Matthew 12:7
But if you had known what this is, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” you would not have condemned those who are not guilty.
Matthew 22:36-39
“Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Yeshua plainly refuted the idea that there is no hierarchy or precedence within God’s law. There are greater commandments and lesser commandments. Some laws must be held higher than others in order to resolve apparent conflicts such as healing or feeding the poor on the Sabbath.
Most Christian theologians divide the law into two parts, moral and ceremonial, and they usually dismiss the ceremonial as irrelevant to life after the cross. I believe that division is incorrect and does a great deal of harm. It would be much better to divide the law the same way that Yeshua did: by beneficiary. All of God’s laws have a beneficiary, and usually more than one: either Self, Others, or God.
The Sabbath honors God and includes provisions for ensuring the rest of others, but obedience to it is primarily self-serving. There is nothing wrong with that. God gave us that law for our own benefit. For some, it is a vital opportunity to say no without causing hard feelings.
Other laws are aimed at the benefit of others and take precedence over the former. “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years. And in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.” A slave owner is required to care for the physical and spiritual welfare of the slave. Like the Sabbath, the laws governing Hebrew slavery fits all three categories: It honors God by honoring his image and his chosen people. It benefits the slave owner by ensuring the good will of his slaves and the health of his community. However, the slave reaps the greatest benefit. His servitude was limited in duration, scope, and rigor. He is assured generous compensation for his service. In fact, if he sold himself into slavery, he will be paid at least twice: First when he sold himself, second during the course of his service, and third when he is released.
Laws that benefit God always benefit the law-keeper and those around him. “You shall have no other gods before me,” for example. Worshipping other gods is a waste of effort and might actually invite sickness and disaster, but primarily we worship only one God because that is what he wants.
We have to be very careful with this category. All of God’s laws were given for mankind’s benefit, and we shouldn’t say that one law or another primarily benefits God unless he has told us so as in, “For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…” Sacrifice is a good example. Blood sacrifices were never about satisfying God’s blood lust, for he has none. Like Yeshua’s sacrifice, the sacrifice of animals was to bring us closer to God. Hence, blood sacrifice is mostly for the benefit of the one bringing it.
If you encounter an apparent conflict in obeying God’s laws, he has already given us the standard which we are to follow. Choose the path which honors God first, then that which honors others, and finally that which honors ourselves.
Tags: bible study, legalism, sabbath, Torah
Great commentary, Jay.
The only thing I’d add is that any apparent conflict in Torah may be resolved as Yeshua explained with the example of David and the showbread, and in accord with Deut. 30 as well:
“Choose life…”
Guest –
Mark Call – who has a login but STILL can’t seem to get it to work.
I would also add that the Sabbath was designed for the benefits of others as well:
De:5:14: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.
By providing rest to others, acts of mercy such as healing people and rescuing animals from wells are permitted on the Sabbath. The whole purpose of the Sabbath was to give folks a break from their occupations, not to render them completely immobile. Jesus never violated the Sabbath, he just followed it according to the Torah rather than according to the customs of the Pharisees.
I would conclude, therefore, that there was never any conflict between God’s laws, but rather confusion on what they meant in the first place.
That second comment was me. Have you considered Haloscan?
Triton
http://tritonunleashed.blogspot.com/
Not really. I have so much else to think about, I’ve been avoiding thinking about plugins and upgrades.
Re your comment. I thought you were opposed to Sabbath-keeping. Or is it only seventh-day Sabbath-keeping that you disagree with?
BTW, thanks for the link!
The Law of God
There has been a misimpression on the part of many that in some sense all men were bound to obey the Old Law before the time of Christ. This is not the case. The Law of Moses was always and only meant to be observed by the Jewish people. We see in the Old Testament many non-Jews who were worshipers of the true God, such as Melchizedek the Jebusite and Jethro the Midianite, who were both priests of God (Ex. 3:1, 18:12), Balaam the Pethorite, who was a prophet of God (Num. 22:18–19), and Naaman the Syrian, who came to worship God and was in no way asked to embrace the Mosaic Law (2 Kgs. 5:15–19).The specificity of the Old Law to the Jewish people is also illustrated by the precepts in the Torah that pertain to the civil life of Israel. For example, Numbers 35:2 commands the building in the land of six cities of refuge to be controlled by the Levites.
The Old Law includes certain precepts of natural law. All of the Ten Commandments, for example, are either direct expressions of natural law or, in one case (that of the Sabbath commandment), a particular application of a natural law principle. Because the natural law is binding for all time on all people and never changes, those natural law precepts of the Old Law are also binding on non-Jews. This is why they get quoted in the New Testament as obligatory for Christians and which is why we continue to quote them today.
What happens, though, is that people end up forgetting that the reason they are binding on us is that they are part of natural law. People hear the verses quoted and think that they are binding because the Old Law says them. Aquinas explains: “The Old Law showed forth the precepts of the natural law, and added certain precepts of its own. Accordingly, as to those precepts of the natural law contained in the Old Law, all were bound to observe the Old Law; not because they belonged to the Old Law, but because they belonged to the natural law” (ST I–II:98:5).
When you understand this fact, it cuts through a bunch of the problems people fall prey to when looking at the New Testament’s use of the Old Law. People will mistakenly ask, “In what way is the Old Law binding on us today?” This question is framed wrong. It assumes that there is a way in which the Old Law is binding on us, and there’s not. The Old Law itself is binding on no one, and, unless one is Jewish, never was. – Jimmy Akin
-hoosiertoo
Hoosiertoo, I refer you to my posts under the Torah category.
No, I’m not opposed to Sabbath-keeping. The Ten Commandments are still in force for Christians; Jesus made this pretty clear in Matthew 19:17-19. I believe HOW we keep the Sabbath has changed, though. The details of it have become a matter of conscience rather than a matter of enforcement on the part of the civil government. The basis for this idea is Colossians 2:16-17:
Col:2:16: Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
Col:2:17: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
In my opinion, the absolute best essay on the Christian Sabbath is from Appendix A in Gary North’s Sinai Strategy. You can download it here:
http://www.freebooks.com/docs/a_pdfs/gnss.pdf
Triton
http://tritonunleashed.blogspot.com/
Cool. I can live with that.