Judicial philosophy is much in the news right now. And underlying the debates – in addition to some very important policy issues - are some very fundamental questions. Who makes the law? Where does law come from? What is law for? What can law do? What role should religion play in the formation of law? There are as many theories as there are people. For societies ruled by kings and conquerors, law was what they could enforce, and changed with the ruler. Roman law was “the product of rationally based work done by those in charge of the exercise of justice. . . . [Anglo-Saxon law got its] authority from] ‘custom’ ... the famous ‘common law. . . "
In America, we are primarily in debt to the idea of the law which was given to Israel on Mt. Sinai. “God did not impose the law solely on the basis of divine power and authority. God enters into a covenant with Israel. Israel is under the obligation to observe the law . . . because Israel freely agrees to keep this law given by God . . . God’s first gift to Israel is . . . freedom.” (References in quotes are from Jean Louis Ska, “Biblical Law and the Origins of Democracy,” The Ten Commandments: The Reciprocity of Faithfulness, ed. William P. Brown, (Louisville - Westminster John Knox Press), 2004), 156.) When Joshua brought the Hebrew tribes into Canaan after the 40 years wan-dering was over, he gave them a chance to opt out of the covenant: “...choose this day whom you will serve … but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” [Josh 24:15] Just as God’s people of that day did, the law under which we live today was also freely chosen by the participants in the great experiment in self-government our ancestors put into place some 21/2 centuries ago. And the reason it worked for so many years is that there was pretty broad agreement about what a civil and just society looked like.
All the trouble we’re having between the various political factions - from police to abortion to national borders - arise from the fact that we no longer have a common idea of what a civil and just society is or does.
We live - we must live - in a society ordered by law. None of us want to live in a lawless environment, although sometimes those laws are inconvenient. Be honest, now . . . have you ever run a red light at 2:00 in the morning when there was nothing coming from any direction? But on the other hand, if you’ve ever driven in Rome - or Istanbul or Djakarta, which are even worse - you start being grateful for the traffic rules here at home.
Think about what kind of society one without laws would be like. It would be a society with no authority outside of the individual. Judges 21:25 describes such a situation: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” When there is no objective authority or law, each individual develops his or her own rules. Some people believe that defending your home and property against intruders justifies violence, others shout “people before property!” If is it all right to kill someone while defending your home, is it equally acceptable to kill someone while invading someone else’s? The difference is, of course, between those who have property to protect and those who want it. Who is to say he is wrong, though, if there is no objective law?
The famous jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes made popular the idea that there is no such thing as “natural law,” that is, laws that are inherent in the nature of the created world. He believed that laws are tools for social engineering. And that’s the backbone of progressive jurisprudence. Under this view, laws are passed by experts in order to create a more perfect society.
But who decides how to engineer society? What is the underlying philosophy? You have to have both a theory of government and a theory of humanity in order to make any kind of coherent system.
The vision of the good society which influenced the development of law in what used to be Christendom owes a huge debt to the Bible. Nowadays, unfortunately, many insist on leaving any reference to God completely out of the discussion. The cry is,“You can’t bring religion into politics!” But where do such people think our laws against murder come from? Hammurabi’s famous code had different penalties for murder, depending on the status of killer and victim. The idea of equality under the law comes straight from Moses. Laws protecting the poor and mandating fair weights and measures come from the Bible. The mandate to care for the widow and orphan comes straight from the earliest years of Christianity. And the abolition of slavery was a purely Christian initiative.
When we think of people who reject the law of God we naturally think first of non-Christians. But in the early days, when people were trying to figure out what freedom in Christ meant in practice, some Christians proclaimed “we aren’t under law, but under grace.” They practically established a religion of doing their own thing in Jesus’ name. That is why Paul had to say firmly to the Romans: “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? By no means!” The error on the conservative side, including nowadays, has been to forget grace and become legalists, slavishly observing every letter of the law.
But neither of these is the answer.
Jesus said that he came “to fulfill the law, not destroy it.” What does that mean?
It means that the law has a purpose beyond itself.
If carefully obeying every nuance of the law was all that God wanted of us, the Pharisees would have been sitting pretty. They would indeed have been on the road to heaven, and Jesus wouldn’t have gotten so upset with them. But the law wasn’t an end in itself. The law was a tool God gave Moses and the Israelites in order to form a people for himself. It was, in fact, social engineering of precisely the kind that our political classes are so fond of nowadays. The difference is that God knew what he was doing. He knew what people are like, he knew what kind of society he wanted, and he knew what it takes to herd us in that direction.
Legalists get part of it right. They know that the law is important. What they don’t know is why it’s important. Socialists get part of it right. They know that no one should go hungry, and that whatever power one has should be used to maximize prosperity and opportunity and freedom for everyone, not just for the people on the top. What they forget is that laws don’t make people virtuous.
When the Pharisees of Jesus’ day spoke of the law, they meant not just the Ten Commandments, but also the first 5 books of the Bible - the Torah - and the Oral Law.
What was it, this Oral or Scribal Law? It was a vast system of rules and regulations that were intended to define and apply the law of God to every possible life situ-ation. There were volumes upon volumes codifying it.
Now, one principle God gives us is that we should have a day of rest. We shouldn’t work on that day. But the scribes, the teachers of the law, were not satisfied with that. No, they had to define what “work” is. One kind of work is “to carry a burden”. What is a burden? This is what the Scribal Law says:
... food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put upon a wound, oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an eye salve, paper enough to write a customs house notice upon, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet, reed enough to make a pen ...
On and on these regulations droned. Hours were spend arguing whether someone could move a lamp from one place to another or if someone could lift his or her child. Well, you see, it all depends on what your definition of “work” is.
You can see why Jesus opposed this sort of thing. It isn’t the law of God at all. It’s a system for worshiping the law, not for following it. The scribes were so focused on the law as an end in itself that they forgot or ignored the God who gave it, his character and purposes and values. And the other problem with legalism is that it produces law-breakers, not law-keepers.
Jesus was not a legalist. He was a law¬keeper. He did not come to abolish the law or the prophets. On the contrary, he held them in the highest esteem. But when Jesus said that He came to fulfill the law, he was not referring to the Scribal Law at all, but to the purpose for which God gave the law to begin with. Jesus was pointing to a goal that transcended slavish adherence to a set of formal procedures.
Notice how He emphases the importance of the entirety of God's law. “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” [v. 18] No way can anyone claim that Jesus’ gift of freedom means freedom from the law. Every part of the law, even the smallest, was and is important to Jesus.
Jesus makes that perfectly clear: “whoever 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 does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” [v. 19]
Jesus is not teaching that the law was a means of salvation. This is not it at all. But God’s law reflects God’s character, his values, his purposes. And because those don’t change, God’s law doesn’t change. No one can repeal God’s character or divert him from his purposes.
So it is very clear that God’s law is just as important today as it always has been. Even though the law doesn’t accomplish our salvation, it was given for our good. And those good purposes are twofold: first of all, following God’s laws creates a just and civil society. It creates an atmosphere of shalom, in which all people can grow and thrive.
Second, the law was given to point us to Jesus Christ. The old ceremonial laws which Israel followed from Moses to Jesus were makeshifts, temporary substitutes to follow until replaced by the sacrifice of Christ. But the moral law of God remains as much in effect today as it was before Christ came. And the reason for that is that God’s desire, his intention, his design for his children is that we should all become like Jesus.
The teachers of the law were wholly focused on keeping the letter of the law, but they never raised their eyes to see if they were headed in the right direction. It’s like someone being so concerned with the state of her engine that she doesn’t bother to make sure she’s on the right road. But Jesus goes on to say, “For I say to you, that unless your righteous surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” [v. 20] What the law does, and what Jesus points out during this entire sermon, is to show us how incapable we are of following it. The law is a mirror. Through the law, as Paul says, “we become conscious of sin.” [Rom 7:7] The law shows us that the only hope we have of being righteous according to God’s standards is by grace, the twin gifts of forgiveness and of the Holy Spirit.
God wanted righteous people in the Old Testament, too. . . . John Wesley points out that “there is no [conflict] at all between the law and the gospel; that there is no need for the law to pass away, in order to the establishing of the gospel. Indeed neither of them supersedes the other, but they agree perfectly well together. Yea, the very same words, considered in different respects, are parts both of the law and of the gospel. If they are considered as commandments, they are parts of the law; if as promises, of the gospel.”
You see, righteous people keep the law because they are righteous on the inside. They don’t become right with God by following the law, but having become a particular kind of people due to their relationship with God, they keep the law not only in letter, but also in spirit. And the spirit within which all the laws are to be obeyed is the spirit of love, loving God with all our heart, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves.
God’s laws, and only God’s laws, work to create a just and civil society. Because they were crafted by someone who knows us, someone who knows what we were created to be, who knows what justice and peace are, and who has given us hearts on which the Holy Spirit can work. All other systems will fail.
Our children are taught by society that there is no truth, that morality is what feels right to you, and that we create our own reality. They are taught that rebellion against authority is cool, that the purpose of freedom is to do whatever you want, and that personal fulfillment is the ultimate goal. If they’ve even heard of wrong and right, they don’t know what makes something right, or why it matters. And when nothing matters, anything goes.
We all want a civil and just society - including those who think we can have it without reference to God. But a civil and just society is a righteous society, and for that you need righteous people, and that means not just obeying, but loving the laws of God. The only way there is through Jesus Christ.
