the other side chooses to quote/emphasize and minimize/ignore. But it seems like the issue is deeper than face value. There are some textual issues and some translation issues with some of the relevant scriptures. So there is room for debate and reason for assumptions and preconceptions to be held very loosely. There are also theological forces at work here too where the relationship of the Church to Israel contributes major impact on the question of how much (if any) of the Mosaic Law and/or Torah the Christ-followers of today should be under.

Contents:

The Problem – Continuity or Discontinuity of the Mosaic Law

Passages Indicating Discontinity of the Law

Acts 15 – The Jerusalem Council of Apostles and Elders

1 Corinthians 9:19-23 – we are under Christ’s law, not the Law of Moses

2 Corinthians 3 – The Law of Moses Condemned; the New Covenant gives life

Romans 7 – You have died to the Law

Romans 10:1-4 – Christ is the End of the Law, even for the Israelites

Ephesians 2:9-22 - The Law has been Abolished

Colossians 2:11-23 – The Law has been canceled and nailed to the Cross

The Proper Uses of the Torah for the Christian

Matthew 5:17-20 – Not to Abolish but to Fulfill

Matthew 5 in the light of Luke 24:25 – Christ the theme of the Torah

Matthew 5 in the light of John 1:35 – Christ fulfilled the main type in the Torah

Matthew 5 in the light of Acts 15:20-29 – The Jerusalem Council

Acts 15 and Genesis 9 - the Noahide Laws

Acts 15 and Leviticus 17 – The Sojourner Laws

1 Corinthians 10:1-11 – the Law is still useful to us as example and warning

1st Timothy 1 – The Law is good if used properly

Bibliography

The Problem

On one hand it sounds like Jesus came to reinforce the Mosaic Law. On the other hand it seems like Christ came to end the Law. This dilemma can be seen in the juxtaposition of these two passages:

Matthew 5:17-18

Romans 10:3-4

Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

Seeing a major change involving the Mosaic Law after the Lord Jesus Christ established a New Covenant with his own blood is an easy task. But attempting to do justice to all the nuances of the discontinuities and continuities may not be so simple. While Jesus himself kept and upheld the Law of Moses perfectly during his life time, he also times seems to have gone out of his way to break the man-made traditions that various Rabbis had created as hedges around the Mosaic Law. (Healing on the Sabbath was not a breaking of the Sabbath rest, for example.) Jesus himself only had positive things to say about “the Law” (and yet had some negative things to say about the Laws of men who attempted to speak for God).

In an ongoing drama of its own, the Church in Jerusalem struggled with attitudes and positions on the continuity and discontinuity of the Mosaic Law for the circumcised believers in Jesus and for the uncircumcised believers in Jesus. Peter himself continued to struggle with the Mosaic Law long after the Lord had given him a powerful vision to help educate him in the at least one of the major changes. Missionaries of a legalistic wing of the Jerusalem Church seem to have gone out without authorization from the Apostles to follow Paul around on his missionary journeys to try to put new believers back under the Law.

As is well known, Jesus’ ambassador Paul makes many negative statements about the Law but also makes a few positive statements as well. So great is the contrast and so radical is the change that it is commonly assumed (I’d argue wrongly assumed) in some academic circles that Paul hijacked and reinvented Jesus-centered theology. But Paul himself also seems to have made several positive statements about the Law, directly or indirectly, and seems to have gone out of his way to keep the Law at times after his conversion.

Although Calvin and Luther agreed quite a bit about the Law, they are not in perfect agreement. The more radical wing of the Reformation saw and stressed more discontinuity than the Reformers did and left behind more of the Latin assumptions. Arguably, on this topic of Law, the radical reformation culminated with the teachings of dispensational tradition (Darby, Scofield, Chafer, Walvoord) which saw total discontinuity between Israel and the Church and Law and Gospel. With the rise in popularity of the New Perspectives on Paul (Sanders, Dunn, etc), the rise of various Messianic Jewish-Christian movements, and the hybridizing of dispensational and continuist systems, there is a whole range of viewpoints in the spectrum to fuel rethinking.

Matthew 5

¹⁷“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. ¹⁸I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. ¹⁹Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Those who like to argue that Christians are still under “the Law” tend to be quick to quote Jesus’ words about, “I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it." They also like to quote some of these verses:

Rom 7:12 the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.

Rom 7:16 I agree that the law is good.

Rom 7:22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law

Rom 7:25 I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law

1 Tim 1:8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly

But here is a glimpse of some of the many passages where Paul, in particular, makes it seem that the Law—and this seems more than not to imply the Law of Moses—has been abrogated, nullified, discontinued, etc.

· Rom 7:3 my brothers, you also died to the law

· Rom 7:6 dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law

· Rom 7:10 the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death

· Rom 4:15 law brings wrath.

· Col 2:14 God canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.

· Eph 2:14-15 [Christ Jesus] destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations

· 2 Cor 3:6 ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

· 2 Cor 3:7 the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone

· 2 Cor 3:9 the ministry that condemns men

· Rom 10:4 Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes

· 1 Tim 1:9 law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious

· Gal 2:19 through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.

· Gal 2:21 if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing

· Gal 2:14 not acting in line with the truth of the gospel. . . you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs

· Gal 2:15 a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ

· Gal 2:16 by observing the law no one will be justified

· Gal 3:3 After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?

· Gal 3:10 All who rely on observing the law are under a curse

· Gal 3:13 redeemed us from the curse of the law

· Gal 3:21 if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.

· Gal 3:23 Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed

· Gal 3:24 the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ

· Gal 3:25 Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

· Gal 4:3 when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world

· Gal 4:7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son

· Gal 4:9 how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?

· Gal 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

· Gal 5:4 You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace

· Gal 5:18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law

· 1 Cor 9 I am not under the law. . . I am under Christ’s law

· Phil 3 Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.

Acts 15 – The Council of the Jerusalem Church Apostles and Elders

So there is room for dispute by those who quote New Testament passages. But this really should NOT be a very controversial matter. At least the question of whether or not Gentile Christians should be under the Law or under the jurisdiction of even some of the Law should not be in debate. For when we read the first church council in Jerusalem, in Acts 15, the controversy vanishes. Acts 15 was the time to put us under law if there ever was one. It is the only example we know of for the exercise of “binding and loosing” by Peter and the other Apostles and Elders in the Jerusalem church. This council of elders in Jerusalem among the first generation Jewish Church was the highest court of appeals, tantamount to a new Sanhedrin for a new community. And for those today who say that Christians (especially Gentile Christians) are under the jurisdiction of some/all of the Mosaic Law, they are exercising the audacity to overrule the authority and ruling of the Jewish Apostles and elders of the first-century Church of Jerusalem—and even the Holy Spirit himself!

Acts 15

¹Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." ²This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. ³The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the brothers very glad. ⁴When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them. ⁵Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, "The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses."

⁶The apostles and elders met to consider this question. ⁷After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. ⁸God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. ⁹He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. ¹⁰Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? ¹¹No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are."

¹²The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. ¹³When they finished, James spoke up: "Brothers, listen to me. ¹⁴Simon^[a] has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. ¹⁵The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
¹⁶" 'After this I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, ¹⁷that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things'^[b] ¹⁸that have been known for ages. ¹⁹"It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. ²⁰Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. ²¹For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." ²²Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, two men who were leaders among the brothers. ²³With them they sent the following letter: The apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: Greetings. ²⁴We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. ²⁵So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— ²⁶men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁷Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. ²⁸It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: ²⁹You 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. Farewell. ³⁰The men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. ³¹The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. ³²Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the brothers. ³³After spending some time there, they were sent off by the brothers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them.^[d] ³⁵But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.

One might argue that this council was addressing the question of salvation and might proceed to say that Christians should keep the Mosaic Law not to earn their salvation or to maintain their ongoing salvation but just because they’re still under its jurisdiction. They’d probably say that becoming a Christian is part of entering the entity known as Israel, and therefore the convert is obliged to obey the laws that God applied to Israel in Exodus ___ and Deuteronomy ___.

Here are some other passages which should challenge the idea that anyone—whether Israeli Jew or Christian Gentile (but especially Gentile)—is actually under the jurisdiction of the Mosaic Law at all.

1 Cor 9:19-23

¹⁹Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. ²⁰To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ²¹To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. ²²To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. ²³I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

This passage is fascinating because here is Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, trained as a Pharisee, saying that he himself if not under the Mosaic Law but that he is under Christ’s Law (and therefore under God’s Law). This helps answer one of my questions about whether believing Gentiles are not under the Mosaic Law while perhaps Jewish Christians still are. Paul clearly says that he is not under the Law. But that he puts himself under the law only for the sake of winning the Jews to Christ. To put win the Gentiles, he lives as one not under Mosaic Law. ).

This passage tips the scales of my judgment that the Law of Christ has replaced the Law of Moses for those who believe into Christ. The Law of Moses has no jurisdiction for those who are in Christ. (But I also might mention, as I shall show later, that the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ have the same kernel: love of God and love of one another.)

However, in the next chapter, Paul also makes it clear that we need to not be ignorant of the Law and that we do need to be sensitive to the examples left in it.

2 Corinthians 3

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. 3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4 Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. 5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? 9 If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! 10 For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. 11 And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts! 12 Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. 13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. 14 But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

1st Timothy 1

3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God’s work—which is by faith. 5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm. 8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

Romans 7 – You Died to the Law

Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? ²For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. ³So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. ⁵For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. ⁶But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet."^[b] ⁸But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. ⁹Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. ¹⁰I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. ¹¹For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. ¹²So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. ¹³Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. ²¹So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²²For in my inner being I delight in God's law; ²³but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. ²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Romans 10

1Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. 2For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. 3Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. 4 Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

Ephesians 2:9-22

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away {gentiles like us} and peace to those who were near {the Jews}. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Colossians 2:11-23

When you [gentiles] were dead [no living, covenantal relationship to God] in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

⁶So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, ⁷rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

⁸See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

⁹For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, ¹⁰and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. ¹¹In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature,^a not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, ¹²having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

¹³When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature,^b God made you^c alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.^d

¹⁶Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. ¹⁷These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. ¹⁸Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. ¹⁹He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

²⁰Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: ²¹“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? ²²These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. ²³Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

Phil 3

Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. ²Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. ³For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— ⁴though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

⁷But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Hebrews 8 13By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.

Matthew 5:17-20

So how do we discontinuists deal with the potential interpretational thorns that Matthew 5 presents? It is easy to read this passage and conclude that those who dismiss the Law perform a great travesty. It is also easy to read this passage and conclude that we all need to practice the commands of the Law to be saved (to enter the kingdom of heaven).

Surely this passage deserves a serious treatment.

First here I argue that there is no conflict between saying that Christ is the one who fulfills the law and that Christ is the one that is the end of the Law. It is perfectly logical to maintain that (a.) Jesus is the fulfillment of all the prophecies and typology found in the Torah and (b.) that Jesus’ work on the Cross also ended the jurisdiction of all the commandments found in the Torah. There is no conflict here. And there is no problem whatsoever in saying that there were prophecies in the Torah that Jesus did fulfill already and that there are prophecies which Jesus will fulfill.

Here is an example from Luke 24:25, from Jesus own lips, of what I believe it means to say that Christ fulfilled the Torah:

²⁵He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" ²⁷And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

John 1:35 provides another example of how John the Baptizer believed that Jesus, especially in his substitutionary death, was fulfilling one major part—arguably the most important part--of the Torah.

³⁵The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. ³⁶When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God!"

Jesus was the Lamb of God. This is the most important way that Jesus fulfilled the Torah. All those thousands of years of sacrifices of lambs, bulls, goats and such pointed typologically to Jesus. Jesus “fulfilled” those types of sacrifices just as he fulfilled so many prophecies.

[Footnote: Quote Leon Morris from The Atonement on this, perhaps as a footnote.]

Second, while it is natural to equate entrance into the kingdom of heaven with salvation, let me remind that the Apostles and elders of Jerusalem (in Acts 15) already dealt with this controversy. And they were far, far better qualified than you or I to deal with this problem. I highly recommend we follow the precedent they set.

They made it clear that “through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we [Jewish converts] are saved, just as they [Gentile converts] are.” (Acts 15:11.) They also made it clear that it was not true that “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved" and "The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses." In their judgment they also made it clear that “we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God” by “putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear.”

Again, if the gentile converts were supposed to be under the jurisdiction of some/all of the mosaic law, this was the time to mention it. And surprisingly it does seem that the Jerusalem council did arguably in fact sort of put gentile converts under a small portion of the Law of Moses! Focus on Acts 15:20-29:

²⁰Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. ²¹For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." . . . ²⁸It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: ²⁹You 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. Farewell.

We should ask where did the Apostles/Elders get these four requirements??? We cannot be sure. But with the phrase “for Moses has been preached… in the synagogues” that perhaps they got these four requirements from the Law of Moses. And if we search the Torah for hints about where they might have read the written will of Yahweh and concluded that there was something still for Gentile converts to be bound by, we can find some good candidates in the Torah .

Genesis 9 - the Noahide Laws of the Noahic Covenant

The laws given by Yahweh to Noah predate the Laws given through Moses by many hundreds (or some say thousands) of years. Since Noah was a father of all races, and since these laws were given long before the line of Abraham-Isaac-Jacob created the twelve tribes of Israel, these laws could be considered binding on all men:

⁴ "But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. ⁵ And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. ⁶“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man. ⁷ As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.”

So this is one good candidate. Generally most teachers seem to point to Genesis 9 as the primary source.

The “don’t eat blood” parallel is obvious. And it can easily be assumed without any stretch of logic or imagination that these “noahide laws” were later included into and expanded upon in the Mosaic law. And indeed in the Mosaic Law of Leviticus we see what very likely may be the laws the Apostles pondered over when coming to their Acts 15 judgments.

Leviticus 17 – “The Sojourner Laws”

¹ The LORD said to Moses, ² "Speak to Aaron and his sons and to all the Israelites and say to them. . . ⁷ They must no longer offer any of their sacrifices to the . . . idols to whom they prostitute themselves. This is to be a lasting ordinance for them and for the generations to come.' ⁸ "Say to them: 'Any Israelite or any alien living among them who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice ⁹ and does not bring it to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting to sacrifice it to the LORD -that man must be cut off from his people. ¹⁰ " 'Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood—I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people. ¹¹ For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life. ¹² Therefore I say to the Israelites, "None of you may eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood." ¹³ " 'Any Israelite or any alien living among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth, ¹⁴ because the life of every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, "You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off." ¹⁵ " 'Anyone, whether native-born or alien, who eats anything found dead or torn by wild animals must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be ceremonially unclean till evening; then he will be clean. ¹⁶ But if he does not wash his clothes and bathe himself, he will be held responsible.' "

Here in Leviticus 17 we see that there are laws for both Israelites and for the “aliens” (or sojourners) living among them. These laws were obligatory for the Gentiles who joined the community of Israel but remained gentiles.

And Leviticus 18 seems to expand the Acts 15 requirements well, as well. It defines for us what “sexual immorality” [pornea] is. If we look up pornea in a classical greek lexicon, we are left with the impression that the only type of sexual behavior that they’re against is visiting temple prostitutes in an act of idolatrous sex. But if we understand sexual immorality in terms of Leviticus 18, we see a broad spectrum of sexual illegalities. Leviticus 19 and 20 seem to very possibly shed light on the Acts 15 requirements as well.

Leviticus 18

¹ The LORD said to Moses, ² "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'I am the LORD your God. ³ You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. ⁴ You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD your God. ⁵ Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD.

⁶ " 'No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.

⁷ " 'Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; do not have relations with her.

⁸ " 'Do not have sexual relations with your father's wife; that would dishonor your father.

⁹ " 'Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere.

¹⁰ " 'Do not have sexual relations with your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter; that would dishonor you.

¹¹ " 'Do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father's wife, born to your father; she is your sister.

¹² " 'Do not have sexual relations with your father's sister; she is your father's close relative.

¹³ " 'Do not have sexual relations with your mother's sister, because she is your mother's close relative.

¹⁴ " 'Do not dishonor your father's brother by approaching his wife to have sexual relations; she is your aunt.

¹⁵ " 'Do not have sexual relations with your daughter-in-law. She is your son's wife; do not have relations with her.

¹⁶ " 'Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife; that would dishonor your brother.

¹⁷ " 'Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. Do not have sexual relations with either her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter; they are her close relatives. That is wickedness.

¹⁸ " 'Do not take your wife's sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.

¹⁹ " 'Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.

²⁰ " 'Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor's wife and defile yourself with her.

²¹ " 'Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed ^[a] to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.

²² " 'Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

²³ " 'Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

²⁴ " 'Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. ²⁵ Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. ²⁶ But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, ²⁷ for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. ²⁸ And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

²⁹ " 'Everyone who does any of these detestable things—such persons must be cut off from their people. ³⁰ Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the LORD your God.' "

Leviticus 19

¹ The LORD said to Moses, ² "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: 'Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.

³ " 'Each of you must respect his mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.

⁴ " 'Do not turn to idols or make gods of cast metal for yourselves. I am the LORD your God.

⁹ " 'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. ¹⁰ Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.

²⁰ " 'If a man sleeps with a woman who is a slave girl promised to another man but who has not been ransomed or given her freedom, there must be due punishment. Yet they are not to be put to death, because she had not been freed. ²¹ The man, however, must bring a ram to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting for a guilt offering to the LORD. ²² With the ram of the guilt offering the priest is to make atonement for him before the LORD for the sin he has committed, and his sin will be forgiven.

²⁶ " 'Do not eat any meat with the blood still in it.

" 'Do not practice divination or sorcery.

³³ " 'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. ³⁴ The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 20

¹ The LORD said to Moses, ² "Say to the Israelites: 'Any Israelite or any alien living in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech must be put to death. The people of the community are to stone him. ³ I will set my face against that man and I will cut him off from his people; for by giving his children to Molech, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. ⁴ If the people of the community close their eyes when that man gives one of his children to Molech and they fail to put him to death, ⁵ I will set my face against that man and his family and will cut off from their people both him and all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molech.

⁶ " 'I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.

⁷ " 'Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the LORD your God. ⁸ Keep my decrees and follow them. I am the LORD, who makes you holy.

⁹ " 'If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother, and his blood will be on his own head.

¹⁰ " 'If a man commits adultery with another man's wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

¹¹ " 'If a man sleeps with his father's wife, he has dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

¹² " 'If a man sleeps with his daughter-in-law, both of them must be put to death. What they have done is a perversion; their blood will be on their own heads.

¹³ " 'If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

¹⁴ " 'If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be among you.

¹⁵ " 'If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he must be put to death, and you must kill the animal.

¹⁶ " 'If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

¹⁷ " 'If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, and they have sexual relations, it is a disgrace. They must be cut off before the eyes of their people. He has dishonored his sister and will be held responsible.

¹⁸ " 'If a man lies with a woman during her monthly period and has sexual relations with her, he has exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them must be cut off from their people.

¹⁹ " 'Do not have sexual relations with the sister of either your mother or your father, for that would dishonor a close relative; both of you would be held responsible.

²⁰ " 'If a man sleeps with his aunt, he has dishonored his uncle. They will be held responsible; they will die childless.

²¹ " 'If a man marries his brother's wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonored his brother. They will be childless.

²² " 'Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. ²³ You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them. ²⁴ But I said to you, "You will possess their land; I will give it to you as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey." I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the nations.

²⁵ " 'You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds. Do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the ground—those which I have set apart as unclean for you. ²⁶ You are to be holy to me ^[c] because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.

²⁷ " 'A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.' "

What then is the reason for these four requirements in Acts 15? The chapter makes it very clear that salvation is by grace and through faith only. It is not by keeping any commandments of any law. So why would they pull four sojourner laws from the Torah to add as a light burden upon the Gentiles? It is clearly not to obtain or to maintain salvation—a right standing with God.

My guess is that the four laws are put on Gentiles for the sake of not offending the Jews in the synagogues and the Jews in the Jewish churches and the Jews in the mixed Jewish-Gentile churches. It has nothing to do with righteousness or jurisdiction. It has to do with keeping peace and making it easier on the consciences of “weak faith” people perhaps?

For later Paul, also an Apostle, and Apostle to the Gentiles, when speaking to a mostly gentile church (?) said that it is technically fine to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols. So is Paul here rebelling against the Apostolic ruling of the Jerusalem Council? Or is there just a deeper principle we need to fish out of this interesting difference? In the same context Paul talks about weak faith and strong faith. Perhaps then Gentile Christians who are fellowshipping with Jewish Christians who still practice the commandments of the Mosaic Law should obey the four Acts 15 sojourner laws as a courtesy to the Jewish Christians.

[Footnote: see the essay by David Bivin, “The Apostolic Decree (Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25): Commandments for Gentiles?” (reproduce at the end of this rethink). It suggests that there are some textual problems with these four commands and that the commands are actually: no idolatry, no immorality, no murder. There are no dietary laws, he suggests. Although I think this is plausible it doesn’t fit the noahide laws perfectly well. Well, the no murdering does fit it very well. Hmmm. Still thinking about this!]

Third, while it is natural to equate entrance into the kingdom of heaven with salvation, perhaps they’re not exactly the same thing. So perhaps we need to keep in mind the context in which those words were uttered and to the audience they were uttered to.

Jesus was offering Israel a fulfillment of the promises and prophecies regarding the Davidic Covenant. The terms of the offer were that if Israel-Judah would repent from idols and social injustice, repent from rabbinic laws that nullified the intent of the Law of God, and accept Jesus as their political King/Messiah, Jesus would become their King, overthrow the Roman yoke, establish David’s throne forever, and rule over Israel and the nations forever from David’s throne in Jerusalem. I maintain that Jesus was, in Matthew 5, as well as most of the early chapters in Mt, Mk, and Lk, offering Israel the Davidic Kingdom. So perhaps now that the establishment of the Davidic Kingdom (which many call the Millennial Kingdom) has been postponed (because that generation in Israel rejected the offer) perhaps we need to not be so quick to equate heaven with “the kingdom of heaven.” (The phrase “the kingdom of heaven” was probably a polite way to say “the kingdom of God” and is not different from the phrase “the kingdom of God.”) But this is another debate for a different rethink.

1 Cor 10:1-11

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. ²They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. ³They all ate the same spiritual food ⁴and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. ⁵Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. ⁶Now these things occurred as examples^a to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. ⁷Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry.”^b ⁸We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. ⁹We should not test the Lord, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. ¹⁰And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel. ¹¹These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.

Although we are not under the jurisdiction of the Mosaic Law, it is clear that we need to not be ignorant of it and that we do need to glean examples from it. It remains an authoritative and trustworthy source of knowledge of who God is and what makes him upset. The fact that we, the Church, are part of the “fulfillment of the ages” also suggests strongly that the Mosaic Law belongs to a prior age and that the Church is in a different age.

Rom 15:4

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

The law of Moses perfect? Is it limited?

Well, yes, but with limitations. The mosaic law set the bar higher than any other law (like that of Hammurabi, for example) on the ethical-moral plane than human history had ever seen. With this the bar was set very high, relative to all that had taken place in that past.

The law permitted some ugly things like divorce, warfare, slavery, revenge killings, and more.

Jesus addressed the problem of divorce saying, “It was because of the hardness of your hearts.” So it is not the Law’s fault or God’s fault that the law is a bar not set as high as it could be. It is because of the hardness of the Jewish heart.

Also the law kept Gentiles out of the Temple. In the temple there was a court of women and a court of gentiles. Women could not go very deep into the temple. Gentiles could not go very deep into the temple either. Not as deep as Jewish men. Priests and Levites could go deeper. The high priest once a year was allowed to go all the way into the depths of the temple into the Holy of Holies where the presence of God rested. Also the law kept out a lot of Jewish men who might have been born disfigured or who might have contracted a disease like leprosy.

This all changed with Jesus. The temple veil was ripped in two!

And Paul made a big deal about this!

And when Christ came and preached “you have heard it said but I say to you” and “your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees” he was raising the bar far far far higher than the Mosaic Law. For the Christian the Law of Christ (which includes the imperatives of the New Testament directed at the church) is a far higher standard than the Mosaic Law. It does not permit divorce. While it recognizes the reality of slavery it discourages it rather than encourages it. It prohibits no man or woman, jew or nonjew, child or adult from coming to God. It forbids participation in worldly warfare. The bar was raised!

The Mosaic Law, according to Jesus himself, raised the bar to loving God with all your all and loving your neighbor as yourself. But the Law of Christ goes way beyond this. The Law of Christ commands the Christian to love God with all our all, love our wives more than our selves, love our neighbors more than our selves (?), and even to love our enemies!

So are you against the 10 Commandments? Are you an Antinomian?

Nine of the Ten Commandments are repeated in the New Testament as binding for Christians. I would consider nine of the Ten Commandments to be part of the imperatives of the New Testament. So while I am generally against Christians practicing the laws of the Mosaic Law (with a few occasional exceptions) I am very much in favor of the Law of Christ (which is love) and in favor of Christians obeying all the imperatives aimed at Christians in the New Testament.

The only commandment of the 10 commandments not reiterated in the NT is to keep the Sabbath holy. But even then I think it is wise to have a Sabbath, for the Sabbath was made for man. I do not think Christians are obliged to keep Saturdays holy with rest and focus on God.

I was asked if in trying to create a “New Testament Style Church” whether or not the Old Testament is to be ignored.

The NT doesn’t make much sense at all without the OT and that.

Examples:

a. I don’t think we can understand Paul/Shau'ul very well if we don’t understand Isaiah and Moses, for Paul quotes from the writings of these two men more than any other. Most of Paul’s quotations and allusions come from the Torah. Outside the Torah, however, he quotes most from Isaiah. How can we, for example, know what Paul meant by “faith” if we don’t understand Isaiah’s concept of faith?

b. if we do not understand the covenants God made with Abraham, with Israel at Sinai, with David, and the new Covenant promised through Jeremiah, the entire NT is a pretty strange book. (I especially like to focus on covenants as a framework for understanding God's relationships with humans). The concept of Messiah makes no sense unless we understand the covenant God made with David.

c. one cannot make much sense of the rulings of the Jerusalem council (Acts 15) on the question of how much of the Law we Gentile converts are under unless we knows about the so-called "sojourner laws" in the Torah (Leviticus 17 and Leviticus 20)

The OT laws (such as not eating the bottom feeders) may still be wise to follow even if I don't find them technically binding in terms of covenantal jurisdiction

The reason I focus on the NT for clues about church life and architecture is that the church is a new thing—it’s not Israel redux. It is not to be confused with Israel as if replacing Israel (the mistake of western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant). I say this because of Paul in Ephesians 3 saying that the church is a "mystery" (something not revealed in the Law and Prophets) which surprised even the angels. Also because when it was clear that the people of Israel had rejected Yeshua as Meshiach, he began talking about a change of plans that included dying for the world and "on this rock I will build my ekklesia." The church replaces Israel only temporarily as a focus of God’s plans. Israel is on the backburner temporarily, but they were not abandoned by God. The church replaces the temple and the apostles possibly replace the Sanhedrin as rulers of the 12 tribes of Israel (a theory I’m working on).

So what was the original purpose of the Mosaic Law?

First the Mosaic Law was one specific to a specific race in a specific place. The Law was given to the 12 tribes of Israel between the time they left slavery in Egypt and their entrance into Canaan. God wanted a holy people in a holy land. He wanted the Israelites to be different from the Canaanites and Philistines and such. The law was to make them holy, different, separate, strange. To this end, some of the mosaic laws may not even truly be a matter of morality as they are for just separateness. (Examples: Don’t yoke an ox with a donkey. Don’t mix flax and linen.)

The law was clearly a bilateral covenant between two parties. Obedience to the law had blessings. Disobedience to the law had curses.

Stated positively, if God’s people Israel obeyed the 613 laws of the covenant (especially avoiding idolatry and establishing justice for the oppressed) God would bless that generation of Israelites in that Land. He would make that land into a land of milk and honey and other temporal blessings. They would have an abundance of rain, wheat, barley, olives, milk, honey, figs, grapes, etc. Their herds of cattle and sheep and goats would thrive. They would enjoy safety from their enemies.

Stated negatively, if God’s people Israel began to worship idols, let justice rot into injustice, and/or really fail as a whole (as a people, as a covenant community) to keep the 613 laws, God would discipline them in very temporal ways. They could expect famine, draught, pestilence/locusts, disease, and invasion by their enemies.

What was the Purpose of the Law according to Moses? What did Moses say the covenant given at Sinai and its many commandments was about. This is very straight forward in Deuteronomy, I think, and it boils down to these two conditions:

(1) If the Israelites will obey the Law and avoid idolatry, He will bless the Israelites in the land of Israel with all manner of temporal blessings (rain, crops, bounty, peace, health, long life, etc.)

And

(2) If the Israelites disobey the Law and fall into idolatry, He will curse them in the land with all sorts of bad things (pestilence, violence, invasion, captivity, plague, etc.)

I think this is clearly the express purpose of the Law given by Moses to the Israelites. And I think that can be established by Deuteronomy 6 and that any little tidbit about “righteousness” needs to be seen in the light of the greater context.

All these verses to me clearly show that the Mosaic Law was given with temporal blessings and curses in mind and that none of it has to do with eternal state or such:

Deuteronomy

4:40

5:29-33

6:1-25

7:11-26

8:1-20

11:8-38 (especially vv 26, 27, 28)

28:1-14 - blessings for obedience

28:15-68 – punishments for disobedience/idolatry

30:1-20

31:all

Exodus 23:20-33

Leviticus 20:22-24

26:3-13 “if you obey”

26:14-39 “if you disobey”

Given this, it is a total mystery to me why any gentiles would ever place themselves under the yoke of the Law of Moses. If you’re not a Jew living in the land of Israel, why should you?

Second, Paul says it was like a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ and show us our need for Christ. It is ultimately like a mirror. The mirror shows us how dirty our faces are. But it will not clean our faces. You don’t know how hard it is to be good until you have tried, said CSLewis.

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Isn’t there a problem even defining what “Law” means? This is heavily disputed.

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Doesn’t Paul bring “the Law” back in 1 Cor 11 when explaining why female believers should wear headcoverings?

Yes and no.

As best I can determine, this “law” comes not directly from the Torah as it does from the Talmudim. Of course arguably the Talmudim was a semi-authoritative collection (oral and then later written) of Jewish insights and extrapolations based on the Torah. So perhaps indirectly the imperative for women to wear headcoverings comes from the Torah.

But it is really interesting that Paul, who has been a Pharisee, called this “the Law.” Very interesting. Want to probe this further.

Also want to make a new rethink on the thorny problem of Women in the Church with headcoverings and silence and all.

Doesn’t Deuteronomy 6 say that the Law provides Righteousness?

The following is a response I wrote to a friend who asked me how to reconcile Deuteronomy 6:25’s claim that righteousness comes from obeying the Mosaic Law with Paul’s letters which insist that righteousness is not by the Mosaic law.

Deuteronomy 6:25:

· If we are careful to obey all this law...commandments....that will be our righteousness (NIV)

· And it will be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments (KJV)

Here was my answer to him. . .

Saved by observing the law? Depends on what we mean by “saved” perhaps. If we mean “saved” in the sense of “justified” (we who are objects of God’s wrath somehow being declared righteous before God and entering into peace with God) we’ll have to focus more on the Abrahamic covenant (the trunk of the tree) and the New Covenant (the top of the tree?). If we mean “saved” in terms of avoiding the temporal manifestations of the discipline of God (draught, plague, locusts, famine, invasions and captivities by gentile empires, etc.) then I think it’s best to focus on the Mosaic covenant. If I understand it right, the Jews of Jesus time who cared about what God thought of them generally thought that they were acceptable to God based on being physical descendents of Abraham (faith in who they are) and/or based upon their obedience to the torah (faith in works). I think much of the NT was written to correct these misconceptions.

I suspect the physical descendent of Abraham/Isaac/Jacob are, as a group (but not as individuals or as even generations?) inheritors of the tangible facets of the promises made to Abraham. They enter into these blessings just by having been born into that lineage. But we who are not Israelites by race enter into the spiritual facets of the promises made to Abraham by investing the same faith that Abraham invested into the same God that Abraham invested his faith into. I don’t think, for instance, that Christians are going to inherit the land of Palestine (from some northern river in Egypt to the southern river in Mesopotamia) like I think the Israelites are eventually supposed to.

Always good, I think, to remember that the Abrahamic covenant (which hints to the new covenant – “through you all peoples will be blessed”) was a unilateral covenant which no human can do anything to break or violate. It’s based only on the faithfulness of Yahweh to his people. Fortunately for us gentiles, we can become sons of Abraham by faith.

In contradistinction, the covenant made through Moses with the Israelites at Sinai was conditional, bilateral. But it was also clear that when it was made the effects of obedience were temporal (I will bless you in the land) and the effects of disobedience/idolatry were also temporal (I will curse you in the land). This has nothing to do with salvation as we think of it. And I think the OT verses which say basically “obey and you shall live” are some of the sources of legalism today based on misunderstanding. Covenant confusion!

That’s why I think a real basic to understanding the bible is to understand the covenants and dispensations. Without that there is no chance for having an interpretive framework to make sense of otherwise confusing passages.

Good challenging exercise. I’ve been thinking about it all day and enjoyed spending time in the Word on it this evening and now that it is late I can try to hammer it out a bit. Maybe I’ll put it on rethinker.net!

I think this problem (of having righteousness connected with obedience to Law in Deut 6) may be a great mind bender to throw at your students to make them think. But I also don’t think the problem is a real problem. I think it is easily resolved.

I think you’re right that there is a difference in the Jewish mindset. If you asked an Israelite how he expected to be saved/justified, he’d probably look at you strangely as if you were asking a man already at the top of a mountain how he planned to climb up the mountain. His or her relationship to God was not a “personal relationship” or an “individual relationship” or an I-Thou relationship perhaps as much as a “We-Him” relationship. I think in their mind it was far more of a covenantal relationship for a people. Jews would have thought they were saved by the very fact that they were sons of Abraham. And I think Paul corrected this view (as did many in the NT) but didn’t totally disagree with it. And I think this is why Paul also goes on and on in astonishment in several of his letters about how we stupid ignorant gentiles were strangers to God, strangers to the covenants, and now—thanks to Jesus--we have the option to become adopted sons.

Ephesians 2:9-22

Colossians 2:11-23

Romans 9:

my brothers, those of my own race, 4the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

So to ask a Jew how he could hope to ‘be saved’ would be like asking a circumcised man how he planned to become circumcised.

But even John the Baptizer/Witness addressed this common assumption:

Matthew 3

7But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Jesus also had to deal with this common assumption too of course:

31To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

33They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants[b] and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?"

34Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37I know you are Abraham's descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38I am telling you what I have seen in the Father's presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.[c]"

39"Abraham is our father," they answered.

"If you were Abraham's children," said Jesus, "then you would[d] do the things Abraham did. 40As it is, you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. 41You are doing the things your own father does."

So the Jew would think—and understandably so—that his salvation was contingent upon his being a child of Abraham. This was his ticket into the many blessings of the covenant God made to Avraham, Yitzac, and Ya’acov. The Jews who assumed this were partially right and partially wrong. They were right that they needed to be sons of Abraham to be saved. They were wrong that they thought this ultimately boiled down to being circumcised—the sign of the covenant with Avraham. Well, not so fast. Paul made a lot out of Moses’ and other OT prophets own phrasing about circumcision of the heart rather than the penis. I think the key for an OT Jew is the same key as for us: we have to be sons of Abraham in the sense that we exercise the same faith into God that Abraham exercised.

Paul argues something like this in Romans 4:

1What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? 2If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. 3What does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." 4 Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. 5 However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.

6 David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

7"Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

8Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him."

9Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness. 10Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! 11And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. 12And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

13It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. 14For if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, 15because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.

16Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. 17As it is written: "I have made you a father of many nations."[c] He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

18Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, "So shall your offspring be."[d] 19Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah's womb was also dead. 20Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. 22This is why "it was credited to him as righteousness." 23The words "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, 24but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

And Galatians 3 of course:

After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? 4Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? 5Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard? 6Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."[a] 7Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. 8The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you."[b] 9So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. 10All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law."[c] 11Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith."[d] 12The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them."[e] 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."[f] 14He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. 15Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. 16The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ. 17What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. 18For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise. 19What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator. 20A mediator, however, does not represent just one party; but God is one.

21Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. 22But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

23Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. 24So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ[h] that we might be justified by faith. 25Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

26You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

All of these passages above weave together in perfect harmony, I think. And of course you’re familiar with all of them and I’ve said nothing new.

So you bring out Deuteronomy 6:25 which uses the word righteousness in connection with the keeping of the mosaic law. And what do we do about that problem?

There might be several reasonable answers. There is very possibly a linguistic difficulty in translation. I don’t know. Regardless of that, the most important one that comes to my mind is one of context. A text without a context is just a pretext, right? A verse stripped out of its paragraph or chapter or book is like stripping a word out of sentence or all the letters but one out of a word, right?

And I think it is quite clear that Paul rightly redirects the Jewish mind away from the Mosaic Law when he is discussing justification. He always seems to be saying, “Forget the Covenant of Law made at Sinai. That only proves that we’re sinners.” Even Moses at the end of Deuteronomy prophesied that the Jews could not keep the Law God had given them. Paul, 1,500 years later or so, had seen that Moses was right. So Paul keeps dragging the confused Jews and legalists away from Sinai and the Law and that Covenant to the Abrahamic covenant. The covenant at Sinai was bilateral and conditional and temporal. If they were righteous by the standard of that Law, they would have milk and grapes and honey and figs and pomegranates and cheese and wine and almonds and dates and such—the stuff of life. If they were not righteous, they would have death and destruction to deal with. Again, none of that has anything to do with eternity I would argue. That covenant didn’t address the issue of life after death. It addressed life and length of life and quality of life in Israel. So I’d say you can’t mix apples with oranges. You can’t mix a Deuteronomy passage about righteousness with a Jesus passage about righteousness with some other passage which is predicated on a different covenant and also speaks of righteousness. Paul wouldn’t allow it anyway.

20090818

Today I am rethinking the difference between being under Christ's Law and being under the Laws given through Moses. It seems that most of the controversy in the New Testament is not necessarily over the Mosaic Law in and of its self as it is the Rabbinic laws/takanot which proved to be traditions of men which nullified the Word of God. The problem of unauthorized men following Paul and Barnabas around, for example, to tell Gentile converts that they need to be circumcised to be saved is not necessarily something we should blame on the Law of Moses. So now that I am realizing that there is an option to strip away rabbinic hedge laws that surround the law of moses, and which created a very heavy yoke that the Jews could not bear, as Peter put it in Acts 15, I have a new perspective on the Law of Moses. As I look at it I see 613 laws minus quite a few. Obviously the laws regarding the temple sacrifices and temple cultus are crossed out. So if we look at the Law of Moses as civil, ceremonial, and moral components, and focus on the moral law inside of the Torah, I am struck again with how similar the Law of Moses is to the Law of Christ. They have the same core: To love God and to love neighbor. While it could be argued that the Law of Christ raises the bar of love higher such that we are to even now love our enemies, it is also noteworthy that love of enemies is also something that can be found in the OT.

I’m also reminded that the NT repeats most of the OT laws. Do not murder. No idols. etc. that's all NT echoing the OT. or saying same things. So what is the difference?

No sacrifices of animals.

No Sabbath keeping anymore? That’s not repeated in the NT. Paul seems to say that no particular day is special and that this is a grey matter.

Paul mentions one purpose of the law -- i woudnt have known what envy was were it not for the law.

So too I find myself refering to the Torah to understand the imperatives in the NT.

Avoid immorality. Hmmm. What does that mean? Is it just to avoid temple prostitution but is premarrital sex between consenting and monogamous adults okay? You have to find that answer in the Law of Moses, I think.

Kind of boils down to keeping the Sabbath holy, dietary laws, and some odds and ends like not trimming the beard, not trimming the sides of hair near the temples, no getting tattoos, etc. Can those just be labeled as grey matters?

So is this all one big moot point???

Should the imperatives found in the New Testament writings—the epistles to churches especially—be considered a type of Law? A Law of Christ? If we say that the Law of Christ is simply to love our spouse, our family, our extended family of our brothers and sisters in Christ by faith, our neighbors (those we come into contact with), our non-neighbors, and our enemies, well, how is this really different than the moral law of moses?

But the civil law comes back in with a theonomic mission if the church is somehow under the law of moses and/or if the church is somehow part of the commonwealth of Israel.

Resources / Bibliography

Discontinuist Viewpoints:

Moo, Douglas J. “The Law of Moses OR the Law of Christ.”

Chapter 9. Continuity and Discontinuity; Essays in Honor of S. Lewis Johnson. Crossway Books: Westchester, Illinois: 1988.

Strickland, Wayne G. “The Inauguration of the Law of Christ with the Gospel of Christ: A Dispensational View.”

Chapter 4. Five Views on Law and Gospel. Zondervan Publishing. 1993.

Moo, Douglas. “The Law of Christ as the Fulfillment of the Law of Moses: A Modified Lutheran View”

Chapter 5. Five Views on Law and Gospel. Zondervan Publishing. 1993.

Hagner, Donald A. “Paul as a Jewish Believer—According to His Letters.”

Chapter 4. Jewish Believers in Jesus; The Early Centuries. Skarsaune and Hvalvik (editors). Hendrikson Publishers: Peabody, MA: 2007.

Hvalvick, Reidar. “Paul as a Jewish Believer—According to the Book of Acts.”

Chapter 5. Jewish Believers in Jesus; The Early Centuries. Skarsaune and Hvalvik (editors). Hendrikson Publishers: Peabody, MA: 2007.

Chamblin, Knox. “The Law of Moses and the Law of Christ.”

Chapter 8. Continuity and Discontinuity; Essays in Honor of S. Lewis Johnson. Crossway Books: Westchester, Illinois: 1988.

Bruce, F. F. “What the Law Could Not Do.”

Chapter 18. Paul; Apostle of the Heart Set Free. Eerdmans. 1977.

Schreiner, Thomas R. The Law and Its Fulfillment; A Pauline Theology of Law. Baker books. 1993.

Moo, Douglas. Commentary on Romans.

Steven Ger’s commentary on Acts?

Bivin, David. “The Apostolic Decree (Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25): Commandments for Gentiles?”

Something by S Lewis Johnson maybe???

Continuist (Messianic) Viewpoints:

· Mosely, Ron. Yeshua; A Guide to the Real Jesus and the Original Church

· Berkowitz, Ariel and D’vorah. Torah Rediscovered; Challenging Centuries of Misinterpretation and Neglect

· Stern, David H. Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel; A Message for Christians

Related rethinks:

Redrawing the Olive Tree

The Apostolic Decree (Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25): Commandments for Gentiles?

by David Bivin

Christians often have distanced themselves so far from their Jewish roots and heritage that they have forgotten that they, too, are obligated by commandments. On the question of whether there was such an obligation, leaders of the nascent church ruled that followers of Jesus of non-Jewish parentage were obligated to keep a few, universal commandments. Unlike the Jewish disciples of Jesus, Gentiles were not obligated to be circumcised (although apparently they were asked to undergo proselyte immersion) or to undertake the obligations of the Sinai Covenant.

How many biblical commandments were Gentile followers of Jesus commanded to keep by the Jerusalem-residing leaders of the community? The obligatory commandments are listed in Acts 15:20, 29 and 21:25, but because of manuscript variants it is not clear whether Gentiles were enjoined to keep two, three, four or five commandments.

In the early forties of the first century A.D., the "apostles and elders" (Acts 15:6) of Jesus' community, who included Shim'on Petros (Simon Peter) and Jesus' brother Ya'akov (James), gathered in Jerusalem to discuss what they should do with the increasing number of non-Jewish followers of Jesus. These leaders were not indecisive. They ruled, contrary to the opinion of "those who were zealous for the Torah," such as James, that Gentiles would be required to observe only a few central commandments.

Agreeing with Peter's recommendation (Acts 15:7-11), the assembly decided to "loose" (that is, absolve) the Gentiles from the obligation of undergoing circumcision and from the observance of the biblical commandments (mitzvoth) prescribed in the Torah of Moses (see Acts 15:1, 5). However, in accordance with James' recommendation (Acts 15:13-21), the assembled leaders decided to "bind" (that is, "prohibit"): the Jerusalem council obligated converts to this new sect of Judaism to observe three basic, universal and overriding commandments (Acts 15:29; 21;25) that within Judaism later developed into seven commandments known as the "Commandments of Noah" or the "Noachite/Noachide Commandments." See my "'Binding' and 'Loosing'".

According to Acts 15:19-20, "those of the Gentiles who are turning to God in repentance" were commanded to abstain from (1) "pollutions of idols," (2) "sexual immorality," (3) "things strangled," and (4) "blood." With slight variations the list of prohibitions is repeated in Acts 15:29 and 21:25. Manuscripts of the Books of Acts are split between a list of three prohibitions (omitting either "strangled" or "immorality") and a list of four. This situation seems to indicate that there was uncertainty among ancient editors and copyists about the original reading. For a discussion of the textual variants found in the manuscripts of these three list (Acts 15:20, 29: 21:25), and the commentators who have argued for four, three (and even two) original prohibitions, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London: United Bible Societies, 1975), 429-34.

Metzger suggests that the original prohibitions—ritual, not moral—are the four found in the Alexandrian textual tradition: "against eating food offered to idols, things strangled and blood, and against porneia (however this latter is to be interpreted)." He argues that this fourfold ritual decree, or food law, was later altered in the Western textual tradition into a threefold moral law, "to refrain from idolatry, unchasity and blood-shedding (or murder), to which is added the negative [form] of the Golden Rule" by dropping the reference to "strangled" and by adding the negative Golden Rule (pp. 431-32).

However, David Flusser ("The Jewish-Christian Schism, Part I," Immanuel 16 [Summer 1983], 45), and, before him, Gedalyahu Alon (Studies in the Jewish History of the Second Commonwealth and the Mishnaic-Talmudic Period [Tel Aviv, 1957-58], 1:278 [Hebrew] ), contended that the Western text represents the original. Later, Flusser and Shmuel Safrai published a substantial article detailing the basis of Alon and Flusser's claim: "Das Aposteldekret und die Noachitischen Gebote, in E. Brocke and H.-J. Borkenings, eds., Wer Tora mehrt, mehrt Leben: Festgabe fur Heinz Kremers (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1986), 176-92.

Metzger could be right that the Western text is a correction of the earlier fourfold Alexandrian textual tradition; however, evidence from early Jewish and Christian sources leads to the conclusion that it was the threefold decree that the Jerusalem elders originally communicated to the Gentiles in Antioch. Behind the variant textual traditions (three and four prohibitions) probably stands the famous rabbinic threesome, the earliest form of the Noachite Commandments, which later in history developed into seven commandments. The Hebrew terms for the three are: avodah zarah (idolatry; literally, "foreign worship"); gilui arayot (forbidden marriages [including adultery] and sexual relationships; literally, "uncovering of nakedness"); and shefichut damim (murder; literally, "shedding of bloods"). Each of these prohibitions encompasses a number of biblical commands: avodah zarah includes the prohibitions found in Exodus 20:4-5; 23:13; Leviticus 19:4; and Deuteronomy 16:21-22; gilui arayot includes the sexual relationships enumerated in Leviticus 18:6-18; shefichut damim includes the prohibitions recorded in Exodus 20:13; Leviticus 19:16; Numbers 35:12, 28, 31, 32; Deuteronomy 5:17; 19:2; 21:4.

The term, shefichut damim (shedding of bloods), containing an idiomatic reference to "bloods," could have caused "blood" to enter the list of prohibitions. Later Greek editors and copyists may have wrongly assumed that the text referred to the biblical prohibition against eating meat from which the blood had not been properly drained. In turn, the reference to "blood" may have drawn "things strangled" into the list, essentially, the same prohibition against eating the meat of animals that had not been correctly slaughtered, in this case, an animal that had been put to death by strangulation rather than by the slitting of the throat. Once "blood" and "things strangled" were attached to the list, then "(the pollutions of) idolatry" was misunderstood and replaced by Greek scribes with "[meat] sacrificed to idols." In this fashion, three central moral prohibitions became misunderstood as food laws.

The threesome, "idolatry, immorality, and murder," occurs frequently in rabbinic sources. This triplet also can be found in early Christian sources (e.g., Didache 3:1-6). The three represent the essentials of the biblical commandments, God's most basic demands of humankind. In Jewish thought of Jesus' time not only are idolatry, murder and immorality the classic characteristics of Gentiles (m. Avodah Zarah 2:1), but Israel's sages sometimes accused the nation of these same central sins. Failure to keep the three, it was said, caused the exile (m. Avot 5:9).

The universal commandments that the leaders of the nascent church enjoined upon its Gentile converts were the same commandments that the nation as a whole expected righteous Gentiles, or God-fearers, to keep. This explains why James (and the other zealous members of the early church, that is, members with Pharisaic leanings) suggested that these minimal commands be "bound" upon Gentiles who came to faith in Jesus. The Jerusalem council did not innovate, but rather ruled in accordance with usual Jewish expectations of Gentiles.

Apparently, the Apostolic Council's ruling was that non-Jewish converts were required to observe only three commandments: abstinence from idolatry, sexual immorality and murder, in Jewish eyes the absolute minimal observance of the Torah. Since Jews expected righteous Gentiles to observe these prohibitions, it was only natural that the first followers of Jesus, a new Jewish sect, should have prohibited these sins to converts of non-Jewish origin. James and others of the party he represented must have reasoned as did other Jews of the period: obviously, since these converts were born in a grossly sinful, pagan environment, they should not be obligated to keep the numerous commandments of the Written and Oral Torah. Such observance would be more than could be reasonably expected. If only Gentiles would stop worshiping false gods, committing murder and engaging in sexual immorality, that would be sufficient!